“I didn’t tell my parents,” Marine Sergeant Huntley said of his assignment to the combat outpost. “I tried to make it as comfortable as possible for them.”
The United States Army had just taken over an agricultural college in Ramadi after a fierce firefight when Huntley arrived there in November 2005. They had turned the college grounds into a combat outpost. The place was a web of generators and strung out power lines. A village with many boarded up windows surrounded the outpost. Because the buildings sat above the outpost, insurgents could just take pot shots into the post from different buildings.
I arrived during a blackout at 4 a.m. The other dog handlers came out and grabbed me and said. “Hey, follow us.” They had us sit down.
“We just got attacked yesterday; gun fights are here and there.” And within the hour they were attacked again.
“The enemy launched about seven or eight mortars, large rockets, into the base. Then they just started shooting,” Huntley recalled. “This was the first night I was there. I was already firing back at random things and shooting large machines guns, something I hadn’t done since target training. Now all of a sudden I’m shooting at people, shadows, or silhouettes of where I think the fire is coming from.” The firefight lasted about thirty minutes.
Huntley soon learned why this place was so hot. They were in the enemy’s backyard.
“Ramadi was where all these fighters lived. They would travel to Fallujah and Al Asad to fight. Then they’d go home at the end of the day to Ramadi. So we were fighting pretty much in their backyard. That’s the reason they were so aggressive and why it was so dangerous at that point in time,” Huntley explained.
Fighting the enemy in his own backyard was not was Huntley expected, but like the others, he responded the best way possible: with prudence and practicality.
“We had to wear our Kevlar vests and helmets at all times,” he said.
Thank you for providing protection in practical ways, from seat belts to bullet proof vests. I pray for those in the military, men and women who need your protection today.
“Then he gave the commanders of units of a hundred the spears and the large and small shields that had belonged to King David and that were in the temple of God.” (2 Chronicles 23:9)