Capt. Carter’s War: Test of Courage, Decency

Toward sundown, on a patch of Kuwaiti desert 10 miles south of the Iraqi border, the first sergeant of Attack Company, 3rd Battalion, 7th Infantry Regiment, called the men to attention.

Their commander, Army Capt. Chris Carter, 31, of Watkinsville, Ga., strode up to the formation in full battle dress -- desert camouflage, flak jacket, Kevlar helmet.

“At ease!” he barked. “Bring it in.”

His 120 men, most of them several inches taller than their commander, gathered around him.

“Sometime tomorrow,” he said, “we’ll roll into attack position.”

Carter knew that many of his soldiers had been clinging to the hope that somehow war could be averted. Now, as they nodded their heads or stared at the ground, he could see the hope seeping out of them.

It was March 18, and all through the vast army sprawled over the desert, hundreds of commanders were addressing their troops. Carter tucked a pinch of tobacco in his cheek and spoke simply from the heart.

In the days ahead, he said in a slow Georgia drawl, thousands of life-and-death decisions would be made by thousands of soldiers. They were well-prepared, he said. Their training, equipment and spirit would carry them through.

“We are a moral army,” he added.

When Iraqi soldiers surrender, “treat them with respect,” he said; when they don’t, “kill them.”

But defeating Saddam Hussein’s army was only part of the job. They must also earn the trust of the Iraqi people.

“We have to go in there and treat them right,” he said.

Carter and his men were about to be tested. It would be a test of courage, endurance and training, but also a test of honor and common decency.

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At 6:36 a.m. March 21, Attack Company rolled across the Iraqi border as part of the 3rd Infantry Division’s 2nd Brigade, Carter riding in a Bradley fighting vehicle with four infantrymen and an Associated Press reporter.

Racing north across the western desert toward the city of Karbala, they encountered only light resistance. In just 2 1/2 days, the 2nd Brigade covered 228 miles -- penetrating faster and farther than any invading army in history.

War planners had hoped that the sudden appearance of a large force just a day’s march from Baghdad would shock Hussein into capitulating. It didn’t. Now, before attacking Baghdad, the brigade had to wait six days for the rest of the 3rd Infantry Division, driving through a sandstorm, to catch up.

On March 31, with the division finally assembled outside Karbala, Carter and Attack Company drew a perilous assignment.

The division commander, Maj. Gen. Buford Blount III, intended to pour through the Karbala Gap, a mile-wide passage between the Euphrates River and a reservoir. But he wanted to fool the Iraqis into thinking that the division would cross the river at Hindiyah, just to the east.

Carter’s company, reinforced by two tank companies, was ordered to make a feint toward Hindiyah, seizing its bridge.

“Yeah, hold a strategic bridge with an infantry company that has only two platoons,” Lt. Col. Philip DeCamp said with a wry smile. “A hell of a mission.”

As Attack Company rolled through Hindiyah, Iraqi troops, hiding in alleys, attacked with rocket-propelled grenades, machine guns and rifles. Attack Company and the tanks crept forward. As the lead Abrams tanks reached the 200-yard-long bridge, a chilling report came over Carter’s radio: “They are using women as shields.”

Carter quickly deployed his troops and vehicles around the bridgehead. He was about to order two tanks and two Bradleys across to capture the east end of the bridge when he was ordered to hold his position. No need to get our men killed seizing a bridge we don’t need, his commander decided.

After three hours of fighting, a soldier saw an old woman lying near the middle of the bridge, waving for help.

Carter’s Bradley lurched forward, he and two of his men moving in a crouch behind it as small arms fire cracked around them. As they reached the woman, Carter threw a smoke grenade to obscure his position.

Carter knelt beside the woman and offered her water, but, fearing a trap, also checked her for hidden explosives.

From across the river, Iraqi fighters opened fire. The Bradleys and M1A1 Abrams tanks pounded them as Carter called for an armored ambulance. After medics loaded the bleeding woman into the ambulance and backed away, the Bradley backed off the bridge, Carter and his men staying behind it for cover.

Later, Carter reflected on why he had put his men in harm’s way to save the woman. He had come to Iraq to fight “not just for the political aims of this conflict, but for the people,” he said. “To leave her out on that bridge would have gone against the grain of why we are here.”

After seven hours of fighting, the order came to pull back.

“I bet they’re bragging right now about how they defeated the American war machine,” Carter said with a chuckle as he drove out of town.

During down time, Carter mused about how he would spend the summer. An avid Jimmy Buffet fan, he has been known to fill the back of his Chevy pickup with sand and a wading pool for pre-concert tailgate parties. Now, his girlfriend, Amanda Cofer, had met one of Buffet’s attorneys and had been promised backstage passes.

Chris Carter was going to meet Jimmy Buffett!

Back home in Watkinsville, folks were excited about a different celebrity: Carter. There he was in an AP photograph -- the local guy who loved to hunt and fish and cheer his lungs out for the Georgia Bulldogs -- rescuing a woman from a bridge in someplace called Hindiyah.

