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They were a surreal sight black motorcycles with mounted rocket tubes parked on the edges of a column of idling Iraqi armored vehicles.

They were about the length of a football field from American troops positioned near date palm trees and vegetation so lush the area looked more like the jungles of Vietnam than the vast Iraqi desert the Americans had traversed over the previous 13 days.

The onset of explosions and gunfire ratcheted up the tension.

Air Force Capt. Shad Magann, commander of two teams providing close air support for a 3rd Infantry Division battalion, decided his truck, a Humvee with plastic doors and see-through jelly windows, would join an armored column as it crossed a bridge over the Euphrates River. The structure was wired with explosives and thick with enemy troops just how many no one knew. His Hummer cut in front of a Bradley armored personnel carrier and was 12 feet behind an M1 Abrams tank.

Making a mad dash across the Al Kaed Bridge 18 miles southwest of Baghdad looked so much like a suicide run that Maganns radio operator, Senior Airman Dan Housley, questioned the order. And then he said a prayer.

Unfazed, Magann explained that he wanted to be among the first to reach the T intersection at the end of the bridge. A counterattack was coming, and they had to repel it.

Did you make peace with your Lord, Captain? asked Housley, who grew up in the Huntsville area.

A long time ago, Magann shot back. He was usually laid back, but the question irritated him.

METRO - KUWAIT A soldier watches as 3-8 Cav troops leave a kabal for a patrol near the Iraq/Kuwait border Friday, November 23, 2001 in Kuwait. Kabals (small fortified encampments) set up throughout the desert region are receiving additional troops and artillery. HEARST NEWSPAPERS/BAHRAM MARK SOBHANI, SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS NEWS STAFF

An Iraqi soldier covers his face from the bugs as he awaits being taken to a POW camp in the town of Navit Al Ajil South of Baghdad Thursday, April 3, 2003 in Iraq. The soldier had fought U.S. soldiers as they crossed the Euphrates River, then hid in his foxhole overnight before surrendering. BAHRAM MARK SOBHANI/STAFF

BAHRAM MARK SOBHANI, STAFF / SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS NEWS

It took the 3rd Infantry Division and 1st Marine Expeditionary Force just three weeks to conquer Iraq. The United States along with the United Kingdom, Australia and Poland launched the Iraq War 20 years ago, on March 19, 2003.

The battle that Magann was muscling into was the turning point in the conflict, and one of its most perilous moments for both sides.

Close air support played a critical role in the 21-day offensive called Cobra II, with Joint Terminal Attack Controllers assigned to the 3rd Infantry Division calling in 925 sorties in defense of troops on the ground. The 70-plus Air Force and Marine JTACs, or Tactical Air Control Parties, helped destroy 656 enemy armored vehicles and other war machines, along with 89 Iraqi facilities.

They also played an outsize role in the divisions crossing of the 900-foot-long bridge April 2, 2003. It marked the first of two battles for Magann and Housley, who were among a handful of JTACs calling in airstrikes at the bridge to protect badly outnumbered American soldiers.

Its a very large force multiplier with a very small group, so with a few people you bring air power to bear, said retired Air Force Col. Bryon Risner, 63, of Richmond Hill, Ga.

Twenty years ago, San Antonio Express-News reporter Sig Christenson and photojournalist Bahram Mark Sobhani were embedded with two close air support teams attached to the 3rd Infantry Divisions 1st Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Battalion, 69th Armor Regiment during the invasion of Iraq. They covered coalition forces three-week push to Baghdad, where they then chronicled the start of the occupation.

He commanded the Air Forces 15th Air Support Operations Squadron, which provided the JTACs to the division.

Objective Peach, as the bridge was called in the battle plan, was the coalitions key to taking Baghdad.

When the sun rose after an all-night battle that saw thousands of Republican Guard troops descend on the bridge and then retreat, the rout was complete and nothing stood between the 3rd ID and Iraqs capital. Two American soldiers were killed and as many as 60 were wounded. Thousands of Iraqis were killed, wounded or driven back to Baghdad.

The capital would fall six days later, on April 9.

Victory on the battlefield had been as fast and efficient as the subsequent occupation was drawn-out and chaotic.

In the years to come, GIs sent to Iraq for a gritty year of occupation duty would say embrace the suck in describing their predicament. They sometimes talked in wonder of the invasion they had missed as if it were an Arthurian legend.

As troops settled in for what would become an eight-year occupation, President George W. Bushs rationale for war that Iraq had a stockpile of weapons of mass destruction vaporized like a desert mirage. None were ever located.

