We weren't done but we mostly were done.
Wellington had a great quote for the moment the last enemy vehicle was stopped:
"I have never lost a battle. But I cannot but think that the only thing worse than a battle won must be a battle lost."
The fields between the village and the ridge were covered with burning vehicles. Guys were wandering out there chaotically. There were still some shots, especially .50 caliber. A defeated enemy that don't want to be killed had better surrender on a battlefield. Running is the same as fighting under the laws of war.
A lot of my boys, American and Nepalese, were dead. More were injured and that was in a way worse. We didn't have any doctors or medevac.
And we still hadn't taken Mosul or Irbil or the fuel we needed.
I ordered my guys to take prisoners and sort them out. And to use the "special protocols."
Normally, say back in WWII, the way that you take prisoners is this.
You round them up. Any who "show fight" are taken under fire but otherwise you just round them up.
You separate them into three groups: Officers, NCOs, enlisted.
You keep the groups separate.
You ensure the security of the prisoners at all times. Once you capture an enemy fighter, his security is higher than your own security or those of your fellow soldiers.
That's if you're fighting the Germans. Which we don't do anymore.
With Middle Eastern forces, especially any that included or could include "hardcores," that is guys who were fundamentalist nutballs, you used the "special protocols."
There were still three groups: Officers, enlisted and "hardcores."
How to define "hardcores"? It's an art. First, you look for any guy who's got a beard. Military units, even most Middle Eastern units, are down on beards. I'm not talking about stubble, I'm talking about a full-up soup catcher. Fundamentalist Islamics are big on soup-catchers. (Says you're supposed to have one in the Koran. Surah something. Look it up.)
Closer up, you look for the guys who are glaring at you. Look, these guys just took a pasting. Ever been in a fight you lost? I mean, just got the shit kicked out of you? Do you glare at the guy who just kicked your ass? No.
Not unless you firmly believe that Allah or whoever is on your side. Then you keep glaring while he kicks your ass again and again.
Got a beard and glaring? Definite hardcore. Beard and not glaring? Possible. Glaring? Probable. We tended to be conservative. Possibles went into the "hardcore" file.
And you didn't just round guys up. You had them strip down, first. Why? Because hardcores hid grenades and shit in their clothes and would use them on you. And you couldn't be sure you got all the hardcores. Although if a guy had a grenade in his pocket you could figure he was a hardcore. So everybody, from generals to privates, stripped down to underwear. Then the guys searched their clothes. Then a rank tab or other sign of rank, if any, was ripped off the uniform. They were told to hold that in their hand and keep it where it could be seen. Then they were separated.
I hadn't brought anywhere near enough fast-ties. Those are basically big cable ties that are used for temporary handcuffs. I hadn't planned on fighting a large force much less capturing a good bit of it.
So we had to go to "special special" protocols.
The enlisted non-hardcore were the most numerous. They always are. They're cattle. Middle Eastern units, by and large, are conscription units with low-morale conscriptees. They don't give their captors trouble. We put them out in one field with a couple of Strykers on guard and told them to get their clothes back on. They were given shovels and told to dig latrines and given some rations and water. They were told to stay in a bunch, don't try to wander off and they'd be fine. Best we could do for them at the time.
(Oh, explaining the latrines is always fun with guys like that. They think they're digging their graves. It gets explained.)
The officers, about twenty, were marched down to Khuwaitla. They were run into a barn and told to hold there. Guards were posted including a Stryker. They were given food and water. One tried to escape. He got shot. Must have missed a hardcore.
The hardcores, a fair number (about a hundred including some "officers" and such-like), were marched into a field. They were spread out. They were told to put their clothes on and sit. Do not stand. Do not talk. If you do either, you will be killed.
Some of them didn't believe us. One stood up.
Had Nepos watching them. Why? Nepos are very interesting when it comes to human life. They take it as a dishonor (they got this from Samad and Ghurka stuff) to kill a true noncombatant. That is, a woman or a kid or an old guy. Even an unarmed male who is not a combatant.
They also don't torture. Don't believe in it. Consider it dishonor. Don't rape.
Combatants? You'd better do what they say or you're fucking dead. And they sort of enjoy it.
Guy stood up. Two .50 calibers opened up. He was hit. Guys on either side were hit. Guys behind him were hit. Some just wounded.
They screamed and bled out. The Nepos giggled.
