Captain Fowler and his men from Alpha Company 2-63 had slept only an hour since an all-night raid outside Baqubah. They rushed to load high-explosive rounds into their tanks' main guns.
By about 11 a.m., Fowler was riding in a Humvee in the middle of a column of six tanks and four M-113 armored personnel carriers along the same road where insurgents had battered the North Carolina guardsmen at daybreak.
Within minutes, they were hit by what Fowler later described as an almost perfectly choreographed attack. A ring of road bombs exploded, followed by well-aimed rounds of armor-piercing RPGs targeting the tanks. Then insurgents opened up with machine guns, covering fighters who ran yelling toward the vehicles in a suicidal bid to throw grenades into the open hatches. Wearing turbans and checked headresses, some fighters came within yards before the Americans shot them.
"It was a textbook linear ambush," says Fowler, initially in disbelief. "This was a well-trained, well-disciplined enemy," he says, adding: "There was definitely someone in charge."