Meanwhile, signs of trouble ahead were as palpable as the odor of diesel exhaust and raw sewage that troops encountered across Baghdad.

During the invasion, the 3rd ID lost 46 soldiers and awarded 263 Purple Hearts. The death toll increased exponentially in the years ahead.

Iraq cost the lives of 4,910 coalition troops, 4,586 of them Americans, according to the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count. In all, 8,509 coalition troops died in Iraq and Afghanistan, 7,051 of them Americans. As many as 315,000 Iraqi civilians were killed in the violence unleashed by the U.S.-led invasion, according to Brown Universitys Costs of War project.

The war and occupation of Iraq cost the U.S. an estimated $2 trillion.

On a recent Friday afternoon, nearly 20 years after the battle at the bridge, Magann and Housley met at Fort Stewart, Ga., for a reunion marking the start of the Iraq War. They recounted their moments of terror, adrenaline, uncertainty and triumph over the Euphrates.

Though subordinate to Magann, Housley was as given to asking questions as he was to playing songs by country singer George Strait on the way to Baghdad. Magann was a one-time enlisted jet engine mechanic from Jacksonville, Fla., who later graduated from the Air Force Academy and flew A-10s over Afghanistan. He usually didnt mind explaining things.

We had a couple of instances where he asked me why, and I said, Dude, theres going to be times when I say crash into that ditch and I need you to just do it without asking why, Magann recalled. And we were having that big conversation just before the road over Peach, and then just before we go, artillery starts coming in and Im like, Dude, put your helmet on.

Why? he recalled Housley asking.

Put your helmet on, Magann replied.

But why?

And Im like, Oh, my God, this is not good.

Housley said that wasnt how he remembered it. Nevertheless, they laughed about the exchange at the squadron reunion.

Magann, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, is now a Delta Air Lines pilot living with his wife, Kandice, in Tampa, Fla., while Housley flies for American Airlines and remains in Texas. Hes a major in the Texas Air National Guard flying C-130J Hercules cargo planes and lives with his wife, Carin, and two children in Houston.

Magann is 50 and Housley 42. They were 30 and 22, respectively, the morning of March 20, 2003, when the 3rd Infantry Divisions 1st Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Battalion, 69th Armor Regiment rumbled across a tall, thick sand berm separating Kuwait from Iraq.

Iraqi troops hadnt fought well, but at Objective Peach, the stakes were too high to write them off.

A large Republican Guard force converged on the bridge for two battles, one the afternoon of April 2, and the other in the early morning hours of April 3. The Iraqis held a lopsided numerical advantage against Lt. Col. Ernest Rock Marcones Task Force 3-69.

Not that it mattered.

They had a great plan, I think, but so did Marcone. He had a wonderful setup, said retired Air Force Chief Master Sgt. Russell Carpenter, a JTAC assigned to Army Col. William Grimsley, a brigade commander who won the Silver Star during the war. The Iraqis just kept coming at the one or two companies that were at this specific position, and so youve got to think of the weight of 10,000-strong (enemy troops).

SSg. Travis Crosby (GA) sits atop his tracked vehicle after a night of fighting at Saddam International Airport Friday, April 4, 2003 in Iraq. BAHRAM MARK SOBHANI/STAFF

U.S. forces take three enemy POWs after a battle near Ah Najaf as 3rd Infantry troops moved north through the central farmlands of Iraq Sunday, March 23, 2003. BAHRAM MARK SOBHANI/STAFF

Alpha Company 11 Engineer Christopher Raeder, with 1st Brigade, sweeps aside spent shell casings from the side of Hwy. 8 Saturday, April 12, 2003 in western Baghdad. Members of 3rd Infantry Division spent the day clearing a stretch of the highway in preparation for it to be reopened to civilian traffic. BAHRAM MARK SOBHANI/STAFF

BAHRAM MARK SOBHANI, STAFF / SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS NEWS

Marcone saw the four-lane bridge as the linchpin of the battle plan.

Once it was taken, his battalion and other elements of the 1st Brigade and assorted Army units sped to Saddam International Airport. They also took the intersection of Highways 1 and 8. The Army and Marines then linked up in Baghdad and crushed the remnants of Saddam Husseins regime.

The bridge was so important that an Iraqi general said Saddam had to repulse the 3rd ID there or lose the war. But the regime wasnt listening.

Iraqi Gen. Raad Majid Rashid al-Hamdani and other commanders met with Saddams son, Qusay Hussein, and were told that the armys high commander believed the American infantry divisions thrust from the southwest was a strategic deception.

