19 years ago, the Battle of Ramadi began when insurgents all over the city initiated ambushes/attacks of 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines. 2/4 lost 12 men that day, the majority in an ambush on Rt Gypsum/Rt Nova, and 2/4 Marines would suffer 34 KIA (killed-in-action) during their 7-month deployment, but they kept the insurgents from capturing Ramadi and overthrowing the provincial government.
In honor of 2/4's heroism, I'm posting a portion of Sgt Romeo Santiago's interview, the 2nd chapter of my book "The Magnificent Bastards in Ramadi and A Father's Journey There" which will be published before the 20th anniversary of the Battle of Ramadi in 2024. Sgt Santiago was a Scout sniper attached to Echo Company stationed at Combat Outpost. The book features interviews with 40+ 2/4 Marines who were deployed to Ramadi in 2004, some Gold Star parents, and my account of the 2 trips to Ramadi that I made to get Gold Star Dad John Wroblewski to Rt Gypsum where he performed a memorial service for his son 2Lt J.T. Wroblewski and the other Fallen Warriors KIA on 6 Apr 2004. USMC MajGen John Kelly and his PSD provided security and helped us honor the Fallen Heroes.
© 2023 Greg Janney. All rights reserved.
Janney: Tell me what you were doing on the 6th of April.
Santiago: Okay. The 6th of April. So, Route Nova, which would be the road closest to the Euphrates was always getting hit with IEDs. Coalition forces, our forces would drive through there and they would always place IEDs. For a few weeks, a few days we were going out and doing our typical IED missions. We would go there; we would watch one area that was hit with an IED or an IED was found and we would sit there and do overnight missions. We would go to one spot and then an IED would blow up on the spot that we couldn’t watch on Route Nova. Or we didn’t have eyes on where we were the night before so this would happen for several days. It would just flip; we would be on one side and then an IED would be in place on the other side and hit coalition forces. We would go to that side and then on the other side would be an IED, so we figured that they were watching us. They knew exactly where we were going, the insurgents were watching us. They would go to the other side where we couldn’t watch them and then place IEDs. Before April 6th we came up with an idea to do a 24-hour mission to stay out there for 24 hours during the day, the evening; one 24-hour mission. We went out the morning of April 6th, we briefed Company Commander, everything - let me just back up. A couple of days before, we came up with that plan, we briefed it, it was approved, they thought it was a good idea, so we’re going to do this 24-hour mission. At the time, we were planning to do it every 24 hours. 24 hours on, 24 hours off, 24 hours on. So, we got the first mission, it was planned, we had routes, we got the gear, and because we wanted to make sure when we exited the gate, the eastern gate, we knew that we were gonna be seen, so it was late afternoon right before the sunset. Because our plan was for was whoever was watching us exit the gate, they would know it’s a specialized team when there’s only four of you guys stepping out of the gate. Correct, right?
Janney: That makes sense.
Santiago: Yeah, it’s not a regular infantry squad. And it’s not a regular mission. They know.
So, we made a point to leave the gate right before, so whosever watching
us and reporting back to the bad guys was going to see us walk out and they
know that our mission is on. So, we went
out, everything was just fine, and this would have been the evening of the 5th. The night before, we leave the gate, we walk
the neighborhood, kids are trying to follow us, we’re giving candy to kids,
we’re our patrol out, once we get to the date palms and the agricultural field,
it was pretty dark at that point. Or it was getting dark. Our idea was we were going to go one way, we
were going to turn west again for whoever is watching us, to think that we’re
going to head west. As night fell, we
hunkered down behind some pretty vegetative stuff and sat there for a couple of
hours until nightfall. Until late in the
night. And then once it was pretty late
at night, we got up from that position and headed east to our planned
observation point which would have been near the tank graveyard.
Janney: So, your position was near the tank graveyard
off of Nova.
Santiago: Yes, off of Nova and it’s right at the edge
of the Euphrates River and probably about 60 to 75 yards away from Route Nova.
