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Show Michael choenfeld 6 tob r 2009 where I'm at. So first, actually Captain Gaughan starts heading up the street and then thi is going to be a bad situation because this crowds gathering, they're starting to point at him. JCW: So they had weapons? MS: Well, we couldn't see, the crowd was so big, if they had weapons yet. But it was big enough and they looked angry enough that we were assuming. I told Staff Sergeant Ivers at the time, because there was no cover, I said, "Get them down somehow." I thought we were going to have to send a rescue mission out, but Captain Gaughan figured out was going on, turned around and came back, because I thought for sure, oh, no, we're going to have to go after these guys. Came back and right as they were coming back, CO said, "Okay, find a place where we can bring the company together." I think that happened a little bit earlier. Anyway, we'd identified this vacant building that kind of faced out. It looked like it was pretty beat up, so it was kind of iffy about the structure of it, but we decided, okay, we're going to go in there. In fact, the locals told us, I wouldn't go in there; it's probably going to fall down on top of you." So, oh great. It was the only place we could really put a large number of people and it had the best vantage point as well. It was somewhat protected because it sat back a little bit. We were also fortunate because the Iraqis, for some odd reason, just built these machine gun bunkers everywhere, so I was able to get my machine guns up front. One of them in one of these bunkers was Corporal Tomsac's machine gun position. Sergeant Riley had set up in another position that wasn't bunkered in, but had a good shot on this Ba'ath Party. They could set up to do good supporting positions with each other and get good crossfire if it came down to that. 14 |
