U.S. service members on the Asad Air Base endured an hours-long drama during the missile strike from Iran. “I accepted I was going to die. My mind was trying to play catch-up,” one staff sergeant described to nabihbulos.
Cpl. Joel Valdivia scanned the sky. It was a little after 1:30 in the morning on Wednesday; for hours, he and the thousands of other personnel in Iraq’s Asad Air Base had been warned of an impending Iranian attack in retaliation for a U.S. drone strike that killed Gen. Qassem Suleimani.
“It was miraculous,” said Lt. Col. Staci Coleman, 49, who commands the 443rd Air Expeditionary Squadron, in an interview.Coleman, a one-time meteorologist from New York City’s Washington Heights, was still in the bunker when one of her subordinates gave her the all-clear and told her there had been no losses in the latest encounter between the U.S. and Iran in an increasingly volatile Middle East.When she heard that, she added, “it was like I just got light.
The vigilance was not misplaced. The start of the year had been marked by heightened tensions with Tehran. On Jan. 3, the U.S. had tracked down a flight carrying Suleimani, head of Iran’s Quds Force, an elite branch within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and killed him as he left Baghdad airport. Killed alongside him was Abu Mahdi Muhandis, a top Iraqi militia leader. Iran and the dozens of Iraqi paramilitary factions it supports vowed revenge.
The cruise missile drilled into the concrete floor of Scarecrow Compound, leaving a more than 12-foot crater. The explosion pushed a pair of T-walls crashing on top of a “duck-’n-cover bunker” a scant 10 yards from the blast site. A fire broke out, raging through the service members’ belongings like kindling.
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