Taylor was stupefied.

"God, these guys are actually shooting," he thought. ---

America's deadliest helicopters were being roughed up during an attempted deep-strike attack behind enemy lines east of Karbala on the fifth night of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

The mission objective was to destroy the Republican Guard's Medina Division and clear a path for U.S. ground troops through the famous Karbala Gap to Baghdad. But the 30 Army Longbows, each carrying a command pilot and a co-pilot/gunner, ran into an unlikely nemesis: Iraqis firing rifles, anti-aircraft weapons, and RPG's (rocket propelled grenades). The Iraqi ambush would bring down pilot David Williams and his co-pilot/gunner, Ronald Young, both of whom were taken captive and paraded on Iraqi TV.

Pilots who flew into the ambush felt they performed nobly against one of the best counterattacks of the war.

"We stayed over that hell storm for almost half an hour and continued to fight and would not back off," said pilot Doug Sanders, 30, of Boynton Beach, Fla.

Working under a sky dotted with stars and close to the battle lines in Najaf, the pilots used night-vision goggles and onboard forward-looking infrared sensors.

Three companies from the 11th Aviation Regiment, based in Illesheim, Germany, attacked to the north, and two companies, including Wojasinski and Taylor in Bravo Company (the Reapers), from Fort Hood's 1-227 Aviation Battalion, to the south. A group of Fort Hood Longbows, Charlie Company, containing Williams and Young, would break west along the Euphrates River, taking out any Iraqi troops that rushed eastbound in hopes of countering the attack helicopters. Other Longbows flew east around Najaf, keeping a discreet distance from the fighting before turning north. They stayed close to the ground, flying at about 120 mph east and west of Hillah in areas that corps intelligence had said were mainly rural and lightly populated.

--- At a muscular 6-foot-2 and 240 pounds, Justin Taylor is the most incongruous of Marines, a bear of a man with the heart of Mister Rogers. He's come a long way since his days as a hard-nosed Marine drill instructor, a job he'd held six years when his second daughter came along and prompted concerns about his family's future.

A typical day will see him wrestling on the carpet with oldest daughter Kirsten, and helping his hydrocephalic daughter, Autumn, walk and ride her tricycle. He watches "SpongeBob" videos with their third child, Katie Lynn, who is obsessed with the Nickelodeon cartoon character.

The Marines' hallowed globe and anchor had been at the heart of his life, but when caught in the crossfire of the corps and his family there could be but one outcome. Determined to make better money and have more time with his growing family, Taylor joined the Army, became a warrant officer and learned to fly helicopters.

He pored over textbooks during long nights at Fort Rucker, Ala., home of the Army's helicopter training center, preferring the quieter confines of his office to studying amid myriad distractions at home. Taylor consulted index cards with questions about how to handle in-flight emergencies. Like any novice pilot, he agonized before exams.

There is just one test Taylor figures he has failed. It is the exam he takes again and again, in a classroom full of shadowy figures wearing robes and carrying AK-47s.

"He dreams of the battle," Amber Taylor said. "He dreams of the RPGs and the moves (the pilots) did, and when Dave and Ron went down, things that could have been done differently."

Like Taylor, Sean Wojasinski had begun his military career in another service. Wojasinski served 10 years in the U.S. Navy, including time in the middle east during Desert Shield and Desert Storm. Wojasinski served aboard the USS Blue Ridge during the first Gulf War, providing the Command staff with intel on Iraqi air assets. He received a commendation from the commanding Admiral for his work during that conflict.

Also like Taylor, Wojasinski is married with children. He and his Australian-born wife, Sharon, have two sets of twins. A typical day sees Sean and Sharon taking the four kids to various sporting events, including football, baseball, hockey, ballet, and golf.

After leaving the Navy, Wojasinski immediately entered the Army and soon after graduated from flight school at Fort Rucker also, finishing 3rd in his class.

It had been a quiet flight to the "kill" box north of Hillah for Taylor and Wojasinski. Taylor checked ship systems aboard the helicopter. He also kept an eye on the ground.

Taylor and Wojasinski suddenly shot past a Longbow flown by Carl Fox and Ralph Brown, the lead Apache in their four-ship attack team. Fox sharply reduced his ship's speed and broke left. Wojasinski, not wanting to slow to a hover and risk enemy fire, flew past Fox and Brown, becoming the lead ship in their combat element.

Up ahead was a set of 400-foot high power lines. Just as Wojasinski leapfrogged the wires, the world around them exploded. Red and orange AK-47 tracers zipped past. Large anti-aircraft rounds began detonating, their basketball-size white blasts flashing like strobes.

The fire was so thick Wojasinski couldn't maneuver around it.

