Grunts_ Inside the American Infantry Combat Experience, World War II Through Iraq Part 10

For insurgents, IEDs were perfect standoff weapons, inflicting death on the Americans from a safe distance, impeding their mobility, and eroding their morale and resolve. Insurgents in Iraq used IEDs in much the same way the Viet Cong had used b.o.o.by traps in Vietnam, but with even greater effect. Whereas 20 percent of American casualties in Vietnam were caused by mines and b.o.o.by traps, in Iraq IEDs were responsible for more than 50 percent of American deaths by 2006. "They [Americans] are not going to defeat me with technology," one insurgent told a journalist around this time. "If they want to get rid of me, they have to kill me and everyone like me." Car bombs and suicide bombers (called VBIEDs and SVBIEDs by American soldiers) only added to the b.l.o.o.d.y harvest.

All of these frightening weapons were indicative of two undeniable facts. First, there was considerable opposition to the American presence in Iraq. To a distressing extent, insurgent groups reflected the murderous anger and frustration of substantial numbers of Iraqis, or at least their willingness to tolerate such shadow warriors in their midst. Second, they represented the latest ill.u.s.tration of human will in war. They showed that human beings themselves are the ultimate weapons, not machines, no matter how clever, technologically advanced, or useful those machines may be. How, for example, could any machine possibly negate a suicide bomber who was determined to blow himself up because he believes that this was the path to paradise?

Opponents of the American occupation understood that they could not hope to defeat the Americans in a conventional fight, so they adapted, using their own standoff weapons, negating American technological and material advantages. Using the Internet and ma.s.s media, they waged information-age political war. Their targets were not just the American soldiers who traversed the roads each day. In a larger sense, they were targeting the will of the American people to continue this faraway war in the face of rising casualty numbers. Day by day, the guerrillas were demonstrating anew one of history's great lessons, summed up perfectly by Adrian Lewis: "War is ultimately a human endeavor. War is more than killing. And the only thing that technology will ever do is make the act of killing more efficient. Technology alone will never stop a determined enemy. The human brain and the human spirit are the greatest weapons on the Earth." Indeed they are, and the experiences of one American infantry outfit, circa 2005, ill.u.s.trate that vital lesson quite well.1 2-7 Infantry in Saddam's Backyard.

They called themselves the Cottonbalers. Unit lore held that their regimental ancestors had once taken cover behind cotton bales to fight the British during the Battle of New Orleans. In reality, the soldiers of the 7th United States Infantry Regiment probably fought that battle from behind the cover of earthen embankments, but the nickname stuck nonetheless. Proud owners of more battle streamers than any other regiment in the United States Army, the 7th fought in every American war, from 1812 to the twenty-first century. Even a cursory look at their combat history read like an honor roll of U.S. battles-Chapultepec, Gettysburg, Little Bighorn, El Caney, the Marne, Argonne Forest, Sicily, Anzio, Chosin, Tet '68, Desert Storm, to name but a few. World War II Cottonbalers had fought from North Africa through Italy, France, and Germany all the way to Berchtesgaden, where they captured Hitler's mountain complex in May 1945 (contrary to popular myth, the Band of Brothers Band of Brothers paratroopers were not the first into Berchtesgaden). paratroopers were not the first into Berchtesgaden).

The Cottonbalers of the early twenty-first century were Eleven Mike (11M) mechanized infantrymen. In April 2003, as part of the 3rd Infantry Division, they had led the way into Baghdad. In January 2005, two of the regiment's battalions, 2-7 Infantry and 3-7 Infantry, returned to Iraq and were a.s.signed responsibility for different sections of the country-Tikrit for 2-7 and western Baghdad for 3-7. Their war this time was radically dissimilar to their April 2003 dash to Baghdad. This time, they were immersed in counterinsurgency.

Located on the Tigris River about eighty miles north of Baghdad, in Salah ad Din province, Tikrit was Saddam Hussein's hometown and a place dominated by Sunni tribes. This river town of a quarter million people sprouted some of the dictator's key advisors and many of his elite Republican Guard soldiers. This was especially true of Saddam's al-Na.s.siri tribe. In spite of the ties with Saddam's regime, Tikrit was not a focal point of resistance to the initial American invasion. Only later in 2003 and 2004, partially in response to the occupying 4th Infantry Division's heavy-handed tactics, did insurgent violence begin to grow. "A budding cooperative environment between the citizens and American forces was quickly snuffed out," one historian wrote.

By the time the Cottonbalers arrived in 2005, the Americans had begun to reach out to the locals but the insurgency was still going strong. Car bombs, suicide bombings, IEDs, mortar, and rocket attacks were all too common. In Tikrit (and Iraq, for that matter), there was no central resistance group such as the Viet Cong. Instead, there were a dizzying variety of cells, some with only a few members, others numbering in the dozens, with names like Juyash Mohammed, Taykfhrie, Albu Ajeel, and Ad Dwar. Some of the guerrillas were former regime loyalists. Some were Sunni opponents of the s.h.i.+te-dominated regime in Baghdad. Some simply resented the American presence in their homeland. Others were part of organized crime groups that had operated in the area for many generations. A comparative few were hard-core al-Qaeda operatives and even some jihadi fugitives from the Fallujah fighting. Most, though, were average people just trying to survive in trying times. "We had a few people that were the hard-core old regime members," Lieutenant Kory Cramer, a platoon leader in Charlie Company, said. "They were cell leaders. But the majority of the people doing the attacks were normal citizens. They were broke, poor and needed to put food on the table for their families. The cell leaders would pay these guys . . . if they would go out and plant something [IEDs]." The company kept finding mines on one road, only to find out later that a mentally handicapped child was planting them. "His brother or father . . . was telling him to go put these [mines] out there."

COPYRIGHT 2010 RICK BRITTON.

Just before this deployment, known as Operation Iraqi Freedom III to the soldiers, 2-7 Infantry had been reorganized into a combined arms battalion, a typical process for mechanized infantry battalions by this time. Alpha and Bravo Companies were straight mechanized infantry. Charlie and Delta were armor companies. Easy was engineers and Fox consisted of supporting mechanics, trucks, recovery vehicles, and quartermasters. In practice, out of sheer necessity, most of the soldiers, at one time or another, functioned as dismounted infantrymen, even the tank crewmen and engineers. This was the trend all over Iraq by 2005.

