Ashes and Dust

SSG Matt Jemison, a squad leader in Baker Company 1-15's first platoon,
gives water to a newly homeless Iraqi child in Wuerdiya, Iraq.

Wuerdiya, Iraq

A KEY ATTRIBUTE of the enemy in Iraq for the past few years has been his unwillingness to directly engage Coalition forces in armed combat. Whether this is a result of the enemy's good sense or his cowardice (or some combination of the two), insurgents and sectarians from al Qaeda in Iraq to the Jaisch al Mahdi have almost entirely avoided direct confrontation with the Coalition, instead choosing to target soldiers with IEDs and snipers, while saving more aggressive attacks for soft targets like the Iraqi National Police (NP) and surrounding civilian populations.

"It's very clear that they want nothing to do with us directly," said Captain Rich Thompson, a former enlisted Ranger and currently the commander of Baker Company, 1-15 Infantry (from the 3rd Infantry Division). Lieutenant Colonel Jack Marr, the 1-15 Battalion Commander, echoed that sentiment, observing that "They will go out of their way to avoid targeting us with their big operations, and to focus them on the NPs or another target they perceive to be weaker."

As a case in point, Captain Thompson told of a recent attack on a National Police checkpoint. With one of his platoons securing the checkpoint on the western side--the side where the insurgents were originally coming from--the attackers had purposely abandoned their original line of approach, looped all the way around the formation, and attacked the NPs from the east and then abandoned their assault when the American platoon came to the Iraqis' aid.

The soft-target strategy (a favorite of terrorists worldwide) was again demonstrated this week in Wuerdiya, a small community on the road from Baghdad to Salman Pak (known to the troops as "Route Wild"), when insurgents fired on, destroyed, and set fire to the houses there, displacing the people, and leaving the village in ruins.

FOR THE SOLDIERS of Baker Company's 3rd Platoon, it began as a routine mission to the local NP headquarters, to input into the system those police who were not yet in the biometrics (retina, fingerprint, and face) database maintained by Coalition forces in Iraq.

As the three-Humvee column approached an NP checkpoint near the Police headquarters along Route Wild, it became evident that something was amiss. A crowd of civilians--mostly black-clad women who were behaving very erratically--had congregated around the police there.

"One of them just tried to wave us down, sir," said the gunner of my Humvee, Corporal Paul Bliss, to the Platoon Leader, First Lieutenant Patrick Geiger, who was sitting in the front passenger seat. "Pull around here and we'll see what's going on," said Geiger, as the vehicle came to a stop near the checkpoint.

As we climbed out of the Humvees, it was obvious that something was wrong; the women were wailing in agony and beating their chests, and the few men with them were jabbering at us in Arabic.

"They say their village is under attack," said Steve,' one of Baker Company's Iraqi interpreters. As we turned around to look, the truth of that statement became obvious--clouds of smoke were billowing from a location less than a quarter of a mile from us, just west of the main road, and, as if on cue, the telltale sound of small arms fire began, clear and sharp in the heavy desert air.

Geiger turned to one of the NPs and inquired whether they were planning on doing anything about the situation. The Iraqi responded in the affirmative--they had called for reinforcements; however, neither he nor his men was in any rush to move in the direction of the small neighborhood that was under attack.

"Thirty, maybe forty men, wearing black," one of the women told Lt. Geiger when asked how many insurgents were currently in the village. Conflicting with her report was the claim by one of the men in the group that the insurgents were driving away, down the road in front of us, at that very moment.

Geiger grabbed the Iraqi policeman again and instructed him to request that armor (the NPs have some old Saddam-era T-55 tanks in their arsenal) be brought along with the reinforcements. Then, ignoring the repeated protests by the aggrieved women that the National Police would be unable to do anything about the situation, he retreated to his Humvee to call for a helicopter to get a look at the scene from the air.