I've posted a new story to The War Project website. Sgt. George Zubaty is an Army veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Once we got closer to the city, we were in between two armored battalions. We’ve got tanks behind us, and we’ve got tanks in front of us. Our vehicle convoy is long, so we don’t see the tanks in front of us, we don’t see the tanks behind us, but we certainly see what they’ve done, in front of us, because they’re killing everybody on the road.[Staff Sgt. George Zubaty]
Every single vehicle we come by is shot up, burnt, tank tread down the center of it. I mean, you’re looking in a car, and there’ll be mom, dad, kids, everything’s burnt, everything’s torn up. Remember, it’s 2003. At that point, Army units, they were training to do a general movement warfare type action. The whole point of our training was, just kill people. It wasn’t soft and nice. It was, you’ve been shot at, you shoot back until the firing stops. You could see immediately it wasn’t going to be productive.
They knew that there was an invasion coming, I guess, but their propaganda, their state-run television, their state-run radio, and everything, they’re not reporting it as, we’re being invaded, there are people right outside Baghdad. So people had gotten on the interstate that morning to go see family, to go shopping, to go wherever. They drive down the interstate, and the first time they notice that there’s an American armor convoy coming is when they start to get shot at. Tanks don’t miss.