Part VI: An ambush produces a hero

Part VI: An ambush produces a hero

By Sharon Cohen - The Associated Press
Posted : Saturday Aug 9, 2008 17:46:40 EDT

It all looked as if a video game had come to life. Through his night-vision goggles, Staff Sgt. Chad Malmberg saw the insurgents scurrying from berms to canals. Some popped up, ran a few yards, then fell to the Americans’ gunfire. But others kept advancing toward his convoy.

EDITOR’S NOTE — An insurgent ambush yields a hero, and a wounded soldier recovers back home. Sixth of a seven-part series on the longest deployment of the Iraq war.

Malmberg’s rocket counterattack hadn’t stopped the enemy. And Truck 4, at the back of the convoy, had just radioed two urgent pleas for help.

It was running out of ammunition. And the enemy was within shouting distance.

Once again, Malmberg ordered his truck to race to the back — this time with two other Humvees, one of which supplied .50-caliber machine gun bullets.

The insurgents, once five or six football-field lengths away, were now within 50 feet, hunkered in a ditch. When their muzzles flashed, Malmberg saw their faces and their turbans.

When his truck stopped, he flung open his door and hopped out, quickly lobbing a grenade into the ditch.

“Frag out!” he shouted so others could take cover, then repeated the alert on the radio. Then his truck stopped again and Malmberg’s driver threw a second grenade.

Finally, that threat was eliminated.

Still, the fight wasn’t over. Insurgents near the front of the convoy, where Malmberg now returned, were launching rocket-propelled grenades as all five Humvees sprayed the area with gunfire.

In the midst of this, Malmberg’s gunner alerted him that smoke was billowing from both sides of the cab of a civilian truck. Malmberg looked through his rearview mirror. Surely, he thought, the driver was dead. He radioed an order to a Humvee crew: Remove the body.

But when the sergeant opened the door, the driver popped out and hugged him. Miraculously, the man had survived, so frightened that he then crawled under his truck for safety.

The sergeant pulled him out. They had to go. Now! They had to get out of the kill zone.
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http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/08/ap_longdeployment_080908/