Baghdad, the high commander insisted, would be attacked from the north.

I asked them to stand in front of the map, Hamdani said in an interview with the PBS documentary series Frontline. I briefed them, saying that American action stopped at the area of Karbala, which was the neck of the bottle. They intend to advance to Baghdad, moving towards Usfiyah, the airport, and then the presidential palaces.

That was exactly the American plan.

Hamdani sent Republican Guard troops to intercept them. They would attack the Americans holding the intersection east of the bridge and strike at their flank on the west side of the span.

Marcone had no notion of their strength. There was a dearth of information.

He thought a facility near the bridge, protected by a 12-foot-tall concrete wall, was a rocket motor plant, but it was more than that.

It was the Al Qa Qaa weapons storage facility, a massive bunker complex controlled by the International Atomic Energy Agency prior to the invasion.

The Armys plan was to cross the bridge, capable of handling vehicles weighing 70 tons or less, with heavy armored vehicles while engaging a larger enemy force. The M1 tank weighed just under the 70-ton limit.

A Republican Guard reconnaissance battalion defended the bridge that afternoon but would be reinforced later by many more troops. They went up against 1,100 Americans and a handful of JTACs with Task Force 3-69.

Marcone later learned that the Iraqis brought three brigades to the fight essentially a division against his battalion. That represented a 9-to-1 superiority in soldiers. He not only didnt know that at the time but had no idea how many enemy tanks he was up against.

There is zero information getting to me, Marcone said. But he added: We were ready.

Marcone launched the bridge battle at 3 p.m. His battalion had boats in the river with soldiers defusing explosives intended to collapse the span. One charge blew up a 10-foot-by-10-foot section of a single lane of the bridge, but vehicles were able to drive around it. No one knew the severity of the damage.

Housley put the Hummer in gear once the column began to move, his M4 rifle resting atop the open drivers side window. A moment later, a courtyard full of overturned vehicles and foxholes came into view. The column moved slowly as mortar rounds exploded in the distance.

Magann, in the passenger seat, eyed smoke rising from the treeline as the Humvee closed on the bridge. Housley occasionally fired three-round bursts at revetments that provided cover for Republican Guard troops, steering the Humvee with one knee.

I was watching him kind of be the man, Magann said. Hot brass was falling in the Humvee as he was shooting.

U.S. warplanes dropped precision-guided bombs near the far corners of the bridge, far enough to spare it from damage. AH-64 Apache helicopters and fighter aircraft attacked Iraqis forces on the far bank of the river as engineers checked the southern edge of the bridge for demolition charges.

The Iraqis set off some of the charges at 4:15 p.m., just after the first coalition soldiers reached the east bank in rubber boats. But damage to the bridge was limited. By then, the first soldiers of the 3rd Infantry Division were on the other side.

On either side of the Humvee lay the detritus of war wrecked and smoldering equipment, abandoned AK-47 rifles and the occasional dead combatant, one with a long black beard clothed in a brightly colored, blood-stained dishdasha.

The bridge shimmied with each artillery and mortar blast.

Magann found Staff Sgt. Travis Crosby, Senior Airman Nick Taylor and San Antonio Express-News photographer Bahram Mark Sobhani about 150 yards to the south, their M-113 surrounded by foliage.

The men were the other half of Maganns close air support team and had just driven past six Iraqi T-72 tanks and six armored personnel carriers that were hidden in camouflage, waiting for the Americans to become strung out so they would make easier targets to hit.

Heeeeyyyyy! Magann yelled.

Housley stopped shooting.

Probably the most vivid memory is the actual drive over the bridge where there was a woman covered with blood, he said. Remember, the Bradley had shot that truck that was across the bridge and she was a passenger in it. When we drove by, you know Im on the left side and she was on the left side of the bridge, and she was covered in blood and she had her hands on her face and shes shaking back and forth, and she was just piercing into my eyes. And she was sobbing, and she was maybe 6 feet from me, and Ill just never forget her face.

