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Battle of Debecka Pass
How 31 Special Forces troops outgunned and outmaneuvered an overwhelming enemy force

By Sean D. Naylor
Times staff writer

Staring through the sights of his Javelin launcher, Staff Sgt. Jason Brown didn’t think he and his buddies stood a chance.
Iraqi air-defense cannon shells burst just 10 feet over the head of the Special Forces NCO; incoming mortar and artillery rounds were exploding all around him as he sat cross-legged on a hillside in the northern part of the country.

He watched transfixed as a formation of T-55 tanks and armored personnel carriers bore down on his position.

he held a Javelin missile system, his team’s best hope for survival against the armored threat. he wanted to use the launcher’s thermal sights to see through the haze that blanketed the plain across which the tanks were racing, and he knew he had to wait at least 45 seconds before the launcher’s cooling system would allow him to fire.

This would be only the second Javelin he had ever fired, and in the nervous excitement of being under fire and waiting for other Special Forces troops to withdraw to safer ground, he had forgotten that he could fire the missile using the day sights without the long wait. So he counted the seconds impatiently, as the Iraqi armor closed to 1,500 meters — about a mile away.

He saw flashes shoot from the muzzles of the tanks’ 100mm main guns, then after a few seconds, “Boom! Boom! Boom!” as the rounds exploded on his hillside, spraying up clods of dirt.

Now the tanks were only 1,300 meters away; still the Javelin wouldn’t arm. … 1,200 meters … 1,100 meters …

Brown was in the thick of the first tense moments of the Battle of Debecka Pass. This April 6 fight for a vital crossroads was one of the most extraordinary small unit actions of the war in Iraq. It pitted 31 American special-operations troops equipped with only four specially modified Humvees against an Iraqi motorized company reinforced with T-55 tanks, MTLB armored personnel carriers and a variety of supporting mortar and artillery systems.

Not only did the U.S. troops have to fight off a well-rehearsed counterattack from a determined enemy, but they had to do so while simultaneously coping with the horrific aftermath of the most devastating friendly fire incident of the war. Displaying the flexibility for which their branch is renowned, two-and-a-half Special Forces A-teams found themselves killing Iraqi troops by the score while saving allied lives by the dozen less than a thousand meters away. This is their story.

Code name ‘Northern Safari’

The seeds of victory in the Battle for Debecka Pass were sown in the pinelands of Fort Bragg, N.C., and Fort Pickett, Va. It was there, from October through December 2002, that the two 3rd Special Forces Group A-teams who fought at Debecka — Operational Detachments 391 and 392 — trained hard for the coming war. The two teams specialize in deep reconnaissance. Their Ground Mobility Vehicles — souped-up Humvees equipped with Mark 19 automatic grenade launchers or .50-caliber heavy machine guns — enable them to travel 1,000 miles in 10 days without any resupply. At Pickett, the teams rehearsed how they would react if attacked by Iraqi armor. Knowing that, in addition to the GMVs’ firepower, they were due to receive the Javelin, the Army’s latest shoulder-held “fire and forget” antitank missile, the team leaders determined that, even if outnumbered and faced with Iraqi tanks, they would not retreat. ODA 391 even came up with a motto to sum it up: “Ninety-one don’t run.”

On March 8, the teams flew from Pope Air Force Base to Romania, and on March 26, they infiltrated Iraq, landing at As-Sulaymaniya aboard an MC-130 Combat Talon.

Their first few days in country were spent operating against the Ansar Al-Islam militant Islamic group near Halabja. On April 1, the teams moved to Irbil and from there, to a staging area where they linked with ODA 044, a 10th Group A-team that was working with the special forces of the Kurdish Peshmerga militia (known by the Special Forces troops as “the Pesh” or “the Peshies”).

On April 4, they received a new mission, code-named Northern Safari. Together with ODA 044 and their Peshmerga allies, they were to seize a vital crossroads near the town of Debecka, about 50 miles south-southwest of Irbil, and hold their position until relieved by the 173rd Airborne Brigade’s artillery.

The crossroads sat just to the west of a ridgeline that ran from northwest to southeast. That ridgeline formed the “Green Line” that had separated the Kurdish-held Iraq from the rest of the country. The Special Forces troops’ operational concept was simple: About 200 Peshmerga special-operations forces and a handful of ODA 044 troops would dash forward and seize the ridgeline, while the 391 and 392 operators would provide support by fire from their GMVs in overwatch positions.

