3 US helicopters shot down in 10 days. Oh and here’s another “lucky shot.”
In the first month after the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division took over security duties in northern Iraq in late fall, roadside bombs killed or wounded more than a quarter of the 34-man platoon.
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A few weeks before, Bartlett and others recalled, the captain and one of his platoon leaders, 1st Lt. Dennis W. Zilinski, of Freehold, N.J., had visited the neighborhood to try to gain information from Ghaeb about a cell of bomb-makers. Zilinski, an amiable young officer and captain of his West Point swim team, brought toys for Ghaeb’s children and traded high-fives with them.
The sheik was holding a large gathering and was unavailable, they were told. The American convoy tried to turn around, but Iraqi cars blocked the way and people waved the soldiers down an alternative, dirt route along the Tigris nicknamed “Smugglers’ Road.”
“It was weird,” Bartlett recalled thinking. A few hundred yards down the road, bordered by fields, the convoy was hit by a massive explosion.
Behind the blast, Goudy jumped out of his Humvee and ran forward toward the huge cloud of smoke and debris. As it cleared, he was confused by what he found.
“I saw this big piece of flesh and thought it was a goat or cow. I thought, ‘Wow, these guys put an IED in a dead animal,’ ” he recalled. He went on, hoping to find his men sitting in the truck. But as he got closer, he recalled, “I didn’t see the truck. I started seeing limbs and body parts.” Goudy tripped over what was left of one soldier. Then he found the only survivor of the five soldiers in the Humvee, blinded and screaming.
“It was horrible,” Bartlett said. “We had to pick up body parts 200 meters away.” The Humvee was “ripped in half and shredded,” he said, by a monster bomb later found to contain 1,000 pounds of explosives and two antitank mines, with a 155mm artillery round on top.
The attack left the platoon outraged.
“I felt so angry and violated,” said Goudy, of Clarksville, Tenn. “We all wanted to go out and tear up the city, kick down the doors, shoot the civilians, blow up the mosque.” Goudy and others were convinced Iraqis living nearby knew about the bomb but did nothing to warn them.
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