Letter from Iraq

[FishForLunch]

I know you guys on this board are rolling your eyes and saying, shucks another Iraqi story. You may think I am obsssed with the Iraqi situation but this is something that has touched my heart. So I will keep posting articles about our fight with terrorists and oppressors. So here is another story.

LETTER FROM IRAQ: Here's another letter from a soldier in Iraq, doing amazing work. He's Lieutenant Colonel Steven D. Russell, the Battalion Commander of the 1st Battalion of the 22nd Infantry, 4th Infantry Division. I wish, reading this, that it gave me more reassurance. Some progress; some setbacks; but a hellish scene nonetheless. It's long, but helpful to see this conflict through the eyes of one of America's incomparable soldiers:
On the 11th of August we successfully raided three more objectives and netted two former Republican Guards officers one a division commander and the other a corps level chief of staff. The third objective netted us a leader of Fedayeen militia. By the 13th we had seen small enemy attempts to harass or strike back at us. On a secondary market street, CPT Boyd's convoy narrowly escaped harm as assailants rolled a volley of RPGs down the street like some game of ten pins. The rockets whooshed, skipped and scraped along the pavement, but made no contact for them to explode. The enemy attackers had fired from several hundred meters away in the middle of a street and then fled.
Our actions continued to have momentum. By mid-month two men wanted by our forces - one who worked for Saddam's wife turned themselves in to us and on the same day we received weapons from helpful Tikriti merchants with keen eyes. Even so, the young and the stupid continue to step forward. In a suburb to our south, attackers launched a volley of RPGs at A Company soldiers in yet another classic miss and run attack. Our Gators responded so quickly that the enemy was forced to flee for his life and abandoned his rocket launchers in the street. The attackers melded into the local population before they could be caught. Hence, we continue to work with the locals, the sheiks and plan more raids. One benefit of our dialogue with the sheiks has been the recruitment of reliable militia that we are now training. Tapping into some previous experience I had on a much grander scale when I served in Afghanistan forming the plans for the Afghan National Army, we moved out with a modest training program that is producing a good-quality small element to assist the local government and our forces. Through the great work of 1LT Deel and SGM Castro, and with the assistance of a couple of former drill sergeants in each company, we move forward to train Iraqis in martial and civil arts that will help them stabilize their own town...
The enemy continues to adapt his tactics to counter ours. His only cowardly refuge has been to hide among the population and among legitimate emergency services. On the night of the 18th our soldiers at a temporary checkpoint searched an ambulance that was bringing back an older man from the hospital. Seeing this, a white car placed an explosive on a side street and ignited the fuse. A Company soldiers reacted to the blast to the west. The ambulance drove north to get out of danger and as it did, the white car pulled along side the Red Crescent vehicle and sent a burst of gunfire toward another unit's outpost. The outpost responded, seeing the fire come from what appeared to be the ambulance.
Also seeing the fire exchanged between the outpost and the ambulance, our snipers engaged the ambulance as it sped north, the victim of a cruel crossfire. The white car, fully masked in its movements, then dashed down a dark alley and made good his escape. The ambulance shuddered to a stop. The driver, fearing for his life, got out of the front seat to escape the bullet exchange. He nearly made it but for one round that hit his ankle. Another aid man was cut by glass from the windshield. The older man in transport took a round to the shoulder and the thigh. The police and our forces quickly arrived along the dark street. The police took the seriously wounded victim to the hospital where he was stabilized. The ambulance then began its journey northward toward a police checkpoint, met by both police and our scouts. After much confusion, we determined what had happened and treated the man with the ankle wound. We took him to better care to remove the bullet. We also handed over the ambulance back to the emergency workers. The Iraqis helped us piece together the confusing puzzle and, while frightened and initially angered, became more angered at the fact that the attackers would once again use innocent people as shields. They are by all estimations cowards... The next day, the 20th, we got an emergency request for help from another unit working in our area. While coordinating information on a market street, armed attackers masked within the population open up a deadly burst of gunfire. The soldiers translator falls dead with a torso wound. A soldier collapses with a serious thigh wound and another is also hit in his extremities severely wounded. The soldiers return fire. The enemy's damage done, he flees, unable to be pursued by this small wounded band.
Men from our C Company rushed to the scene. Shocked and bloody men are lifted into vehicles, accompanied by their angry and equally shocked peers. Our soldiers cordon the area, conduct a wide search and gather little from the locals who have either closed their shops in typical fear or claimed they saw nothing. The men's lives are saved by a medical evacuation. A translator, an American citizen, will speak no more. Vigilance, vigilance, vigilance. My burden is that every soldier of mine goes home and with a pair of legs. God has spared us from much in the midst of our battles. Psalm 68:19-21.
One such sparing occurred on the 22nd of August. A tip from a distraught local warned us of a plan to attack the Tigris Bridge. He stated that the attack would occur within an hour and would be with RPGs, small arms and mortars using a water-services truck as a mask. Our response was immediate. A section of M1 Abrams tanks changed the scenery of the bridge and our checkpoint there. The enemy did materialize at a distance and launched a single pathetic 82mm mortar round, impacting just across the near bank of the river at dusk. The scenery of his own attack also changed, he missed and now ran.
An hour later, our Recon platoon headed south along the main highway. They approached a decorative gate incongruently guarding a wadi that funnels the waste byproduct of Tikrit into the Tigris River. Our men affectionately know this depression as the Stink Wadi. That night it exuded more than just odor. A volley of RPGs raced across in a flash from the south bank of the wadi. Small arms accompanied the volley. The scout's weapons erupted in a converging arc that raked and then secondarily exploded on the bank. Unable to get to the scene quickly by the nature of the wadi, distance and terrain, the men could not determine the damage they inflicted. But they blew up something. When searched later, the area was vacant, revealing little information.
The revelation of information took on a different form in Tikrit the following morning. Our C Company posted security along the main street of the city near the telephone exchange offices. Bradley fighting vehicles and tough soldiers mixed with the squat, dilapidated structures of the city. A small crowd gathered at a new café in town, an Internet café. Words are exchanged, cameras roll and snap, a pair of scissors is lifted off a pillow as the owner and I cut a ribbon at the entrance.
While thrilled, it all seems so foreign to me given the context of the previous days. For a brief moment these small trappings of normal life of normal pursuits and daily living awaken me. As I leave the café an old woman is nearly struck by a car and a bicycle as she attempts to cross the busy street. Our soldiers step into the four lanes of traffic and she is escorted across the thoroughfare. As we pull out in our vehicles, we cradle our weapons, begin to watch rooftops, examine every trash pile, and check each alley. A sea of people is scanned quickly - what is in their arms, what are their facial expressions, do they make unusual movement. We pull away and reenter our world.Alternately moving and sobering, I'd say.

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