Rose was the unit's supply sergeant. He kept track of items like toilet paper, wrenches and spare tires. Guard duty in hostile territory wasn't normally a part of his job.
It was still early, but the Iraqi city was beginning to come to life. Several cars that looked to be taxicabs -- they had bright white and orange fenders -- drove slowly by, then circled back, as if checking them out. Then a pickup truck with a machine gun mounted in the back sped past.
Rose was relieved when the order finally came down to get back in their vehicles and start back toward town.
He steered his 5-ton bobtail and trailer, laden with supplies, east on the four-lane road. Suddenly, he heard gunfire.
The 507th had driven into an ambush.
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The directions to Objective RAMS, the 507th's destination in the middle of southeastern Iraq, were simple enough: travel overland to the Iraqi border; link up to the hardball (a paved road) Route Blue, also known as Highway 8; make a left onto Route Jackson, Highway 1; stay on Route Jackson until it intersected again with Route Blue.
The instructions adhered to the Coalition forces' strategy of skirting urban areas while charging headlong toward Baghdad.
The 507th's commander, Capt. Troy Kent King, was new to his job, taking charge just as the company was departing for Iraq from Fort Bliss, Texas. He was a quiet leader -- easygoing, smart and a good listener. He'd joined the Army a decade ago as a dental assistant and got his captain's bars in October. This was his first time in combat.
On March 20, the first day of the war, the company, which provides support for a Patriot missile battalion, moved out of its staging area in Kuwait at 2 p.m. Almost immediately, things began going wrong.
The company's drivers weren't experienced driving over desert sand. As the 33 vehicles, many weighed down by tons of equipment, snaked toward the border, they began bogging down. Staff Sgt. Tarik Jackson, in charge of maintaining the 507th's fleet, rode at the end of the convoy in a 5-ton tow truck. Whenever someone got stuck, he peeled off to help.
That evening, the company stopped for their last night's sleep for the next 42 hours. At 10 a.m. the next morning, they crossed the border into Iraq.
Now, the delays were worsening. Thousands of military vehicles had crossed the desert ahead of them, making the sand more treacherous. Every 20 minutes, it seemed, one of the tractor trailers got stuck.
Cpl. Damien Luten, a beefy 24-year-old supply clerk from Indiana, called on Jackson's tow truck a half-dozen times to pull him out of the sand.
Ahead of them in the convoy, Rose, the supply sergeant, was riding with his supply clerk, 19-year-old Pfc. Jessica Lynch of West Virginia. Lynch was nervous, and Rose, her mentor, tried to project confidence.
He wanted to keep her close, make sure she stayed safe. But soon, their vehicle busted an engine part. Lynch jumped into another vehicle while Rose joined someone else.
By 5:30 a.m. on March 22, the vehicles in the little convoy were scattered for miles across the desert and had fallen well behind the rest of the Third Infantry Division they were supposed to be accompanying.
King's battalion commanders told him they couldn't wait and told him to push forward as best he could. King sent 32 soldiers in 17 vehicles ahead with the main convoy and waited for the rest of his company to show up.
The remaining half -- 33 soldiers and 18 vehicles -- finally reached him at a desert checkpoint at 7:30 p.m.
By now, the American advance had morphed into a mind-bending traffic jam as vehicles from various units converged and headed north.
Out of radio range of his superiors, King decided to take the most direct route to Highway 8 -- straight overland. It took the convoy five hours to drive the 8 miles to the highway.
Along the way, Jackson was hurt slightly when the unsecured hood of a disabled truck crashed on his head. His bosses decided to give him a break from the wrecker, switching him to a Humvee.
Heading west on Route Blue now, the convoy watched for a manned traffic control point where they should have been directed onto Route Jackson. By the time they got there, the post had been abandoned. King asked some Marines in the area if Route Blue continued north. They confirmed that it did.
King had already made a crucial mistake, according to the Army report on the incident. He was supposed to lead his company from Route Blue to Route Jackson, but on his personal map, he had highlighted Route Blue all the way.
Sgt. Curtis Campbell, 27, a logistics specialist, was driving behind King with a load of Patriot missile parts. He felt reassured when he spotted lights in the distance, figuring they were from the main convoy.
The 507th passed some M1-Abrams tanks driving in the dark with their lights off. Rose, now driving a bobtail laden with supplies, thought this strange. Why was their support unit passing the armor?
Soon it became apparent the lights in the distance weren't from the convoy. King guessed they were from an oil refinery and forged ahead.
Already on the wrong road, King missed a left turn that would have kept them on Route Blue and bypassed the heart of the city of Nasiriyah.
Now they were heading north on Route 7/8, crossing a bridge over the Euphrates River and driving directly into what soon became known as "ambush alley."
Buildings were becoming more tightly packed, some hugging the road. Trenches and berms lined the roadside, but they appeared abandoned. They passed an Iraqi military checkpoint, a phone-booth-sized shack manned by an Iraqi soldier. He waved at them.
Crossing a second bridge, over Saddam Canal, they passed out of the city center and reached an intersection where they had to turn left or right. King took a left, then another right. He'd gone a half-mile up that road when he realized he had somehow lost Route Blue and decided to turn the convoy around.
They had backtracked only a few minutes when gunshots rang out. Rose, near the front of the convoy, thought they were behind him. The convoy picked up speed.
