March 2008

The AmGrunts

Cpl Ryan Thompson provides security for his patrol’s movements in the vicinity of the palm groves in Dulab, Iraq, in February 2007, when amtrackers of 1st AA Bn take on the active role of Marine infantry—becoming AmGrunts—patrolling and providing security and creating an environment for local government to flourish.

Photo by Sgt Damian D. Henry

By Stewart Nusbaumer

A new generation of AmGrunts are fighting and training to give Iraqis the time and skills to bring peace to their country.

It’s hot, furnace hot. Sand is everywhere, blowing in my eyes, in my mouth. A river’s sparkling blue water beckons. Trees gently wave from the distance. This could be Vietnam in 1967, but it’s not. The sand is Middle-Eastern desert, not South China Sea sand dunes. The river is the Euphrates, not the Cua Viet. The trees are palms, not scrub pines. This is Iraq today, but it sure feels like Vietnam 40 years ago.

In April 1967, with units of the North Vietnamese Army streaming across the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ)—a misnomer for a dangerous militarized zone—and the Marine Corps running dangerously low on front-line infantry troops, Company A, 1st Amphibian Tractor Battalion, Third Marine Division was ordered to park its amtracs and saddle up as infan­try. An amphibian tractor company suddenly became a rifle company and the “AmGrunt” was born.

For 40 years, the AmGrunts of Vietnam with their four unit commendations have been a curious footnote in Marine Corps history. A memorial wall honors them in the Alfred M. Gray Research Center at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Va., and in the Recruit Chapel at Parris Island, S.C., a stained-glass window honors their sacrifices. These aging men remain intensely proud of their distinctive history and possessive of the title “AmGrunts.”

In April 2007, I learned that “Delta” Co, 3d Assault Amphibian Bn, 1stMarDiv had parked its amtracs and was operating as infantry. As Yogi Berra said, “This is déjà vu all over again.” Or is it? Are these modern-day AmGrunts of Iraq similar to the original AmGrunts of Vietnam? Was their training similar? Is their mission the same? Forty years after being an AmGrunt in Vietnam, I went to Iraq to find out.

Home of the New AmGrunts

A convoy of four humvees roars off heading south on a narrow road that twists and turns with the bends of the Euphrates River. The vehicles rattle through a dusty village and pick up speed to cross a stretch of desolate desert, slow down when enter­ing another village and pick up speed cross­ing more desert.

The Marines remain focused on the road, eyes darting for signs of danger—loose gravel, slight depressions and rises in the asphalt, wires on the shoulders, anything that might indicate a deadly improvised explosive device.

In the northern sector of AO Baghdadi—area of operations for Delta Co, located in central Al Anbar province—when Marines drive through villages, the children rush to the road waving and flashing “V” signs and screaming for candy. When the machine-gunners in the open turrets heave handfuls of goodies, the kids scram­ble after them.

About half an hour later, rumbling through the village of Baghdadi, the little ones are more restrained, friendly but not dancing and screaming. More candy is thrown. Another 45 minutes south, the convoy moves cautiously through Dulab. The children only stand and stare.

Along the Euphrates River lush green palm groves are interspaced with small villages, while away from the river is barren brown desert. In the northern villages the children are ecstatic, and in the southern hamlets they seem cold. The mobile assault platoon (MAP) crews remain alert, radioing suspicious markings, instructing drivers to weave around potentially deadly spots.

“MAP is [a] hundred times harder than foot patrols,” Staff Sergeant Jesse M. Mur­phy from Rodgersville, Ala., explains inside the Dulab patrol base, a dark and gritty fortified house reminiscent of a World War II movie set. “Foot patrols go slower; you can look for IEDs better. You can understand the atmospherics, see warning signs faster. It’s hard to see much of anything out of those humvees.”

Delta Co is a reinforced company of 197 Marines, with an additional 25 to 30 Marines in support, including a human ex­ploitation team, tank section, military working-dog team, military transition team and a police transition team.