So, we set up there, we probably got in position pretty late, I think it was
maybe around 1:00 or 2:00 a.m. when we finally got into position. During the time of darkness, we were on top
of the two pump houses. We found two
pump houses that was basically within 10 yards of each other, and we split up
into two-man teams. That was Richard
Stayskal, my assistant (redacted) was with Cameron Ferguson. So, two of them went up on top of one pump house
and me and Richard Stayskal was on the other pump house, and we had pretty good
views of Route Nova and the surrounding area. We sat there late throughout the
night until the next morning and nothing was going on in the morning until
about 8:00 or 9:00 a.m. until we started hearing the gunshots in Golf Company’s
area. Do you want me to keep going on
what we did on the morning?
Janney: Yeah, absolutely.
Santiago: Okay.
We stayed there on top of these pump houses. Nothing was going on. We had our night vision glasses on. I only mention this because on another book when I
got interviewed for it, was that late at night you start thinking about
different things. And how I came to that
point of being on top of this pump house thinking about my family and thinking
about things I’ve done in the Marine Corps so far, and just nothing was going
on. We’re in 50-50 meaning half of my
team was asleep; the other half was sitting security and watching the
road. The sun started coming up, of
course we were going to be pretty exposed up on top of these pump houses so we
decided to go down to the base of the pump houses and have the rest of the team
on the base of the river. Right at the
edge of the river where it’s heavily vegetative, we were going to hunker down
right there. We could still see pretty
far down Route Nova. Since we were there
and we ended up setting up our position at night we wanted to make sure we got
the lay of the land and see what’s around us so I decided to do a quick foot
patrol. Just me and my teammate Richard
Stayskal, so we just did a quick patrol down to the orange grove which was
further to the east. We were patrolling
and sneaking around until we realized that there were some locals that were
tending to their crop. So, they were
pretty far away and they’re not going to come over here, so we ended up going
back to our observation position behind these two pump houses. I know my team was pretty tired at that
point, so we decided again to go 50-50 just watching the road waiting for
something to happen. I forget now, I
think we started hearing the gunshots in Golf Company’s area. I’m trying to remember, I apologize, it’s
been quite some time, and I’m trying to give you a good chronological order of
the things that happened that day. I’m
watching the road and we start seeing orange and white taxicabs going down the
road and they were full of men. We see one drive by at a high rate of speed and
I ask my assistant, “Did you see that?” and he was like, “Yeah, I’m seeing the
same thing that you see.” But we weren’t seeing any weapons at the time. We couldn’t just determine whether or not
they were hostile. We’re assuming that
something strange is going on; a taxicab full of males headed westward on Route
Nova wasn’t normal, if that makes sense.
So, we started seeing that, right.
I don’t know if we got compromised by the kid first or heard the
gunshots. I think we started hearing
some gunshots in Golf Company’s area.
And this would have been around 9:00 or 10:00 a.m. I believe. We started hearing some gunshots in Golf Company’s
area and we’re like, “Okay, they’re in a firefight.” And at the time, we didn’t
think it was pretty heavy gunfire at first.
Janney: And Golf is west of you. They’re west of Gypsum, is that correct?
Santiago: Yeah, way west. They’re pretty much downtown area. Several kilometers away. We can hear the gunshots and stuff like
that.
Janney: And the taxicabs that you
saw earlier were headed that direction, they weren’t headed east toward Gypsum?
Santiago: Yeah, they were headed westward on Route
Nova. So, we were already assuming that
they had something to do with it, but again we didn’t see any weapons. I believe we did send out just a communication to our command center that we were seeing people, parties of
males in taxicabs headed west on Nova.
We did communicate that to our operations center. And then, at some point we were just sitting
there 50-50 and it was my turn to rest, so I was laying down trying to get some
sleep and one of my teammates, Cameron, starts telling me that there was a boy
walking towards us. Or was walking in
the field in front of us. I’m like, “A
boy?” I get up and I started looking and
yeah, I see this boy walking towards us.
