Lost in the shuffle
Det 1’s combat record showed it could stand out among spec ops, but the Corps cut short this unit’s stellar story
By Gidget Fuentes
May 01, 2006
...Tensions were flaring in the Iraqi town of Kut as insurgents took over key buildings in the city along the Tigris River south of Baghdad.
An Army Special Forces “A” team, supported by a small detachment of Marine Air-Naval Gunfire Liaisons (ANGLICO), had been working with the Ukrainian military, which was holed up in its base when insurgents overran the local police station.
Over five days in August 2004, the “A” team fought from its safe house, taking casualties before it requested support from headquarters.
That call for help went to a highly trained team of leathernecks who, at the time, represented an experimental unit that marked the Marine Corps’ official foray into the world of special operations forces.
Enemy fighters had taken over key parts of the city, “and we had to get it back. So we just helped the SF guys out doing that,” said Master Gunnery Sgt. Charles Padilla, the senior man and recon team leader.
“We got there just in the right time.”
Within hours and under cover of night, a 16-member team from Marine Corps Special Operations Command Detachment 1 — including reconnaissance scouts, snipers, fire-support coordinators, communicators and radio recon operators — flew from its base near Baghdad to a nearby strip and worked its way into the city. The Marines arrived around 1 a.m. and linked up with Special Forces.
For one week, Det 1 and the Special Forces “A” team operated together, pulling security for local officials, taking the high ground around the city and river to provide cover and directing aircraft to strike buildings housing insurgent fighters.
When an Army Stryker brigade combat team arrived days later, Det 1 stayed to help quell the insurgents and plan the eventual retaking of the city before heading to Najaf, which was teeming with insurgents.
The men said it was a seamless blend of skills and high-tech capabilities that the Army units, including one battalion commanded by a Ranger-trained officer, welcomed with open arms.
“They just used us as if we were another one of their teams,” Padilla said, adding that without the Det’s capability to control and synchronize fires, and do command and control, “the Stryker battalions would have went in blind.”
The Det team’s accomplishment, repeated in similar fashion during the intense battle for Najaf later that month, is among the highlights of a combat deployment by an experimental unit that has stayed off the public’s radar.
Det 1 broke ground June 20, 2003, as a “proof of concept” designed to see whether Marines should become part of U.S. Special Operations Command. The Marines, who numbered 102 when they deployed, jumped into intense training before leaving on schedule in April 2004 for Iraq to a six-month deployment that, by most accounts, was successful in proving the Corps should have a seat at SOCom’s table of Army, Navy and Air Force commandos.
...Det 1’s strength, said its commander, came from the unique way the group organized itself around battlefield functions: maneuver, communications and control, fires, force protection, intelligence and logistics.
Along with the headquarters element, the Det comprised of a reconnaissance element, which included four five-man recon teams; a fires liaison element, which included two fire liaison teams and air controllers; and a 30-member intelligence element, which included radio reconnaissance, human exploitation teams and fusion cells.
“All functions can be executed in one grid square. We can do everything — all the intel process, high-end communications and everything,” said Col. Robert Coates, the Det’s commander. “We were fielded with emerging technologies that allowed us to do that. And you combine that with hard feet and strong backs, which made us very versatile and a force of choice on the battlefield.”
...In August 2004, the Det got a tasking order to support conventional forces fighting in Najaf. It would use its enabling capabilities to support the Army battalions, Marines and Navy SEALs poised to fight in the holy city.
“What they got was a full spectrum of battle-space capabilities,” Coates said.
Army and Marine forces battled militia forces loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, fighting amid the tight urban confines of the Old City and through expansive cemeteries.
U.S. forces fought their way in to encircle the gold-domed Imam Ali Mosque, a sacred Shiite shrine. It was the first major battle for the then-fledgling Iraqi government, which had assumed control two months earlier.
Padilla and the Det’s sniper team coordinated fire support, which included AC-130 and helicopter gunships, working closely with 2nd Battalion, 7th Regiment, of the Army’s 1st Calvary Division. Organized teams with snipers went several blocks forward of the friendly lines for observation, and the team integrated fires, air support and strikes and communications while heavily engaged, supporting the conventional forces.
“The snipers kept them down in the day, and fires kept them down at night,” Coates said. Some logged “kills” as far as 1,300 to 1,400 meters away.
With a communications architecture that provided “unheard of” amounts of bandwidth, the Det was able to reach back to its intelligence cell, which provided advanced imagery, data, signals intelligence and other products that the Marines were able to hand to the conventional forces to fight the fight.
“They got intelligence products ... that they had never, ever seen before,” Coates said.
“When we showed up, the maps they had were like the maps you buy at a gas station,” said Master Sgt. Ryan Keeler, the communications chief. “We sent back requests, and a day later ... we were able to print them off and take them to the field and also take them to the conventional units we were supporting.
“They couldn’t believe the photo imagery that we were able to get, one block over.”
For more than a week, “Kilo,” Keeler’s radio call sign, became a known voice among the air controllers and pilots hanging over the besieged city.
Keeler recalled that one day, as he caught a few precious hours of sleep after an intense night directing fires, an Army colonel he didn’t know went up to him and kicked him awake.
“So you’re Kilo,” the colonel said to him.
It seemed the colonel just wanted to pass along his thanks. “We put a lot of rounds downrange and put a lot of people out,” he recalled.
The Det left the city several days after a cease-fire was called. It was surreal, seeing insurgents they had been fighting now walking the streets. “It was like the rats coming out,” Padilla said.
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