Joe Taverner (48:16)
Yes, exactly. So we, you know, my platoon, we deployed in 2016, we've got two different sectors up there. Between sector six, I think we're 6.1. And then my other platoon had sector seven, which is going out towards the west. It's just a huge line. You know, at that point you've got truly a flood. It's like a berm basically that the Peshmerga are managing. And on the other side of it with all was all isis. So Charlie and my platoon, OIC were over at Muzzle Dam and then I stayed over by the hook with my ayc and we had been checking the border trying to figure out what was going on since we'd gotten there. We got there like late February. By March 3, the other platoon, Charlie's platoon or their world, the same platoon, I guess, but his squad, they were actually doing recon and there was a huge assault on the Mosle Dam then that they had repelled. And that ended up being a pretty, pretty crazy fight as well. And they had multiple VBIDs driving almost right up on their position. If they had known that they were actually a group of Americans, they probably would have all been dead because they drove by within about 100 meters of them. They tried LAW rockets, whatever, and they just like bounced off these armored trucks that they built, you know, the Mad Max trucks that ISIS would put together. They finally got some cast in there, took care of the IDs. We showed up to assist after, of course, everything's done and then it's too late as you're trying to do, you know, show up as a QRF. But anyway, that was March 3rd. So then fast forward a couple months later. We've been doing our own recon, meeting with all of our partner forces and kind of figured out this weak spot that we thought was going to be the weakest spot, the line. They just didn't have the funding, didn't have the support. Both of the other sides, where their guys, where Charlie and his guys were more of like General Barzani's forces. In front of us was another general who was part of like the Peshmerga parliament, kind of another, you know, higher ranking official. He had a lot of his own funding. And then you've got telescop and it was kind of a, just kind of an open area. You had forces but you know, they didn't have a lot of food, they didn't have a lot of supplies, they didn't have any tanks, they didn't have any like armor armored vehicles or not. Not many at least. And so we had kind of felt that that was probably the weakest point and if something happened that's where it was gonna, that was where it's going to take place. Plus you've got a direct line road coming from the border through the, through the town there, Telescopin almost all the way to, to the Bosel Dam. So not only was it a weak spot, but it was also a very pivotal spot that gave them direct access up to, straight up to the hook and then over to or over to the Mosel Dam. So that morning we started getting calls at about, about 2:00am saying like hey, we're the floss getting attacked. Like okay, let us know if it gets worse. So again that throughout the night we keep getting calls and by probably 4am My ground force commander now AYC from the multi, he wakes me up too and it's like hey, this is, we gotta start getting ready. We're gonna figure this out. So him and I sit up for a while, we start figuring out what the plan is going to be. And finally by, by 6 at least we're, we've got our whole group up now we're heading out on our vehicles and we're going to that spot because we know that's going to be the weak spot. As we're driving into the town, my communicator is on for my translator on this actually is on comms with their partner Terp, you know from the, the general saying that nope, tele staff is still secure. We still have the town are on the south but they're, you know, they breached the flop, but they're still south in the town. They don't have access to anything else. So. Okay, well we're going to go to the, the general's headquarters. We'll get up on the roof, we'll get some, some cast support, we'll figure out what's going on. And then as we start pulling into the village, we start taking small AR fire. So at that point we're like okay, what's going on? What's the deal? So stop the convoy a couple hundred meters before we enter the town. There's a There's two humvees that are kind of blocking the road a little bit that we can use as a little bit of COVID So we pull over, I've got my one armored vehicle at the front, and we're on comms trying to figure out what the heck is actually going on. Because obviously the intel we had was not correct with the status of the city. And almost immediately the past people in the group in the two humvees start driving away and our armored vehicle at the front takes an RPG. Airbags are gone. We're not driving that vehicle anywhere. Then 150, 150 starts taking a bunch of bullets. So now we're basically down two vehicles, not really going to be able to get out of there. Well, and the decision that I make is to. We're gonna consolidate. We're gonna hardpoint in a, in