It didn’t look like he knew exactly where we were at; he was just
walking but then he happens to walk right on top of our position. And at the time, I’m a big movie buff right,
and I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the movie “Bravo Two Zero.” Have you ever seen that?
Janney: No sir, I have not seen that.
Santiago: Well, “Bravo Two Zero” is based on the first
Gulf War, right? And there’s this
British Special Forces team that was compromised by a little boy. And they ended up getting in this big melee
where they had to basically fight their way through Iraq and make it to Syria
and only a couple of them survived. I
think there was eight-man team, or a six-man team and only two or three of them
survived. They all got captured and
killed. At the time, to me, it was kind
of comical in my head that I was thinking about that, thinking about that
movie. And I couldn’t believe that we were
getting compromised by a boy that must have been no more than ten; eleven years
old. And he looked at us and we looked
at him like, “Aww, crap, now he’s gonna tell somebody that we’re here.” Of
course, we didn’t know what to do. We
didn’t know what to do with this boy, whether to hold on to him. We were just
looking at him. I think he was
dumbfounded and, of course, we were dumbfounded, and confused at what to do and
this boy ends up running away. He runs
away and I’m assuming that he went back to his parents and now we’re
compromised. Is the mission over at this
point? I mean, we were trying to make a
decision to head back to base, scrub the mission and go back to base or stay
put. Of course, at the time we’re
communicating this to our command, that we had just been compromised by a boy. Now understand that we were in the middle of
the Sofia district, right. In order for
us to get back into base we would have had to walk several kilometers through
open fields of date palms and through the residential neighborhood before we
can get back to base. Definitely a good
recipe for an ambush, correct?
Janney: Yes.
Santiago: And, of course, we had a
mission to accomplish. So, at the time,
I decided to stay put, gamble and continue on with the mission. Hunker down, and of course, at this point
everybody is 100% up and ready, weapons next to them. We’re on the radio trying to make sure if
somebody does hit us, we’re prepared.
So, we’re sitting there, and I don’t know if a few minutes or an hour go
by or some time go by and now I see a grown man and a woman walking towards
us. I’m like, “Great, this is probably
his parents or some adult that the little boy told that there’s these crazy
Americans, four of them next to the river.” So, this man and woman walk up to
us and I don’t speak Arabic and I don’t speak the language they speak. Farsi, something like that, I don’t speak
their language but based on their body language and the tone of their voice, and
the loudness of their voice, I could tell that they weren’t happy that we were
there. And at this point I’m thinking
that we were in great trouble, right. Of
course, we didn’t see any weapons. He
wasn’t getting too aggressive walking towards us that would warrant us acting
upon what he was doing. We had weapons
at the ready just in case he has a concealed weapon on him and starts blasting
at us. After a few minutes of him and
her yelling at us and motioning things that wasn’t very good, they walk
away. Go back towards the neighborhood. Again, at this point, this is an adult, two
adults that have seen where our position is at.
They know we were a specialized unit because there was only four of
us. We have weird, different gear than
everybody else. And at the time, we were
wearing green cami's aside from the desert cami's that everybody else was wearing
because we were in a vegetative area because we wanted to blend in. So, they disappear. At this point, of course,
we communicated that to our command post telling them what’s going on and again
I make a decision to stay put because if they are setting up an ambush it’ll be
silly of us to walk back towards base because all they are going to be doing is
setting up that ambush at the likely avenue or road that we’re going to take
back to base and they’re just going to sit there and lay in wait and wipe us
out as we are walking towards them.
Janney: Yeah, you would have walked right into
it.
Santiago: Yup, we would have walked right into an
ambush if the worst happened. And at
this point I’m assuming that they are.
So, we hunker down and at least we had set up a defensive position and
we’d already communicated that we had been compromised to command center so we
should be good right. The decision was
once nightfall hits, we were going to move.
At least we can have an advantage of moving under the cover of
darkness. But, like I said, this was
9:00 or 10:00 in the morning. We have
several hours of pucker factor ahead of us.