Lieutenant Colonel Todd Wood, a gentlemanly Iowan and former college baseball player with nearly twenty years of experience in the infantry, was the commander. He had about eight hundred soldiers under his charge. They were stretched quite thin in their area of operations because they were responsible for more than just Tikrit. The battalion's area of operations (AO) also encompa.s.sed Bayji, an oil town about forty miles to the north along the river, and most of the desert that led west out of Tikrit, many miles to Lake Tharthar. Lieutenant Colonel Wood spread his companies throughout the AO to cover it as best he could. Alpha Company was in the heart of Tikrit. Bravo Company was in Bayji. Charlie Company covered the outskirt towns of Owja and Wynot, plus the desert where weapons traffickers often operated. Delta had Mukasheifa and another slice of desert. Easy Company operated as roving engineers, infrastructure specialists, and additional infantry. Wood also had, at various times, a light infantry company from the 101st Air a.s.sault Division or a Pennsylvania National Guard mechanized infantry company from the 28th Infantry Division to patrol Kadasia, on the northern outskirts of Tikrit.2 The soldiers did not live among the people. That approach was an effective counterinsurgency tenet implemented later, during the surge phase of the war. Instead, in 2005, Wood's troops were housed in forward operating bases (FOBs) with such names as Remagen, Danger, Summerall, and Omaha. They ate and slept in the FOBs and then ventured "outside the wire" to patrol their areas. The typical FOB was located within preexisting buildings, most of which featured the st.u.r.dy beige brick structure so common to Iraq. The buildings ranged from old houses to palaces. Each FOB generally consisted of living quarters, a chow hall, a motor pool, a command center, a gym, perhaps even surrounding walls and guard towers. Meals were nutritious and plentiful, offering a variety of foods that grunts of previous wars could only have dreamed about.

Soldiers typically lived in the buildings, or in trailers, two or three to a room. Officers and senior NCOs sometimes had their own rooms. Almost everyone had air-conditioning and, given Iraq's brutal heat, that was a big deal. "I had a nice room to myself," Lieutenant Kramer said. "It was about the size of my bedroom back home but I didn't have to share it with my wife." Lieutenant Casey Corcoran's Delta Company was based in a palace called FOB Omaha, though it was anything but lavish. "It didn't have walls and . . . there were birds and rats living in it with you and the electricity was on and off. But you could say you lived in a palace."

Power came from a combination of the local grid and generators but it could be very spotty. "The generator to our buildings broke down and has left us at the mercy of the city's power," one Alpha Company soldier at FOB Danger wrote to his family and friends on July 25. "So, we have power for roughly 3-4 hours on and 3-4 hours off. It really isn't too bad at first, but after an hour or two of no power (hence no air-conditioning) during the middle of the day, the temperature starts to creep its way up." Just as the FOB got uncomfortably hot, the power would come back on.

Often, multiple units rotated through a FOB, so the Cottonbalers often shared theirs with other outfits. As had always been the case from World War II onward, the American war effort required tremendous logistical and administrative support. This meant that the majority of soldiers, especially females, served in noncombat units. Although the nature of the guerrilla war in Iraq often created great danger for combat and "noncombat" units alike, many of these support soldiers performed jobs that kept them safely in the FOB. Grunts generally look down on anyone who does not face as much danger as they do (and usually that means everyone else). They especially resent when support soldiers have better weapons and equipment. In Tikrit it was not at all uncommon for the Cottonbalers to patrol in unarmored, dilapidated Humvees while soldiers at the FOB had brand-new rifles and up-armored Humvees. The resentful infantry soldiers disparagingly called the FOB-BOUND support troops "pogues" and "fobbits."

Sometimes this clash of cultures led to tension when the infantrymen came back to the FOB after a hard day of patrolling. "We were in full battle rattle-goggles, knee pads, elbow pads, looking like a shooter," Sergeant First Cla.s.s Kenneth Hayes contemptuously said. "Then you'd see a guy laying out in the sun across the street or walking around in PTs [shorts and T-s.h.i.+rts] with no Kevlar [helmet] on." Another Cottonbaler NCO, Staff Sergeant William Coultrey, was flabbergasted and angered by their lack of understanding for the exhaustion the combat troops felt after a mission. "We'd come back in . . . and you'd take your vest off and you're all sweaty. They tried to tell us at first that we [couldn't] come in the chow hall sweaty." The Cottonbalers simply refused to stand for such nonsense.

For the infantrymen, the FOBs offered a reasonably safe sanctuary from the dangerous unpredictability of Tikrit. Insurgents sometimes lobbed mortar sh.e.l.ls and rockets at the various FOBs, but most of the time the fire was ineffective. Even so, the Americans had to expend quite a bit of manpower to protect their bases. "It was a force protection nightmare having folks at all different places [FOBs]," Lieutenant Colonel Wood said. He and his personal security detachment spent a lot of time driving in up-armored Humvees from sector to sector, visiting the various companies. "We had a lot of soldiers that pulled a lot of guard duty." The security of each FOB came only through such constant vigilance. Every soldier knew that, even as he slept, others were guarding the base. So, at the FOB, a grunt could relax, get a shower, cool off, catch some sleep, eat a good meal, and rejuvenate himself until it was time to strap on his body armor, his weapons, and the rest of his sweaty gear to venture out for yet another mission.

They were almost like aviators-venturing forth from a secure base, facing danger, and then going back home to their base. This reflected the American strategy at this point in the war to protect themselves in big bases and keep as low a profile with the Iraqi people as possible. It was the exact wrong way to fight a counterinsurgent war. "The first rule of deployment in counterinsurgency is to be there," Lieutenant Colonel David Kilcullen, the Australian guerrilla warfare expert, wrote. "This demands a residential approach-living in your sector, in close proximity to the population, rather than raiding into the area from remote, secure bases. Movement on foot, sleeping in local villages, night patrolling: all these seem more dangerous than they are. They establish links with the locals, who see you as real people they can trust and do business with, not as aliens who descend from an armored box."3 The fact that the Americans did not live among the people guaranteed that their influence would be limited, mainly to the duration of their patrols. It also meant that they were usually reacting to the insurgents rather than the other way around. When the Americans went back to their FOB, the insurgents filled the void, much the same way the VC had re-infiltrated villages in Vietnam after General Westmoreland's battalions moved on to different areas. In Iraq, even when company commanders devised schedules that guaranteed that at least one platoon would be out in sector at any given time (as the Cottonbalers often did), their influence could only reach so far. The insurgents always knew that, eventually, at some point each day, the Americans would retreat back to the security of their FOBs. To the average Iraqi, this made the Americans seem aloof, concerned more with their own comfort than the security of the area. Anyone who considered helping the Americans knew that, when the GIs went back to their FOBs, they were at the mercy of insurgent reprisals.

To minimize this problem as much as possible, and because the Americans had such limited ground combat manpower in Salah ad Din province, the operational pace for 2-7 Infantry was frenetic. On average, each soldier partic.i.p.ated in at least three patrols, raids, or outpost (OP) operations per day. It was not at all unusual for the men, especially in the infantry and armor companies, to do five or six missions per day. "There were times when you'd go on a six- or eight-hour patrol and then come back in, maybe get an hour's rest, and then it's right back out there again for an all-night OP," Sergeant Kevin Tilley, a sniper, recalled. Every company commander maintained a quick reaction force (QRF) that was ready to scramble out of the FOB at a moment's notice in case of trouble anywhere in the sector. "If you were on the QRF," Tilley said, "G.o.d help you, because you may roll out of the FOB between ten and fifteen times."