The scene 75 feet below was as mesmerizing as the flashes. Men fired rifles and RPGs at their helicopter. Large-caliber rounds sliced into the aircraft. Wojasinski looked downed and saw an Iraqi man in the back of a pickup. He was firing an anti-aircraft gun mounted to the bed of the truck. Just as Wojasinski saw the Iraqi, the man looked up and saw their aircraft. He swung the gun towards them, firing all the time.

"Break left!" Taylor yelled to Wojasinski.

Wojasinski turned the Apache left but they ran into rifle and RPG fire. As Wojasinski banked left, the Iraqi man disappeared out of sight under the ship. Taylor and Wojasinski both felt the rounds the man was firing slam into the bottom of the aircraft with loud, and hard, thuds.

"Break right!" Taylor shouted, only to encounter more anti-aircraft rounds. An RPG flew past, barely missing the Apache.

The control panel went black. A few moments later, large-caliber bullets chewed into the left engine, piercing the liquid cooler. Oil spewed everywhere, followed by smoke.

"We lost our engine! ... " Wojasinski said.

"Our engine's on fire!" "Our engine's on fire!"

Before them was a pair of buildings flanking a courtyard. Taylor hit the button that released his ammo but still the Longbow fell toward the buildings. The smoldering Longbow plummeted toward the ground.

At just 12 feet above ground, Wojasinski leveled the helicopter and pulled it back up, cutting past trees and buildings like a football clearing the goalpost.

The Iraqis continued to drill the flaming Longbow, but Wojasinski gained speed and altitude. Putting the fire out was the next order of business. Though the fuel line was shut off, the fire extinguishing system didn't work. He'd have to accelerate to snuff out the blaze.

Wojasinski turned the aircraft around, dropped its nose and throttled to maximum power. The Longbow, nicknamed "the Squakinator," skimmed palm trees and rooftops while zooming past Iraqi shooters. The fire went out just as they hoped as they flew 35 feet above ground at more than 100 mph.

"Oh, crap!" Wojasinski said, alarmed.

Pulling out of the dive and putting out the engine fire were short-lived victories. Wojasinski revealed they were miles off their position.

"We've got to turn around," Wojasinski said.

Taylor swore under his breath. Wojasinski would say later that the scene looked like he could have gotten out and walked on the tracer rounds alone. And there were at least 3 rounds for every tracer they saw. "It was like the scene in the movie "Flight of the Intruder" when they were flying over downtown Hanoi, only much, much worse." Wojasinski said.

Their helicopter was miles away from its intended battle position. Wojasinski and Taylor would now have to run through the gauntlet of fire they had just escaped — on one engine. It wasn't looking very good for the two soldiers.

The crews of 31 Longbows --18 from the 227th Aviation Regiment of the famous 1st Cavalry Division in Fort Hood, Texas, the rest from the 11th Aviation Regiment in Illesheim, Germany -- fighting 60 miles south of Baghdad were beginning to realize their desperate situation, only moments after the battle began.

Taylor turned to the craft's radio systems. The FM transmitter also had been shot up, leaving him with just one option -- a frequency used only for emergencies and heard by anyone, including the enemy. Now, Longbow crews and Iraqis alike heard him offer a blow-by-blow description of their plight.

"This is Reaper One-One," he called. "We've lost an engine, we've lost our computers, we're shot up, we're returning back to base."

Two F-15 Eagle fighters soon arrived as escorts.

Suddenly, a foreign voice broke over the frequency.

"Infidel Americans," an Iraqi said, "We see you, we hear you and we're shooting you down."

Taylor and Wojasinski flew back through the storm of fire and limped back to their lines, the smoldering Apache straining on a lone engine to stay aloft. Although the intense fire continued as they struggled to return, neither Taylor nor Wojasinski thought they took another hit.

"It was like there was an invisible hand on my shoulder, helping me fly the aircraft." Wojasinski commented later.

Wojasinski talked to Taylor about a plane-like "roll-on" landing on the desert. Taylor disliked the idea. He feared it could be more than bumpy.

"Dude, find a road."

Somehow, they did. Ironically, it was a Marine Rapid Response Team that first reached the pilots and secured the Apache and helped them get back to base.

Later a safety officer would report that the helicopter had taken 22 hits. Wojasinski, since the battle, has served two tours in Korea and one tour as an Apache Longbow flight instructor (teaching new pilots what he has learned in Iraq) at Fort Rucker, Alabama. He still has one of the AK-47 rounds that was pulled from his aircraft as a reminder of how close he came to not coming home to his wife and 4 children. The underbelly of the craft was ripped open like a can, hit by something big — perhaps an unexploded rocket-propelled grenade.

The miracle of their survival became clearer after the pilots awoke to the light of a new day. 30 Longbows on the mission were scattered over a large swath of Tactical Assembly Area Vicksburg. Only three of them could fly. And it would be weeks before all the repairs could be finished.