None Left Behind by Charles W. Sasser Read Free Book Online Page A

(Improvised Explosive Device) attacks where the blast was distributed in all directions. They offered less protection from a blast directly beneath the truck, such as buried IEDs and land mines. None of the soldiers was eager to test it either way.
    Just after sunrise and the beginning of another sweltering day in early October, HMMWVs assigned to Delta Company, 4 th Battalion, were lined up in front of the empty fire-gutted building at Yusufiyah, waiting for the anti-IED vehicles “Iron Claw” and “Husky” to link up. Delta Company was moving out in force. Officers and senior NCOs had been briefed and rehearsed over the last several days. As with other 4 th Battalion companies, Delta was about to occupy and hold ground in its own AO—the four-mile stretch of treacherous highway known as Malibu Road that twisted in concert with the Euphrates River. Every soldier had already heard the disconcerting rumors about how the 101 st Airborne feared to travel that route.
    The Polar Bears had made their presence and intent known in a series of preemptive raids and air assaults. Now it was time for the companies to put Colonel Infanti’s theories into practice—that only by living among the people and protecting them could the war be won. Delta would eventually occupy a Company FOB and two patrol bases or battle positions on the road. The grand strategy, as Buck Sergeant E-5 Joshua Parrish understood it, was for Delta to tame its AO step by step. Advance, occupy, or construct a “fort,” hold and pacify the area, then move on down the road and do it again.
    Parrish’s Fourth Platoon, commanded by Lieutenant Joe Tomasello with Platoon Sergeant Louis Garrett had been tapped to occupy the first patrol base in the AO. Company, along with Iron Claw and Husky, wouldescort the platoon in, after which the Fourth would be left to hold its own ground. Parrish was a bit apprehensive, not knowing exactly how the local insurgents might react. Surely they wouldn’t be foolish enough, or suicidal enough, to attack a heavily armed, heavily armored platoon.
    Sergeant Joshua Parrish, Fourth Platoon’s First Squad leader, had been working with his dad remodeling a house in Glenfield, New York, when terrorists flew hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 11 September 2001. That very same day, even before the WTC finally imploded in toxic clouds of dust and smoke, he rushed right down to his local army recruiters and enlisted. It was his duty as an American to do
something
. He was nineteen years old and one year out of high school. Five years later, he was still in the army and still doing
something.
    He was a slender young sergeant, an inch over six feet tall, with cropped light brown hair, eyes that looked either gray or hazel according to the light, and a scar on his upper lip that gave him a wise, old-vet look. Conscientious and responsible, he had shaken his squad out of their racks as soon as he received the movement warning order at 0500. In the town outside the walls, muezzin were broadcasting their eerie, warbling calls to first prayers.
    Corporal Begin Menahem and a new private named Pitcher were now tarping over a trailer hooked up to Parrish’s vehicle. The trailer was full of MREs and water. No one knew exactly how long the platoon might have to survive
out there
on its own before it could occupy Delta’s first position. Hopefully, no more than a few days. Intel sorts had tentatively selected a site in the first big curve of the road.
    Lieutenant Tomasello came by while Sergeant Parrish was talking quietly with Menahem and several others from his squad. Tomasello was in his late twenties, broad-shouldered and almost Parrish’s height, with a ruddy complexion and a friendly, open manner. The Joes liked him and respected his leadership.
    â€œWhat do you think, Sergeant Parrish?” he greeted, looking down the length of the parked convoy with its turrets