Word: mccoys
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...time the 3/4 Battalion arrived downtown at Paradise Square, Iraqis were picking yellow flowers from the gardens and handing them over for the Leathernecks to stick in their helmets. Lieut. Colonel Bryan P. McCoy saw the large picture of Saddam above the entranceway to the Palestine Hotel. "I want that down," he said. Another Marine pointed out the huge statue in the square. "And that," said McCoy. A Marine noted that U.S. forces were not supposed to pull down statues. "Get your 88 and pull it down," McCoy said, referring to a powerful tank-recovery vehicle. And with that...
...fight the Americans if you stay here. I wish the government to be Iraqi, not American." The soldiers had no illusions that flowers would be strewn at their feet for long. "You go from hero to despised occupier, and it's only a matter of time," says Lieut. Colonel McCoy. "No one wants a foreign occupier in their country. We wouldn't. So whether that takes a year or a week depends on how you conduct yourself. And if we become the ugly American, that will happen real quickly...
...early-morning light of April 7, Lieut. Colonel Bryan P. McCoy is discussing the crossing and the anticipated fight in the southern suburbs of Baghdad with several of his commanding officers. A song is running through McCoy's head, the one that plays every time he goes into battle: The Girl from Ipanema. "I have no idea why," he says...
...samba in McCoy's head is overtaken by a different beat--the whump of an artillery round. Suddenly, the courtyard where the infantrymen have assembled to make the charge across the bridge is black with raining oil and shrapnel and smoke. Marines are shouting, hitting the ground, running for cover. The round has slammed into an amphibious assault vehicle just five feet away from me, landing between the gunner's turret and the driver's hatch. Marines pull injured buddies away from the smoking wreck. Blood mixes with oil on the vehicle's metal ramp. They cover bodies...
...McCoy and his humvee team--a driver, a gunner, a radio operator and a TIME correspondent--drive across a scrub-filled field and stop on a small dirt patch between two bunkers. McCoy jumps out and shoots into the bunker on his side of the humvee. His gunner takes the other. Both turn out to be empty. But McCoy's aggressiveness is classic Marine, and the men like it. "He's the first one into battle and the last one out," says a Marine. "He's not like other battalion commanders sitting in their humvees at the back." And McCoy...