A typical mounted patrol in Humvees, Bradleys, or tanks consisted of driving around the streets, the alleyways, the back roads, the dirt trails, maintaining a strong presence. At times, they raided the homes of suspected insurgents. There were even rumors that the infamous al-Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was operating in the area. Several times, the Cottonbalers responded to supposed Zarqawi sightings. The soldiers spent a lot of time dismounted from their vehicles, talking to the locals, mainly through Iraqi interpreters. At any moment during a patrol, an IED could detonate, an RPG could whoosh out of any building or from any corner, or a suicide bomber could strike. OP duty generally meant keeping watch over a section of road to prevent guerrillas from placing IEDs, or it might mean watching a house where they might be hiding. It was tedious, tiring, and often quite boring. "When you're sitting for hours, it really gets to you," one grunt said. "You're just sitting there thinking about how you wanna go home or you're thinking about how hot it is."

The dizzying number of missions could be especially hard on the men in the armor companies because, with a strength of only about seventy soldiers, they were roughly half the size of the other companies. Frequently, the tankers patrolled as de facto infantrymen in stripped-down Humvees instead of in their armored behemoths. At full strength, a tank platoon had sixteen soldiers. Usually a few men were gone on R and R or other a.s.signments, so it was not unheard of for a platoon to roll out of the FOB with nine or ten soldiers. "You can only run your guys so much before . . . they break," a tank platoon sergeant in Charlie Company said. "We didn't have enough guys to do the mission sets they wanted us to do. Pretty much from the day we stepped on the ground until the day we stepped off to come back, it was a hundred percent b.a.l.l.s to the walls." In and around Tikrit, it took enormous amounts of concentration and work just to maintain the status quo. The tankers of Delta Company, for example, spent much of their time patrolling Highway 1, the main supply route (MSR) through Tikrit, to keep it free of IEDs. "Delta MSR sweeps patrolled over 70 kilometers down and back twice a day," the company after action report declared. "Delta Company ensured the MSR stayed 'Green' [clear] with these painstaking, long, slow IED sweeps."

No matter which company a soldier came from, almost all of them, at one time or another, functioned as a dismounted infantryman or a gunner on a vehicle. "There were few opportunities for traditional engineer missions," one Easy Company engineering officer wrote, "but the company had plenty of Infantry type missions." The regular Eleven Mike riflemen and machine gunners, of course, crewed the vehicles and patrolled as dismounted infantrymen all the time. "We have conducted operations of almost every kind," Lieutenant Colonel Wood wrote in the summer of 2005. "We have done river raids from boats, Air a.s.saults . . . from helicopters, and of course traditional operations using our Tanks, Bradleys, and Armored HMMWVs [Humvees]." In all, they conducted over one hundred raids, six thousand patrols, detained 171 suspects, found and destroyed sixty-two weapons caches.

At the height of the summer, temperatures soared to 120 degrees and beyond. The tension inherent in the threat of potential danger, combined with the h.e.l.lish heat, was exhausting. "You've got all that c.r.a.p [equipment] on," one rifleman complained, "and it's a hundred and thirty degrees. You're . . . mentally exhausted 'cos . . . any window a guy could stick an AK[-47] out. The next vehicle coming down the road could be a VBIED. That pile of trash right there could be an IED." Since the soldiers knew that every vehicle might contain a suicide bomber, any car that came within one hundred meters of the Americans required great scrutiny. The rules of engagement always seemed to be in flux (a source of great agitation for the troops) and were always seemingly handed down by lawyers who rarely went on patrols (a point of even greater perturbation). But, in general, if an Iraqi vehicle was heading straight for an American and did not heed a signal to stop, the soldier would fire one warning shot in the air, then another in front of the car, then another in the engine block. and, finally, if the vehicle kept coming, he would put rounds through the winds.h.i.+eld. The privates, specialists, and sergeants had to make life-and-death decisions-with strategic implications-in mere seconds. Did the unheeding vehicle contain a distracted parent with a car full of screaming kids or was it a suicide bomber? The soldiers were well disciplined, but they were only human. They could not be right all the time. Sometimes they prevented bombings. Other times they killed innocent people. The insurgents' strategy was to create this sort of uncertainty, the kind that led to tragic deaths that would alienate the population from the Americans.

To avoid dehydration, the grunts drank copious amounts of water, often to the point where they felt that their bladders might explode. Soldiers would discreetly duck inside their Bradleys or Humvees, urinate into an empty water bottle, tightly replace the cap, and then resume their duties. In one instance, a Humvee gunner had to defecate so badly that, in the middle of a patrol, he hopped down from his turret and did his business in the middle of a street.4 The Tikrit area could actually be quite calm, so the vast majority of the time the patrols were uneventful. As the days wore on, monotony could set in, especially as the soldiers came to know their AOs like the proverbial backs of their hands. Each day seemed to be a blur of driving or walking down the same streets, talking to the same locals, chasing the same elusive "bad guys." Firefights and pitched battles of any kind were very rare. Without the give-and-take of conventional combat, the grunts could sometimes lose their edge and settle into a dangerously false sense of security. Commanders expended much time and effort to keep their men from getting complacent. "Tikrit was a place where, if you let your guard down, you might get away with it for one day, you might get away with it for a whole month and then, bang, you'll get hit by a VBIED," Lieutenant Lane Melton, a rifle platoon leader in Alpha Company, said. "These guys . . . were trained to go out there and pull the trigger and you had to convince them that this isn't the fight. You have to convince them that we're out here to make this place better and it's not gonna happen by shooting up [the town]. There's not a lot of terrorists out here. We're gonna win by building up their schools . . . and things like that." It was a tough sell, especially when the men faced so much danger from impersonal, but deadly, IEDs. They yearned to hunt down and kill those responsible. That was part of their mission, but not always as important as the peacekeeping job of fostering good relations with Tikritis.

To relieve the stress and buck up morale, Wood implemented a patrol rotation policy for the companies. Every month, each company enjoyed a two-day stand-down with no mission responsibilities. The soldiers could eat, relax, sleep, watch movies, read, play video games (Ghost Recon was a favorite), phone their loved ones, have barbecues, play sports, or do whatever else they wanted to do. The forty-eight hours off were heavenly, but the days leading up to and after the stand-down were onerous for the soldiers because of the need to cover for other units that were resting. At times, sergeants and lieutenants would sense that the stress or exhaustion of constant missions was getting to a soldier and give him a day off to recover.