a building complex about 75 meters or so off to the side. So just like before, it's like, okay, let's, let's set up some blocking positions, let's stay down, lay down some fire and let's get behind cover. We can't just sit here in this bowling alley. That definitely not going to end well for us. So that's what we do. We move over to the building. And as we are entering the building and just getting there then, then Charlie and his guys show up as a qrf. They, we had sent them over to go check out another area. They had already done that. Bonani's guys had, had confirmed that that area was clear, so they came to join us. So we all link it up as a platoon, actually almost a one and a half platoons because we had another group up visiting us and they were getting ready to go on another, another event and when this took place. But we've been housing them for the night. So it just lucked out for us that we had an additional about 10 guys. So we're sitting there with about, we probably had about 30, about 30 people there. And we just hardpoint this, this building. We start getting a lot of. It ends up being a school. But from the school it's, it's north of the town, maybe 200 meters or so. We've got multiple VBIDs coming up towards us going off, you know, doors are flying directly over your head. We've got a small field in front of us and then a line of like three story buildings. So they've got altitude on us and they've got ammo. They've got basically everything. Task, please appear to where we are. So not really the best again, position to be in, but I don't have anywhere else to go and it's the best cover we can get. So we, we hard point there and just set up. You know, we've got our Javelins for some of the ID or some of the bigger vehicles, whatever we can do with that one, our automatic weapons and then our own sniper teams and, and we're, we're just in a battle for multiple hours. We were finally getting our cast support so we're starting to be able to engage with some CAs. We weren't getting as many aircraft as we wanted. The flood of the vehicles and the flood of the forces of ISIS from the south was still continuing pretty heavily. And so the headquarters decided that they were going to keep part of the forces themselves. And they were engaging the vehicles as they were trying to move from further south in Iraq up across the plot. I don't know if that would have made a difference for Charlie or not, but we definitely had the building that we're pretty sure he was shot from on our list. We were trying to get air support in order to take that building out. But before that was able to happen, I tasked him because we were getting a lot of very accurate, you know, sniper fire from kind of that area. He was our lead sniper and spent years as a sniper. It's like had Charlie try to work on figuring out where that was and, and hopefully take care of that threat. While he was in the process of doing that up on the roof, he took, took a single round right kind of by his clavicle, upper, you know, collarbone and, and that was that. He basically rolled over and, and had, had said, you know, he was hit and, and then he was, he was gone. You know, we continue to work on him for, for as long as we could. We got him off the roof, got in the medevac bird. They launched that almost immediately. Grid was, the grid was passed incorrectly, not from us, but we passed the 10 digit grid. Medevac birds take an 8 digit grid. Instead of taking off digits 5 and 10, they took off digits 9 and 10, which completely changes the grid. And they ended up directly on top of the town that all of the forces were coming from. Instead. They did make it up. Finally, after they finally got to us and we were able to get some smoke out to call them into the position, I took Charlie, loaded them up in our one other armored vehicle, along with basically a security detail and a medic. They, they drove about 5km up the road, further north, to get away from the Contact where we finally had the helicopter coming to land. And then they got out of there. And at that point they. When they got back, one of the helicopters, I think never flew again. It was done. I think they had, I forget, 100 something bullet. It was. It was pretty wrecked. Both of them had quite a few bullet holes in them. So those pilots were amazing. They did everything they possibly could for sure to. To do what they could. They changed, I think the. The SOPs after that too, because they were supposed to be escorted by a couple of Apaches. The Apaches were slower than they were. So they just said, we're not waiting for you. And they took off. After losing basically the two helicopter, they said, no, no, no, you guys go as a team. You need to keep your armored escort. You can't just take off on your own. So. But after Charlie took or after Charlie was. Was medevacked out, we still had another couple of hours of the fight before we finally had that they could take over the fight and we were able to break contact and get out of there.
