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Type of bind: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 956.7044342
EAN num: 9780891419112
ISBN number: 089141911X
Label: Presidio Press
Manufacturer: Presidio Press
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 384
Printing Date: October 30, 2007
Publishing house: Presidio Press
Release Date: October 30, 2007
Sale Popularity Level: 15396
Studio: Presidio Press
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March 23, 2003: U.S. Marines from the Task Force Tarawa are caught up in one of the most unexpected battles of the Iraq War. What started off as a routine maneuver to secure two key bridges in the town of Nasiriyah in southern Iraq degenerated into a nightmarish twenty-four-hour urban clash in which eighteen young Marines lost their lives and more than thirty-five others were wounded. It was the single heaviest loss suffered by the U.S. military during the initial combat phase of the war.
On that fateful day, Marines came across the burned-out remains of a U.S. Army convoy that had been ambushed by Saddam Hussein’s forces outside Nasiriyah. In an endeavor to rescue the missing soldiers and seize the bridges before the Iraqis could destroy them, the Marines decided to advance their attack on the city by twenty-four hours. What happened subsequent is a gripping and gruesome tale of military blunders, tragedy, and heroism.
Huge M1 tanks leading the attack were rendered ineffective when they became mired in an open sewer. Then a company of Marines took a wrong turn and ended up on a deadly stretch of road where their armored personal carriers were hit by devastating rocket-propelled grenade fire. USAF planes called in for fire support play their own part in the unfolding cataclysm when they accidentally strafed the vehicles. The endeavor to rescue the dead and dying stranded in “ambush alley” only drew more Marines into the slaughter.
This was not a battle of modern technology, but a brutal close-quarter urban knife fight that tested the Marines’ resolve and training to the limit. At the heart of the drama were the fifty or so young Marines, most of whom had never been to war, who were embroiled in a battle of epic proportions from which neither their commanders nor the technological might of the U.S. military could save them.
With a novelist’s gift for pace and tension, Tim Pritchard brilliantly captures the chaos, panic, and courage of the fight for Nasiriyah, bringing back in full force the day that a perfunctory task turned into a battle for survival.
'Ambush Alley' is a gut-wrenching account of unadulterated terror that's hard to read yet impossible to put down. London-based journalist and filmmaker Tim Pritchard, who was embedded with US troops during the initial stages of the American-led invasion of Iraq, paints a compelling picture of one of the costliest battles of the Iraq war that will at turns anger, horrify, and sadden, regardless of one's political views.'
--The Boston Globe
From the Hardcover edition.
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Rated by buyers 
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El-Nasiriyah was a town that the U.S. Army was only supposed to see in the distance as it took the main highway north to Baghdad. It turned out different.
The Marines were not initially supposed to participate in the attack on Baghdad, and it took time for them to lobby for the political go-ahead. By the time they got it, they also got a separate route: the Marines were to leave the main highway the Army was on and cross the southern part of Nasiriyah from west to east to get to another highway heading north. To do this, the Marines had to plan to take and hold two bridges in the southern part of town. No real resistance was expected, however, as the Shi'a population was supposed to hate Saddam and the Iraqi military in the area were supposed to have disbanded.
Before the Marines got there, the Army had already passed by, heading north on the highway west of town. Unfortunately, an Army Maintenance Company in the rear took a wrong turn and drove up to Nasiriyah itself. Thanks to what they had been told by our leaders (see above), they didn't think it was a big deal to drive into town. They actually got all the way through to the east before realizing that they had to turn back to link up again with the Army combat units headed north on the main road on the west. It was when they tried to drive back through town the second time that they were shot up. Nine died; when her Humvee crashed, Jessica Lynch was knocked out and injured but was treated at the local Iraqi hospital in Nasiriyah until the U.S. Army picked her up.
Some of the Army trucks did make it back through to the west, however. At that point, they encountered the Marines who were (intentionally) headed into town and were ready for possible combat. The Marines, however, were held up by having to take care of the Army Maintenance Company trucks, as well as by unexpected Iraqi sniping outside of town.
As a result, Marine units entered the town out of the planned order of battle and ended up fighting the local population with small arms on both sides. While the Marines were a hundred times better riflemen than the townspeople, they were also a hundred times fewer in number, so they were in some tight spots for several hours before the planned units got back together, at which point the Marines' tanks blew resistance away. In the meantime, eighteen Marines were killed, about half of them by U.S. aircraft who were misdirected by the disorganization on the ground. It was traumatizing for all involved.
Ambush Alley seems to support Sam Damon Jr.'s contention that the Marine Corps is not configured for this kind of combat: too many wheeled trucks, not enough tracked tanks. (See his review of "The March Up: Taking Baghdad with the 1st Marine Division.") Possibly the Marines' inability to get assigned to the attack on Baghdad until very late in the game resulted from leadership's understanding that Marine Corps's equipment was not the best adapted to the mission. In the end, the Marines ended up with the harder route, suffered more, and didn't get to Baghdad on time.
It is also striking how many of Nasiriyah's population -- men, women, children, old people -- attacked the U.S. forces, mainly with handheld weapons, AK-47s and rocket launders (RPGs), although also some mortars (no armor). Instead of the Iraqi army taking this stuff out to meet the U.S. forces in the desert, where they knew it would be pulverized by U.S. aircraft, it has been stockpiled in the neighborhoods waiting for the U.S. forces to drive in.
Rated by buyers -
One of the best things about this book is that Pritchard incorporates multiple points of view into the narrative (for example, the decision to attack the north bridge without tank support). Some thought it was necessary, others thought it was foolhardy. Pritchard just gives the information and lets the reader decide.
But the "omniscient narrator" style rubbed me the wrong way. I realize that when Pritchard writes about what the Marines were thinking, he's taking that information directly from interviews he had with them after-the-fact. But sometimes it comes across like a football game where the camera shows the coach on the sidelines and the announcer says what (he presumes) the coach is thinking. I think I would have preferred to either have the individual Marines' accounts told in the first-person, or to have had Pritchard write in the first-person about what the soldiers told him in their interviews.
But other than that minor complaint the book is excellent.
Rated by buyers 
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I couldn't put this book down. I know very little about the Iarq war and found Tim Pritchards book to be informative and eye opening to the horrors of war. Excellent reading.
Rated by buyers -
This book should be read by anyone interested in the current situation in Iraq. I have read many books on the Middle East, but this one was exceptional.
Civilians will benefit from the intensely personal accounts and the accurate portrayal of the "fog of war."
I only hope the military will closely review the aspects of this battle that went so terribly wrong.
I strongly urge everyone to read this book.
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I picked this up to read on a month long travel trip. I ended up reading it in one sitting! Consequently, Im very glad I had also purchased a few other titles on the same topic. I really good read, disturbing and terrifying at times with a great deal of insight, but a great read.
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