Even amid the hectic pace of operations, the troops found enjoyable ways to fill up their downtime. Fox Company held a weight-lifting compet.i.tion. Delta Company ran kick ball, volleyball, and basketball tournaments. Charlie Company played dodgeball. On several occasions, Lieutenant Matt Woodford, a platoon leader in that company, bought steaks and grilled them for his guys. "We're a tank platoon so I only had to get sixteen steaks," he said and laughed.

The fun and games ended when it was time to leave the FOB and go back out in sector. In spite of the fact that little happened most of the time, danger was ever present. In October alone, throughout 2-7's AO, there were twenty-two IED attacks. "We heard an explosion once an hour for three hours straight and found ourselves glued to the radio listening for the report to come in on what happened and if everyone was okay," one soldier said from the perspective of an FOB. Soldiers found and destroyed another fifteen IEDs that month. There were nine mortar attacks and three rocket attacks, as well as five grenade and four small-arms-fire incidents.

One of the IEDs-a double-stacked land mine-claimed the life of Private First Cla.s.s Kenny Rojas. Another terrible concoction, consisting of a mine and several 155-millimeter artillery sh.e.l.ls, killed Specialist Joshua Kynoch, a Bradley driver. Seven other soldiers from the battalion were killed in the course of the year. Sergeant Daniel Torres and Staff Sergeant Steven Bayow of Bravo Company were the first two soldiers to lose their lives. In early February, they were riding in the back of an open-topped Humvee as it left FOB Summerall in Bayji. Almost immediately they ran into an IED. The explosion killed both of them instantly. In May a fanatic drove a car bomb into a Bravo Company Humvee, flipping it over three times, killing Private First Cla.s.s Travis Anderson and wounding four others. Another car bomb killed Sergeant Carl Morgain, a Pennsylvania National Guardsman attached to the battalion. That same month, an IED that was concealed underneath a tire exploded and killed Delta Company's Private Wesley Riggs as he was pulling the tire off the road. In August and September, respectively, IEDs killed Lieutenant David Giaimo and Sergeant Kurtis Arcala. In many cases, the Cottonbalers, through good intelligence work and targeted raids, apprehended the killers.5 This was satisfying but it was also reactive. The core of the battalion's mission was not really to kill terrorists; it was to prevent their existence. Mirroring the overall American strategy in 2005, 2-7 Infantry attempted to do that by turning over security responsibilities to the new Iraqi Army and the local police. "I came here with a very myopic focus [that] success equals the defeat of the bad guys through shooting bullets," Lieutenant Colonel Wood said in late October. He came to find out that the mission was much more complex than a situation where they could "kill enough terrorists and then peace was gonna break out." The goal was not just security, but also economic growth. "The insurgents will be defeated through economic, government and military means. We are trying to provide an environment that would allow [Iraqis] to create a system to self-govern."

To do this, he and his soldiers had to reach out not just to local government leaders but to the local tribes. To a great extent, the foundation of Iraqi society is built upon family honor and long-standing tribal loyalties, especially in midsized cities like Tikrit. Many of the tribes even predate Islam. In Tikrit, the al-Duri, Jumalee, al-Jabouri, al-Na.s.siri, and Albu-Ajeel tribes are preeminent. The tribal leaders, known as sheiks, hold great power and influence.

In 2003, when the Americans first occupied Iraq, they naively expected to co-opt the tribes, especially in the Sunni areas, to create a federal democracy. By 2005, they had come to understand the error of their ways. Army commanders now knew that stability in Iraq could only come through the tribes. Fortunately for the Cottonbalers, the previous unit in their AO, the 18th Infantry, had enjoyed reasonably good relations with the tribal sheiks, and this established a nice foundation for the 7th. Wood and his officers spent much of their time meeting with the sheiks, often eating lavish meals of rice, flat bread, lamb, and pastries, drinking chai tea, discussing a myriad of issues. In his recollection, the typical topics included "a.s.sisting the local government in accomplis.h.i.+ng tasks . . . a.s.sisting in the building of local infrastructure . . . [and] generally helping the local population with every task they need help with, i.e. school, hospitals, businesses."

They learned patience. Iraqis do not value punctuality or time management in the same way as Americans. In their culture, directness is impolite, a stark contrast with American norms. Even in business meetings, it is customary to engage in many minutes of idle conversation before getting to the issue at hand. The Americans learned to filter out much of what they heard. Any tip-off or insider information about the ident.i.ty and location of a terrorist had to be thoroughly vetted. Too often, the Iraqis simply denounced people whom they did not like, people who owed them money, or people with whom they had long-standing feuds.

For the Cottonbalers, every meeting and every meal was an unglamorous exercise in diplomacy and restraint. Lieutenant Colonel Wood spent significant amounts of his time dispensing aid to the sheiks and their key power brokers, while encouraging them to help him with security. He also sometimes had to smooth over the angry feelings that resulted from accidental killings, even though, in most instances, the Cottonbalers did not do the shooting. Too often, supply convoys that regularly drove through Tikrit shot at any perceived threat. "I was more afraid of them than anything," Specialist Dan Driss, a member of the battalion mortar platoon, commented. "They would shoot at anything." Wood defused the angry feelings that eventuated from such killings by talking with the sheiks and the affected family members. Following local custom, he usually paid $2,500 to the aggrieved parties. This blood debt would then relieve the family members, and their tribal allies, of their honor-bound duty to avenge the death of their loved one.

In a couple of instances, Lieutenant Colonel Wood had to smooth over some serious cultural problems relating to gender. On one raid, a Special Forces team detained their female informant at her own request. "My life is not safe here," she told the team. "Take me somewhere and secure me." They did so without any a.s.sistance from the Iraqi Army or female U.S. soldiers. This was completely unacceptable in the local culture. The erroneous word spread among the Iraqis, particularly the soldiers, that the Americans had abducted and violated her. It took many weeks to dispense with that falsehood.

Another time, Lieutenant Lane Melton's infantry platoon was supposed to set up an OP atop the roof of a male dormitory at the local college but mistakenly established their OP on the roof of the female dormitory a block away. The next morning, when they saw quite a few young women emerging from their building, they discovered their mistake and quickly left. "But the word went out immediately that U.S. soldiers were inside the female dorm doing who knows what," Lieutenant Colonel Wood said. "We [brought] in key leaders and put out our version of the truth as quickly as we could. The perception was what was tough. For five months we fought the rumors of U.S. soldiers . . . routinely going up there and violating women. It was a onetime thing but we fought the rumor the whole year." Wood even made regular appearances on local radio to debunk such rumors and shape public perceptions as positively as he could.

