Mortar Attack Kills Six U.S. Servicemen in Iraq

Mortar Attack Kills Six U.S. Servicemen in Iraq

CAMP FALLUJA, Iraq (Reuters) - A mortar attack killed six U.S. servicemen in western Iraq (news - web sites) Sunday, Marine Major T.V. Johnson said.

He told reporters the attack was on a military base two hours drive from Falluja, the rebellious city 30 miles west of Baghdad, but would give no further details.

link:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&ncid=578&e=1&u=/nm/20040502/ts_nm/iraq_mortar_dc

Koppel's gonna have to re-read the list in a week....

n/t

and "Bring it On" the resistance did

No flowers in this Mortar attack.

On Edit:

You don't just "learn" to use a mortar overnight.

six killed and as many as 30 wounded? Thats alot of bombs. That would take alot of trained men too , reckon so?

I have however been on the receiving end and it is scary. They tend to "WALK" them across an area. You hear each explosion as it comes closer to you ---very very frightening. I guess the accurate range for medium mortars is less than 2 miles

Fellow Vets ---any mortar men out there to answer the question?

I was an 11B40 ( infantry ) when I got out - but you don't need to be an 11C ( mortarman ) to answer the question. In 2 RVN tours as a squad leader and finally a platoon sergeant (E5), I got to be up close and personal too many times with those beauties.

I'm guessing the Iraqis used the typical Soviet Bloc 82mm Mortar ( they could fire our 81mm ammo but we couldn't fire theirs - clever b***ards ! ) will do a pretty good job on you if it lands in your hole or hooch, but I've had them hit 2 or 3 feet from my well-dug-in young a** ( used to be ) with the only damage being done to my eardrums and skivvies, plus some hot spent shrapnel on my back. I also received minor shrapnel wounds on 2 occasions from them - medics tweezers, tetanus shot, and a small bandage without leaving the bush, but they hit a fair distance away and I was strolling along a rice-paddy dike.

I'm guessing that these unlucky folks were grouped together and could well have been killed by a single round if they were not bunkered up or dug in. I've had people killed the next hole over.

As to training - it does take some to know how to use the sight and get the range and azimuth right, but it ain't rocket science - my guess is that the Iraqis were probably ex-soldiers and had that training.

Most of the mortar attacks I've seen in the news have
been ineffective, from what we are told anyway, and this
one stands out, so there must have been better training
or really bad luck at work.

(And welcome to DU. :hi: )

Bad luck will kill you just as easily as good training of the enemy.

I bet the Iraqis in this case had "staked" the range and bearing of the target - the news tonight said only 2 rounds were fired. My guess is that the first one was the hit, and the baseplate "bounced" with the first shot, and the second round missed.

Put the mortar in the back of a pickup with sand bags to stabilize the baseplate, drive to a pre-planned spot, park, orient the tube with a compass and adjust the elevation, drop two rounds with the proper increments ( the charge can be varied on individual rounds - this and the elevation (angle) of the tube determine the range ), and split - again, the guys doing this learned their trade in the Iraqi Army, in my opinion.

Mortars aren't super precise in accuracy, and normally require someone to "spot and adjust" after the first round.

The Iraqis are not amateurs.

I was billeted at Tan Son Nhut. I was a combat photographer, an A23671. The base was a target for all types of rockets and mortars. Especially during May 68 Mini-tet. That's where the VC came into the housing area along Plantation Road. It was ugly they used mortars on that trip. I agree with the bad luck part, there were a number of people killed by the lack of luck or by being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

CHARLIE EGGLESTON was killed in Rocket Alley on May 6th it was a sad story

http://www.digitaljournalist.org/issue9711/req28e.htm

DEATH IN

IRAQ-NAM

Death in Iraq-Nam like its older brother THE NAM takes NO HOLIDAY.

It stalks the Guilty, the Innocent, the Careless and the Unlucky with equal impunity.

In my past I was a 0331 - machine gunner. The mortars in our weapons platoon impressed me.. the ones on the other side, too. We had guys who could be on in two or three rounds.

I've been wondering when the Iraqis would start using them.

Question is.... what would happen if a somebody put an 81 in a pickup (camoflaged it) and dropped a few smoke rounds in a crowded sports stadium in this country? How many people would be killed in the stampede?

:(

CNN is reporting 5 dead.

Will May be as bloody as April?

Looks like that whole "Let's turn Fallujah over to the Republican Guard and hope everyone just forgets about all the unpleasantness" plan isn't turning up roses. Does this mean the Marines are going to have to do yet another about face and try to re-take Fallujagrad?

We have lost all political and moral credibility and now we're losing military credibility as well.

these are sailors
6 wounded and 12 injured.