The principal objective — Objective Rock — was a small intersection east of the main crossroads. Once U.S. forces seized the crossroads, thus cutting Highway 2 between Kirkuk and Mosul, they could move southeast to take Kirkuk.

But there were a number of unknowns. Chief among them was any hard knowledge of how the Iraqi forces had arrayed themselves. There had been no time for the Special Forces troops to order any overhead imagery of the positions they were about to assault.

“No one knew what was on the ridgeline or behind it,” said Capt. Eric Wright, 391’s team leader. But the Americans knew they likely would be in for a fight. “They had 10 years to prepare this,” Wright said.

Another complicating factor was the weather. A thick haze enveloped the ridgeline and the valley beyond it 24 hours a day, limiting visibility to between two and four kilometers, at best.

In the absence of overhead imagery, the 10th Group troops relied on human intelligence gained from talking to farmers who were allowed to graze their livestock on each side of the ridge. The farmers told the Special Forces troops that there were Iraqi forces on the ridge and beyond.

“They said, ‘There’s definitely Iraqis up there, and there’s a lot more on the other side,’” Wright said.

The farmers also informed them of the rough locations of minefields and trenches.

On April 5, each 3rd Group team sent one GMV forward to reconnoiter the Iraqi positions on the ridge. From a position just behind a 12-foot berm east of the ridgeline, they spied lots of Iraqi soldiers on the ridgeline, none of whom seemed remotely concerned about concealing themselves.

“The weirdest thing to us was, we were watching these people on the ridgeline, and they were standing on top of their bunkers like everything was okay,” said Sgt. 1st Class Scot Marlow, 392’s senior communications sergeant.

That night, the reconnaissance teams called in airstrikes from circling B-52s. The B-52 bombs soon pulverized the Iraqi positions, sending orange fireballs blossoming along the ridge.

“Pretty much the better part of the night was a fireworks show,” Marlow said.

The next morning, about 80 of an expected 200 Peshmerga showed up and drove straight down the road toward a 12-foot dirt berm the Iraqis had built across and on each side of the road. The two 3rd Group teams spread out on each side of the highway over about two kilometers to reduce their vulnerability to artillery.

But the Peshmerga assault soon was brought short by a minefield laid in front of the berm. Gingerly, the Peshmerga picked their way through the dangerous terrain, removing the plastic Valmira antitank and antipersonnel mines and piling them by the road.

Although the Special Forces soldiers advised against it, the Pesh moved through the minefield and somehow got over the berm with a jeep mounted with a recoilless rifle. Reluctant to follow the same route the Pesh had taken, the Special Forces soldiers and their GMVs temporarily were stranded on the other side of the berm. The operators decided to leave the road, outflank the berm and drive straight up the ridgeline instead.

But with one eye on the need to prepare for a hasty withdrawal, CW2 Martin McKenna, 391’s assistant detachment commander, was keen to breach the berm anyway.

“Getting in somewhere is easy,” he told Wright. The hard part is “always how you get out.”

But as they debated the issue, gunfire erupted from the other side of the berm. Wright, who could hear the sound of gunfire coming from the top of the ridgeline, overrode McKenna.

“We’ll deal with it later,” he told the warrant. “Let’s get up there with the Pesh.”

Catching up with the Pesh proved difficult. Driving forward, ODA 391 came to a trench too deep and wide for the GMVs to cross, so they got out and tore up a sandbag-built fighting position, filling in the trench just enough for the GMVs’ wheels.

The next obstacle was American-made: dud submunitions dropped by the B-52s the night before that created what the Special Forces soldiers referred to as a “minefield” that was 700 meters deep. The only way through was for the GMVs to get in column and for one of the Special Forces soldiers to dismount and go on foot to guide them through the hazards.

South of the road, 392 also advanced up to the berm and then heard the distinctive “boom” of the Pesh’s recoilless rifle being fired somewhere up ahead. Then, 392 got a call from 391 saying they were in a minefield that extended at least 100 meters off the road on their side.

WO1 Robert Parker, 392s assistant detachment commander, cracked open the door of his slow-moving GMV and leaned over for a look underneath as the driver navigated a concertina wire barrier about 150 meters to the south of the road.

