Staff Sergeant Jamie Villafane (31) from Long Island, New York, is among 24 American servicemen recovering from combat injuries at the US armed force’s medical centre at Landstuhl in south-west Germany.
Yesterday, the scout from 1st battalion, 30th Infantry Regiment, gave this account of how he and his six-man section survived an ambush by Iraqi soldiers posing as civilians on a bridge south of Nassiriya.
”On Saturday, about 1300 hours, we had a call to go down and check out some civilians … There was about two dozen civilians on two separate bridges. We moved up to find out about the civilians and they moved off the bridge. [Some] moved to the left of us and the ones to the front of us went underneath the bridge. As we were looking at the ones to the left of us my gunner, Sergeant Horgan, announced ”RPG” [rocket propelled grenade]. A rocket hit our truck from the front. It blew me out of the truck.
”The next I remember I started engaging the group to the left of us who were firing at us: the civilians who were firing at us. At that time, another rocket was fired from the front. It was a wire-guided missile ‘cos it came pretty close and I got to see the wire as it went by. If I hadn’t moved it might have hit me. I announced to my soldiers behind me that it was a rocket and [yelled] ‘Get down’. They all got down and moved out of the way and it hit the truck next to us. At that time, I realised that I was injured. [The shrapnel had torn a large chunk from his arm and another smaller piece from his hand]. I don’t remember anything between the first and the second rocket but I must have got my weapon off the truck.
”I moved off to the side of the bridge to start to get a good spot to start getting some fire down on these guys. When I went down there, there was one guy hiding behind one of the pillars. He was looking one way and I just happened to be looking directly at him. I yelled at him and he turned and dropped his weapon. He was no longer a combatant. He was a prisoner of war.
”[Another three guys] just came round the corner. They seen I already had one guy at gunpoint. I’d put him in front of me. You could see they were terrified. Really. I mean, if you’ve ever had a gun pointed at you … They had AK47s. They dropped their weapons. They had robes on to look like the regular bedouins around there. They looked like any normal civilian we had seen over there. The uniforms … one of them had four stripes [and] one of them had three stars. I’m not sure what rank that is for Iraqis. They were living underneath the bridge. They had a couple of huts set up underneath there. Lotta weapons.
”We were briefed that they might put on civilian clothes – that some of the soldiers were putting on civilian clothes to flee … we had no idea they would use that to ambush us. I guess they have to do whatever they have to.”
”I came back up on the bridge and found my section was still up waiting for me and trying to figure out where I was at.
”If I went back out there, I have to second guess every single civilian. I’d not be able to look at any man, woman or child without asking: ‘I wonder what they’ve got on them.’
”Me and Sgt Horgan talked about it [later] and we figured out that getting shot at really was not that bad. It was just the getting shot part that sucked.” – Guardian Unlimited Â