Janney: Yes, that’s a long time to sit there and wait
for something to happen.
Santiago: Yep.
Yeah, exactly. So, we’re sitting
there and of course at this time we’re at 100% just waiting to get hit. I make a decision because I could not see the
curve on the west end portion on Nova. Route Nova starts curving around as you
head more toward the west and I couldn’t see what was on the other side. So, what I decided to do, I told my team, “Hey,
stay here, you guys are at 100%, just make sure you guys are keeping watch and
be on alert. I’m going to punch out
about 100 to 200 yards to the west to a different pump house and see if there’s
anything going on towards the west.” I grab my M16, a couple of magazines and a
handheld radio so I could still have communication with my team, and I punch
out. I do a solo patrol to the next pump
house about 100 to 150 yards out. I find a pump house and I go inside this pump
house. And I’m sitting there, and I had
good views of the western part of Nova and all the surrounding areas to our
west. So, I’m sitting there looking and
a few minutes go by, probably a good thirty minutes go by now. I’m super tired,
I’ve been up all night, and I’m on patrol and observing. Adrenaline dump and
now the adrenaline dump is wearing off so I’m getting tired. And then a little voice in my head kept
telling me, “Hey, you should look on the other side of Route Nova” because
you’ve been there, and Route Nova is on a berm.
A three- or four-foot berm and you can’t see over on the other
side.
Janney: Right, exactly.
Santiago: So, I wanted to see what’s on the other side
just in case insurgents or that couple were insurgents and wanted to make
trouble. I wanted to make sure that if
they were planning an attack they were not on the other side. Whatever, I just wanted to see what’s on the
other side, right. So, being short and
compact that I am sometimes it has an advantage, but it makes it easier for me
to hide. So, I see this little ditch. Now
understand, it’s an agricultural field and between farm fields or between crop
fields are like little ditches, and the ditch is probably a good foot deep and
it’s surrounded by short grass. So, you
could actually crawl inside that ditch and just low crawl. I saw one of those ditches and it lead to
this big bush right on the side of Route Nova where I can get onto the edge of
Route Nova or the edge of that berm and look over the other side. I started low crawling; it must have been a
good 50 – 60 yards to get to this bush.
So, I low crawled inside this ditch and got into this bush. And every so often I would pop up and scan
the side of Route Nova with my three-power ACOG. I had good views. I could see 100 to 200 yards. I could see the residential neighborhood
where we came from; I could see the tank graveyard. I could see the palm grove, everything, I had
good views. So, I pop up one time, I
scan; a quick scan, I sit back down, I scan again, nothing all clear. And I think it must have been my third time
that I popped up and slowly scanned and then I see two guys in traditional
dress, the pajama looking attire and their headdresses. The head wrappings and it looked like, based
on their gestures, it looked like they were arguing. And I can see them maybe 150 -200 yards
away. I can see them arguing and one of
the guys that was there that was talking takes off running westbound. I’m like, “Okay, that was kind of odd.” And
then the guy that he was talking to, arguing with, starts motioning to somebody
in an alleyway or roadway. And then one
more guy comes out and starts running west.
And that guy had something in his hand.
So, I’m like, “Why is that guy running?
That doesn’t seem normal.” I followed the second guy, must have been a
second guy running so I follow with my ACOG and I’m following, following him,
and I couldn’t make out what he had in his hand until - you’ve been to the tank
graveyard, right?
Janney: Yes.
Santiago: The palm groves?
Janney: Yes.
Santiago: And you can kind of visualize how the sun
would shine in between the palm trees, correct?
The date palms.
Janney: Yes.
Santiago: So, he happens to run underneath where the
sun was shining down on the ground between the palm trees and him being lit up
like that I could actually make out what he had in his hand was an AK47. I’m like, “Well, that’s not good.” And I
traversed my rifle and my scope back to where I first saw him coming out of the
roadway and I see one more guy come out.