“Stop!” he barked; the driver slammed on the brakes and stopped the GMV just 12 inches — and a split second — from running over a three-pronged antipersonnel mine.

Parker jumped out and immediately saw a rusty sign in the grass. It warned of the minefield.

By now, the Special Forces troops could hear that the fire had intensified. They decided to take a calculated risk and instead of carefully clearing a path, they followed the flattened grass trail they had created on their way into the minefield back to the “hardball,” or road.

Parker later admitted they were holding their breath. “We were blessed that there was no incident there,” he said.

On the ridgeline

The Pesh already had seized the top of the ridgeline. When the Special Forces soldiers got to the top, they saw that the reverse slope of the ridgeline flattened out into flat, prairie-type grasslands much like the terrain from which they had just advanced. But ahead, they also spied more trenches, as well as unoccupied one- and two-tier fighting positions dug for armored vehicles.

Wright, a former mechanized infantry officer, immediately understood the significance. “Oh yeah,” he thought, “there’s definitely armor back there.”

The two A-teams linked with the Pesh and rushed to secure Objective Rock. They also helped the Pesh take prisoner 20 to 30 Iraqi troops who surrendered after a firefight on the ridgeline. One of the prisoners, a lieutenant colonel, told them that the previous night’s bombing had shattered the morale of many of the Iraqi troops, who had left of their own accord.

Asked where the Iraqi armor had gone, he replied angrily that his brother officers had departed with it.

“So he was upset, and he almost gave the impression that he was just waiting to surrender,” Wright said.

The 391 team leader decided it was a good time to follow McKenna’s advice and blast a path through the berm where it crossed the road. He did so for two principal reasons: to clear a route forward for the teams’ logistical lifeline, in the form of specially modified LMTV trucks under the command of the company commander for 391 and 392; and to create an escape route in case the teams came under heavy artillery fire and had to withdraw quickly.

Wright headed back with two GMVs to blow the berm.

Once they stood at the intersection, the Special Forces operators realized that Objective Rock did not offer the commanding view of the plains for which they had hoped. A low ridgeline just to the west of the road junction obscured all that lay beyond. McKenna and Capt. Matthew Saunders, the 392 team leader, decided to move about 800 meters farther down the slope to reconnoiter the crossroads.

After seeing Iraqi vehicles traveling through the crossroads, two “split teams” — about half of each of the 3rd Group teams — took positions on a low ridgeline later named the Alamo, about 800 meters west-southwest of Objective Rock. As they moved, the operators noticed, but paid little attention to, a pair of T-55 tanks that lay abandoned on Objective Rock.

While half of 391 was busy collecting land mines to help blow the berm, the rest of the Special Forces troops were in a gunfight with Iraqi infantry, who were shooting from fighting positions in the fields. It was here that Brown squeezed off his and his team’s first-ever Javelin. The missile streaked low above the ground, slamming into an Iraqi troop truck about 3,000 meters away. The truck erupted in flames, and the occupants scrambled to escape.

The Special Forces troops mounted their GMVs and roared down the slope at about 70 miles per hour, shooting at the Iraqis. They took the crossroads by force. Then a surreal sight greeted them. Two white SUVs emerged from the haze to the west, driving slowly down the road toward the American positions, their lights blinking on and off. Special Forces Commander Frank Antenori, 391’s senior NCO, told his men not to shoot, as the troops in the vehicles might be trying to surrender.

At almost the same time, the Special Forces troops gathered at the crossroads started to receive sporadic mortar fire from the southeast, near the village of Debecka.

“It hadn’t gotten real accurate yet, it was just pissing us off,” Parker said.

The troops identified two Iraqi mortars to the south, and Saunders led his team in four GMVs in a “bounding” movement toward them. They moved through a series of prepared defenses for an Iraqi armor battalion, allowing each GMV to jump from one defilade position to another.

Back at the crossroads and seated in his GMV’s “turret,” Staff Sgt. Bobby Farmer, 391’s junior engineer, glanced back down the road to make sure nothing else was following the SUVs. What he saw astonished him so much that he looked over at Staff Sgt. Andy Pezzella seated in another GMV turret.

Pezzella was looking straight back at him in alarm.

Personnel carriers and tanks

As Farmer and Pezzella watched, gray metal forms emerged from the mist, clanking and groaning along the highway. They were MTLBs — Iraqi armored personnel carriers — and as soon as they came within view of the Americans they pulled off the road to the left and to the right in a maneuver they had obviously rehearsed many times.

