Notes From A 2/7 Platoon Commander On The Battle Of Shewan

There have been several large battles in the town lasting anywhere from 3 hours to 36 hours in the past, but we had traveled through the town on numerous occasions without incident since then. I was prepared for contact but I wasn't expecting any. It turned out later that there was a big meeting of enemy leaders in the town that we had interrupted and we inadvertently trapped them inside of their compound. They must have thought that if they ambushed us we would cut and run. This was not the case. They were not expecting us to assault through their ambush and they were not expecting us to stay and fight. I think they are used to a lot of people being tied to their vehicles. I think that the enemy commanders gave the call to reinforce the town and fighters were coming in from all over the place. I know that they were reinforcing the ambush site because the battle started out with about thirty guys and eventually escalated to over 250. We didn't win the fight because of our superior firepower. We were severely outnumbered, and outgunned. From that first counter ambush assault we gained the momentum and maintained it until the enemy finally fled from the battlefield eight hours later. We later found out that we had killed or wounded all of their leadership in the fighting and this was probably what finally broke the enemy's back. We were patrolling through the town for an hour and a half before we were attacked. We were walking through the town when I saw a [rocket-propelled grenade] go over one of my HMMWVs. We saw a three man RPG team about 150 meters away. My [platoon sergeant] killed the RPG gunner, and another one of my Marines killed the second RPG gunner before he could fire his weapon. We starting taking fire from various compounds but we kept pushing into the village. An hour or so later we were ambushed by 5 - 10 [insurgents] in a shallow irrigation ditch. Part of my platoon assaulted through the ambush but started taking heavy fire from a trench line to the north. Two of my trucks were ambushed from another position in the same tree line with heavy machine gun and RPG fire. One of the vehicles took a volley of RPGs to the hood. The crew dismounted from the vehicle and immediately started taking accurate machinegun fire from the trenchline. The M249 SAW gunner disregarded all the fire being directed at him and started suppressing the enemy with his SAW from a very exposed position. The team leader from the other vehicle dismounted with two of his Marines and began laying down suppressive fire. I pushed my truck into the kill zone to cover the downed vehicle and my gunner was able to suppress the enemy targeting my downed vehicle, which helped buy the Marines enough time to dismount from their truck. My gunner was taking a lot of fire to his gunners shield but he stayed up on the gun and continued to effectively suppress the enemy. The SAW gunner took charge of his team, pulled his vehicle commander out of the burning vehicle and exposed himself to enemy fire in order to suppress the enemy so that his Marines could get behind some cover. All of a sudden we took an intense amount of fire from the tree line and at this point numerous machine guns opened up on my vehicle and the dismounted crew trapped in the kill zone. All of this happened in about thirty seconds to a minute. This began twenty minutes of intense fighting as the platoon battled to recover the Marines from the kill zone.

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One of my designated marksmen heard what was going on so he crawled up on the berm he was taking cover behind and began searching for targets with his rifle. This left him completely exposed and the enemy began to focus their fires on him. He was able to identify an RPG team targeting the Marines. With absolutely no regard for his personal safety, the designated marksman ignored the heavy fire impacting within a foot of his position, made the appropriate adjustments to his scope, controlled his breathing, relaxed, and began engaging targets. He killed the first RPG gunner before he could fire. He spotted another RPG gunner readying to take a shot and killed him. He scanned the trenches until he found another target, made corrections for wind and distance and killed him. The enemy fired over forty RPGs from the tree line but were unable to effectively engage the Marines trapped in the kill zone because of the high amount of accurate fire being directed at them. The SAW gunner continued to suppress the enemy while the gunner on my vehicle systematically shifted his fire from fighting position to fighting position. The enemy was reinforcing the tree and the enemy was replacing fighters as quickly as we were killing them. The designated marksman was able to clearly see waves of enemy fighters running to the tree line from a compound to the north. He quickly acquired these new targets, made the necessary adjustments and rapidly worked his way down the line destroying targets as they presented themselves. The enemy began to target him with extremely accurate small arms and machinegun fire. In response to the heavy fire he was receiving, the designated marksman merely adjusted the data on his gun and sighted in on targets as they revealed their positions by engaging him. He rapidly acquired and prosecuted these targets again and again, firing his rifle with exceptional accuracy. He continued to scan the trenches for targets from his exposed perch until all of the Marines were recovered from the kill zone. In the short time we were in the kill zone he fired twenty shots and killed twenty enemy fighters. After twenty minutes of fierce fighting, we were finally able to suppress the enemy enough to get an MRAP into the kill zone to recover the Marines. Once that was accomplished, we pulled back so our platoon corpsman could look at the casualties. The vehicle commander from the downed vehicle was incoherent. The gunner wasn't in much better shape. We drove out of range of the enemy's fires, took ten or so minutes to redistribute ammunition, and came up with a quick game plan. I don't think the enemy expected us to come back, because we caught them off guard. We dropped some [close air support] on them while we conducted a trench assault. We started fighting our way through the trenches to clear out the ambush site but we had to cross over a road in order to complete the assault. As soon as we started to make our way over we took heavy machinegun fire from a compound to the north. We took another sixty or so RPGs, some rockets and mortars. We turned the direction of our attack and fought our way to the eastern flank of the compound. It wasn't as far to the compound from that direction, but as we attempted an assault we started taking more fire from another compound. The enemy had established a defense with mutually supporting positions. We were unable to press forward because a direct assault would have been extremely difficult because of the distance and level of resistance. We could see

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vehicles arriving from the distance with dozens of enemy reinforcements who could be seen swarming through the fields and trenches to protect their stronghold. We engaged these fighters, but while we significantly reduced the number of enemies on the battlefield, there was no lull in the fire from the enemy compounds. One of my team leaders and his SAW gunner (the same team leader and SAW gunner from the ambush above) crawled under heavy small arms and machinegun fire until they were thirty meters away from the enemy compound and were able to positively identify the enemy fighting positions. The team leader used his map and compass to mark these positions and returned to cover seventy five meters away from the compound. He continued to observe the enemy fighting positions as he called for air strikes on the various compounds only seventy five meters from his position. At this point we saw that the enemy was starting to pull back their forces and we drove them off the battlefield.

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