Some of the sheiks could not be trusted. "There was always bias in everything," Lieutenant Corcoran commented. "You couldn't take anything they said . . . at any sort of face value." Some were playing a double game, maintaining ties with insurgent groups and the Americans. A few were funding insurgents or had family members involved in cells. Arresting these veiled enemies usually caused more trouble than it solved. Few of the sheiks were indomitable allies. That simply was not the culture of the place. The tribes' loyalties were to themselves, not any outsider, whether that was the government in Baghdad, Americans from the other side of the world, or al-Qaeda, for that matter.6 For the Cottonbalers, the crux of their plan to turn over the security and economic growth of Tikrit to the Iraqis revolved around the Iraqi Army and the police (collectively called Iraqi Security Forces or ISF by the Americans). Among the many bad decisions the Americans had made in 2003, the disbanding of Iraq's army was one of the worst. It eroded the security of the country and dumped many thousands of disaffected, militarily trained, unemployed, angry Iraqi young men into circulation. Realizing what a colossal screwup this had been, the Americans had since re-created the Iraqi Army and, by 2005, as the war grew more unpopular in America, they invested most of their hopes in turning the war over to this new security force. Thus, the soldiers of 2-7 Infantry spent much time and effort training Iraqi soldiers and a.s.sisting the local police with security. Wood established a Military a.s.sistance Transition Team (MITT), parceling out his soldiers to work on a daily basis with the Iraqi Army. The Americans also launched a public information campaign to support this transition effort. They broadcast radio messages, handed out leaflets, and even rented billboards to post glossy ads featuring images of dedicated, professional soldiers and policemen.

Compared with the overall poor quality of the army and the police in Iraq at that time, the Cottonbalers were fortunate to work with soldiers and policemen who were at least reasonably proficient and reliable. The soldiers were mostly Sunnis from the province. They wore desert camouflage utilities (DCUs), helmets, boots, and a range of military equipment. Many had military experience in Saddam's army, especially the officers. The Iraqis had little regard for NCOs (a major reason why Saddam's army had been weak), so the Americans emphasized the importance of sergeants and tried to build an NCO corps essentially from scratch. "They tried," Staff Sergeant Kenneth Hayes, an MITT team member, said of the soldiers he a.s.sisted. "There's some clowns and then there's some good soldiers actually trying to do the right thing. There was a dropout rate. We'd lose guys. But most guys were trying to do the right thing." In characteristic American fas.h.i.+on, few of the U.S. soldiers knew the local language, culture, or customs. They communicated with their charges through interpreters or they would speak to the Iraqi soldiers who knew some English. As was typical in Iraq, corruption could be a real problem. One time, for example, the Americans supplied their counterparts with brand-new AK-47 rifles, only to find out that the Iraqi commander had stolen the rifles from his men so that he could sell or give them to his family members and fellow tribesmen.

Over time, the corruption ebbed a bit and the army units got better. Eventually, after much intensive training from the Americans, the Iraqi soldiers ran their own operations without all that much a.s.sistance except for logistical support. "It was nice to have them because they did a lot of raids . . . that were in farmlands so we didn't have to worry about getting anybody in our company to go out there and do it," Sergeant First Cla.s.s Michael Deliberti of Charlie Company said. "Then they started taking MSR [main supply route] OP [outpost] for us." The sergeant's company commander, Captain Jason Freidt, felt that "a lot of 'em not only built confidence in themselves but the population developed confidence in them as well." Captain Kelvin Swint, who headed up a MITT team and worked every day with the Iraqi soldiers, believed that "they were committed to cleaning up that area." Throughout 2005, the Cottonbalers' Iraqi Army partners conducted multiple operations and even a.s.sumed responsibility for the security of one FOB. This did not necessarily represent victory, but it was a step in the right direction.

The blue-s.h.i.+rted police, of course, were local men and not as well trained, well armed, or reliable. In some ways they were more important than the Army, though. The soldiers represented outside, American-sponsored authority, mainly at the province level since few of the Sunni soldiers had any love for the Baghdad government. Like the Americans, the Iraqi Army could, of course, enhance security wherever the soldiers went, but their influence was still limited because most were not from the areas where they operated. The police, as local men with the same tribal and family ties as everyone else, represented the best hope for stability. They were of mixed quality because some were insurgents, had ties with insurgents, were ambivalent about the situation, or, most commonly, they were frightened of reprisals. "When I first got to Owja," Captain Freidt said of the section of Tikrit that his company patrolled, "the only police station I had, guys would be doing guard outside and they would be wearing ski masks. None of the policemen wanted anybody else to know that they were part of the Iraqi Security Forces."

The situation did get steadily better, but the police and the soldiers were always prime targets for the insurgents, especially in off-duty hours. The insurgents, of course, were confined by no rules of war and virtually no human decency. Like mafiosi, they would hunt down the off-duty ISF members and their families and kill them. In one attack, an Iraqi Army officer's brother got his legs blown off, and, in the memory of a Cottonbaler sergeant, "all he [the brother] was doing was coming outside to go to the hospital 'cos his wife was pregnant." A terrorist walked up to another off-duty staff officer and pumped nine bullets into him. Insurgents killed the wife and brother of one police chief.

In fact, while most of the IEDs were meant for the Americans, the majority of car bombs and suicide bombings were directed at the police or the Army because they represented such a mortal threat to the predominance of insurgent groups in Tikrit. Throughout the spring and summer, the bombings happened with terrifying frequency. "At one point we had one going off every three days," Lieutenant Colonel Wood recalled. These bombs killed three hundred civilians and inflicted one hundred casualties on the Iraqi police and soldiers. The most infamous such bombing took place on February 24 at a police station the Americans thought of as the best in the whole province. A car bomb took the lives of ten policemen at the station and wounded several others. Another time, insurgents detonated a car bomb in a crowd next to a police station, killing thirty-one people and wounding eighty-one more. The aftermath was truly horrible. "The ambulances were cramming as many wounded and dead as they could hold," Lieutenant Jon G.o.dwin wrote. "The air was so thick in some areas with fumes of burnt rubber and fuel mixed with the smell of burnt human flesh it was suffocating. Several bodies were still on the ground and had been covered with burkas. The surrounding businesses and apartments had the windows blown out of them. After the fire trucks had put out the flames, the water had mixed with the puddles of blood and turned gutters into small streams tinted red." Another time, at the site of a suicide bombing, he saw the remains of four victims who looked as though they had been petrified in ashes, similar, he thought, to those who died in the volcano at Pompeii, Italy. Charged with gathering forensic evidence, he "found the bomber's face a block from the explosion and I collected it into a garbage bag." An Iraqi policeman then led him to a spot where the rest of the bomber's head was lying grotesquely in a blob. "Even though I didn't make any actual contact with the remains, I think I used a whole bottle of hand sanitizer after the incident."

