Ambush Alley: The Most Extraordinary Battle of the Iraq War Read Online Free PDF Page B

a range of over 450 kilometers and a stabilization system that meant it could fire its main gun accurately when moving. There was no faster or more accurate tank in the world, and he loved being in command of it.
    Peeples picked up the radio. He wanted a CAS update from Captain Scott Dyer, his executive officer. He had requested and been promised a flight of helicopters, but as yet there was no sign of them.
It’s all quiet at the
moment, but it would be good to have some air support as we move forward.
    “Panzer 5, this is Panzer 6. Any news on air support?”
    Captain Scott Dyer, call sign Panzer 5, was riding in his tank just behind Major Peeples in the center of the wedge formation. His huge six foot eight inch frame, ridiculously tall for a tanker, was clad in a green Nomex tanker’s jumpsuit, and jutted out of the TC’s hatch. On his head he wore a bullet-resistant CVC, or combat vehicle crew helmet. His tank was named
Dark Side.
It was a reference to the fact that as an enlisted marine he had once been one of the guys. Now that he was an officer, they teased him for crossing to the Dark Side. He’d marked his turret with a huge red hand-print like the Native Americans marked their ponies. He and his crew liked to call it the red hand of death
.
His driver, Lance Corporal Michael Shirley, and his gunner, Corporal Charles Bell, had painted a large Playboy Bunny on the left side of the tank’s skirt. It was a ruse to get
Dark Side
in the magazines. It hadn’t yet worked.
    It was Dyer who had borne the brunt of the battalion’s hostility toward the reservists. He had responsibility for getting the tanks back up and running in Kuwait. They were lacking so many pieces of vital equipment that he had put in a parts request that exceeded the budget for the entire battalion. He’d watched a succession of generals and experts come down to inspect their tanks. He could tell what the battalion and regimental staff were thinking.
Those nasty reservists don’t know what the hell they are
talking about.
Part of him understood why they were so freaked. Peeples and Dyer had one-tenth of all the tanks available to the Marine Corps in Iraq.
If 80 percent are deadlined, that’s cause for pause.
    It took several weeks before he convinced the battalion staff that he did know what he was talking about. Only then did they pull together to help him get the tanks up and running. Navy engineers had managed to machine some of the parts on ship, like firing pins and bustle rack extensions, to carry even more gear. He, his maintenance chief, Staff Sergeant Charlie Cooke, and the tank crews had begged, borrowed, cannibalized, and even stolen parts from other units waiting in Kuwait. On March 19, after days working around the clock, they had managed to get fourteen working M1A1s up to FAA Hawkins, the force assembly area, for the push into Iraq. While they were there, waiting for the order to cross the line of departure, one of the tanks broke down. Another was driven into a hole and couldn’t be recovered. In spite of their achievements in getting twelve tanks ready for combat, it was a bad start, and Dyer realized that it had left a nasty feeling between them and the battalion staff. He knew that Major Peeples had felt it, too. There was bad blood from which they might never recover.
    It was doubly frustrating for Scott Dyer because he had started his career as an infantryman with 2nd Marines and was looking forward to working with them again. He had enlisted when he was seventeen. It was looking for a fight that had got him interested. He’d been on his way to enlist in the Army when, because of his height, he’d banged his head on a sign hanging outside the Marine Corps recruiting office. He started cussing. The recruiting officer had yelled at him.
    “What the hell are you doing to my sign?”
    “Well, if your sign wasn’t so friggin’ low I wouldn’t have bashed my head.”
    “You’ve got an attitude, kid.”
    Dyer had