“It’s exactly what I would expect from Chris,” said his father, Michael, 63. “I get so choked up, I can hardly talk.”

The division rolled north through the Karbala Gap and on April 3, part of the force assaulted Saddam International Airport.

Attack Company and the rest of the 2nd Brigade prowled the outskirts of the city. As they passed through a farming area, two RPGs tore toward them from an orchard. One hit the turret of a Bradley commanded by Staff Sgt. William Gilliam of Hamburg, Ala., blowing off one of his fingers -- Attack Company’s first casualty.

The company responded with ferocious machine-gun and cannon fire, leaving Iraqi bodies scattered in fields and orchards.

On April 5, Attack Company, joined with the 4th Battalion, 64th Armored Regiment, swept south through Suwaryah toward the headquarters of the Republican Guard’s Medina Division.

Hundreds of men of military age lined the roads. They wore jeans or robes, but they had military haircuts. Many were barefoot, their military boots discarded in nearby ditches.

The men cheered and waved -- an eerie greeting from remnants of Hussein’s crack Republican Guard.

Don’t you think that they are overdoing it a little, Staff Sgt. Bryce Ivings, of Sarasota, Fla., asked Carter.

Beyond the town, the convoy rolled into the Medina Division’s bomb-damaged headquarters and found it deserted. Carter stopped his Bradley at the gate, stood in the turret and blasted a 14-foot-high portrait of Hussein with his shotgun

On April 6, during a routine reconnaissance patrol, Attack Company drove into trouble at a farming village. RPGs streaked out of an alley, one hitting the driver’s hatch of the lead Bradley and wounding four soldiers. As the Iraqis fled toward a complex of levees and irrigation ditches, Attack Company pursued them, firing cannons and machine guns.

Carter spotted two men sneaking up on the Bradleys through a water-filled culvert. Standing in the turret, he shot one in the head with his shotgun.

He shouted at the other: “Kif, kif, kif,” Arabic for “stop.”

Only 15 feet away now, the fighter stood and aimed his RPG launcher. Carter cut him down.

“That’s what you get for trying to be a ... hero!” he yelled.

The two dead men wore red headbands with “Allah Akbar” (God is Great) written on them -- the insignia of suicide fighters.

Hours later, Carter sat on the turret of his Bradley, thinking about his first taste of close combat.

Carter had been looking ahead to something like this. He is a professional soldier, a graduate of the Army’s elite Ranger school. But when it happened, he said, the adrenaline had flowed so hard that he had lost all concern for his safety.

“I think every infantry officer has a desire deep in his heart to prove himself as a combat leader,” Carter said. “After a while, I guess you learn it’s not really something you should hope for.”

At 5:30 a.m. April 7, Attack Company entered Baghdad, part of a convoy that was several miles long. Until now, U.S. troops had only probed the city. This time, they were going to stay.

As portions of the convoy split off for other objectives, Carter and Attack Company rolled toward Hussein’s New Presidential Palace. As the lead Bradley smashed through the palace’s 12-foot-high iron gate, Iraqi guards sprayed a few rifle rounds, then fled.

“I do believe this city is freakin’ ours,” Carter crowed.

Carter and his men walked the bomb-damaged palace’s marble floors, climbed the staircases to the fourth-floor swimming pool -- and used indoor toilets for the first time in months.

“This is why we are here,” Carter said. “That he would build things like this while his people starve is just unbelievable.”

After two nights’ sleep under the palace roof, Attack Company headed north on a four-lane road lined with cheering civilians and drove straight into an ambush. RPGs flew from the narrow alleyways of the slums near the Ministry of Tourism. One hit a Bradley, wounding its commander. The soldiers of Attack Company fanned out, the Bradleys’ cannons firing over their heads.

In minutes, the street fell silent. The soldiers crouched and listened, but heard only the rustling of their equipment. The attackers had vanished.

Attack Company spent the night behind concertina wire, guarding a bridge over the Tigris River as hundreds of men, women and children looted the tourism ministry. Carter wanted to stop them, but he didn’t have enough men to do that and also guard the bridge.

As he looked back over 20 days of combat, Carter felt pride in his men. They had passed the test he had set out for them in the Kuwaiti desert.

He also realized that the war had changed him.

“It has made me a lot less concerned about worldly things,” he said. “It’s not about possessions but about taking care of people we know, we love -- and taking care of people we don’t know.”

On April 10, in downtown Baghdad, Carter and six of his men sat around an armored personnel carrier for “Story Time,” the twice-daily ritual in which the reporter traveling with them read aloud the latest news: President Bush had declared that Hussein’s regime was gone for good and that the Iraqi people would soon be enjoying the blessings of liberty.

“Good, we’ve done our job,” Carter said between bites of an Army ration. “Now send us home.”

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Associated Press staff writer Samira Jafari in Atlanta contributed to this report.