"You move. You coil. You move"

By Matthew McAllester
Newsday

BILAL HUSSEIN / AP Insurgents load weapons during an attack on U.S. forces in Fallujah yesterday. The U.S. troops were in the first stage of a major assault on the insurgent stronghold.

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Newsday reporter Matthew McAllester is embedded with U.S. forces attacking Fallujah. Here is his first-person report of today's attack.

FALLUJAH, Iraq — By 2 a.m., a column of heavily armored Abrams tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles entered Fallujah along the perimeter roads and down some of the main arteries toward the heart of the city.

The vehicles crawled past palm trees swaying in the wind and apparently deserted two-story homes, many of them behind walls and metal gates. Viewed on an infrared screen inside one of the Bradleys, an Abrams tank swiveled its main gun to the east and fired repeatedly at suspected insurgents who were firing Kalashnikov rifles at the Americans.

A bit later, a man was spotted in a doorway looking at the Bradley through binoculars. As the Bradley, carrying a Newsday reporter, approached the doorway, the man stood before the vehicle on the street, pointing a shoulder-held missile launcher directly at the Bradley.

The gunner opened fire with his .25-mm cannon twice, blasting the area where the man stood. It was unclear whether he was hit. The Bradley continued on.

Missiles from an AC-130 gunship patrolling the route of the advancing Abrams and Bradley vehicles shattered cars suspected of being driven by suicide bombers.

The soldiers of the 2nd Battalion of the Army's 7th Cavalry Regiment pushed through clouds of desert dust toward the front row of houses in the northwestern corner of the insurgent-held city. Drawing fire from rebel positions, they let loose with their guns in what was intended as an overwhelming attack.

"The finest fighting force on the face of the earth is right here," Marine Maj. Gen. Rich Natonski, commander of the ground forces in the attack, told the 2nd Battalion in a visit shortly before the assault began.

	APTN / AP This nightscope image made from TV shows U.S. and Iraqi soldiers outside a Fallujah hospital yesterday. U.S. forces stormed into western districts of the city early yesterday, seizing the main city hospital and securing two key bridges over the Euphrates River.

"This is a hell of a team. Iraqi forces are fired up. We're going to kick some butt."

The vehicles proceeded in groups of one or two toward the train station. Lt. Col. Jim Rainey, commander of the 2nd Battalion, said they were moving slowly because of concern about booby traps in the station. "You fight like a Slinky," he said, his jaw puffed with chewing tobacco. "You move. You coil. You move. You coil."

The plan was to destroy at least the first two rows of houses that border the Jolan district. The 2nd Battalion's initial role, commanders said, was to punch the hole into Jolan that will allow the Marines and Iraqi forces to flow into the northwest of the city.

Commanders consider Jolan to be the part of Fallujah most densely populated by insurgents. The goal of the battle, said Marine Lt. Col. Joe L'etoile, 40, operations officer for Natonski, was to turn control of the city of Fallujah from the insurgents to the Iraqi people and government.

"It'll be fast, I'll tell you that much," he said before the battle began, gazing toward the front line of houses.

In the command tent of 2nd Battalion, Rainey and intelligence officers watched a computer screen that displayed a live feed from an unmanned drone aircraft flying over the city with powerful cameras and positioning systems.

From the tent, the officers could see four insurgents firing mortars — the white flash showing up in the backyard of a house — and then moving quickly through the streets.

Two of the men appeared to be carrying weapons, probably Kalashnikov rifles.

From a few dozen yards away, the 2nd Battalion's mortar team fired into the sky , a bang followed by the whiz of the projectile heading toward the city in an arc. Several seconds later, booms echoed back across the desert to this forward base.

Earlier, Rainey led a reconnaissance mission of eight Bradleys and five tanks up toward the train station to the north of Jolan, some of them pushing toward the front line.

Inside a Bradley, a passenger's teeth rattle and his body is shaken and battered with each maneuver the tracked vehicle makes. Five envelope-shaped periscopes allow a limited view outside, but the main view for the five or six infantrymen in the rear of the vehicle comes from the green video screen in one corner.

By pressing buttons, the passengers can see the different views of the gunner, the driver or the commander. There is also a map; a blue dot represents the vehicle, which is located with a GPS tracking system known as Blue Force.

Blue Force also allows Rainey and his officers orchestrating attacks to tell where all his vehicles are at any given time. One described it as a video game overlaid on a map.

Before the battle began, commanders explained there would be two main prongs to the offensive, one directly into Jolan and another arcing through the city from the northeast to the south of Jolan. They hope the entire warren-like neighborhood will be cut off. Once inside, the 2nd Battalion will establish forward operating bases and target specific areas that its intelligence says are likely to be holdouts of the insurgents.

On this front, Maj. Tim Karcher, the battalion's operations officer, said the battalion would use a mine-clearing explosive device before advancing through the front line. The Army thinks the area is likely to be heavily mined and booby-trapped.

The primary aim of the full-scale pounding of the front line of homes is to kill the triggermen of the remote-control bombs that are likely to prove the biggest threat to American and Iraqi army forces pushing into the city.

"We're going to rain holy terror down on this front row of buildings," Karcher said. "You should see a burning part of the city. They're all sandbagged and all fortified buildings."

While American and Iraqi forces began the attack on the city Sunday night, quickly seizing a peninsula on the western edge of the city and securing two bridges across the Euphrates River, this was the start of the main assault.

Early in the morning, the 2nd Battalion moved en masse to its forward position in an old plaster factory on the outskirts of town. It set up a new command post and scattered its 60 vehicles around the desert.

A short distance to the west across the desert stood the tanks and vehicles of the Marine battalion due to push into Jolan. Another battalion stood ready to the west. Sometimes they maneuvered, but most of the day they lurked menacingly, pointed in the direction of the city.

Most civilians are believed to have left Fallujah.

"I feel for anybody who's bought real estate here in the past year," said Company Sgt. Maj. Timothy Mace, 44, as he sat in the back of Rainey's Bradley on the reconnaissance mission.

On that probing movement, before the battle, only one Iraqi opened up from the front line at the American vehicles. A Bradley gunner shot three times at him.

"Some little guy poppin' caps, huh?" said Mace, talking over the rattling roar of the vehicle. "You gotta admire his determination."

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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