Another guy come out and I start counting them. And I stopped counting at around 12-15. I stopped counting and I’m like, “That’s not
good.” Each one of them was carrying
something in their hand. Now, I’m assuming at this point it was weapons. And I’m looking at them and they’re getting
in a traditional infantry-based tactics of getting online if you can kind of
picture that. They’re basically side by
side and facing towards us. And I
counted 12 – 15 dudes. At that point, I
grab my radio and I start talking to my teammate Stayskal and I’m like, “Hey,
get your stuff on, we’re in big trouble.” And every time I would click on the
mike and try to transmit, he would just tell me, “Hey, you’re coming in
broken. I can’t understand what you’re
saying.” I just kept telling him, “Hey, get your stuff on and get moving. We’ve got bad guys moving towards us.” So, he
kept saying, “Hey, I can’t understand you.” The transmission was broken, so I
just stuffed that radio in my pocket and I haul ass running back to my
teammates and I come sliding in like I was sliding into home in baseball,
right. I slide in and I start telling my
guys what’s going on and what I saw, and we started grabbing our gear, putting
our body armor back on, and stage magazines and grenades in front of us. And we just sit there and wait. We sit there and wait for these guys to see
if they were actually going to find us, right.
Last thing I saw was them getting online and moving towards us. So, of course, that’s when I briefed my
team. I grab the radio and start communicating
that to our command center. I kept telling them that we have 12-15 dudes moving
towards us all armed. And for them to
send a QRF. The quick reaction force.
Janney: SOP for your four-man team is that to try to escape
and evade or sit tight. You guys had your back to the river, so you’re kind of
in a bad spot there.
Santiago: Yeah, yeah so you bring up a good point. So, we’re in a bad spot, right. I mean, at this point I’m trying to determine
what’s the best course of action. We’ve
could have easily left, but we don’t know if the bad guys have set up on the east
side. We couldn’t go west because we
don’t know if bad guys have already set up on the west side. And both east and west of us is nothing but
open fields; there’s nothing there for us to take cover on if we get hit. In front of us, in between us and Combat Outpost,
safe haven, as far as I know, are 12-15 dudes, all armed. So, the best course of action for us was to
fight it out. Wait for QRF, right. We were going to stand our ground there and
try to fight it out with these 12-15 dudes until we can get some reinforcement
with the QRF. Making sense?
Janney: Yes, it is making sense. Horrifying, but it’s making sense.
Santiago: Oh yeah.
Tell me about it man, I mean, just sitting there waiting knowing we were
about to get hit. It was pretty
terrifying. So a few minutes go by, when we’re sitting there prepping for this
potentially massive gunfight that we’re about to get into. So, one of the main
standard operating procedures for scout sniper teams is you never let the bad
guys get ahold of your sniper rifle.
That is your baby; that is the one thing that you do not want the enemy
to get ahold of. The common thing that
we were supposed to do was render that rifle useless to the bad guy.
Janney: Okay.
Santiago: If we knew that we were going to get wacked,
render that rifle useless. So, standard
operating procedure was to smash the scope and take the bolt out. I didn’t want to smash my scope because there
was still the possibility, I mean, I wasn’t going to give up. I wasn’t going to say, “We’re not going to
make it out of this alive.” But, I ended up taking the bolt out of the gun
because we’re in a bad spot; this was going to be bad. So, I took the bolt out of the sniper rifle
and stuck it in my pocket. And I wasn’t
going to smash the scope just yet, like I said, if we were going to fight it
out and see what happens next. And you
bring up the point that our backs were to the river, so I’m sitting there, and
I mean our most likely avenue of escape is across that river. So, that was one of the things that we
discussed, and of course, Cameron Ferguson, he wasn’t a very good swimmer and
I’m telling him, “Dude, if this gets bad we’re going to have to jump up and cross
that river.” And he was just cussing at me, “Fuck you, I ain’t crossing that
river. I can’t swim.” One of the moments
of comedy in this whole thing. So, we
take the bolts out, place the magazines in front of us for easy access and
we’re waiting there, waiting, waiting, waiting and a few minutes go by and I’m
scanning the road and looking for bad guys.
