Takedown: The 3rd Infantry Division's Twenty-One Day Assault by Jim Lacey

By Jim Lacey

Over the years the effect has grown that the 2003 invasion of Iraq met with little resistance and that, with few exceptions, the Iraqi military easily melted away. As this e-book truly exhibits, not anything should be farther from the reality. In its force to catch Baghdad, the U.S. Army's third Infantry department used to be in approximately consistent wrestle for twenty-one days. whereas american citizens have been gazing Saddam's statue being torn down on television, a brigade of the third identification used to be at the verge of being overrun by way of Iraqi Republican safeguard devices attempting to get away north. instructed to carry bridges in his zone, a brigade commander needed to blow up one among them simply because he didn't have the strive against strength to carry it. the corporate commander retaining the opposite bridge was once so tough pressed that he referred to as at the artillery to fireplace their ultimate protecting fires a command made simply whilst a unit is in mortal chance and person who had now not been given considering the fact that Vietnam. each one of the division's armored autos was once hit via rockets a few taking greater than a dozen hits and the struggling with was once so fierce now and then that complete battalions ran out of ammunition. however, whilst the scuffling with was once eventually over, the third identity had destroyed Iraqi ordinary military divisions and 3 divisions of the a lot vaunted Republican shield.

Takedown tells the little-known tale of what occurred to the third identity in the course of its fight to win Baghdad, a crusade that a few name the most vicious in American army historical past. to provide this firsthand account, Jim Lacey, a former Time journal reporter embedded with the first Brigade of the one hundred and first Airborne department, attracts on vast interviews that he performed with the yankee squaddies concerned in addition to entry to non-public papers and struggle memoirs. This tale is additionally enriched via his broad use of interview transcripts of senior Iraqi military officials besides their own written reminiscences. From the Kuwaiti border to the streets of Baghdad, those dramatic eyewitness descriptions of what went on provide readers a correct examine the brutal engagements within which the department fought for its life.

In employing any such wealth of fundamental resource fabric, Lacey has succeeded in writing a quick paced narrative of the clash, sponsored up through verifiable proof, that indicates how glossy wars are quite fought.

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In nearly every case where later versions disagreed with what was said earlier, I went with the earliest version. The sheer volume of information I was able to obtain and the publisher’s space limitations forced me to prune many interesting details of this fight. For instance, I collected enough information on engineer and artillery units for separate histories of each of them, and anyone interested in undertaking the task will find electronic copies of all my research, including copies of the videos, at the Military History Institute at Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

Using his rifle as a crutch he then starts back towards my vehicle! He then falls down and begins to crawl towards us. When he is about thirty-five meters away he aims the rifle at us so we killed him with the coax. 303 British so I kept it for a while. Later in the war I was shooting RPG guys from two hundred plus meters away. 303 hit them they stayed down for good. Anyway later that night the bull came back and stomped on this guy for hours. He would gore him, throw him up in the air, and then stomp on him some more.

While the bulk of the brigade—with all of his supplies and fuel—would take a circuitous route along the only road in his sector; Perkins would take the tracked armored vehicles on a straight line march across open desert to Samawah. He named the wheeled vehicle convoy “Rock and Roll” and placed it under his executive officer, Lieutenant Colonel Eric Wesley. ” In fact, both his own executive officer and his operations officer were against it. However, Perkins was resolved, and he took the plan to Brigadier General Lloyd Austin, the assistant division commander for maneuver, for approval.

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