VIKING HAMMER (AND THE UGLY BABY)

01.Masters of Chaos Pages 8/17/04 12:00 PM Page 311
Viking Hammer (and the Ugly Baby)
at a run, en masse. Attempts to teach them new tactics like time-phased
attacks had not prospered; they had fought this way for generations. The
Kurds were lightly armed and wore no helmets or body armor. Many
wore tennis shoes, the better to run. Each man had 150 to 200 bullets for
his AK–47. The few heavier weapons were a mishmash of Russian
machine guns and captured Iraqi artillery.
The U.S. soldiers respected their partners’ martial spirit. Young and
old, they were fearless fighters who did not quail under fire. Pesh merga
means “he who faces death.” If a man was wounded, he was expected to
get back to the rear by himself to seek first aid. The U.S. soldiers manning
the first-aid station in the town below the Gurdy Drozna command
post were amazed by the first Kurd who arrived later that day. They
could not tell what was wrong with him at first—he had been shot in the
chest and had walked all the way from the front.
The Special Forces soldiers were much better armed. Each had his
M4 automatic rifle and hundreds of rounds of ammunition. Each team
or split team also carried 60-mm mortars, a sniper rifle, an M240 light
machine gun, an Mk 19 automatic grenade launcher, and an M2 .50-caliber
machine gun. They had a pickup truck for the heavier weapons and
one for the Kurdish commander.
The starting point for ODA 081 was a crossroads called Dekon. The
captain joined the Kurd’s senior field commander, Sheikh Jafr, a silverhaired
man in his fifties with a bristling mustache. As the light filtered
over the snowy mountains hundreds of pesh merga arrived in dump
trucks, buses, and taxis. Most of them wore the traditional Kurdish
baggy tan pants and distinctively tied headscarves, and a few had camouflage
jackets or pants. They wore no helmets, so the U.S. troops also did
not, to better blend in.
The yellow prong could not launch until the green prong had
secured the high ground on the north ridge overlooking the Sargat valley.
At 6 a.m., the green prong began its assault, first preparing the way
with mortar and artillery fire and then proceeding up the mountain. The
hidden Ansar fighting positions and heavy guns still lodged in the mountain
crevices would cause havoc for the yellow prong, whose entire
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