The Delta Marines are in three sections: 30 percent in MAP, humvee crews patrolling the roads and functioning as the quick reaction force; 65 percent conducting foot patrols in villages and standing guard at the fixed positions; 5 percent assigned to headquarters. None of the Ma­rines, however, seem to miss their amtracs.

“It’s monotonous to do the work on tracs every day,” SSgt Murphy says. “This is different. I like foot patrolling, and in Iraq, amtracs are metal coffins!”

Sergeant Thomas S. Fuhrmeister from Philadelphia, adds, “After that IED in Haditha [in 2005, 14 Marines died when an amtrac hit an IED], I want nothing to do with tracs over here.”

Being an AmGrunt in Iraq, then, is different from and possibly safer than being a “tractor rat.” But there is more. Marines, certainly amtrackers, are strongly drawn to infantry, to living the motto “Every Ma­rine a rifleman.”

The Training of AmGrunts

Amtrackers are quick to point out that, unlike many support troops, they operate in close proximity to infantry. They transport grunts to and around battlefields, deliver fire support and run resupply and medevac missions for them. This makes their transition from amtrackers to infan­try smoother and faster, which may be one reason, they speculate, amtrackers were assigned the role of AmGrunts in Vietnam and Iraq, as well as in Afghanistan.

The operations chief for Delta Co, Master Sergeant Donald P. Vick from Frank­en­muth, Mich., was with 2d AA Bn, part of 22d Marine Expeditionary Unit in 2004 when they were headed to Afghanistan, but their amtracs were remaining on the ship. For a month at sea they trained hard—running up and down stairwells, firing weapons off the deck, studying infantry tactics—followed by two weeks of training in Kandahar, Afghanistan.

“We did the training ourselves,” the master sergeant says matter-of-factly. “We dusted off the manuals and just got into it. Because of Vietnam, it was stuck in my mind that we could become a rifle unit. Even when I was a PFC, I heard about the Vietnam amtrackers. A number of times through the years I did have infantry training covering the fundamentals of rifle squads and rifle platoons. So we didn’t need any fancy, pricey contractors. We just did it ourselves.”

The Delta Co commander, Major Kirk D. Mullins, a Hoosier from Richmond, Ind., also was aware of the AmGrunts of Vietnam. When the prior amtrac company in Iraq was “doing tracs and infantry but transitioning to infantry,” he understood his amtrackers would become a provisional rifle company, like in Vietnam. So he arranged training for his Marines. “When 3d Recon was scheduled to do Mojave Viper, there was room for my men, so they trained with them.”

Exercise Mojave Viper, the Marine train­ing program in the California desert with an “Iraqi town” and Iraqis playing various roles, focuses on infantry counterinsurgency. The training lasts 10 days, seven of classes and three days of experience. The amtrackers took classes on Iraqi culture, vehicle checkpoint operations, base security, urban patrolling, searching structures, detainee operations, counter-IED operations and more.

“After Mojave Viper,” the major explains, “we had lots of live-fire with various weapons. We would rotate platoons to the live-fire ranges while other platoons would do training on the [AAV] ramp. We wanted to reinforce what they had learned at Mojave Viper and gain greater efficiency in weapons. Our motto was ‘Use every minute to train.’ ”

And in Iraq, the AmGrunts were unanimous in praising Mojave Viper and Del­ta’s customized program for preparing them for their mission.

For the original AmGrunts, the lack of infantry-operations training and direct experience was overcome by battlefield on-the-job training. With intense fighting along Vietnam’s Demilitarized Zone, there was not the time or resources for more than a brief instructional class, if that. For Afghanistan, these modern-day AmGrunts experienced one month of training on a ship followed by two weeks of in-country training. For Iraq, six months prior to deployment they were preparing for infantry counterinsurgency and developing their own training program.

