Todd Hibbs, now a good friend of Gilkey's, pointed him back toward the fighting. Gilkey ran out with the rest of the troops and, in the dark, made a wrong turn.įirst Sgt. In nearly two days of some of the wars most intense fighting, the British destroyed 40 enemy tanks and captured a division commander. Meanwhile, British forces attacked Iraqs Medina Division and a major Republican Guard logistics base. Upon crossing into Iraq, he says, he could hear bombs and gunfire, then suddenly everything went quiet and the driver of his vehicle opened the rear hatch. A US soldier was killed by an Iraqi land mine, another five by friendly fire, and 30 wounded during the battle. "I don't do a lot of praying, and, in this particular case, I think I did." "To be honest, I don't think there was anyone who wasn't scared - maybe borderline terrified," Gilkey recalls. troops were making what seemed to be final preparations to invade Iraq.įinally, after months of waiting, Gilkey and the soldiers he was embedded with from the Army's 3rd Infantry Division loaded into their vehicles and headed into Iraq in the early morning hours on March 20, 2003. The night vision optics came just in time: U.S. ![]() Gilkey made a request for night vision optics from his employer at the time, The Detroit Free Press, which made a Fed-Ex shipment to him in Kuwait. "I don't remember who it was," Gilkey recalls, "but one of the soldiers pulled me aside and said, 'You know, if you want to have pictures, if and when this happens, you should have night vision.' "
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