# Doomed Convoy



## tomahawk6 (30 Apr 2005)

This article falls into the category of lessons learned, essentially an account of how not to conduct a convoy. Mistakes in combat do kill and this article reinforces that adage.

www.armytimes.com

Subscriber only article.

May 02, 2005

'Then all hell broke loose'
One year ago, a fuel convoy strayed into the path of a fierce battle near Baghdad leaving eight dead. A report says they shouldn't have been sent there in the first place.

By Joseph R. Chenelly
Times staff writer


When 24 soldiers and 19 contractors pulled out of the gate at Logistical Support Area Anaconda near Balad, Iraq, on the morning of April 9, 2004, they passed a guard shack bearing a sign that asked: â Å“Is today your day?â ?

It was.

Eight of the 43 riding in the convoy of fuel tankers that day were killed, 17 were seriously wounded and two are still missing a year later, after the group rolled into the middle of a full-blown battle. But an after-action report obtained by Army Times shows it all could have been avoided if others hadn't made grievous errors when accuracy mattered most.

The report shows that communication breakdowns led to the redirection of the unarmored, undermanned fuel trucks into one of the hottest zones in Iraq at that time.

A battalion tasked with tracking dangerous conditions on supply routes was so mixed up that its soldiers were reporting two different threat levels and its Web site a third for the route the convoy took.

Orignially prepared to head north, the convoy had its destination changed to Baghdad International Airport â â€ south â â€ just a few hours before it was set to hit the road that day.

Then, minutes before it was set to depart, the convoy had its route to the airport changed. And just before the doomed convoy pulled through the gate to leave, an e-mail meant to halt the convoy was sent to the wrong address.

The Army report, written by Col. Gary Bunch, the investigating officer and commander of 172nd Corps Support Group, states: â Å“The information that was not forwarded had a direct influence into the outcome of this convoy. If the information was properly sent to subordinate units, action could have been taken to potentially minimize impact of hostile engagement with the 724th [Transportation Company] convoy.â ?

These costly mistakes sent 19 unarmored fuel tankers driven by civilian contractors and guarded by a single platoon from the 724th, a Reserve company out of Illinios, down â Å“IED alleyâ ? and into a battle between the 1st Cavalry Division and hundreds of insurgents.

Every vehicle in the convoy was heavily damaged and more than half were destroyed.

According to interviews with soldiers and the Army report, the fuel convoy was hit just outside the airport by one of the largest coordinated ambushes any coalition force had faced in Iraq to date. Fighting covered a five-mile stretch.

â Å“There is no way to exaggerate what was happening and what it looked like,â ? recalled Spc. Jarob Walsh, who was riding shotgun in a Kellogg, Brown and Root fuel tanker. 

â Å“The most horrible thing you could imagine is what it looked like,â ? he recently told Army Times. â Å“Bodies everywhere, trucks on fire and exploding.â ?

The convoy consisted of 19 green military fuel trucks that had been recently acquired by KBR from the Army. Only six carried a single soldier in the passenger seat, despite an order issued by the 13th Corps Support Command early that morning that said every convoy needed at a minimum one soldier per two KBR trucks. 

The seven escort vehicles included armored Humvees and 5-ton gun trucks with heavy machine guns. Some of the 5-tons' â Å“armorâ ? consisted of three-quarter-inch plywood, according to one soldier. None had ballistic windshields.

The Army report has not been released to the public, but a copy was obtained by Army Times, and a heavily edited version was given to the families of the men who were killed in the ambush.

Some families and drivers are suing to find out what was deleted and what has been left out, but interviews with soldiers, an attorney for families of those who were killed and the Army report spell out some of the errors that led up to the ambush.

The night before the convoy headed out, the leader of the 724th's platoon, 1st Lt. Matthew Brown, and Thomas Hamill, KBR's convoy commander, were told they were going to haul fuel north to Camp Webster in Al Asad the next morning. They received the normal intelligence briefing, which indicated that in the south, the Mahdi Army was on the offensive in the midst of a religious holiday. 

But about 1:30 a.m. April 9, Brown and Hamill were told their mission had changed: they were instead to head south and deliver 125,000 gallons of JP8 fuel through the airport's south gate, pushing down Main Supply Route Tampa.

Brown briefed his platoon on the new plans at 7 a.m. His soldiers had been in country for less than two months and had yet to face enemy contact. They had not convoyed to the airport before, so a sergeant first class was pulled from another unit to accompany them for the day as a guide.

The KBR drivers didn't learn of the change until they arrived at the vehicle staging area, about 9 a.m. Only three had ever driven to the airport, though none had driven there in the previous two months. 

