VIKING HAMMER (AND THE UGLY BABY)

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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 307
01.Masters of Chaos Pages 8/17/04 12:00 PM Page 308 308 M asters of C haos effort, the yellow prong, through binoculars as far as the town of Gulp. After that, the valley turned north and was obscured by mountains. The officers would then be dependent on radio to follow the progress of the yellow prong and the fate of Operation Viking Hammer. At 1 a.m. on March 28 the captain of ODA 081 lay down on the floor at the Halabja general headquarters to sleep for a couple of hours. He shut his eyes, but they immediately flew open, and he got up again to make sure he had put his radio battery into the charger. Still the captain could not sleep. It had been a memorable night. Lieutenant Colonel Tovo, the company commander, the Kurdish general Kak Mustafa, his lieutenants, and the soldiers had huddled around a big table for a final discussion of the next day’s plans. The excitement was palpable. It reminded the captain of a photo Tovo had given them of their OSS forebears, the Jedburghs, and the French resistance gathered in a smoky room on the eve of battle. In a few hours, the captain would lead his team and several hundred Kurds into the Sargat valley. Until two days ago, he had no idea they would be assigned to carry out the main assault on the yellow prong. The original plan had been for them to conduct the reconnaissance and then move to a southern portion of the Green Line. When the other teams were delayed in arriving, however, ODA 081 was a logical candidate because the men were thoroughly familiar with the Ansar territory. Surprised and pleased, they scrambled to get ready. Three of their sergeants would accompany the ODA on the green prong, and the other six members of 081 would lead the main effort on yellow. They studied their maps and gave the two towns on the yellow prong that they were to capture, Gulp and Sargat, code names beginning with a “Y” for yellow prong: Yahtzee and York. As he lay in the dark near his teammates, the captain visualized the dirt road to Sargat. It winds through a valley that steadily narrows into a gorge full of caves amid the snowy mountains. From there it was a short dash across the border. What would he and his team find?
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VIKING HAMMER (AND THE UGLY BABY)

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