Iraq Blog:  March 2007

The following news items are taken from the Blog web site
of the 2nd Brigade, 10th Mountain Division Commandos

MONDAY, MARCH 05, 2007
Golden Dragons Discover Massive Cache Southwest Of Baghdad

2nd BCT, 10th Mtn. Div. (LI) Public Affairs

   YUSUFIYAH, Iraq - Multi-National Division – Baghdad troops found and seized a massive weapons cache along one of Baghdad’s main highways Feb. 28.
   Soldiers from Company A, 2nd Battalion, 14th Infantry Regiment “Golden Dragons,” 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division (Light Infantry) discovered the cache while conducting a combat patrol along Mulla Fayad Highway, west of Yusufiyah.
   The cache consisted of two Sanger missiles with launch tubes, 200 meters of fuse, 1000 12.7mm Dishka rounds, two 122mm rockets, 18 60mm mortar rounds, 80 hand grenades, six rocket stabilizers, 10 120mm mortar tail fins, 100 60mm mortar fuses, five 106mm artillery rounds, one 57mm rocket, one rocket-propelled grenade, one 57mm anti-aircraft round, two RPG-9s, 60 120mm mortars, two unknown mortar rounds, one RPG launcher, one 60mm mortar illumination round, one Dishka heavy machinegun receiver, 20 canisters, 10 cylinders of homemade explosives, 2000 7.62mm rounds, 14 57mm rockets, 40 pounds of homemade explosives and 200 ZPU-1 anti-aircraft rounds.
   “The (find) will put a dent in the terrorists’ ability to make improvised explosive devices,” said Maj. Brock Jones, the executive officer with the Golden Dragons and a native of Lakewood, Ohio. “The Soldiers did well today – their familiarity with the area of operations allowed them to locate the cache”
   The battalion continues to search the area for more caches. The cache was destroyed during a controlled detonation conducted by an explosive ordnance team.
  


MONDAY, MARCH 05, 2007
Soldiers Search Roadsides After Explosions

   Command Sgt. Maj. Clyde Glenn (foreground), and the senior noncommissioned officer for 2nd Battalion, 14th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division (Light Infantry), and Staff Sgt. Laurencio Lopez (background), and a medic with Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 2-14th, emerge from the reeds along a canal near the village of Sadr Al-Yusufiyah, Iraq, after checking the canal for terrorists and weaponry after two improvised explosive devices exploded near their convoy March 3. (U.S. Army photo by Spc. Chris McCann, 2nd BCT, 10th Mtn. Div. (LI) Public Affairs)
  


MONDAY, MARCH 05, 2007
Golden Dragons Discover Six More Caches In Operation

2nd BCT, 10th Mtn.
Div. (LI) Public Affairs


   YUSUFIYAH, Iraq - Multi-National Division - Baghdad Soldiers continue to find weapons caches along Mullah Fayad Highway during an ongoing operation southwest of Baghdad, Feb. 28.
   As reported earlier, Soldiers from Company A, 2nd Battalion, 14th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division (Light Infantry) found a massive cache along the highway as part of Operation Commando Viper, an operation intended to deny terrorists' freedom of movement in southwest Baghdad.
   After continuing to scour the area, the 'Golden Dragons' found an additional six caches along the highway, just west of Yusufiyah, March 1.
   The first cache consisted of 12 mortar warheads, 28 tear gas grenades, 150 cassette tapes, a 200 round ammunition drum, 20 feet of wire, 29 mortar charges, three rocket propelled grenade sights, a rifle scope, an AK-47 magazine, four chest-rigged AK-47 kits, four small cloth bags of gun powder, 250 loose 7.62mm rounds, a battery charger, an alternating current adapter, three rifle slings, and various bomb making materials.
   The second cache, smaller than the first, included 22 rocket propelled grenade rounds, 300 feet of detention cord, a 62mm high-explosive anti-tank rounds and a 106mm anti-tank round.
   The third cache had two unknown aiming tools, three AK-47 magazines (two full and one empty), 100 7.62mm rounds, a box containing 1,000 7.62mm rounds, 11 cloth bags filled with gun powder, 20 feet of time fuse, 20 feet of detonation cord, two RPG-7 rounds, 10 blasting caps, a 57mm warhead, an AK-47, a bottle of unknown liquid, a spotting scope, four cell phones, two mortar sights, an RPG sight, an unknown electronic site, various digital and paper archival equipment, and initiators for improvised explosive devices.
   In the fourth cache were four RPG-7 rounds, 22 81mm warhead rounds, 39 60mm warhead rounds, 25 mortar charges, an 81mm mortar round, three high-explosive assembled warhead rounds, two RPG-9 rounds, 55 various grenades, 16 blasting caps, five AK-47 chest kits, six AK-47 magazines, a set of binoculars, an RPG sight box, a machine gun rod, an unknown aiming device, a mortar sight and a test light.
   The fifth cache had three AK-47 magazines, a two-way radio, a plastic grenade, 300 7.62mm rounds, a spool of wire, a camera bag, a tripod, a hand drill and an improvised explosive device kit.
   The last cache included five RPG-9 rounds, two 81mm mortar rounds, three blasting caps, a mortar site, a warhead, a homemade rocket launcher, 22 boxes of mortar charges, an 81mm warhead, two 60mm warheads, a ammunition can, 20 feet of detonation cord, a set of binoculars and a cell phone battery.
   "The Soldiers of 2-14 are putting a huge dent in the terrorists' capabilities," said Maj. Brock Jones, the 2-14 Inf. executive officer and native of Lakewood, Ohio. "Each large caliber round is one less (improvised explosive device) the enemy can emplace."
   The Soldiers will continue to search the area in hopes of finding more caches.
   An explosive ordnance detonation team destroyed the contents of the caches and the operation is still ongoing.
  