The sergeant first class drew a rough map to the south gate in the sand at the staging area. Several KBR drivers later said they didn't understand the route and decided they had to rely on following the vehicle immediately in front of them.

The sergeant first class later said he was critical of the decision to send the convoy onto the hostile routes: The lack of â Å“intel from higher on route status ... and the ongoing operations in the area, with no helicopter support is criminal and must be addressed,â ? the NCO wrote in a sworn affidavit included in the report.

Coalition forces use four colors to classify threat levels on a route. Black means enemy contact is imminent or ongoing, and the route should be avoided if at all possible. Red means a serious threat exists on the particular route. Amber indicates some threat exists, or that enemy contact occurred on that route 24 or more hours earlier. Green means little to no threat.

According to the report, the route that the convoy traveled was on that day classified as black â â€ the most dangerous of all conditions.

That information may never have gotten to those who planned the route that morning. After the attack, the soldiers in the 49th Movement Control Battalion's Highway Section told investigators the route, code-named Alternate Supply Route â Å“Sword,â ? to the airport's north gate was black, according to the report. Several other convoys had been attacked there, some as early as that morning, and 1st Cavalry was engaged in fierce fighting with insurgents in the Abu Ghraib market area, which the route went through.

But the morning of April 9, the section's secure Web site indicated the route was red, less dangerous. And the officer in charge of the 152nd Movement Control Team at Anaconda recalled in the report that he thought the status of ASR Sword was amber.

According to the report, Sword was officially black that day and remained so through April 16, 2004.

An unidentified soldier with the 49th said in the report that the route to the north gate was rarely used and had always been a hot spot, adding, â Å“the route had been tag[g]ed IED alley.â ?

Just before 10 a.m., less than 15 minutes before the convoy rolled out, the soldiers were told to take this route. Prior to that moment, the plan had been to take MSR Tampa, a shorter, commonly used route to the airport's south gate. But, Brown said, word came down that an attack had just taken place near the south gate. He was told to take MSR Tampa only part of the way and then take the rarely used routes Husky and Sword to enter the airport's north gate.

But the report points out that a second fuel convoy, launched from Anaconda about a half hour after the 724th left that day, took MSR Tampa all the way and arrived safely. 

Misdirected e-mail

As the convoy headed out, it unknowingly missed one last chance to avoid ASR Sword. The investigation shows that just minutes before the convoy left the gate, the 13th Corps Support Command's G-3 section mishandled a critical e-mail that should have stopped or redirected the convoy.

The G-3 first sent an e-mail to the 172nd's operations section at 9:54 a.m., saying the 724th convoy was to be redirected through ASR Sword to the airport's north gate. It is unclear where this order originated.

Three minutes later, the same G-3 soldier sent another e-mail.

â Å“Sorry, it looks like Sword is closed until further notice. I am trying to deconflict,â ? the e-mail read.

But the only person to receive that second e-mail was the soldier who sent it. He accidentally addressed the e-mail to himself only.

The sender's name was blacked out in the edited version of the report.

The convoy left less than 10 minutes later.

The Army report calls for a deeper investigation into the botched e-mail as well as into other errors running up to the tragic events of April 9. An attorney representing several families of KBR drivers who were killed said that, despite numerous queries, the Army won't say whether such an investigation will take place. As of press time, the Army had not announced any disciplinary action for the mistakes leading up to the ambush.

Death march

A few minutes past 10 a.m., the doomed convoy pulled onto MSR Tampa and unknowingly began a road march toward a fiery battle between 1st Cavalry Division and 200 to 400 insurgents.

The first hour and a half of the 40-mile trek went smoothly. Traffic flow was normal; Iraqis stopped and waved along the four-lane highway. But a little after noon, shortly after the convoy turned onto Route Husky, the scenery changed.

As the convoy came within 10 miles of the airport, Iraqis and civilian vehicles became scarce, soldiers recalled.

â Å“Then an Abrams comes out of nowhere in the oncoming traffic,â ? Walsh told Army Times. â Å“A soldier standing in the turret was waving his arms at us. We just wondered what he was doing in the area. Then we see a second Abrams firing into buildings not far from the road.

â Å“Then all hell broke loose.â ?

Pfc. Jeremy Church was driving Brown and the guide in the lead vehicle, an armored Humvee.

The first thing Church remembered seeing was towers of black smoke and smoldering KBR trucks that had been hit earlier that morning.

His Humvee came under a barrage of small-arms fire from both sides of the road. Improvised explosive devices began detonating around them, Church told Army Times. All three men began returning fire. Brown, in the front passenger seat, was twisting his body to the right to fire out his window when an enemy sniper sent two rounds through the windshield. He was hit in the forehead. 

