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were waving while shooting at us with AKs from the
next. It was insane."

There was relief when we finally crossed the second
bridge to the
northeast of the city in mid-afternoon. But there was
more horror to
come. Beside the smouldering wreckage of another AAV
were the bodies
of another four marines, laid out in the mud and
covered with camouflage
ponchos. There were body parts everywhere.

One of the dead was Second Lieutenant Fred Pokorney,
31, a marine
artillery officer from Washington state. He was a big
guy, whose
ill-fitting uniform was the butt of many jokes. It was
supposed to
have been a special day for Pokorney. After 13 years
of service, he was to
be promoted to first lieutenant. The men of Charlie
company had agreed
they would all shake hands with him to celebrate as
soon as they crossed
the second bridge, their mission accomplished.

It didn't happen. Pokorney made it over the second
bridge and a few
hundred yards down a highway through dusty flatlands
before his
vehicle was ambushed. Pokorney and his men had no
chance. Fully loaded 
with ammunition, their truck exploded in the middle of
the road, its
remains burning for hours. Pokorney was hit in the
chest by an RPG.

Another man who died was Fitzgerald Jordan, a staff
sergeant from
Texas. I felt numb when I heard this. I had met Jordan
10 days before we
moved into Nasiriya. He was a character, always
chewing tobacco and 
coming up to pat you on the back. He got me to fetch
newspapers for him from
Kuwait City. Later, we shared a bumpy ride across the
desert in the back of a
Humvee.

A decorated Gulf war veteran, he used to complain
about having to come
back to Iraq. "We should have gone all the way to
Baghdad 12 years ago
when we were here and had a real chance of removing
Saddam."

Now Pokorney, Jordan and their comrades lay among
unspeakable
carnage.  An older marine walked by carrying a huge
chunk of flesh, so 
maimed it was impossible to tell which body part it
was. With tears in his eyes 
and blood splattered over his flak jacket, he held the
remains of his
friend in his arms until someone gave him a poncho to
wrap them with.

Frantic medics did what they could to relieve horrific
injuries, until
four helicopters landed in the middle of the highway
to take the
injured to a military hospital. Each wounded marine
had a tag describing his
injury. One had gunshot wounds to the face, another to
the chest.
Another simply lay on his side in the sand with a tag
reading: "Urgent -
surgery, buttock."

One young marine was assigned the job of keeping the
flies at bay.
Some of his comrades, exhausted, covered in blood,
dirt and sweat walked
around dazed. There were loud cheers as the sound of
the heaviest
artillery yet to pound Nasiriya shook the ground.

Before last week the overwhelming majority of these
young men had
never been in combat. Few had even seen a dead body.
Now, their faces had
changed. Anger and fear were fuelled by rumours that
the bodies of
American soldiers had been dragged through Nasiriya's
streets. Some
marines cried in the arms of friends, others sought
comfort in the Bible.

Next morning, the men of Alpha company talked about
the fighting over
MREs (meals ready to eat). They were jittery now and
reacted
nervously to any movement around their dugouts. They
suspected that civilian 
cars, including taxis, had helped resupply the enemy
inside the city. When
cars were spotted speeding along two roads, frantic
calls were made over
the radio to get permission to "kill the vehicles".
Twenty-four hours
earlier it would almost certainly have been denied:
now it was granted.

Immediately, the level of force levelled at civilian
vehicles was
overwhelming. Tanks were placed on the road and AAVs
lined along one
side. Several taxis were destroyed by helicopter
gunships as they
drove down the road.

A lorry filled with sacks of wheat made the fatal
mistake of driving
through US lines. The order was given to fire. Several
AAVs pounded it
with a barrage of machinegun fire, riddling the
windscreen with at
least 20 holes. The driver was killed instantly. The
lorry swerved off the
road and into a ditch. Rumour spread that the driver
had been armed and had
fired at the marines. I walked up to the lorry, but
could find no
trace of a weapon.

This was the start of day that claimed many civilian
casualties. After
the lorry a truck came down the road. Again the
marines fired. Inside,
four men were killed. They had been travelling with
some 10 other
civilians, mainly women and children who were
evacuated, crying, their
clothes splattered in blood. Hours later a dog
belonging to the dead
driver was still by his side.

The marines moved west to take a military barracks and
secure their
third  objective, the third bridge, which carried a
road out of the city.

At the barracks, the marines hung a US flag from a
statue of Saddam,
but Lieutenant-Colonel Rick Grabowski, the battalion
commander, ordered it
down. He toured barracks. There were stacks of
Russian-made ammunition
and hundreds of Iraqi army uniforms, some new, others
left behind by
fleeing Iraqi soldiers.

One room had a map of Nasiriya, showing its defences
and two large
cardboard arrows indicating the US plan of attack to
take the two main
bridges. Above the map were several murals praising
Saddam. One, which
sickened the Americans, showed two large civilian
planes crashing into
tall buildings.

As night fell again there was great tension, the
marines fearing an
ambush. Two tanks and three AAVs were placed at the
north end of the
third bridge, their guns pointing down towards
Nasiriya, and given
orders to shoot at any vehicle that drove towards
American positions.

Though civilians on foot passed by safely, the policy
was to shoot
anything that moved on wheels. Inevitably, terrified
civilians drove
at speed to escape: marines took that speed to be a
threat and hit out.
During the night, our teeth on edge, we listened a
dozen times as the
AVVs' machineguns opened fire, cutting through cars
and trucks like
paper.

Next morning I saw the result of this order - the dead
civilians, the
little girl in the orange and gold dress.

Suddenly, some of the young men who had crossed into
Iraq with me
reminded me now of their fathers' generation, the
trigger-happy
grunts of Vietnam. Covered in the mud from the violent
storms, they were 
drained and dangerously aggressive.

In the days afterwards, the marines consolidated their
position and
put a barrier of trucks across the bridge to stop
anyone from driving
across, so there were no more civilian deaths.

They also ruminated on what they had done. Some
rationalised it.

"I was shooting down a street when suddenly a woman
came out and 
casually began to cross the street with a child no
older than 10," said Gunnery
Sergeant John Merriman, another Gulf war veteran. "At
first I froze on
seeing the civilian woman. She then crossed back again
with the child
and went behind a wall. Within less than a minute a
guy with an RPG came
out and fired at us from behind the same wall. This
happened a second
time so I thought, 'Okay, I get it. Let her come out
again'.

She did and this time I took her out with my M-16."
Others were less
sanguine.

Mike Brooks was one of the commanders who had given
the order to
shoot at civilian vehicles. It weighed on his mind,
even though he felt he had
no choice but to do everything to protect his marines
from another
ambush.

On Friday, making coffee in the dust, he told me he
had been writing a
diary, partly for his wife Kelly, a nurse at home in
Jacksonville,
North Carolina, with their sons Colin, 6, and
four-year-old twins Brian and
Evan.

When he came to jotting down the incident about the
two babies getting
killed by his men he couldn't do it. But he said he
would tell her
when he got home. I offered to let him call his wife
on my satellite phone
to tell her he was okay. He turned down the offer and
had me write and
send her an e-mail instead.

He was too emotional. If she heard his voice, he said,
she would know
that something was wrong.

END


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