U.S. troops might have hesitated. Should have, probably would have, gotten eaten up by it. Sure, they're hardcores, they're the core of the terrorist motherfuckers we've been fighting since the taking of the U.S. embassy in Iran. They're the guys that flew into the Twin Towers. But they're humans.
Nepos don't think that way. There are targets and non-targets and they don't care what happens to a target.
We get along great but we're not exactly alike.
That wasn't all that was going on.
There were still forces in Mosul. I punched the remaining tanks and Scouts up to the pass. They found the Paladins that were still intermittently firing. Captured them. (A Paladin has a .50 caliber on it and their guns can be lowered to direct fire. They're there if a group of infantry hit your unit. If you're a smart Paladin commander, however, when a Main Battle Tank comes calling you surrender. Quick.) More prisoners. Dispatched a couple of trucks with Nepo guards and some guys to drive the Paladins back.
We "consolidated" on Khuwaitla in the meantime. Gathered wounded, redistributed ammo, reammoed. Ran a supply truck up to the guys on the Pass. No movement in the direction of Mosul they could see.
We did what we could for the wounded. I'd brought a plentiful supply of medical stuff with us and picked up more in Baghdad. Most of what was wrong, though, the medics could barely touch. Horrible burns on a couple of guys. One amputation from a tank round. Shrapnel. One of the Nepos, who had been hit on the head so hard a chunk of skull was missing, wanted to go back on duty. We sedated him.
The Kurds in Mosul had a doctor. He was short on medicines. I had lots of medicines. As soon as things were stabilized it was time to link-up.
So I had somebody go get the commander of this ratfuck.
Yes, he'd survived. Got picked up from the "truck" group. Was in a wheeled mobile command post which had stopped and everybody bailed when the Strykers hit. Smartest thing they could do.
He was alive. He'd gotten his clothes back on. He was turning the rank tab over and over in his hands when I walked in.
Decent looking guy. Clean shaven, good haircut. Uniform wasn't tarted up with medals. Smart eyes. Not glaring, just smart.
"Captain Bandit Six," he said very dryly in really clear English. "What a surprise to see you up here."
We talked. He didn't do the usual Arab thing of beating around the bush. I got out a bottle of hooch from the Iran LOG base. He didn't turn down a belt or two.
Turns out he was a "real" colonel. Sunni but American trained and hadn't been part of the Resistance. (Not all the Sunnis were.) Survived the Plague. Kept some people together. Family, some guys from his unit.
Bigger fish took over in most of Baghdad. Not military, a Sunni mujaheddin type. Not even from Iraq, an Egyptian. Grabbed the LOG base. Colonel joined forces with the bigger commander. Fighting would have been stupid.
He was pretty good. Experienced. School trained. (Command and General Staff among others. Guy was better trained than me.) Things were quiet in the south. He was dispatched with most of the combat forces around to go up and take the oil fields from the Kurds. Well, beating up on Kurds was just patriotic duty to any Iraqi. Kurds were mountain raiders, ground-mount Vikings, barbarians. Well-known fact. Been that way since time immemorial. The guys on the plains get raided by the Kurds . . . Go back to that bit and read it. Then take it from the POV of the guys in the "empires." "Fucking Kurds."
Couldn't hold fighting the Kurds against him except they were my allies. The Kurds were bastards to the Iraqis and vice versa.
"By the way, wiped out the other armored force down in Baghdad."
"Yes, I was told." Very dry again. "Actually, I found out through sources. What I was told was somewhat different. I was also told you were on your way to Syria. That I shouldn't worry about you."
"I tried very hard to give that impression," I admitted. "So what do I do with you? You know all the laws and such. And, trust me, I'm down to basic law not regs put on top. Not even basic law to tell truth."
What I was saying was, I no longer felt constrained by the Geneva Convention. Easiest thing was to shoot everybody out of hand.
"Believe it or not, I actually have Kurdish POWs," he replied. "I am keeping them as well as I can."
What he was saying was he felt constrained by the Geneva convention. Fucker.
On the other hand, if he was willing to play by the rules . . .
"Parole?"
Parole, in military terms, means that the officer and his unit agree to no longer engage in combat against a particular enemy. So he couldn't be used to beat up on the Kurds or us. But he could be sent down to watch the Shias or whatever and free up forces from down there. I'd take that.
