Company E’s deadly ride through Iraq

On May 29, 2004, a station wagon that Iraqi insurgents had packed with C-4 explosives blew up on a highway in Ramadi, killing four American marines who died for lack of a few inches of steel.

The four were returning to camp in an unarmored Humvee that their unit had rigged with scrap metal, but the makeshift shields rose only as high as the marines’ shoulders, photographs of the stricken Humvee show, and the shrapnel from the bomb shot over the top.

"The steel was not high enough," said Staff Sergeant Jose Valerio, their motor transport chief, who along with the unit’s commanding officers said the men would have lived had their vehicle been properly armored. "Most of the shrapnel wounds were to their heads."

Among those killed were Rafael Reynosa, a 28-year-old lance corporal from Santa Ana, California, whose wife was expecting twins, and Cody Calavan, a 19-year-old private first class from Lake Stevens, Washington, who had the Marine Corps motto, "Semper Fidelis," tattooed across his upper back.

They were not the only losses for Company E during its six-month stint last year in Ramadi. In all, more than one-third of the unit’s 185 troops were killed or wounded, the highest casualty rate of any company in the war, Marine Corps officials say.

In returning home, the leaders and Marine infantrymen have chosen to break an institutional code of silence and tell their story, one they say was punctuated not only by a lack of armor, but by a shortage of men and planning that hampered their efforts in battle, destroyed morale and ruined the careers of some of their fiercest warriors.

The saga of Company E, part of a lionized battalion nicknamed "the Magnificent Bastards," is also one of fortitude and ingenuity. The Marines, based at Camp Pendleton in southern California, had been asked to rid the provincial capital of one of the most persistent insurgencies. And in enduring 26 firefights, 90 mortar attacks and more than 90 homemade bombs, they shipped their dead home and powered on in a tour that has become legendary among other Marine units now serving in Iraq.

"As marines we are always taught that we do more with less," said Sergeant James King, a platoon sergeant who lost his left leg when he was blown out of the Humvee that Friday afternoon last May. "And get the job done no matter what it takes."

The portrait of Company E, pieced together through interviews at Camp Pendleton and by telephone, company records and photographs taken by marines, shows they often did.

The unit had less than half the troops who are now doing their job in Ramadi, and resorted to making dummy marines from cardboard cutouts and camouflage shirts to place in observation posts on the main highway when they ran out of men.

During one of their deadliest firefights, they came up short on both vehicles and troops. Marines who were stranded at their camp tried in vain to hot-wire a dump truck they had previously seized from Iraqis to help rescue their falling brothers. That day, 10 men in the unit died.

Sergeant Valerio and others had to scrounge for metal scraps to strengthen the unarmored Humvees they inherited from the National Guard, which occupied Ramadi before the Marines arrived. Among other problems, the armor the Marines slapped together included heavier doors that could not be latched, so they "chicken-winged it" by holding them shut with their arms as they traveled.

"We were sitting out in the open, an easy target for everybody," Corporal Toby Winn of Centerville, Texas, said of the shortages. "We complained about it every day, to anybody we could. They told us they were listening, but we didn’t see it."

The company leaders say it is impossible to know how many lives may have been saved through better protection, since the insurgents became adept at overcoming improved defenses with more powerful weapons. Likewise, Pentagon officials say they do not know how many of the more than 1,500 American troops who have died in the war had insufficient protective gear.

But while most of Company E’s work in fighting insurgents was on foot, the biggest danger they faced came in traveling to and from their camp: 13 of the 21 men who were killed had been riding in Humvees that failed to deflect bullets or bombs.

Toward the end of their tour when half of their fleet had become factory-armored, its worth became starkly clear. A car bomb that the unit’s commander, Captain Kelly Royer, said was at least as powerful as the one on May 29 showered a fully armored Humvee with shrapnel, photographs show. The marines inside were left nearly unscathed.

Captain Royer, from Orangevale, California, would not accompany his troops home. He was removed from his post six days before they began leaving Ramadi, accused by his superiors of being too dictatorial, records show. His defenders counter that his commanding style was a necessary response to the extreme circumstances of his unit’s deployment.

Company E’s experiences still resonate today both in Iraq, where two more marines were killed last week in Ramadi by the continuing insurgency, and in Washington, where the Senate voted Thursday to spend an extra $213 million to buy more fully armored Humvees. The Army’s procurement system, which also supplies the Marines, has come under fierce criticism for underperforming in the war, and to this day it has only one small contractor in Ohio armoring new Humvees.

Marine Corps officials disclosed last month in Congressional hearings that they were now going their own way and had undertaken a crash program to equip all of their more than 2,800 Humvees in Iraq with new $33,000 armor kits that box in the open passenger beds to make them more bullet- and shrapnel-proof. The effort, started last summer, went into production in November and is to be completed at the end of this year, officials said.

Defense Department officials acknowledged that Company E had faced shortfalls in equipment and men, but said that those were problems experienced by many troops in Iraq when the insurgency gained strength last year, and that vigorous efforts had been made to improve their circumstances.

Lieutenant General James Mattis of Richland, Washington, who commanded the First Marine Division to which Company E belongs, said he had taken every possible step to support the marines in Ramadi. He added that they had received more factory-armored Humvees than any other unit in Iraq.

"We could not encase men in sufficiently strong armor to deny any enemy success," General Mattis said. "The tragic loss of our men does not necessarily indicate failure - it is war."

Lieutenant Sean Schickel remembered Captain Royer breaking the chain of command by standing up at a meeting to ask a high-ranking Marine Corps visitor whether the company would be getting more Humvees that were already fully armored. The official said they had not been requested and that there were production constraints, Lieutenant Schickel said.

Captain Royer recalled: "I’m thinking we have our most precious resource engaged in combat, and certainly the wealth of our nation can provide young, selfless men with what they need to accomplish their mission. That’s an erudite way of putting it."

Six days before Company E began leaving Iraq, Captain Royer was relieved of command. General Mattis and Colonel Kennedy declined to discuss the matter. His first fitness report, issued on May 31, 2004, after the company’s deadliest firefights, heaped praise on him for "personal bravery."

"Is also capable of extreme violence and focused lethality," it added of Captain Royer.

The second, issued on Sept. 1, 2004, gave him opposite marks for leadership. "He has been described on numerous occasions as ’dictatorial."’ it said. "There is no morale or motivation in his marines."

His defenders say he drove his troops as hard as he drove himself, but was wrongly blamed for problems like armor that he could not solve. "Captain Royer was a decent man that was used for a dirty job and thrown away by his chain of command," Sergeant Sheldon said.

Today, Captain Royer is at Camp Pendleton contesting his fitness report, which has jeopardized a pending promotion and could force him into early retirement. Company E is awaiting deployment to Okinawa, Japan. Some members have moved to other units, or are leaving the Marines altogether.

"I’m checking out," Corporal Winn said. "When I started, I wanted to make it my career. I’ve had enough."

http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/04/24/news/marines.php