And then I see this head pop up.
This head wearing that red shemagh around his head. And he pops up his head and he’s looking
around, scanning left to right and I can vividly remember his little beady eyes
looking through that shemagh. And I have
my ACOG right on his noggin and I’m like, “Should I squeeze one round off? Should I not?” and at the time, I’m thinking
maybe they don’t know exactly where we’re at and I’m trying to buy time. As far as I know, command center has received
our transmission requesting a QRF and I just need time for them to get
here. To get to where we’re at. So, I didn’t want to squeeze off a round and
alert them to exactly where we were at and start this gunfight. I didn’t squeeze the round, but I told my
team, “Hey, I see them. I see a head.”
And he ducks back down behind Route Nova right behind the berm. And I’m like, “Oh boy, here we go” and he
pops his head back up. And again, I had
my crosshairs right on his noggin thinking that I should just pop him in the
head, and then he ducks back down. And
then the third time that he pops up, my reticle goes right on his noggin again
and I hear the distinct sound of an RPG being fired. You know that whizzing sound. It just whizzes and hits, and at this point I
don’t even know where it hits, whether it hits a palm tree right above us,
whether it hit in front of us or next to us, but I can distinctly remember the
concussion and the heat from it. We get
hit by an RPG and the fire fight is on, right.
It was just so loud and so deafening.
All four of us were firing in all directions. You can hear the snaps of the bullets going over
us, going next to us. Richard is to my
left, Cameron is to my right, and (redacted) is to his right, and all four of
us were right behind the pump houses that we had been using as an observation
position or a defensive position. And
we’re just shooting, shooting, shooting to try to fend these guys off. I grab my radio and start broadcasting for
command that we’re being hit, requesting QRF and requesting ETA for the QRF and
I just keep hearing whoever is on the other end of the radio to “Say again, say
again.” I guess my transmission was being garbled. He asked me on the radio, “Are you requesting
permission to fire?” and I’m like, “No, I’m not requesting permission to
fire. We’re being engaged. We’re in a gunfight.” And then he just kept
saying, “Say again, say again” and by then your transmission is broken and
unreadable. So, what I ended up doing
instead of like talking on the radio is I just keyed the mic and just held the
mic for a few seconds so whoever was on the other end of the radio can hear all
the shooting that was going on. All the
shooting and yelling that was going on.
Janney: That was smart.
Santiago: Yeah. After a few seconds, I released the mic
and stuck that bad boy in my pocket and continued to direct my team and get in
the fire fight. So, we’re in this fire
fight already and I guess we should back up a little bit to give you an
understanding of what was happening. A
few hours before this firefight, one of the squads lead by Corporal Barrone,
passes our position because they were patrolling Route Nova for IEDs. That typical patrol that we used to do with
Combat Outpost in front of you and they’re sweeping the road for IEDs. They happened to pass us up a few hours
before this gunfight.
Janney: They were moving west on Nova or east towards
Gypsum?
Santiago: They were moving east towards Gypsum. And
during our gunfight, he actually got hit as well. So, they were dealing with their own gunfight,
and we were dealing with our own gunfight and once they got done and everything
was pretty much under control in their area, Corporal Barrone and his guys,
heard the call for help, our call for help.
And these guys, man, I mean, to this day, if I can just go up to them
one by one and just thank them for saving us, because without them we most
surely would have got overwhelmed and surrounded and killed. These guys mounted up on their Humvees and
just sped towards us. And during this
gunfight Stayskal tells me, “Hey, there’s a Humvee on the road.” And I look
over on the side of the pump house to see where this Humvee was at and I could
just see the guy on the turret of this open back Humvee just laying waste to
whoever was on the other side. A machine
gun, you’re only supposed to shoot six to eight round bursts, right, just
because if you just keep spraying and praying, you’re going to melt the barrel
and render that gun useless. I guess he
wasn’t following that six to eight round burst because that guy just had his
finger on that trigger and was just sweeping, sweeping back on the other side
where the bad guys were.
