Thunder Run: The Armored Strike to Capture Baghdad (Paperback)

~ (Author), Mark Bowden (Foreword)
Key Phrases: brigade command center, ambulance exchange point, coax guns, Charlie One Two, David Zucchino, Colonel Perkins (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Even a very short, victorious shooting war against a disorganized, dispirited, vastly outnumbered and underequipped enemy is hell. That is the central message that Los Angeles Times correspondent Zucchino brings home startlingly well in this riveting account of the American military's lightning capture of Baghdad in April 2003. Zucchino (The Myth of the Welfare Queen) is an experienced, Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter, and he shows off his reportorial skills in this reconstruction of the "lightning armored strike" in Iraq that the military refers to as a "thunder run." The narrative focuses on the men who commanded and battled in the tank battles as the Americans fought their way to Iraq's capital city. It is often not a pretty picture, nor one for the faint of heart, because Zucchino unhesitatingly and graphically describes the violent and grisly fates that befell hundreds, if not thousands, of Iraqi Republican Guard troops and fedayeen militiamen, their Syrian allies (at the border) and the unfortunate civilians who were killed or wounded by the deadly high-tech American armored vehicles and their well-trained crews. He also does not shy away from intimately describing the deaths and injuries of American troops. The Americans who fought their way into Baghdad engaged in, according to Zucchino's account, a vicious, if short-lived, war. While the Americans overwhelmed the Iraqis on the road to Baghdad, U.S. troops faced periodic stiff resistance; rocket-propelled grenades caused death and destruction among the crews in the Bradley fighting vehicles. Zucchino tells his story primarily from the American troops' point of view, but does include a section describing the experiences of a Baath Party militia leader and some Republican Guard officers in this high-quality example of in-depth and evocative war reporting. First serial to Men's Journal.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From The Washington Post

When asked to describe a battle as seen through the camera of an unmanned aerial vehicle, one Army brigade commander said it was like watching a football game through a straw.

The same metaphor could be used to describe the pictures and stories relayed by embedded reporters in Iraq. This innovative program took civilian reporters and attached them to combat units on the ground and at sea. The downside was that these journalists often saw little more than their unit's piece of the battlefield. Fortunately, this cannot be said of David Zucchino's Thunder Run, which chronicles the armored assaults on Baghdad by the 2nd Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division. Zucchino paints a vivid picture of the battle by stitching together the narratives of soldiers, officers, generals and Iraqis whom he interviewed during and after the war. As a result, his book goes far beyond the "first draft of history" that he filed from Baghdad in April 2003.

Zucchino wasn't meant to cover the Spartan Brigade or its thunder runs. He was originally embedded with the 101st Airborne Division, a light infantry force that was supposed to get the mission to assault Baghdad. But in the fog of war, both things changed. Zucchino and his equipment were dumped into a canal by a vehicle accident, and he decided to hitch a ride with the 3rd Infantry Division instead of the 101st. As it turned out, his instincts paid off, and he accidentally found himself with a ringside seat for the war's pivotal battle.

The Spartan Brigade's mission was to slice through Baghdad to the heart of the Hussein regime in order to break the Iraqi army and the Iraqi people's will to fight. Conventional wisdom held that it was unwise to send armored forces into urban areas and, indeed, given the recent U.S. experience in Somalia, that it was unwise to fight in cities at all. However, American planners were convinced that an armored force could smash through Baghdad's defenses without getting bogged down in house-to-house fighting.

