Marine fireteam killed over 20 enemy Iraqi soldiers in a mad assault after being ambushed

The members of 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines were making their push north on the march to Baghdad in March 2003 when their convoy came under an intense and coordinated ambush by Iraqi soldiers under Saddam Hussein. Machine gun fire, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars, pouring out from behind a berm on the side of the road in a dry irrigation channel, battered then-1st Lt. Brian Chontosh and his anti-armor platoon, a baptism by fire for their first heavy taste of combat.