Janney: So, he’s
opening up with a 240 Golf I’m guessing or a SAW?
Santiago: Yeah, it was either a 240 Golf or a SAW. I mean definitely a belt fed; he’s using it
and laying waste to whoever was on the other side of Nova that we were fighting
with. Now understand, like I said, this
was only 60 – 75 yards away. The only
thing that separating us from those 12-15 dudes that I saw was 60 – 75 yards of
open ground. And we were just doing
everything that we could to pin them down and to keep them from crossing that
open ground and we were stuck behind these two pump houses. So, as soon as I see that I see the Humvee, Stayskal asks me, “Hey, should I pop smoke to mark our location?” and I said, “Yeah,
go ahead pop smoke,” so he popped smoke.
He pops white smoke to cover our position and mark our position to let
the good guys know where we’re at. So,
as the smoke billowed, we were going to join in this fight. They start dismounting the Humvees and
getting into this fight, so we’re going to join them in this fight. We’re going to get on online. I directed my team to get online and go to
the other side of the berm. So, we just
haul ass to the other side of the berm.
Pop over the berm expecting to get mowed down by whoever was on the
other side of the berm, expecting all kinds of bad guys on the other side of the
berm. But when we popped over all we saw
was AK47’s left on the ground; some sandals; blood trails, a couple of RPG
rounds left on the ground, and we didn’t see anybody. At a distance, we could see people
running. This squad basically made the
enemy move away from us. At this point,
we just get in a gunfight. We’re still
getting shot at. There’s still enemy out in the tank graveyard shooting at
us. We just started doing your infantry
tactics of bounding forward and taking the fight to the bad guys. We’re
bounding forward, shooting up bad guys, bad guys shooting at us. There’s some machine gun fire being shot
towards us. Some mortar fire that was
being shot towards us, and during this crazy melee, Marcus Cherry gets hit. I’m no more than a few yards from Marcus
Cherry and I could see him. He’s rocking
and rolling, shooting up bad guys and he just spins around. I literally see him spin around and drop to
the ground. And we’re receiving some
heavy machine gun fire, so everybody was pinned down. That squad that had reinforced us was pinned
down. Forward momentum was halted at
this point, so basic infantry tactics, I decided that the best course of action
was for my team to keep moving forward and to try to flank the bad guys who are
shooting at us. So, I directed my team
to start fighting forward and do a flanking maneuver to wipe out the bad guys
that were shooting at us. We’re moving,
bounding forward shooting at bad guys, bounding forward, cover, move, basic
infantry tactics, and I see to my left my teammate Stayskal yelling. I hear him yelling and pointing and he was
like, “Look at that” and I’m like, “What is he yelling at me?” He’s yelling and pointing at the direction of
the tank hulk and all of a sudden, I see him spin and drop to the ground. Assuming that he just got hit. Again, to give you a background, one of the
SOP that we established within my team is that if one of us gets hit, you will
not go to the down teammate right away because you have to deal with the threat
before you can render aid just because you can become a casualty yourself. If you don’t deal with the threat, you’re no
good if you get shot as well. Make
sense?
Janney: Yes, absolutely.
Santiago: So, I’m sitting there trying to find who shot
my teammate and I can kind of see them.
And to this day, I can still, I don’t know if I can hear them but in my
head, I can hear them screaming. I can
hear them screaming in my head. I don’t
know whether or not I did hear them scream.
