VIKING HAMMER (AND THE UGLY BABY)

01.Masters of Chaos Pages 8/17/04 12:00 PM Page 307
Viking Hammer (and the Ugly Baby)
Gurdy Drozna, by adding sandbags and a tin roof. It was still basically a
heap of stones, with enough room for a few men to crawl inside and
sleep.
At the Kurdish general headquarters in Halabja, they built a five-byten-foot
terrain map out of sand that showed the plan of attack. Six
color-coded prongs snaked eastward along different ridgelines or valleys.
Each prong represented a mixed unit of Special Forces and Kurdish
fighters. In the center, the yellow prong marked the main effort, which
would attack the heart of Ansar territory and capture the village of Sargat,
the AI headquarters. Pink paper cards marked key objectives including
Sargat. The green prong, the main supporting effort, ran along the
ridge just north of the yellow prong’s route. Two prongs, the red and
blue, would fight Ansar elements to the south as well as one Kurdish
splinter group. One would also drive toward the border town of Biyara.
To the north, the orange and black prongs would aim at the other Kurdish
splinter group and also cut off Ansar’s escape routes there.
Finally Tovo decided they were ready; it was the hardest decision he
had to make in the war. Waiting longer would only favor the enemy.
They would launch at dawn on March 28. The six available teams had
reshuffled missions and divided the weapons they had. The call went out
for the pesh merga to assemble at several staging areas on the frontlines.
The top PUK political leader, Jalal Talabani, had last-minute qualms on
March 27. The lieutenant colonel left Halabja and drove two hours to
Dukan to see Mam (“Uncle”) Jalal. “We’re as ready as we’re going to
be,” Tovo advised the Kurd. Then he turned around and drove back to
the command post for the final mission brief.
Talabani informed Tovo that the Kurdish splinter group in the north
had sent word that it would not fight, having suffered about 100 dead in
the March 21 cruise missile strikes. It turned out that the splinter group
in the south did not fight either. The four prongs, red, blue, orange, and
black, proceeded on the planned routes nonetheless, to attack Ansar outposts
and cut off escaping fighters. Tovo and his Charlie Company commander,
Major George Thiebes, would monitor the battle from Gurdy
Drozna. From there they could watch the initial assault of the main
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