In spite of the gruesome bombings, the Americans never had trouble recruiting men for the security forces. These men were motivated by a combination of financial need, personal pride, protection of their turf, and some level of loyalty to the Americans. The Americans provided medical care, financial a.s.sistance, and security for the police after the bombings and this solidified a bond of sorts between them and their Iraqi colleagues. This, in turn, produced some tangible results. The police and the army both steadily improved, although never to the level of proficiency where the Americans thought they should be. Still, security was getting better and economic growth soon followed. By the fall, bombings were in steep decline, although IEDs and kidnappings were on the rise, so Tikrit remained dangerous. Elections went off with no substantial problems. For 2-7 Infantry, the record in Tikrit was mixed. The population still held no special love for the Americans or strong allegiance to them. There were no dramatic failures or successes, just steady, albeit glacial, progress that redounded more to the tactical than the strategic advantage of the American position in Iraq. Such were the complicated realities of pre-surge counterinsurgency in a midsized Sunni city.7 3-7 Infantry in Western Baghdad.

Without control of Baghdad, the Americans literally had no chance to succeed in Iraq. The capital city was a megalopolis, with a 2005 population of 6.5 million and growing quickly. Baghdad was so large, so profoundly central to Iraq's economy, and so central to Iraq's vexing political situation that it was at the very center of the fighting. The city teemed with insurgent groups of all shapes, sizes, and agendas-s.h.i.+te militiamen, Sunni rejectionists, Saddamist stalwarts, foreign jihadis, organized crime, al-Qaeda butchers, and most commonly, half-interested anti-American neighborhood resistance fighters. "You've got Mustaafa and Muhammad who are just p.i.s.sed off," one intelligence officer said in describing the latter type of insurgent. "They're not getting enough water. They're standing in a line and they can't get a job." So they lashed out. The population density and the concrete jungle of neighborhoods comprised the perfect environment for insurgents to operate, like proverbial fish in water. Baghdad made Fallujah look like a rural hamlet. By 2005, the capital city, similar to other parts of Iraq, was plagued with daily violence. Some of it was internecine, Sunni versus s.h.i.+a. Much of the violence was directed against the Americans, the Iraqi Army, and the police. IEDs, car bombs, and suicide bombings were predominant; firefights and pitched battles were comparatively rare.

COPYRIGHT 2010 RICK BRITTON.

Amid this chaos, Lieutenant Colonel Dave Funk and his 3-7 Infantry Cottonbalers a.s.sumed responsibility for the Ras.h.i.+d district in southwest Baghdad. This AO included the Baghdad International Airport and Route Irish, an extraordinarily dangerous, IED-infested highway that led from the airport into the heart of the city. The 3-7 was configured like the 2-7, with the same combined arms mix of infantry, armor, engineers, and support troops, many of whom functioned as dismounted infantrymen. This battalion of 800 soldiers was charged with the task of controlling a district containing about 800,000 people (and growing by the day), an area of operations that two battalions had previously covered. Ras.h.i.+d featured a mixture of Sunnis and s.h.i.+tes. Transient groups of poor squatters were growing in size and scale. Most of them were s.h.i.+tes attracted to the area by the possibility of finding menial jobs in the growing city. Funk divided Ras.h.i.+d into sectors and a.s.signed each of his companies a sector to cover. Quite commonly, platoons were responsible for several blocks, containing tens of thousands of people.

As in Tikrit, the soldiers lived in an FOB and commuted to war. Later, during the surge, the Americans would learn that the only way to defeat the insurgents was to live (and sometimes die) among the people by spreading out into combat outposts throughout Baghdad's many neighborhoods. This wise but painful approach dramatically diminished the influence and potency of insurgent groups. But, at this point in 2005, the United States was still fighting its ineffective FOB-centric war. Most of the 3-7 Cottonbalers lived in FOB Falcon, a sprawling, dusty, walled base with tents, barracks, a motor pool, an excellent dining facility, and the usual amenities. "There is plenty . . . the soldiers can do to relax their minds and bodies," Lieutenant Reeon Brown, an infantry platoon leader, wrote in a letter. "The gym here is as big as a warehouse. It is opened 24 hrs a day as well as numerous Internet cafes, where soldiers can e-mail loved ones. Every soldier stays in a two man room with ac [air-conditioning]." They also had satellite television and sufficient opportunities to watch movies or play video games.

Sallying forth from their remote base, these very few would have to decisively influence the very many, a daunting job indeed. The 3-7's herculean task was merely a symptom of what was going on in Iraq as a whole-the Americans had nowhere near enough ground troops, especially infantrymen, to pacify the country and achieve their ambitious objective of transforming Iraq into a peaceful democracy. This difficult situation was a direct consequence of overreliance on air and sea power, at the expense of ground power, a mistake American policymakers had been making time and again since the start of World War II.

The previous outfit in Ras.h.i.+d was a cavalry battalion with plenty of vehicles but very few infantrymen. As a result they rarely ever got on the ground to speak with people. They would drive from place to place, at high rates of speed to avoid IEDs, always careful to stay away from areas they thought of as too dangerous. "Their method [of] relations.h.i.+ps with the community was to wave to 'em from the vehicles," one Cottonbaler infantry platoon leader related. As a cavalry unit miscast into an infantry role, this was all they were equipped to do. Moreover, they had bought into the notion so common among Americans in Iraq that personal safety necessitated the protection of armored vehicles or an FOB. In their view, getting on the ground was way too dangerous.

The Cottonbalers were not comfortable with this. Regardless of the initial dangers they might face, they believed in getting to know the locals and establis.h.i.+ng a strong on-the-ground presence in every area. "We thought the decisive terrain was the people," Funk said. The colonel was a six-foot-five giant of a man with a sizable personal presence and a wry sense of humor. He knew that, in southwest Baghdad, personal relations.h.i.+ps would help his people accomplish their mission like nothing else could. "We have to develop a level of trust in the people and they in us and we have to develop in them the confidence that we are there to do good for them. So the notion of speeding around at Mach Seven, gun ablazing . . . wasn't getting the results . . . that we all thought we needed."

Thus, the 3-7 soldiers spent many hours on the ground, patrolling the streets. They had a bit more time off than their counterparts in 2-7, but the pace of operations was still similarly hectic. On average, a grunt enjoyed a day and a half off per week. Often, on dismounted patrols, they were protected by up-armored Humvees with .50-caliber machine guns or M240 machine guns mounted in their turrets, or Bradleys or even the occasional tank. Most of the time the patrols had a defined purpose, such as visiting a certain person, checking out a certain neighborhood, or apprehending a wanted insurgent, rather than just riding around waiting to get attacked.