WEDNESDAY, MARCH 07, 2007
Golden Dragons Defeat IED Cell

2nd BCT, 10th Mtn. Div. (LI) Public Affairs

   SADR AL-YUSUFIYAH, Iraq - Coalition soldiers killed four terrorists planting improvised explosive devises near a village near the banks of the Euphrates, Mar. 5.
   The Scout Platoon of the 2nd Battalion, 14th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, “Golden Dragons” discovered five terrorists emplacing IEDs and engaged them with small arms fire, killing four of them.
   Found with the dead terrorists were two AK-47s.
   The bodies of the terrorists were turned over to the local authorities and the weapons confiscated.
  


WEDNESDAY, MARCH 12, 2007
Golden Dragons Detain Man, Weapons After Taking Fire

2nd BCT, 10th Mtn. Div. (LI) Public Affairs

   RADWANIYAH, Iraq - Multi-National Division - Baghdad Soldiers arrested a man and confiscated a weapons cache in a house near here, March 10.
   Soldiers of Company D, 2nd Battalion, 14th Infantry Regiment “Golden Dragons,” 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division (Light Infantry) received small arms fire from the house Feb. 23. Marking the building as a potential site for future search, they returned to search the house and found a cache.
   Among the weapons found were a Mauser rifle, 38 rounds for the Mauser, four AK-47 fully loaded magazines, 300 loose AK-47 rounds, over 200 9mm pistol rounds, copper wire (typically used to trigger improvised explosive devices) and a camera.
   The Soldiers detained the resident of the house and confiscated the weapons and ammunition.
   The man is being held for questioning.
  


THURSDAY, MARCH 15, 2007
Suspected IED Emplacer Arrested In Rushdi Mullah

2nd BCT, 10th Mtn. Div. (LI) Public Affairs

   RUSHDI MULLAH, Iraq - Coalition forces arrested a suspected improvised explosive device emplacer north of Rushdi Mullah, Iraq March 14.
   Soldiers from the 2nd Battalion, 14th Infantry Regiment “Golden Dragon,” 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division (Light Infantry) arrested the individual after receiving a tip from an Iraqi civilian.
   When the Soldiers searched the house that was believed to be the insurgent’s hideout, they discovered eight local nationals, one of whom was arrested.  The seven other men were held for further questioning.
  