“I couldn’t believe what I was seeing,” Farmer said, recalling the moment.

But worse was to follow. As soon as the Iraqis in the MTLBs saw the Americans, the lead armored vehicle began spewing smoke, creating yet another layer of haze between the U.S. forces and their enemies. Through the smoke, a column of at least five T-55 tanks appeared, their 100mm main guns firing round after high- explosive round at the Americans.

The tanks were about 1,500 meters off, shooting on the move and closing at about 40 mph.

“They were going balls to the wall,” Farmer said.

Farmer banged on the roof of his GMV to warn his colleagues.

“Tanks!” he shouted. “Tanks!”

Unable to see for themselves, the other occupants of the GMV were bemused.

“Thanks?” Antenori replied.

Then Antenori jumped up on the roof of the vehicle.

“Holy shit!” he exclaimed.

Three soldiers — Brown, Master Sgt. Kenneth Thompson and Sgt. Jeff Adamec — grabbed Javelin launchers, jumped from the GMVs and ran toward the tanks.

Then began their maddening test of nerves as they waited for the launchers to cool in time to engage the tanks.

Saunders’ team was still attacking toward the Iraqi mortar position when McKenna broadcast a chilling call over the radio: “Tanks coming from the south!”

“You’ve gotta understand, we’ve got all this armament, but we’re still in rolled fiberglass vehicles,” Parker said. “For a gun truck team to hear ‘Tanks!’ is like for a diver to hear ‘Shark!’”

ODA 392 halted their assault on the mortar position.

“We had more immediate concerns,” Parker said. They looked to their west, where the haze hung like drapes hiding all movement beyond about two kilometers. To Parker, it appeared that the Iraqi tanks were “coming out of a curtain.” The team pulled its GMVs around and sped back toward the crossroads.

The tank rounds got closer. “Boom!” And closer. “BOOM!” McKenna’s launcher was taking longer than normal to cool down; he was left with few options. As 392 reached the crossroads, he gave the order to withdraw 900 meters to the Alamo ridgeline.

With no time to lose, Brown grabbed the Javelin and the launcher and jumped on the hood of a GMV as it pulled away. As the GMVs sped back up the ridgeline, each team’s Air Force combat controller put out an urgent call for close-air support.

But the 3rd Group teams found themselves in a traffic jam behind the Pesh and their 044 advisors, who had also mounted up and left in a hurry. The Pesh had one overloaded old truck, with fighters hanging on its sides as it strained to make it back up the steep hillside, gears slipping and grinding.

“Every Pesh that was on that battlefield piled on this one truck,” Parker said. With mortar rounds, artillery and tank rounds exploding around them, the combined SF/Pesh force finally made it to the Alamo.

Brown jumped from the GMV hood, ran to the crest of the ridgeline and immediately acquired an MTLB in the Javelin’s thermal sight, which by now was ready to fire.

He squeezed the trigger, and the missile shot out of the tube, slowing to almost a standstill before its booster kicked and it arched upwards, then came down like an arrow shot to score a direct hit on the moving personnel carrier. Iraqi soldiers raced out of the back of the burning vehicle and ran for cover in the tall wheat near the road.

“When the first Javelin hit, that set the tone for the rest of the battle, because it caused the Iraqis to deploy their infantry early,” Wright said.

Two more Javelin-wielding operators — Adamec and Staff Sgt. Eugene Zawojski, both of 392 — quickly joined Brown on the ridge. Together, they destroyed two trucks and two MTLBs within a couple of minutes. As Iraqi infantry poured out of the burning vehicles, other operators — Farmer, Sgt. 1st Class Scot Marlow and Sgt. 1st Class Van Hines — rained what Parker described as “a murderous rate” of .50-caliber and Mark 19 fire on them.

The 3rd Group teams quickly used up about half of their ammunition. Still, the waves of Iraqis attacked.

Meanwhile, the T-55s had taken cover in defilade positions on the far side of the road, making it impossible for the Javelins to get a lock on their heat signatures.

But deliverance — in the form of two Navy F-14 Tomcats — appeared to be at hand. Running low on ammunition, and under fire from five T-55s , the Special Forces operators decided now would be a good time to drop some 750-pound bombs on those tanks.

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AIRBORNE GODS WALKING THE EARTH....