Ever vigilant, the infantry soldiers circulated up and down the crowded commercial streets and among the diverse blend of neighborhoods. Every earth-toned house, large or small, seemed to have a satellite dish perched atop its roof. Many of the men marveled at this weird blend of s.p.a.ce-age technology with old-world poverty. "They introduced themselves to local power-brokers and imams [religious leaders], visited schools, police stations, and mosques, and went door to door introducing themselves and pa.s.sing out contact information," Alpha Company's unit history declared. "There were some very wealthy neighborhoods as well as some brutally poor ones. Where former regime officials lived the infrastructure was relatively good, whereas in other areas sewage clogged the streets and created small lakes." The sewage created the powerful stench of human waste, dust, and rotting garbage that soldiers grew to a.s.sociate with Iraq. Experiencing the smell was like standing in a landfill, next to a sewage treatment plant, on a hot day. It was nauseating but the soldiers grew used to it. "You noticed where the corruption really was," Specialist Javier Herrera, a machine gunner from Miami, Florida, recalled. "Some neighborhoods looked pristine. Others . . . looked like everybody from this [nice] neighborhood just picked the trash up and put it in their neighborhood." He and the other soldiers were especially amazed at the resourcefulness and abject poverty of the squatters. They would collect aluminum cans, pack them with mud, and build small houses with them. "Then they would tarp . . . a blanket or something . . . and make a roof. It rarely ever rained during the summertime so they were good to go."8 After many months without much of an American presence, quite a few of the Iraqis were shocked when the soldiers began to mingle with them. "They looked at us like we'd just come out of a s.p.a.ce s.h.i.+p," Lieutenant Kevin Norton, a platoon leader in Bravo Company, quipped. "To actually walk up to a cafe . . . dismounted, on the street, in a security posture . . . but walking down the street . . . where you can get close to people and wave to 'em, say hi to 'em . . . to them was unbelievably shocking." Some people were so excited to see the Americans that they hugged them and gave them flowers. To them, the Americans represented a new way to solve local problems and enhance security. Others were more reticent or suspicious. Few, if any, were overtly hostile. One street might be full of friendly residents. The next block might be empty or packed with sullen people. "Daily patrols would visit homes and talk to families about . . . what the Iraqi government was doing for them and improvements in the ISF," Alpha Company's history said. "Each patrol leader had his own business card that he would pa.s.s out with contact information."

They also gave out their cell phone numbers and flyers that described all the work the Americans were doing to improve living conditions. Through interpreters and an a.s.sortment of halting Arabic and English, they conversed with scores of people on nearly every patrol. As time went on, the soldiers' understanding of Arabic increased and, of course, many of the people knew some English. Children tended to have the best linguistic skills. They would often translate in exchange for chocolate. "Everyone out there is a potential informant or a potential insurgent," Captain Ike Sallee, the commander of Alpha Company, a.s.serted. "If you really want to get this place secure, you've got to change perceptions. You've really got to focus on changing people's minds."

The Cottonbalers understood the vital importance of human intelligence. In essence, they were soldiers doing a policeman's job. Only by cultivating local informants, building trust and rapport with the people in their respective neighborhoods, and gathering good information from them could they foil the insurgents. Only ground troops could do this very personal job. The 3-7 Infantry basically had to start from scratch in this regard. "Beyond overall demographics of the area and figures [power brokers] at key locations, we really had nothing," Lieutenant Ben Follansbee, an infantry platoon leader in Alpha Company, explained. Lieutenant Colonel Funk was shocked to learn from his predecessor that almost 90 percent of that unit's intelligence information was coming from higher headquarters rather than from everyday soldiers on the ground. "Well, geez, I think that's backwards," he thought.

He was absolutely right. It is an incontrovertible fact that, in combat, the best intelligence information comes from on-the-ground sources-human contact. The higher up the chain, the more distant intelligence a.n.a.lysts tend to be from their subject, and the more reliant they tend to be on such technological sources as satellite photos or audio intercepts rather than bona fide human contacts. Human informants can sometimes be of questionable reliability but, in a counterinsurgency war, they are vital. After all, in such a war, knowledge is practically everything: Who is an insurgent, what motivates them, when and where will they strike, what is an acceptable counterinsurgency approach within the constraints of the local culture? All of these are central questions. "As the S2 [battalion intelligence officer]," Captain Steve Capehart said, "when we . . . got on the ground and gathered information and built a rapport, it made my job a h.e.l.l of a lot easier." Truly, counterinsurgency is an intelligence officer's game. Indeed, as the Iraq War unfolded, infantry companies began using their artillery forward observation teams as company intelligence specialists. "Nothing beats having your own informal network down at your level that helps you develop something," Funk said.

Over time, through sheer repet.i.tion and endless human contact, the soldiers of 3-7 developed these sorts of relations.h.i.+ps with Iraqis, s.h.i.+te and Sunni. "You were a detective," one small-unit leader said. "You'd go out there and you were questioning, on the ground. You're an amba.s.sador. You're going out trying to fix what's broken, trying to help the people, win their affection, see if you can get 'em on your side. At the same time, though, you're also a combat patrol leader." This meant that they always were on the lookout for any threat, especially suicide bombers. They also made sure to maintain good discipline-soldiers covering corners, covering each other's movements and the like-to project an aggressive posture. This deterred many of the insurgents, who were more inclined to attack soft targets.

As mutual trust accrued, the locals began pa.s.sing along good information. Over 90 percent of the battalion's intelligence data eventually came from such sources. As the Americans got better information, it minimized one major by-product of poor intelligence: the disruption, and popular resentment, caused by raids on the wrong houses, or the incarceration of innocent people. "I would say that maybe half of the IEDs we found was because a local . . . would say 'Ali Baba' and actually point out where it was," Lieutenant James Cantrell, a platoon leader in Delta Company, said. One friendly local kid, whom the soldiers called Johnny, regularly pointed out the location of IEDs. "Every [weapons] cache we found was from somebody calling in the information," Lieutenant Follansbee said. Before long, tips began pouring in by phone and personal contact. The majority of the time, the information was correct. One of Follansbee's squad leaders, Staff Sergeant Michael Muci, found that acting with restraint, even on raids, counted for a lot with the Iraqis. "We knocked on the door. We didn't go cras.h.i.+ng in. That saved a lot of ha.s.sle. You're a foreigner and you come into these people's house because someone said something . . . so our platoon always knocked. The people liked that. We gave 'em courtesy" and respect. They also made sure to give any women in the house plenty of privacy. As a result, the platoon's area was usually very quiet.

Like their regimental brothers in Tikrit, the Cottonbalers of 3-7 also worked closely with the Iraqi Army and the local police. In a way, the Americans felt sorry for them because they were in so much danger from insurgent reprisals. "It took a lot of guts for them to be in the military," Sergeant Jason Wayment said. "They would stay in their compound for three or four days and then go home for two days. If anybody saw 'em leaving the place, going to their house, then they'd get killed." Wayment personally knew of several soldiers whom insurgents killed while they were on leave. Specialist Herrera knew one NCO who was so concerned for his safety and that of his family that he did not go home for six months.