My ears are ringing from all the gunfire at this point anyway, so maybe
it was just in my head that I can hear them scream. Occasionally, while I’m shooting trying to
move forward, I’m seeing him kick his leg like he’s moving and squirming. A few times I look over to him and he stopped
moving and I’m like, “Man, I think he’s dead or he’s either dead or dying at
this point”. So, I break my own rule
that we established within our own team and I run towards him. When I run towards him and he’s just
complaining about his back. That his
back hurt and I’m trying to assess where his wound was and I didn’t see massive
amounts of bleeding, I didn’t a gunshot wound or none of that. He’s complaining about his back and he’s
asking me to cut off his gear. So, I get
my knife and I start cutting off his gear, I open his flak jacket and all I see
is some blood on his right shoulder. So,
I tell him, “You’re good, it’s just a little bit of blood on your right
shoulder. It looks like your good dude,
you’re good.” I’m about to start cutting his cami top off to see where the
wound was and then I happened to look up.
And when I look up, I see this guy maybe about 75 yards away, either
sitting or kneeling behind this burnt up tank hulk. And I see him and I’m looking at him and I
can distinctly see him swinging and aiming a rifle at me. I’m like, “Fuck, I just broke my own goddang
rule and now I am going to be that casualty.”
So, I grab my rifle and I tell Stayskal, “I’ll be right back.” I grab my
rifle and I stood up and I started walking towards this guy who’s aiming a
rifle at me and I just started popping off rounds trying to keep his head
down. I’m walking, walking, walking, a
fast walk trying to pin his head down and shooting at him. Occasionally I would
stop and try to get a good shooting platform and shoot at him and I got to
maybe 40 – 50 yards of this guy and take a shot. I assume that I hit him just because I saw
him flinch, but he gets his rifle up and tries to aim at me again. I tried to take another well aimed shot as he
tried to aim his rifle at me again, and I took one final shot and he fell
backwards. He fell backwards and as soon
as I got done with that, Cameron runs up to me and we run up to this guy I had
just shot. I stood over him and I see that rifle that he was pointing at me
and trying to shoot me with was an SVD Dragunov rifle which is basically a..
Janney: A Soviet sniper rifle.
Santiago: Yes, exactly.
I see that and I’m looking at his face and I’m looking at him and yeah,
he’s dead. Amidst all this craziness
going on, rounds popping off everywhere, snapping around us, people yelling,
people screaming, people shooting, mortar rounds going off, I just stood next
to this guy looking at his face. I grab his rifle and I sling it behind my
back. Me and Cameron proceeded. I get on my radio and I tell (redacted),
actually Ferguson told me that (redacted) was with Stayskal, taking care of
Stayskal calling in a medivac for him.
So, me and (redacted) were getting in different cover positions. We would look for bad guys to shoot at a
distance and he would tell me where the bad guys were at and I would just shoot
at bad guys here and there and yeah, just fight it out until we all got
consolidated back with a platoon with Echo Company. We joined them; cleared a couple of
houses. Tanks eventually showed up. Army guys showed up. And we continued the fire fight for another
hour or so and clearing houses and that stuff and taking prisoners and hauling
prisoners away. And then we ended up
driving through, actually Route Gypsum seeing all the melee that happened
there. The aftermath of Route Gypsum and
then we headed back to Combat Outpost late that afternoon. I remember it was getting dark by the time we
got back to Combat Outpost. So, that’s
basically the gist of April 6th on
my part.
Janney: Wow.
That’s incredible. I’m glad you
guys made it through that. I can’t even
imagine.
Santiago: Yeah, and I guess, after everything was said
and done, I mean, just talking to the guys that were there and who helped
support us and then the after-action reports, guys were saying that estimated
numbers behind that berm trying to kill us was 30+ dudes. It wasn’t the 12-15 dudes that I initially
thought. I mean, I counted 12 -15 dudes
initially, but I knew there was more guys coming out of the woodwork, but I
wasn’t going to sit there and wait for how many dudes that were going to come
out. But based on the debrief, it seemed
like there were 30+ dudes that were actually there that were trying to kill
everybody.
Stay tuned for more information about the publication of "The Magnificent Bastards in Ramadi and A Father's Journey There." All profits will be used to establish a scholarship fund for the survivors of the 34 Fallen Warriors of 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines that were KIA during the 2004 deployment.