The progression is clear: On the battlefield, on a ship bound for a war, in Stateside programs—AmGrunt training is starting sooner and continuing longer.

The Missions and the Fighting

Maj Mullins states Delta’s mission: “To conduct Iraqi Security Forces [ISF] development through embedded training teams in AO Baghdadi in order to set the conditions for battlespace turnover to ISF.”

The company’s three locations in the villages of Jubbah, Baghdadi and Dulab all have embedded Iraqi police and army that the Marines mentor and train in specific skill sets: weapons handling, fire team/squad tactics, urban patrolling and detainee operations are a few. With guidance from the Marine support teams and grasping the gravity of the task, the Ma­rines eagerly conduct their hands-on, prag­matic training classes.

Today’s AmGrunts have the dual mission, then, of training the Iraqi police and army and patrolling the roads in humvees and the towns on foot, often with Iraqi forces. Then Maj Mullins, with a small team, works the political side, the tribal sheiks and city council. Training local security forces and developing a government­al structure while holding off an enemy is classic counterinsurgency.

Four decades ago in Vietnam, the 1st Amtrac Bn moved north from Da Nang to the mouth of the Cua Viet River along the South China Sea. It was a vulnerable yet critical location on the resupply route for Marine units all along the DMZ. With well-armed and -trained North Vietna­mese Army units pouring across the DMZ, with enemy artillery pounding Marine positions and with infantry units in extremely short supply, the amtrackers were assigned the additional mission of infantry and given responsibility for their own AO.

Immediately they were conducting small-unit foot patrols and ambushes and soon company- and battalion-size search and destroy operations. Dismounted from their amtracs, these were the original AmGrunts.

Meanwhile, other 1st Amtrac Bn Ma­rines continued the traditional mechanized role of providing combat support, transportation, resupply, medevac, mine clearing, etc., to various infantry units, including fellow amtrackers-turned-Am­Grunts. Eventually, however, these amtrackers would also become AmGrunts.

While today’s AmGrunts in Iraq are all dismounted from amtracs, in Vietnam they shifted back and forth between tracs and grunts. And, unlike in Iraq, the original Am­Grunts had to contend with heavy bar­rages of large-caliber artillery and rocket fire as well as extended close-range combat, producing significant Marine casualties.

Forty years later, the AmGrunts of Viet­nam still discuss Operation Hickory II. Outnumbered by enemy forces, possibly 5-to-1, the Marines managed to account for 54 of the 57 NVA killed during the division-size operation. Hickory II was the first time Marine Corps amtrac companies operated as a stand-alone, mechanized infantry unit.

In the village of Baghdadi, after handing out soccer balls, the Marines, although weighed down in full combat gear and rifles, challenge the local kids to a fun-filled match. SSgt Brian S. Bailey of Wood­land, Calif., talking about this other side of war, the counterinsurgency side, notes: “It takes three months to make an Iraqi a friend, but it can take only three seconds to make him an enemy.”

Still, these modern-day AmGrunts are engaged in fighting the Iraqi enemy, both al-Qaida in Iraq and local Sunni insurgent cells. During four days at Dulab, there is a roadside bomb that wounds several Ma­rines, a brief firefight with insurgents along the Euphrates River, a drive-by shooting in front of the patrol base, and three rifles unearthed in the town’s palm grove that was a recent location for incoming fire.

The next day in the northern sector at Jubbah, a rocket slams into the base pe­r­imeter. The following morning between Jubbah and the Baghdadi patrol base, a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device (VBIED) strikes the local police chief’s convoy.

Inside the Dulab patrol base, about two dozen Marines gather in the dusty courtyard under a camouflaged covering. “We’re not here to win the war for the Iraqis,” says Colonel Stacy Clardy, the commanding officer for Regimental Combat Team 2, Delta Co’s higher headquarters in Al An­bar province. “We’re here to leave our area in a better condition than when we arrived. It is the Iraqis who must win their war.”