"If I give my parole Mullah Hamadi will have me killed," he replied, smiling. "And find an officer who is willing to lead this shattered force. I will give it, but you might as well shoot me."
Fuck.
"I don't suppose you can get the forces besieging Mosul to surrender?"
"Probably not and if I could I would not give the order."
Honorable bastard.
"What if you agree to remain under parole here," I asked. "Until the local issues are decided?"
"I would go for that. But there are elements of my force which will not."
"The hardcores. What to do with them?"
"Give them to the Kurds for all I care."
Honorable and knew who to be honorable about. I was starting to like this guy.
And so it was done.
I called the Kurds. I told them to tell the guys in Mosul that when the tanks came back they were ours. Don't shoot.
I left most of the prisoners in Khuwaitla with a group of Nepos and, notably, our LOG and wounded. The enlisted prisoners were moved into the shattered houses and given food. They didn't cause problems. The officers did a couple of times. The colonel settled that out. The Nepos were just there to make sure nobody got really stupid. There were a couple of hardcores in the enlisteds. They got stupid. The rest got the hint.
We waited until the next morning then rolled to Mosul.
Don't get me wrong, nobody got any sleep that night. There were hardcores to handle, which is never easy even with blood-thirsty Nepos. Shit had gotten fucked up. It had to be unfucked. I had to spread out units as observation posts and hope they didn't get overrun. There were still some guys moving around that had avoided the sweep. We had to round them up. All the vehicles had to be logged, which since we were spread to fuck and gone took time. I put in a quick call to home. More on that later. There was a probe up towards the pass. It got turned back.
Some of the troops got some sleep, I got none at all and neither did the other officers or most of the NCOs. I'd talk about how tired I was but unless you've been there you just can't know. And if you have, I don't have to explain. But by dawn we were ready to roll.
Creating any sort of "combined action" was impossible. First of all, the Perg Mersha for all their valor were never particularly disciplined. They're great fighters, don't get me wrong, but so were Vikings. Getting them to do anything, though, is like herding cats.
The way to herd cats is to toss treats. The treats were running Iraqi soldiers and Iraqi logistics units that were suddenly unguarded.
Basically, we did what JEB Stuart did at Gettysburg instead of his job. We rolled all the way around the battle. Everywhere we went, the suddenly surrounded Iraqis broke and ran. The guys in the trenches were the least hardcore of any of the units. Getting rolled over by Abrams scared the shit out of them.
As a unit broke, the local Kurds, who kept a close eye on such things and had gotten the rumor that we were in the area, would break out and attack. Raid if you will but when an enemy is running raiders will run just as fast or faster.
Took all day but by the time the sun set the Siege of Mosul was lifted. Link-up was effected with the guys coming down from the mountains. All quiet on the Mosul front.
One tank farm went up. Probably a hardcore. There was still plenty of diesel and gas. Hell, there was enough for us in the trucks supporting the Iraqi forces.
The Kurds did a pretty good job in the aftermath. They'd been civilized, a bit, by dealing with us. They rounded up the Iraqis instead of putting them on stakes or whatever. They used the "special" protocols but that was just sense. They also separated for hardcores. We gave them ours. They still didn't put them on stakes.
We got our wounded under care and the Kurdish doctor (doctors, actually) got medicines from our stores and the Iraqis'. (Which were U.S. medicines, anyway.)
I got with the local Perg Mersha commander. Here's how the Perg Mersha work. They're tribal based. That is, a company, battalion, whatever, will all come from one tribe. When they gather in big groups, one guy is put in charge. There's a lot of arguing about orders at that level. But they all sort of agree as long as the target is clear. Think barbarian hordes. Or, hell, the Confederate Army.
The local guy was the brother-in-law of the president of Kurdistan. (They'd tried a couple of different organizations, politically, and gone with one that is remarkably close to ours. Works for tribes which is what the thirteen colonies really were. And, hell, still are.) Also one of their brighter military lights, by useful coincidence. I looked up his data on the DODnet and DOD agreed. Smart guy, good natural tactician, school trained in the U.S. Fuck, what was it with these guys getting CGSC and I couldn't get a damned slot?
The Kurds got under control fast. They rounded up prisoners. They secured equipment and critical installations. They started counting the loot. All under this Kurd guy.
He had things well in hand. Well, fuck me. I'm supposed to have to do everything!
We parked in downtown Mosul and just fucking crashed while the Kurds had a party.