More important, though, the mission was designed to win the information war in Iraq. The presence of American tanks in Baghdad would give the lie to propaganda that said Iraqi soldiers were killing American soldiers in droves and winning the war. Mohammed Said al-Sahaf, the beret-wearing Iraqi minister of information known as "Baghdad Bob," particularly irked officers in the 3rd Infantry Division with his claims that U.S. forces were committing "suicide at the gates of Baghdad." The best way to prove him wrong, joked Spartan Brigade commander Col. David Perkins, was to "ask for validation for parking for a hundred tanks" in the middle of Baghdad. As Zucchino shows, not everything went right for the brigade during its two assaults on Baghdad. A tank caught fire a few miles into the first thunder run, slowing the column and jeopardizing the entire mission. One tank mistook a journalist with binoculars for an artillery spotter and killed two reporters with a deadly accurate shot to the Palestine Hotel during the second thunder run. The Iraqis' low-tech weapons pounded the Americans' high-tech tanks and Bradley armored vehicles on both missions and exacted a heavy price from support vehicles brought up to refuel and rearm the Spartan Brigade. Iraqi fighters also came close to severing the brigade's line of communication during one of the war's toughest battles, for three highway interchanges known as Objectives Moe, Larry and Curly.

Most of Thunder Run's narrative focuses on the captains, lieutenants and sergeants who led the fight -- men (only men fought in the brigade's three combat battalions) mostly in their late twenties and their thirties who had all served in the post-Vietnam Army, grown up on stories from the Gulf War, and come of age in that conflict or the brushfire deployments of the 1990s. An after-action review credited these officers and their training with producing a "seasoned fighting force that was trained and ready to fight and win on any battlefield."

As an embedded reporter, Zucchino spent enough time with the troops he covered to understand the complex social dynamics that define warriors under fire. "They were fighting for their country, of course, and for the inherent nobility of their profession," he writes. "But mostly, they were fighting to come home alive and to ensure that the men beside them came home, too. . . . A few men spoke of 'getting some,' that peculiar, sexually tinged reference to confronting the enemy and killing him. But most of them spoke of getting out of Iraq alive, and their buddies with them."

Reviewed by Phillip Carter
Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press (November 29, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 080214179X
• ISBN-13: 978-0802141798
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (61 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #188,847 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

43 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Thunder Run Book Review, April 26, 2004

By	Alan V. Dunkin (Richardson, Texas USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Thunder Run: The Armored Strike to Capture Baghdad (Hardcover)

One of the most surprising moves by the United States military in Operation Iraqi Freedom was the quick inception and execution of the two "thunder runs" into Baghdad as they were quickly dubbed (a Vietnam-era term) on April 5 and 7, 2003. The surprise, as author David Zucchino informs in his new book Thunder Run, was that the idea was implemented nearly spur of the moment, and that the soldiers on both sides of the conflict had no idea it was coming.

The military had planned to besiege Baghdad, surrounding the city with the 3rd Infantry Division (Mech.) while cordoning off sections of the city piece by piece via air assaults from the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions. Everyone thought and planned the siege would be a lengthy and potentially very bloody process, including the Iraqis - they had correctly discerned the American strategy and had prepared well for it.

Once the coalition reached Baghdad, commanders decided that a military demonstration into, instead of in front of, the city was in order. The highways into the city were practically unobstructed; the route chosen was a pure concrete and asphalt highway that arced from the southern to western ends of the city, ending with Saddam Airport, which was already in 3rd Infantry Division hands. The intention of the first run was to be the first of many, a risky armored thrust into enemy-held urban territory where tanks were supposedly wholly vulnerable. The second would quickly follow-up the apparent success of the first, two days later - and this time the Americans had come to stay.

Mr. Zucchino writes the physical and emotional peaks and troughs of combat in a powerful yet readable way. Occasionally he falls into the trap of using too much military jargon and slang when repeatedly mentioning terms - the continuing use of "twenty-five Mike Mike" to describe twenty-five millimeter rounds for instance can be jarring, especially when it is not consistent. As an embedded reporter, however, the influences on his writing gauged against his experiences in the war is hard to measure.

What Thunder Run is not is a personal memoir or first-person retelling of how the thunder runs unfolded. This is a blow-by-blow, practically minute-by-minute white-knuckle experience of hectic, frantic firefights on Baghdad highways, bridges, exchanges, and palaces - and serves much more as a tactical oral history than a memoir by a journalist. Occasionally the reader could possibly wonder if the Army troops really could hold out against such heavy resistance. Then, as the author recounts the disorganization of the opposing forces, one is forced to wonder what would have happened if they had been more organized.