The mission statement emphasizes Ma­rines remaining in the background, training Iraqi Security Forces to enable them to take over the battlespace, but insurgent attacks also require the AmGrunts to be out front, fighting. The Iraqis must win their war, but the AmGrunts’ training and fighting are meant to give Iraqis the skills and time to win their war.

Gradually, then accelerating during the last six weeks of Delta’s deployment, the IEDs on the roads and in the palm-tree groves, the rocket attacks and the quick small-arms engagements decrease significantly. The increase in trained Iraqi security personnel with the support of an improved, functioning government has changed the battlespace. As the AmGrunts of Delta Co board a plane for California, in AO Baghdadi, it appears the Iraqis are beginning to win their war.

Job Well Done

The original AmGrunts employed traditional fighting techniques against a surg­ing North Vietnamese Army to defend a critical resupply route. The AmGrunts in Afghanistan applied convoy- and airport-security methods and patrolled the hometown of the feared Taliban. The AmGrunts in Iraq used counterinsurgency tactics against a violent irregular insurgency while training indigenous security forces.

And the amount of cross-training for the old and new AmGrunts was different: minimum for Vietnam, moderate for Af­ghani­stan and rather extensive for Iraq. Different wars have different missions and different training, but the AmGrunts remain the same.

Exhausted after a long, hot day looking for weapons caches in Baghdadi village, Private Curtis W. Simmons of Gulfport, Miss., says: “I was going to join the infan­try, but I figured they didn’t walk enough, so I joined Amtracs.” That could have been said 40 years ago in Vietnam. ... It probably was.

During Delta Co’s seven-month deployment in Iraq, from October 2006 to May 2007, not a single AmGrunt was killed, less than 30 were wounded, and only two were medevacked Stateside.

“The men never took shortcuts,” Maj Mullins says from Delta’s home at the Marine Corps Air-Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms, Calif. “Iraq’s a small-unit-leader war, and our squads and fire teams were superb. They were awesome!”

For the Marine Corps, a lesson originally learned in Vietnam, reinforced in Afghanistan and established beyond doubt in Iraq is “tractor rats” make good grunts. Awesome grunts! With today’s advanced training, AmGrunts are maximizing their capabilities as they minimize their casualties on the battlefield. “What I am most proud of,” Maj Mullins says, “is we did not lose a single Marine.”

It’s been months since Delta Co departed AO Baghdadi. The Iraqi police continue to grow stronger, and recruitment for the Iraqi army continues to rise, while al-Qaida in Iraq and the Sunni insurgency grow weaker and less effective. The three villages of Jubbah, Baghdadi and Dulab on the Euphrates increasingly are patrolled by the Iraqi police and the barren desert stretching westward from the river by the Iraqi army—policemen and soldiers who were embedded with and trained by the AmGrunts.

With Iraqis operating ever more independently of the Marines, the AmGrunts’ mission goal of “battlespace turnover to Iraqi Security Forces” is moving closer to reality.

In Dulab, where the children stared cold­ly when Marine convoys passed, a new youth center just opened. Now, when the Marine convoys pass, the kids flash “V” signs and scream for candy. Where there were attacks against the Marines almost daily, now there are few.

“I feel really great about what we accomplished,” says Sgt Damian D. Henry from Miami who was stationed at Dulab. “When we got there, it was bad. But when we left, it was much better. That is a really good feeling.”

Author’s note: Hugh Connelly, an AmGrunt with 1st Amtracs in Vietnam, provided research and editorial assistance for this article.

Editor’s note: Stewart Nusbaumer served as an AmGrunt and was medically retired. In Iraq, he was embedded with various Marine and Army units. Nusbaumer submitted this article upon return from a recent tour. To read more about the AmGrunts of Vietnam, go to Leatherneck’s online archives at www.mca-marines.org/leatherneck and read Sgt P. L. Thompson’s June 1968 article, “AmGrunts.”