Church, who was dodging IEDs and insurgents blowing up Iraqi vehicles to create roadblocks, managed to give Brown a bandage and tell him to close his window. It was the last thing Brown was able to do before passing out. 

Walsh remembers Brown radioing before being hit to say he was taking fire. Then, he recalled, â Å“someone came on [the radio] shouting, 'The LT's truck just blew up, and I don't know where to go or what to do.' I knew then things were about to get real bad.â ?

â Å“Rounds started ripping through the cabin,â ? Walsh said, noting his truck's fiberglass doors offered no protection. â Å“We could see fuel was leaking everywhere. It was all over the roads. It got real bad real fast.â ?

The KBR truck in front of Walsh was losing power, which meant speed, its only protection, was rapidly fading. It was smoking as Walsh's vehicle approached, then flames ignited below it. It exploded and rolled onto its side just after they passed.

With Walsh hanging out the passenger window looking for insurgents, he saw the truck he believes then-Pfc. Keith Maupin was riding in. Less than a minute later, the truck exploded, Walsh recalled.

Dodging incoming fire and burning wrecks that used to make up the convoy, Walsh's driver sped forward. While turning onto an overpass, Walsh's truck took a direct hit from a rocket-propelled grenade. The blast threw the truck onto its passenger side; Walsh's legs were pinned against the dashboard. Using the buttstock of his M16, he smashed out the windshield, freeing his truck driver and eventually himself. His right foot was shot as he kicked his way out of the cabin.

Once Walsh was standing, he saw another KBR truck crawling up the road, its trailer on fire. Walsh could tell both passengers, civilians, were wounded, so he climbed onto the hood and lay down suppressive fire as they rolled forward at about 10 miles per hour.

But it didn't take long for the truck to succumb to gunfire. Walsh took a position nearby and continued shooting for about 10 minutes until an armored Humvee that had been rear security for the convoy stopped to pick them up.

He piled into the vehicle with the two civilians from the truck. Shortly after, the Humvee stopped to pick up two more people, a KBR driver and Pfc. Gregory Goodrich.

Soon after, Goodrich was shot to death while firing out the Humvee window.

Still nearly two miles from the safety of the airport, the Humvee's engine just quit. To make matters worse, Walsh and his fellow riders were nearly out of ammunition.

â Å“We sat there listening to the bullets hitting the armor. They sounded like golf balls,â ? Walsh said. â Å“We all knew it was over.â ?

What the occupants didn't know was that Pfc. Church had pushed on after his lieutenant was shot and had reached a â Å“milk factory,â ? where 1st Cav had set up a forward operating base. Church led three 1st Cav soldiers back into the ambush to look for survivors.

When he returned to the base with a second Humvee of wounded, Church was told the division had brought together two Abrams tanks and two Bradley fighting vehicles. Led by Church, they found Walsh and the wounded bunch, who had been stranded in the Humvee for 10 or 15 minutes.

The heavy armor formed a tight box around the broken-down Humvee and took the survivors to the outpost, where they were evacuated to the airport's hospital. Church stayed in the disabled Humvee because the evacuation vehicles were full.

He is credited with saving five contractors and four soldiers. He also recovered some who didn't survive. He later was promoted to specialist and awarded the Silver Star, the first reservist to receive the award for action in Iraq.

Brown lived but lost his left eye. He received a Bronze Star.

Walsh spoke with Army Times while recovering from multiple surgeries at Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington. He was decorated with an Army Commendation Medal with device for valor.

The lawsuits filed by the KBR truck drivers and their families claim the mission was an unnecessary risk, as drivers in the second convoy that was sent out a half hour after the 724th said the fuel bags at the airport were full when they arrived, according to Vincent Howard, an attorney with a Southern California law firm representing the complainants. 

Through Howard, the families and truck drivers say they are more interested in hearing the whole truth about that day than they are in money.

â Å“The whole lawsuit is about finding what really happened,â ? Howard said. â Å“And the soldiers were just as much victims of this.â ?

At least one soldier agreed. â Å“Really, the public hasn't been told what we did that day,â ? said Sgt. Matthew Bohm, a gunner in the 724th who was in the rear of the convoy. â Å“The full story needs to come out.â ?

Although Bohm sustained a back injury, he remained in Iraq until the 724th redeployed in February.

â Å“The 'Is today your day?' sign on the guard shack had new meaning for us,â ? he said of missions after April 9. When in Iraq, you never know when your day will come.â ?


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## KevinB (30 Apr 2005)

The fact that email and not physical or definite electronic (radio) means where used to initialte and countermand movement orders is CRIMINAL.  That just blows my mind.  Email is fine IF it is physically confirmed as received by other means.

This is less of a lessons learned and rather more of a lesson of what not to do...


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