Salman Pak, Iraq
THE 3RD INFANTRY Division (known as the "Marne" Division) has a long, storied history as a mechanized unit. For years they have brought the big guns of tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles, as well as M-113 Armored Personnel Carriers and dismounted infantry patrols, to the fight wherever they may be needed.
The third of the five 'surge' Brigades, the area of operations (AO) covered by the Marne Division's 3rd Brigade--a region just southeast of Baghdad--is made up of a population that is majority Shia but predominantly Sunni to the east along the Tigris River, and includes the site of the Iraqi nuclear reactor that was destroyed by the Israelis in 1981, as well as Highway 8, which runs directly to Iran, and the former terrorist training center (and resort town) of Salman Pak.
The part of that area that 3rd Brigade's 1st Battalion (also known as the 1st Battalion of the 15th Infantry Regiment, or '1-15') is responsible for includes a geographic feature called the "deep bowl"--so named because of its round-bottomed appearance on a map. Bordered on the east, west, and south by a large bend in the Tigris, the "deep bowl" is an extremely defensible area in the southernmost part of 1-15's area of operations, and is home to the majority of al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) in the region. Terrorists cross the river from the south, and base their weapons factories and operations out of farms and various other unmapped places.
One problem with 1-15's
AO is the fact that, over much of its terrain, there are very few actual roads; most passageways are canals and other paths that are not easily navigated by large vehicles, and which are well-suited to ambush. As the northern limit of the "deep bowl" is one of these areas, the only realistic vehicle-based approaches into the bowl are from the east and the west--and the cost of actually making such an entrance would be extraordinarily high. "We tried to drive in, but the roads were absolutely laden with IEDs [improvised explosive devices] at the eastern and western access points," said Lieutenant Colonel Jack Marr, the 1-15's Battalion Commander. "Approaching from the east, we found so many IEDs that our EOD [explosive ordnance disposal] team ran out of demolitions before they could destroy them all."
Rather than accept that there was a region within their AO that his forces simply could not enter--let alone one containing large numbers of al Qaeda fighters--Marr made the decision to radically alter his battalion's way of doing business. "Since we couldn't drive in without an inordinate amount of risk," Marr told me, "we decided to go in the way that we knew we could--by air."
In essence, Marr, a former light infantry officer with the 82nd Airborne and the 25th Infantry Division, took his infantry battalion--long used to heavy vehicle-based operations--and made them into a unit capable of the mission known as 'Air Assault.' Air Assault units are able to fly to an objective via helicopter, perform a quick dismount upon landing, do an infantryman's job on the ground, and then re-board the helicopters and 'exfil' back to their base.
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