WEDNESDAY, MARCH 21, 2007
Golden Dragons Capture Mortar Team

2nd BCT, 10th Mtn. Div. (LI) Public Affairs

   CAMP STRIKER, Iraq - A 120mm mortar system and terrorist cell were captured southwest of Sadr Al-Yusufiyah, Iraq, March 19.
   Soldiers of Company A, 2nd Battalion, 14th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division (Light Infantry) ran into four terrorists with AK-47s at about 1:30 p.m. local time. The terrorists fled.
   The men had seemed to be guarding a home; Soldiers entered and questioned 13 local nationals in the home while other Soldiers of the team pursued the fleeing terrorists.
   In the house, the Soldiers discovered two 120mm mortar rounds and three 82mm rounds, as well as a number of hand grenades.
Approximately a half-hour later, the Soldiers found a 120mm mortar tube in a truck parked at a house nearby. In the truck were also found two 120mm rounds, a loaded PKC machine gun with 200 rounds of ammunition, a mortar sighting device, nine 120mm charges, and 30 Russian-made shape charges.
   As the terrorists fled, they left many objects in a nearby reed-line, which the Soldiers seized. The objects included four 82mm mortar rounds, two load-bearing vests full of loaded magazines, two hand grenades, two 82mm mortar charges, a video camera, a black ski mask, a DVD and a bag of tools.
   In the second house, the Soldiers discovered five 82mm mortar fuses, two AK-47s, seven full magazines for AK-47s, a new global positioning system unit, a mortar compass, a calculator, a piece of paper with mortar tables on it, two notebooks, a video cassette, an unknown rifle, and a bag of electrical components.
   “We’ve been targeting this mortar cell for awhile,” said Maj. Web Wright, a native of Annapolis, Md., and a spokesman for the 2nd “Commando” BCT. “They’ve been launching attacks throughout our area of operations, aimed at (coalition forces) but in a lot of cases they have been injuring civilians as well, so we’ve put a lot of priority on capturing them.
   “Capturing 120mm mortar system is significant,” Wright continued. “When you find the tube it strips away their capability to attack, whereas if you find a cache of rounds, although it takes ammunition from them, that tube can still be used again. This time we captured the tube and the people who are trained to use it. This is a very significant event.”
   The cell was suspected to have attacked Soldiers of the 4th Battalion, 31st Infantry Regiment, 2nd BCT, earlier that day.
  


MONDAY, MARCH 26, 2007
Golden Dragon Troops Find Large Weapons Cache

2nd BCT, 10th Mtn. Div. (LI) Public Affairs

   RADWANIYAH, Iraq - A large cache of weapons was found by coalition forces near here March 22.
   Soldiers of the 2nd Battalion, 14th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division (Light Infantry) were moving as part of a security operation when they discovered two 81mm mortar tubes and a 68mm mortar rocket with an electronic launching system southwest of Radwaniyah.
   Upon searching around the tubes, the Soldiers found more cache weapons hidden in two 50-gallon drums.
   The first drum contained 1,500 rounds of 7.62mm machine gun ammunition, 1,000 rounds of RPK machine gun ammunition, a black load-bearing vest, an ammunition drum for a machine gun, a roll of detonation cord, 75 blasting caps, two rocket-propelled grenade launchers, a grenade, a roll of electrical wire, and a mortar charge.
   The second drum contained three RPG launchers, an RPG night sight, three RPG-7 rounds with accelerators, 500 rounds of PKM machine gun ammunition, five RPG-9 rounds and two unknown RPG boosters.
   “This is a significant find,” said Maj. Web Wright, a spokesman for the 2nd BCT. “Taking mortar tubes out of the terrorists’ hands removes their ability to launch indirect-fire attacks. Additionally, the seizure of the detonation cord, blasting caps, and wires means that those things cannot be used in the construction of improvised explosive devices.”
   The cache was destroyed by an explosive ordnance disposal team.
  


MONDAY, MARCH 26, 2007
Listening With Your Eyes:  A Commentary

By Lt. Col. John Valledor
Commander, 2nd Bn., 14th Inf. Reg't.

