The Firefight

How one night in Iraq changed three soldiers' lives.

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A Bad Situation

It was almost midnight in Karbala, one of the holiest Islamic cities in Iraq. Streetlights wrapped in wisps of fog cast shadows on the dun-colored two-story buildings that lined the road. Four dozen Iraqi men armed with clubs, knives and assault rifles milled about, in open violation of a curfew set by coalition forces. A pair of armored Humvees with six American military police officers pulled up. Soldiers in the turrets watched nervously, swinging their light machine guns from side to side. The Americans were from the 194th MP Company, a unit that had been in Iraq almost seven months, since April 2003, patrolling the streets like cops in any big city. They had seen no real action. One of the MPs, 28-year-old Staff Sgt. Joseph Bellavia, left his Humvee, walked over to the Iraqis and tried talking them into leaving the street and disarming. Another joined him, 26-year-old Spc. Michael Wolfe, who stood with his M-4 carbine at the ready.

"I knew in my mind it was a bad situation," Wolfe later explained. He remembered hearing more Humvees arrive -- and then, suddenly, gunfire.

The opening blasts knocked Wolfe to the ground, and he was terrified to find he couldn't move his legs. He lay there in the street, helpless, as the firefight raged about him. "If I tried crawling anywhere, I'd be a perfect target," he said. "So I just played dead. I knew somebody would come get me."

Blocks away, at an Iraqi police station, radio calls crackled in: Shots fired. MPs down. Standing in the open turret of the first Humvee racing to the scene was Pfc. Teresa Broadwell. The 20-year-old had been in the Army only 11 months and, except for a few times in training, she had never fired the M-249 machine gun now in her hands. Soon her Humvee came onto the chaotic scene: Men were screaming, grenades exploding, and tracers crisscrossing in front of her. Through the stinking gun smoke, Broadwell made out three soldiers sprawled in the street. She didn't know if they were alive or dead.

She was scared. Over and over, she kept saying to herself, I don't want to get shot. I don't want to get shot. Standing on tiptoes to sight down her weapon, Broadwell began firing in short, controlled bursts, just like she'd been trained.

At the same time, she was engulfed in enemy fire. "It came from windows, from rooftops, from men on the ground," she said later.

Then 1st Lt. Jay Guerrero leapt from Broadwell's Humvee and ran to Wolfe. "Get your butt out of here!" Guerrero shouted.

At the school where my mother worked, the two first-grade teachers were named Miss Paine and Mrs. Hacking. One morning the mother of a student called in the middle of a flu epidemic to excuse her daughter from school. "Is she in Paine or Hacking?" the school secretary asked.

"She feels fine," said the confused mom. "We have company and I'm just keeping her home."

-- Merri Lee Colvin

“ The best way to keep one's word is not to give it. ”

— Napoleon Bonaparte

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