BAGHDAD, Iraq – The 16-man platoon from Fort Hood, Texas, uses a decrepit Iraqi national police compound for its outpost. Chickens, turkeys and sheep graze on the lawn, drenched by an overflowing septic tank. Each day, the soldiers venture out for a few hours onto the dangerous streets of what was once a fashionable Sunni Arab neighborhood.
Led by a 24-year-old West Point graduate, the Americans weave their Humvees among villas commandeered by Sunni fighters who snipe at them from rooftops, bury bombs in the streets and evade searches with the help of two men dubbed the “moped twins,” who relay the platoon’s position by walkie-talkie at nearly every turn.
The troops stay overnight in makeshift quarters, nursing their wounds and attempting to hold onto any gains they’ve made through the day in the now-downtrodden Ameriya and Khadra districts.
The latest U.S.-Iraq security plan, based on occupying neighborhood bases and having close contact with the community, is nowhere more intense and focused than here in northwest Baghdad, where government troops battle daily with homegrown Sunni insurgents and foreign Islamist fighters.
Five U.S. soldiers have died this month in Ameriya as of Tuesday, victims of improvised explosive devices and snipers. Since the surge began in February, the one-square-mile area patrolled by 1st Lt. Schuyler Williamson’s platoon and others from the 1st Battalion, 5th Cavalry, has been the site of 300 improvised explosive devices buried in the road or placed on the shoulder. An army intelligence map uses small red blast symbols to mark bomb sites. The symbols obscure entire thoroughfares.
Soldiers here now openly declare pessimism for the mission’s chances, unofficially referring to their splinter of heavily fortified land as “The Alamo.”
“Sometimes,” said Brendan Gallagher, the captain who oversees Williamson, “we like to comfort ourselves when we are taking a lot of IEDs and casualties by saying that the enemy is desperate, they are doing this because they are scared. But how many times can they actually be desperate? I sometimes worry that this period will end up going down here as their surge, not ours.”
Williamson’s platoon has patrolled Iraq elbow-to-elbow in Humvees since November. In the group is Sgt. Andrew Zamacona, nicknamed Tackleberry after the character from “Police Academy” who is always gung-ho for a fight. There’s also Pfc. Alonzo Duncan, a 42-year-old former mechanic who re-enlisted at 40. They labeled him Blue after a character in the film “Old School” who wants to join the college fraternity in his old age.
Williamson calls himself the governor of Texas as he patrols Khadra. He refers to his soldiers as the Texan militia.
Over the course of four recent days, Williamson’s soldiers were struck repeatedly by IEDs, one of which blasted a hole through an army medic’s foot, requiring him to be sent home. The platoon also was attacked by snipers – a bullet ripping through the fingers of an Iraqi national police captain accompanying the Americans on a joint patrol.
In the same period, checkpoints operated by Iraqi police at two entry points into Khadra came under gunfire several times a day, and a desecrated corpse suspected to be that of an Iraqi police officer was found hanging May 15 from a lamppost in Ameriya.
Minimal gains
Col. J.B. Burton, top commander of the brigade, acknowledged difficulties but said American and Iraqi troops were making progress elsewhere in the capital city. “The troops in Khadra and Ameriya don’t always get to see that,” he said.
For their sacrifice, the troops here have been able to make minimal gains in increasing contact with the Iraqi populace and helping with trash collection, fuel delivery, sewerage repairs and the delivery of other essential services. They have been diverted by tedious, largely fruitless searches for their attackers. Williamson said they had found about 1 suspect per 15 explosions.
On Monday, May 14, the soldiers began such a search from Camp Liberty, where they had been spending a break from their Khadra outpost. A Bradley tank had been hit earlier in the day with a bomb buried in a road in Ameriya 15 minutes away, and the platoon was assigned to a door-to-door search for those responsible.
Before leaving Liberty, the men formed a circle in the midafternoon heat, their arms wrapped around one another’s shoulders and prayed: “Please bring us home to our families, Lord, in your strong name we pray.”
The tank convoy traveled to the site of the morning’s blast, and the soldiers fanned out. For hours they detained most people walking in the street on suspicion that they might be trying to evade other American soldiers.
Some residents invited the troops into well-tended homes with faded red-velvet couches and portraits of children on the refrigerator. More of the homes were spartan carcasses occupied by people who said they had lived there for only a few weeks, sometimes three families to a residence. None was able to provide rental papers.
Despite the friendly welcome from all residents interviewed, only one told the troops where they might find a homemade bomb, and that tip proved incorrect. No one claimed to know where the soldiers could find a weapons cache, a suspect, a witness.
“Of course they know, but I can’t say I blame them for not telling us,” said Spc. John King, the army intelligence officer leading the questioning. “They could be killed.”
Since the security plan started in February, the troops have tried to protect government and contract workers delivering gasoline, picking up trash, and making sewer repairs. But all three services remain broken. The effort to fix potholes actually backfired by making it easier for insurgents to disguise the placement of IEDs as road repairs.
It was IEDS that were on the mind of the soldiers when they headed out again Tuesday morning, May 15.
“Everybody have their game face on?” asked Sgt. Stephen Cyr as he steered a Humvee toward Khadra.
After 15 minutes, they arrived at the national police outpost where their company had established camp.
Constant dangers
The downside of the security plan is that one of the three platoons that share the outpost must be stationed inside 24 hours daily. As a result, the company’s captain said, there are now fewer patrols in Khadra than before the surge started.
When the troops moved in to establish their quarters, they learned their old outpost, a less fortified Iraqi police station, had come under attack
“(The Iraqi police) reported firing from 360 degrees each of the four days since we left. I don’t have much hope for them,” said Staff Sgt. Mike Perez, second in command of the platoon.
It wouldn’t be the first time the “clear, hold, build” strategy of the security plan hadn’t moved beyond the clear stage.
On Wednesday, May 16, an IED detonated during patrol. Gunfire erupted, and an Iraqi police captain was wounded. The next day, another patrol in Khadra was hit in close succession by two IEDs – a daisy chain.
Williamson’s soldiers went in search of the perpetrators and spotted the “moped twins” again, the two gap-toothed men who persistently had followed the platoon at a distance, raising walkie-talkies to their mouths.
This time, the soldiers were happy to see one of the men point to a rooftop and then to the U.S. convoy. That overt act gave soldiers license to take a shot. The targeted man cartwheeled over the front wheel, smacking the asphalt. Just as quickly, he jumped up and fled into a house. The soldiers gave chase; yet he escaped, jumping from roof to roof.
In a nearby taxicab, the soldiers found a propaganda tape from al-Qaida in Iraq. Tests showed the car had carried homemade explosives within an hour of its capture.
“I miss when the worst thing we had to do is go around this neighborhood picking up dead bodies,” Cyr said. “It’s sick, but true.”
Back at the outpost, the soldiers return again and again to the subject of leaving the military.
Three of the 16 soldiers in Williamson’s platoon no longer patrol. Their mental health is in tatters. One lashed out against Williamson, another reported he couldn’t do the job anymore, and a third went home on leave and “couldn’t act right,” Williamson said.
The conversation this night rarely strayed from Iraq, with some talking about the defining dates of their tours when best friends were killed or maimed.
“I worry about you guys,” Perez told them. “When I went home between tours, I forgot all about Iraq. I turned it off like a light switch. I wanted to get laid, get paid and get drunk. I didn’t worry about what I did, what I didn’t do – and that’s what I’ll have to do again.”
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