The army compounds and the police stations were sometimes attacked by insurgents. By and large, the ISF men were brave, but not very skilled or savvy. "They're not very disciplined people," Specialist Joshua Macias, a mortar platoon soldier who often worked with the Iraqi soldiers, opined. "You'd try and tell 'em something and they'd go off and do something else." They did not pull guard duty and maintain security the way the Americans knew they must. The grunts had to be careful about correcting them, especially in front of their peers, because this would cause them to lose face. It was also shameful for them to admit that they did not know something. In response to questions, they would often shrug and say "Insha'Allah," a fatalistic phrase that means "G.o.d willing." The expression was a source of great frustration for the proactive, blunt-speaking Americans. "If you ask an Iraqi if he's gonna do something, if he says yes, it might get done," Lieutenant Colonel Funk commented drily. "If he says no, obviously, it won't get done. If he says Insha'Allah that means it ain't gonna get done. It's the universal Arabic way to say if G.o.d wills it, it will get done but don't count on me, buddy."

Soldiers and Ministry of the Interior (MOI) commandos often partic.i.p.ated in American raids and patrols. The police maintained traffic control points (TCPs). By and large, the quality of all these security people got better as the months wore on, but they were still not all that good or as reliable as they needed to be. Most of the Americans did not completely trust them. More important, many of the locals did not like or trust them. Often, the Americans found themselves trying to persuade residents to change their negative perceptions of the ISF and their own government. Still, in a larger sense, they were an a.s.set because, as Lieutenant Colonel Funk pointed out, "[they] don't have to be as good as us. They just have to be better than the insurgents they're fighting." In southwest Baghdad, by the fall of 2005, they were significantly better than most of the guerrillas.9 In spite of 3-7's wise approach to counterinsurgency in Ras.h.i.+d, there was no way a battalion of eight hundred soldiers could hope to truly control such a densely populated area. The danger of IEDs and suicide bombers was always profound. For the troops, this urban environment was stressful and unforgiving. The 3-7 Infantry spent many months intensively patrolling Route Irish, a stretch of road that had gotten out of control over the course of the previous year (reporters routinely referred to it as the most dangerous road on Earth). The highway bristled with IEDs of all varieties. The most common were drop-and-go types. Insurgents would cut a hole in a van, slow down a bit, and simply drop the IED on or alongside the road. Others were hidden in trash or buried in curbs or in the gra.s.sy median between the eastbound and westbound lanes. The Cottonbalers found and detonated countless IEDs on Route Irish. They also outlived all too many explosions. "We were on Route Irish a lot," Lieutenant Cantrell said. "We realized that you can survive IEDs." The soldiers weathered many near misses. "We saw a flash," one Alpha Company soldier remembered about an IED that exploded near his Humvee one night. "The IED went off . . . about four or five feet in front of our vehicle. Thank G.o.d . . . I stopped in the middle of the road and it blew up about four or five feet in front of us."

Eventually, new technology and new tactics took Route Irish away from the insurgents. The Americans began to equip most of their Humvees with the Warlock system, a piece of equipment capable of jamming the signals of cell phones and garage door openers that the terrorists used to detonate IEDs. Even more than Warlock, though, new tactics secured Route Irish. Not only did they saturate the road with patrols night and day, but they began to restrict access to the road. Engineers built concrete barriers and wire screens to prevent pedestrians from walking along the road. Then the Iraqi Army maintained checkpoints at every possible vehicular access route. To top it all off, SEAL and Cottonbaler sniper teams performed overwatch missions, shooting anyone they could positively establish as planting an IED. Before long, Route Irish got dramatically better, to the point of almost complete safety. "That's why you really don't hear about Route Irish anymore," one soldier said, with disgust dripping from his voice.

Throughout the rest of Ras.h.i.+d, the best way to defeat IEDs was to know the area. Over time, the Cottonbalers got to know their neighborhoods so well that they could spot anything that was amiss. "You have to patrol the same area over and over," Lieutenant Peter Robinson, a platoon leader in Easy Company, said. "My guys could look at the curb and tell you the cinder block's been moved." They came to know instinctively what was normal and what was threatening. "There's absolutely no way to replicate that except by patrolling over and over." The only problem was that, once the Americans came to dominate one part of Ras.h.i.+d, the insurgents would simply relocate to another, creating a whack-a-mole scenario. There simply were not anywhere near enough soldiers in the battalion to control the whole AO.

The battalion's worst incident occurred on April 19 when a suicide bomber attacked a dismounted patrol from Alpha Company's 1st Platoon. The grunts had just dismounted from their vehicles and were on their way to a school in the Jihad neighborhood when a car drove into the middle of their formation and detonated. The h.e.l.lish blast instantly killed Corporal Jacob Pfister and Specialist Kevin Wessel. Four other soldiers were wounded, two of whom had to be evacuated out of Iraq. Just moments after the blast, the platoon's vehicles turned around and roared back to the terrible scene. "People in the buildings around us were shooting at us," Sergeant James Malugin, a gunner on one of the Humvees, recalled. The gunners returned fire. As they did, medics did everything they could for the wounded and other soldiers policed up the remains of the two dead soldiers.

Several other Cottonbaler patrols, and many Iraqi policemen, scrambled to the scene. The standard procedure in these tragic instances was to seal off the entire site. Eventually, the shooting from the buildings petered out. "Once we got there, quickly everything was cordoned off," Staff Sergeant Gerard Leo, a gunner from Charlie Company, recalled. "We were watching the buildings. We weren't letting anyone walk near. The kids were trying to come out and play and we were chasing 'em back into their homes. The . . . guys were medevacked and gone within minutes." In addition to Pfister and Wessel, two other battalion soldiers lost their lives during the year in Iraq-Corporal Stanley Lapinski of Bravo Company and Corporal Manuel Lopez from Delta Company.

In another harrowing incident, a suicide car bomber attacked a Charlie Company traffic control point. The soldiers had set up barbed wire and orange traffic cones to maintain at least one hundred meters of standoff between themselves and the traffic. The troops were in the process of questioning a man whom they suspected of selling illegal gasoline. All of a sudden a white car veered around the cones. "I'll never forget it until the day I die," Staff Sergeant Michael Baroni said. He was standing several yards away from his Humvee, watching the terrible scene unfold, as if in a dream. "As soon as he swerved around the cones, it was all like slow motion. You could just hear the vehicle just ga.s.sing down [accelerating]. He hit the wire. As soon as he hit the wire . . . we pulled our weapons. By that time my gunner and my loader just started opening up on him. I remember just seeing the guy [suicide bomber] go down . . . on the winds.h.i.+eld and then the fireball, and feeling the heat. It detonated . . . about fifteen feet or ten feet behind my Humvee . . . so close, the wreckage was . . . underneath my Humvee."

At that moment, Baroni could think of little else except the welfare of his men. He had promised their families that he would bring them home safely. Amid the smoke and flames, not to