“IT WAS LIKE BLACK HAWK DOWN TIMES TEN”
When his unit came under heavy fire in Iraq, Justin Thomas didn’t hesitate to take on the enemy himself – with just a single gun…
With a furious onslaught of Iraqi mortars, machine gun fire and rocket powered grenades slamming into the dirt all around them, the Marines of 40 Commando were in big trouble. “We were getting shot to shit” explains Lance Corporal Justin Thomas, “We’d been ambushed, virtually surrounded and were silhouetted against the sky with virtually no cover.” As his colleagues desperately tried to flatten themselves to the deck, the then 24 year old from Cardiff jumped up onto a nearby jeep, took hold of the machine gun that was fixed to the roll bar, punched in a magazine of ammo and swung it around to face the enemy.
Squeezing the trigger, Thomas pumped out volley after volley of 200 round bursts as enemy bullets ripped past him and punctured the jeep’s bodywork. A heavy caliber anti-tank missile streaked overhead and slammed into a tank just metres away, rocket propelled grenades bounced off the bodywork and exploded, but the Marine gritted his teeth and pumped the trigger remorselessly for over 15 minutes, spraying the Iraqi firing line, allowing his fellow squaddies to get back in the game. “When I was doing it I felt as if I was in a film or something. It was only after when my knees went weak and I started trembling that I realised how lucky I’d been,” he says.
The Marines are almost always first in to a war zone and, true to form, on 20 March last year, 40 Commando – a heavy fire support unit – were the first Coalition troops to enter Iraq. “We were in contact [exchanging fire] on the first night we landed,” explains Thomas. “We come straight off the boat, got mortared and went straight into battle and that was it for the duration of the war. From the start it was on.”
The 40 strong troop landed in Al-faw, and their mission was to push through the main road to Basra, 80 kilometres to the north. In the searing heat, they played cat and mouse with the Iraqi army, engaging in fierce gun battles taking hundreds of prisoners as they swept up road. “It took seven days and we were all hanging, but we eventually reached the suburbs of Basra. And that’s where it all kicked off big style. We started spotting ammo dumps, which meant that we were getting closer to the main body of the enemy, and a new objective came through from our Commanding Officer. It was named Operation Pussy – named after Pussy Galore from the Bond films – and it was to take the main crossroads at Abu-al Hassib, one of Basra’s suburbs.”
The troops crossed the ‘start line’ (went into battle) at three in the morning having silently crept up to the intersection. Artillery went in to soften up known enemy positions, and the Marines were initially met with light resistance. However, what they didn’t know was that a failed Coalition mission north of the city had pushed hundreds of Iraqi forces towards their location. “They started getting a foothold. There were 40 of us and to say we were outnumbered isn’t the term – we were getting shat on from a great height. Rocket Propelled Grenades (RPGs) were flying everywhere. If you’ve seen Black Hawk Down, times that by ten and you’re somewhere near the ferocity of what it was like for us.”
While some of the RPGs were bouncing off the ground uselessly, many were reaching their targets. First the power lines above them were hit and exploded in a deafening shower of sparks, then explains Thomas, “I saw one of my mates take an RPG to the left side of his jeep, get spun around by the force of it and take another to the right. Amazingly, he came out of the smoke unscathed. We moved up the road and got so close that we could actually hear them [the Iraqi soldiers] on the other side of walls. They were trying to draw us into a street battle, but there was no way that was going to happen.”
The Marines fought up to the crossroads as the night wore on, but though they hadn’t suffered any casualties thus far, it was simply a question of time. “We were given the order to pull out, but it wasn’t an easy job as we had to stay on the road. There was a ditch either side of the tarmac and beyond that there’s sand and silt which you’d get bogged down in and shot to bits.” The tanks were the first to retreat, followed by the rest of the troop. “Even as we were pulling out one of our wagons got hit, but the lads managed to get out and we all raced off down the road. Within minutes, enemy infantry were pouring over our damaged truck, trying to strip kit off it. We waited until the truck was filled with soldiers and blew it from a distance.”
The battle-weary Marines came to a halt a couple of kilometers down the road and, with sentries posted, grabbed some zeds to prepare for another assault on the crossroads the following morning. Unfortunately for them, some 200 militia, fedhien (fanatics) and a detachment of Iraqi Special Forces had surrounded them. Thomas explains: “All of a sudden they started mortaring us from nowhere. We were resting with our protective kit off, and we all just dived all over the place looking for cover. A missile streaked towards us from the tree line on the horizon and from the speed and size of it it was a heavy caliber anti-tank weapon. It took out one of our Challengers, which was right behind me and I knew that something had to be done otherwise we’d be dog meat.” Cue Thomas’s heroic leap up into the back of the jeep…
“There were some taller buildings where the snipers were. They were quite easy to pick out because there was just a single crack followed by the whine as it goes over your head. I could also see some firing points quite clearly in the wood line, so I just got rounds down in their direction. After a while one of the lads, Gary Lancaster, climbed up onto the wagon with me and was undoing the ammo crates and passing it too me as quick as he could. As we were standing there I could see a missile snaking towards us; I could see the yellow flare and it amazingly passed straight between us. We were no more than three feet apart and it almost took my arm off.”
Thomas’s heroic mission continued until his troop could get rounds down in response and the enemy firing started to subside. The anti tank section of the troop managed to get some thermal-sighted missiles off and began picking off houses and enemy positions. In addition they called in air strikes, which soon came and pounded the area. “I’ll never know how it happened, but none of the troops in the ambush were injured that day,” explains Thomas. “It went quiet, and we waited for half an hour. It was time to go back up and take that crossroads. We were absolutely fucked, but we did it.”
In February this year, Lance Corporal Justin Thomas was awarded the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross for his heroism. His citation said: "As small arms and RPGs landed all around him, his determination to suppress the enemy did not waver, nor did his courage in the face of considerable threat to his own life. This singular act of selfless bravery ensured that his troop were able to extract safely from effective enemy fire without loss."
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