In the confusion, King missed the turn-back on to Route 7/8. Rose, traveling three vehicles back, didn't notice either, but he saw a truck in front of him speed up to inform the commander.
He saw the vehicles ahead making U-turns again. He lumbered over a grassy median and hurried back the other way, struggling to keep up with King as they barreled left and headed back into town.
Now, the members of the 507th became separated. The larger vehicles had to travel farther down the road to find a spot wide enough to turn. One 5-ton tractor-trailer got stuck and another broke down. According to the Army report, three of the soldiers in the vehicles were picked up; but one, Sgt. Donald Walters, may have been left behind and was apparently the first member of the company to die.
The convoy was now split into three groups. The first three vehicles, led by King, sprinted ahead. Rose led a second group of four vehicles that included Campbell, Jackson and Luten. Far behind was the largest group, with 17 soldiers, including Lynch, their vehicles all towing cumbersome trailers or disabled vehicles.
In the heart of the city now, Rose could see dozens of fighters in civilian clothes firing from trenches and behind berms on the side of the road. Others ducked in and out of buildings, unleashing bursts of machine gun fire. Some stood brazenly near the road.
Rose stomped on the gas, rising out of his seat to lean on the pedal, but his bobtail refused to budge past 45 mph. He watched King's vehicle speed farther and farther ahead.
Behind him, Jackson, Campbell and Luten barreled along, swerving to avoid debris tossed into the road.
Jackson was firing out of his Humvee with his M-16 when he felt a bullet graze his left hand. Moments later, he felt the burning of a round penetrating his right arm, breaking the bone.
Behind him, Campbell was firing away with his M-16 when it jammed. He reached for another weapon, then felt a warm sensation near his hip. He'd been hit.
Luten stood on his seat to man a .50-caliber machine gun on the roof of his semi, but he couldn't get it to work. He'd cleaned the gun at their last stop, but that had been more than eight hours earlier. He sat back down then felt a pain in his right knee. He tried to move but screamed in agony.
"I'm hit," he told his driver.
Luten slumped in the cab and rolled down the window to fire his M-16, but it jammed.
Rose had entered the city as the lead vehicle in the second group, but now the speedier vehicles were passing him. A fuel truck with two soldiers rumbled past, its shot-out tires flapping. As Jackson raced by, Rose saw his good friend slumped over in the passenger seat. Then came Campbell, and finally Luten, also obviously hurt.
Iraqis dressed in civilian clothes were firing rocket-propelled grenade launchers now. Campbell also spotted a tank. The Army estimated 250 Iraqis converged to attack the 507th, according to Rose.
After the second group barreled back over the Euphrates, Campbell's bullet-ridden vehicle gave out. Moments later, Jackson's Humvee sputtered and died. About 150 yards behind them, Rose's truck ground to a halt.
Luten and his partner drove ahead, only to spot what appeared to be a roadblock a hundred yards down the road. They circled back to where soldiers were now congregating around Jackson's Humvee. Grabbing a medical kit, Rose, a former medic, bandaged the wounded as best he could.
Despite his hip wound, Campbell could still walk. He salvaged ammunition from his vehicle and headed with the others for a berm several hundred yards away. As Rose and another soldier struggled to pull Luten from his truck, the other seven in the group settled into a ditch. Mortar rounds were falling across the road.
Rose was acutely aware that the rest of their company hadn't shown up yet.
The slow-moving third group was under heavy fire. Veering to avoid an Iraqi dump truck, one tractor-trailer carrying two soldiers went off the road. It was immediately struck from behind by the Humvee carrying Lynch and four others. Three were killed instantly; Lynch and Pfc. Lori Piestewa, who died later in captivity, were badly hurt. Behind them, another soldier was killed by gunfire.
Pvt. Patrick Miller, a welder from Kansas, later told Rose that he left his broken-down vehicle, jumped into the dump truck and tried to drive it off the road. It wouldn't start. Then he turned his weapon on an Iraqi mortar position. He may have killed as many as nine Iraqis before being captured, according to the official report.
Two other vehicles nearly made it out of the ambush before the soldiers inside were killed. Everyone in the third group with Miller was either killed or captured.
King, meanwhile, had reached a Marine unit, which dispatched M-1 Abrams tanks. The Marines rescued the second group, putting Luten and Jackson on stretchers and piling the group into two armored personnel carriers. They were transported a short way down the road, where a helicopter evacuated Luten and Jackson to a field hospital in Kuwait.
Within 45 minutes from the Marines' arrival, both were on operating tables. The fate of the rest of their company wouldn't become clear until the days and weeks ahead.
Of the 33 soldiers who entered Nasiriyah that morning, only 16 would emerge that day, four them wounded. Ultimately, 11 soldiers were killed and six were captured, among them Lynch, who was later rescued from an Iraqi hospital.
Rose received the Bronze Star with V-device for valor for his actions that day; Campbell, a Purple Heart and Bronze Star; Jackson and Luten, Purple Hearts.
This story was written by AP writers Michael Luo and Chris Roberts. It is based on interviews with four members of the 507th. Sgt. Curtis Campbell was interviewed in El Paso, Texas; and Staff Sgt. Tarik Jackson was interviewed in Spring Hill, Va. Sgt. Matthew Rose in El Paso and Cpl. Damien Luten in Indianapolis were interviewed by telephone.
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