,...has created hell on earth!!!

:grr: :grr: :grr:

burn in your own hell, bush

bad news!

CAMP FALLUJA, Iraq (Reuters) - A mortar attack killed six U.S. servicemen in western Iraq (news - web sites) Sunday, Marine Major T.V. Johnson said.

He told reporters the attack was on a military base two hours drive from Falluja, the rebellious city 30 miles west of Baghdad, but would give no further details.

.........fuck you bush* :(

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&ncid=578&e=1&u=/nm/20040502/ts_nm/iraq_mortar_dc

see...

Ah yes, the cakewalk and the celebratiosn are still going on, huh?

Who will tell the children?

It is now offical that the Iraqis don't like us.

One thread reports one killed, another reports four killed, and now this one reports six. Month of May will be as bad as April. The casualty count must be high as well. Number of deaths will hit the one-thousand mark before we "hand over" on June 30.

:(

and ten injuries in some other attack where Americans died today.

Incredible that this isn't headline news.

Six more names to be read at a later date.

say there were no casualties at that base.

American citizens. And they have been doing this for a year. It's just one of the "Memos' Limbaugh, Fineman, Novak... have receive from the Bush Adm. It's an attempt to mark these as specific areas where the resistance is but the entire rest of the country is solidly behind Bush's occupation. You are supposed to react with, 'Oh, it's just that area everything else is fine and going smoothly.' It's psychological propaganda in the same form used by Hilter and the Nazi machine. The Jews were the same color as the rest of the population so the Nazis had to figure out a method to indentify the Jews so that they could become marked. The Nazis did this by forcing all Jews to have a star sewn onto the outside of their clothing.

But isn't everything outside the Sunni Triangle pretty much desert? And doesn't the majority of the population reside in the Triangle? That would give the lie to the story they're trying to peddle that it 's only one small area and the rest of Iraq is peaceful.

Someone let me know if I'm mistaken about this.

They can tell the the folks at home anything they like, it will do nothing for them when people start to get draft notices.

Kimmet (sp?) said six dead thirty wounded in that mortar attack. Thirty wounded.

Just watch, 80 or 90 soldiers will be killed this month and the White House will call that "progress" because it is a sharp decline from April's toll of 140.

:eyes:

I doubt we will end up with more dead than in April, but you never know.

Not injured in this attack, but thought this thread was a good place to put this story

The worst fears of the mother of an Athol Marine injured last week in a car bombing were calmed after she heard her son's voice on the phone from Fallujah early Friday morning, she said yesterday.
Ronald Ducharme, 30, who suffered shrapnel wounds in his neck and arm. Ducharme was interviewed on TV Friday in a hospital bed in Fallujah.
``He wanted to be sure we knew he was all right. He didn't know if we'd see (his interview) on TV,'' she said.
A career Marine, Ducharme was sitting on the turret of his carrier when a suicide car bomber struck. Two Marines outside the vehicle were killed.
King said her son had volunteered to return to Iraq in January.
``They were all asked to go. He said, `I have brand new recruits, Ma. . . . I wouldn't let them go without me','' she said.

oh, it's heartbreaking - because he knew what they were in for. That is some guy.

Yet Baghdad is only 30 miles away.

Something doesn't fit here.

They had a big dustup over there a couple weeks back.

..I hate thei fucking War!!

,...which is why decent human beings are/have been calculatively manipulated by the absolute worst of human evils. Only human evil would venture to engage in such calculative control over decent human beings.

that is eating us like rats eating stinky Limburger cheese.

However it's only a militarily insignificant number of guys killed by a few dead-enders.

Tight Knit Military Community at German Base Mourns Eight Soldiers Killed in Single Attack

By Katharine A. Schmidt Associated Press Writer
Published: May 3, 2004

BAUMHOLDER, Germany (AP) - Welcome home banners still hang on houses at the U.S. Army's Baumholder base, but members of this tight knit military community are planning memorial services instead of celebrations.

Eight Baumholder-based 1st Armored Division soldiers were killed in a single attack near Baghdad Thursday during the bloodiest month since the United States invaded Iraq in March 2003, with the loss of at least 138 U.S. troops.

The division was supposed to have begun returning home in April, but Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld decided to keep them there up to three months longer to help deal with the recent spike in violence.

For the soldiers and families who remain in Baumholder, the fact that the men should already have been home when they were killed has made their deaths even more devastating.

"Their nerves are shot; it's really getting to them," said Hermann Gerlach, owner of the Billiard-Cafe-Blue in downtown Baumholder, a popular hangout for soldiers. "The news spread like wildfire Thursday - they were talking about it all night."

http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGAU7M03STD.html


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Didn't want to start yet another casualty thread...