PFC Brandon Ellis, 422 Civil Affairs Battalion, heads for cover as the second day of sandstorms turn the sky red in the south central Iraqi desert near the town of Kifil Wednesday, March 26, 2003. BAHRAM MARK SOBHANI/STAFF

A dead Iraqi soldier lies next to his Kia minivan as U.S. tanks roll by near a bridge in Southern Iraq Tuesday, March 25, 2003. Iraqi soldiers had tried to ambush U.S. troops, blowing up a bridge as their vehicles crossed, and attacking with AK-47s, but they were swiftly taken down by U.S. forces. BAHRAM MARK SOBHANI/STAFF

An infantryman stands inside his Bradley Fighting Vehicle at the scene of the battle in Kifl as a sandstorm moves into Southern Iraq on Tuesday, March 25, 2003. BAHRAM MARK SOBHANI/STAFF

A gunner on a Bradley Fighting Vehicle is silhouetted against a large fire as Task Force 3-69 moves to take Saddam International Airport. This was a long night of fighting and by the time we got to a stopping point, we were on the tarmac. We stopped for about an hour of rest and at sunrise made the move across the runway and secured to entire airport.South of Baghdad Thursday, April 3, 2003 in Iraq. BAHRAM MARK SOBHANI/STAFF

BAHRAM MARK SOBHANI, STAFF / SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS NEWS

The Republican Guard, or Saddam fedayeen, a fanatical militia, had deployed black motorcycles with anti-tank missile tubes mounted on them.

Crosby and Taylor saw one of the motorcycles rounding a bend, the driver clinging to the bikes handlebar with one hand as he leaned into the sidecar. The Americans had never seen such a strange contraption before. Transfixed, they didnt fire at the Iraqi.

Well, he does something and this damned missile takes off, and if it had continued straight it probably would have missed anyway, but it shoots up in the air like a surface-to-air missile and we never see it again, said Crosby, 45, of Riddleville, Ga. What the hell was that?! And everybody opens up on the motorcycle and kills him. Five minutes later, here comes another one, does the same thing.

As the first battle at the bridge began, Crosby a gifted athlete who played football in high school directed A-10 fighters to attack Iraqis trying to detonate demolition charges on the bridge. The bombs found their mark, striking six trucks. He then directed A-10s to cover a team of engineers in the river.

Then the situation got dicier.

Crosbys team was ambushed by three Iraqi tanks, numerous other vehicles and soldiers on foot. The ensuing firefight was so close that American and Iraqi vehicles were intermingled, making it difficult to identify friend from foe. Fire fell like hail around the M-113 tank. It had its protective Kevlar removed so radios vital to calling in airstrikes could be installed, making it vulnerable to rockets and small-arms rounds.

Under fire, Crosby drained the ammunition belt of his.50-caliber machine gun, killing more than 20 Iraqi soldiers while simultaneously calling in another A-10 airstrike.

A few moments later, two Republican Guard soldiers got within 10 feet of the M-113.

Infantry in the ditch! someone cried on the radio.

I turned and looked and thats when they started shooting, and I said, Son of a said Crosby, who would serve five tours in Iraq and three others in Afghanistan.

The Iraqis ducked into a bunker and were quickly forgotten, but they came out again when one of them saw Crosby standing in the M-113s turret.

When he says, Dudes in the ditch! I turned and looked, and first thing I see is sparks, like the flash of a gun, and it came by pretty damn close, Crosby said. Im facing left in my turret and the dudes are on the right. Those turrets you turn by muscle theyre all slow and heavy and I got it turned about halfway around and I just spun the gun as far as I could, and we got that damn thing hot. We shot two rounds and it locked up.

The two rounds I shot kind of put them on the defensive a little bit, and then I reach for my M4, he said.

He struggled to pull the rifle because Army Sgt. Bryan Slick, the M-113s driver, was reaching for the weapon at the same time. Seeing the danger, both unwittingly had a tug of war over the rifle, thinking it was stuck.

And thats when I reached down and grabbed my pistol, Crosby said.

Taylor exited the truck, aimed his rifle and fired three bursts at the Iraqis.

Distracted by Taylors entry into the fight, the Iraqis were exposed as Crosby trained the handgun on them.

The moment Crosby fired at the Iraqis, Sobhani captured an image of a single bullet casing floating over the handgun, frozen against a deep blue sky.

Even though they were hit by multiple rounds, the two mortally wounded Iraqis kept coming.

Both of them fell forward after they finally gave out of whatever, adrenaline, said Crosby, who was awarded the Silver Star, the nations third-highest award for battlefield gallantry.

More than 30 Iraqi POWs sit in the back of a U.S Army vehicle after they were captured Friday, April 4, 2003 near Saddam International Airport in Iraq. The POWs were brought to the airport to be processed and held temporarily until until they could be taken to a POW camp. BAHRAM MARK SOBHANI/STAFF

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Remembering the battles that sealed the fate of Saddam and Iraq - San Antonio Express-News