BAQUBAH, Iraq – The pale blue light inside the Chinook helicopter cast a faint glow on the young soldiers, shoulder to shoulder, tensed for battle. They crossed themselves and bowed their heads.
The battalion was flying in the middle of the night toward an Iraqi village, one unexplored by American troops and believed to be dominated by Sunni insurgents. The troops had heard the stories – militant camps hidden in palm groves, underground torture prisons, sniper teams on rooftops – and were ready for a fight.
But when the 600 soldiers descended on Buhriz al-Barra with machine guns and night-vision lenses early last Monday, they found the village largely devoid of men. Soldiers fanned out from the rocky field where they had landed, combing riverbanks, palm groves and hundreds of concrete and cinder-block homes, only to find many abandoned and others inhabited only by nervous women and children.
“The biggest dry hole ever,” said 1st Lt. James Brandon Prisock, 28, a platoon leader on the operation, after several hours in the village. “These guys all took off. They knew we were coming.”
In Diyala province northeast of Baghdad, the American military is engaged in an intractable guerrilla fight against an elusive and sophisticated enemy more deadly than many battle-hardened soldiers have ever encountered in Iraq.
The insurgents “fight in small numbers, they try and hit you through subterfuge, they like using snipers,” said Sgt. 1st Class Benjamin Hanner, 35, of Redding, Calif., part of an armored unit of Stryker combat vehicles that took part in the Buhriz al-Barra assault. “These guys know what they’re doing. They’re controlled, their planning is good, their human intel network and early-warning networks are effective.”
These techniques have become increasingly devastating to the Americans in this province. Since November, when the 5,000-member 3rd Brigade Combat Team of the 1st Cavalry Division deployed to Diyala, at least 46 American soldiers have died in the fighting, officers said.
The soldiers fighting in Diyala have faced insurgents who communicate with radios and sometimes watch the Americans with night-vision goggles. Marksmen bore holes in the parapets of rooftops, stand back a few feet and fire through the openings to disguise the muzzle blast. Some shoot with tracer rounds to guide their bullets. When Americans come under attack, they often find themselves taking fire from several directions.
“I’ve been all over this country,” Hanner said. “This is by far the worst place I’ve ever been in my life. This is what you think war is going to be.”
“These guys are smart. The Iraqi insurgent as a whole has really adapted well to our tactics and have learned a lot,” said 1st Lt. Anthony Von Plinsky, 28. “They know how to bury things without us seeing them, they know how to trigger it without us knowing.”
“Every time we react to a contact, they take that and learn from it. I hate to give credit to somebody who has no rules, but they’re pretty good.”
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