Much of the story about the two thunder runs is unknown to the public, with perhaps the exception of the fighting at Objective Curly on April 7 (video documented by NBC) and the incident the next day with the Palestine Hotel.

The latter incident, involving 3rd Infantry Abrams tanks, is a prime example of how the situation was so muddled and confused, and how the people who knew least about the war were the ones fighting it. Mr. Zucchino deftly explains the situation, the fighting on the bridge, frequent direct and indirect enemy fire, and how none of the soldiers below brigade level even knew what the Palestine Hotel was, let alone whom it housed. It was a tragic incident and probably avoidable, but, in war, tragic incidents happen.

Mr. Zucchino not only takes the accounts of American soldiers and officers, he interviewed a bevy of journalists, but Iraqi civilians and military representatives as well. Of course, the bulk of the account tilts toward the U.S. point of view, which can be understandable as many of the Iraqi or foreign (Syrian) fighters died - many needlessly, even haphazardly - during the two thunder runs.

The inside covers of Thunder Run and the few pages contain maps of the south-central area of Iraq, covering the 3rd Infantry Division's march up to Baghdad, highlighting several points along the way. The maps show the paths of the thunder runs, as well as the objectives and other infamous landmarks and visual cues of the area. Specific maps of the objective areas or the terrain around the Jumhuriya Bridge are not given. The back of the books contains a list of combat awards and interviewees. Disappointingly, there is no index, and no photographs (except for the front and rear dust jacket).

David Zucchino, who edited both the serialized versions of Blackhawk Down and Killing Pablo for Mark Bowden, has written a tremendously compelling tale of what arguably was a prime turning point in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Historians and contemporary writers should not ignore it in the growing field of writing emerging from the war.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Taut, tense, frightening and finally inspiring., February 20, 2005

By	Jerry Saperstein (Evanston, IL USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)

David Zucchino has written a timeless account of the armored strikes that effectively captured Baghdad. Called "thunder runs," the idea was to thrust an armoured column into Baghdad with such force and violence that tyhe enemy could not resist and would know that the Americans could go where they want, when they wanted.

The first Thunder Run was through the suburbs of Baghdad to the main airport. Zucchino does a superlative job of describing the mishaps, mistakes, lost opportunities and fear attendant to any military operation. One can only marvel at the courage and resourcefulness of the men assigned this task.

The second Thunder Run was to be to the center of Baghdad just to broadcast to the Iraqis that, indeed, American forces could drive right into the heart of the government center, sweeping aside any opposition.

The commander of the operation felt it could go further: that the armored column could not only penetrate to the heart of Baghdad - but stay there as well. This would, it was argued, end the war.

Zucchino distinguishes himself as one of the finest narrators of war in this generation. His descriptions of the frantic Iraqi counter-attacks, the confusion, the almost random nature of death in combat run right to the heart.

Happily, Zuchhino leave politics at the doorstep. He describes combat, not the polemics and politics of this particular war. I am certain that I will be re-reading Thunder Run: the detail is just too vast to grasp in a single reading.

Jerry

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I was there..., July 29, 2004

By	Christopher Freeman (Savannah, Georgia) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Thunder Run: The Armored Strike to Capture Baghdad (Hardcover)

First of all, this was a great book. I was a tank gunner with Charlie Company, 1-64 AR with the 2nd Brigade/3ID. What I enjoyed most about this book was the very detailed accounts of what other units in the brigade were going through. At the time, I (and everyone else, I'm sure) was very wrapped up in our own individual actions so, to read about the rest of the brigade, was very interesting. Additionally, while I cannot vouch for anything having to do with other units, the descriptions in the book of everything that happened with C/1-64 were totally accurate. I recommend this book to anyone with an interest in the subject and I would further recommend the book Heavy Metal: A Tank Company's Battle To Baghdad written by my CO (CPT Jason Conroy) and our embedded reporter (Ron Martz of the Atlanta Journal Constitution). This book won't be out until March 2005 but I for one am dying to read it.