   Dawn fades on another bright, warm and dusty day in Iraq’s Euphrates River Valley. A solitary 10th Mountain Division infantry rifle squad nears the end of a nightlong security mission on Battle Position F-205-U. This traffic control point, manned by nine battle-hardened Soldiers, seasoned by three successive combat tours in Iraq, sits on a narrow, elevated levee road that parallels the Euphrates River.
   Coalition Forces know the road by its military designation, Route Pinto. Bravo Company, the squad’s parent unit, uses this checkpoint in its counterinsurgency fight to screen tribal farmers hauling produce from the canal-laced vegetable fields that define the Village of Sadr Al-Yusufiyah to Baghdad’s street markets. Informant networks reveal to the company commander that Sunni extremists operating in his assigned operational environment seek the anonymity of the populace to hide and for the illicit trafficking of suicidal foreign fighters and their bomb-making materials.
   The squad leader finalizes pre-combat checks prior to mounting their three up-armored Humvee gun trucks for what has seemingly become a short, routine patrol back to their forward operating base—Patrol Base Warrior Keep.
   The four-kilometer trip normally takes around 10 minutes to complete, but this deceptively short patrol is seldom routine.
   This past year Route Pinto has been the site of persistent and deadly insurgent improvised explosive device attacks. On Christmas Day, this squad’s platoon lost a highly respected team leader to a hidden IED, buried deep in the crater of a previous attack.
   As the squad leader readies his patrol for movement, he notices that the normal traffic jam of produce-laden vehicles is conspicuously absent. Normally this checkpoint is teeming with impatient farmers backed-up 20 vehicles deep behind a serpentine set of concrete Jersey barriers trying to race to Baghdad’s markets by first light. This day, the squad sees no traffic.
   The squad leader radios the start of his patrol to his company at PB Warrior Keep and begins his short journey down this now familiar winding stretch of well-worn and grooved asphalt.
   The thick smell of burning straw fills the air as the patrol passes crater after crater that pock the road from previous IED attacks. Eyes peeled on the perilous course before him, the squad leader cautiously scans the periphery of each crater as well as the shoulders of the road for recent signs of electrical command wires used by insurgents to detonate freshly buried IEDs.
   Equally daunting is the difficult task of finding “pressure switch” IED initiators well camouflaged by insurgents. These thin, homemade, Christmas-tree-wire initiators resemble veins emanating from the sides of the road that the victims set off by simply running over and crushing the connections, completing the deadly circuit.
   As the patrol passes a familiar S-curve lined with numerous market shops, the squad leader once again takes note that today they are all curiously closed. Moreover, the now recognizable sight of teenage boys spending their entire day sitting next to stacks of makeshift benzene containers, Iraq’s version of roadside gas stations, are also gone.
   The patrol snakes past the last curve on their final stretch into their destined patrol base.
   The Humvee’s turret gunner, peering over the barrel of an M-2 .50 caliber machine gun, glances over to the north side of the road where local Iraqi women are normally seen tending to the fields. He notices only one single woman scurrying with a child in tow.
   She quickly darts behind the door of a nearby home as the patrol drives by.
   The gunner makes a quick mental note and alerts his truck commander using the gun truck’s intra-vehicular intercom; “something doesn’t look right.”
   As the patrol nears a final set of IED craters that straddle both sides of the road, unconsciously, something in the squad leader’s mind, again, tells him that this does not seem right.
   Suddenly and without warning, the Humvee catapults aloft, engulfed in a brilliant flash of searing heat, instantly frosting its thick ballistic glass windows.
   The dense coating of dust that was previously covering the inside surfaces of the vehicle is simultaneously lifted into the air and the deafening sound from the enveloping blast is immediately followed by dense, black, and choking ammonia-scented smoke.
   Injured, and in a slow motion, dreamlike state, the squad leader succumbs to the agonizing pain and slips into unconsciousness.
   The six-ton, hardened steel Humvee completes its astonishing barrel roll and crashes to earth from its split-second moment of flight.
Moments later, a fellow Soldier riding in the patrol’s last gun truck grasps his radio’s hand mike and reports; “Barbarian Tango this is Barbarian one-six, IED strike, nine-line report follows, over”.
   The story above illustrates the power of unconscious hyperawareness resident in all of us. In this real world case, the patrol members were bombarded with tell tale visual cues from their environment alerting them to impending danger, but they failed to trust their unconscious instincts and act accordingly.
   In Iraq, survival demands that the foot Soldier master this innate ability, often involving instantaneous, life or death decisions. Our Soldiers serve as living, breathing sensors continuously processing verbal, non-verbal and visual cues from their environment. They unconsciously process information relayed to them from their surroundings. Acting on that information is a matter of confidence borne out of experience.
   One of the biggest challenges to our Soldiers in Iraq’s counter-insurgency is separating the insurgent from its host—the populace.
   The first step in defeating the insurgents is gaining the trust and confidence of the very population both opposing forces are vying to win over. This is done by getting out and meeting people. Engaging people regardless of culture and language on a personal face-to-face level is essential in winning them over.
   In Iraq’s ungoverned tribal areas, infantrymen best accomplish human interaction by conducting good old-fashioned foot patrols.
   An enabling tool available to the foot Soldier is the embedded interpreter otherwise known as “terp”, abbreviated to simplify radio reporting. Although limited in number and availability, terps facilitate Soldier’s direct communication with the people.
   The degree to which we measure success in communication through a terp depends on several factors including their command of the English language, the recognition of a wide array of slang terms, their native knowledge of Iraqi versus Middle Eastern cultural norms, as well as their ethnic or sectarian bias.
   The importance of the terp and their deciphering skills was recently demonstrated at a company-level tactical questioning event.
   A rifle platoon returned to their forward patrol base after concluding a targeted raid with a dozen detainees suspected of participating in attacks in the area. The company commander began the process of tactically questioning the gathered detainees with his assigned terp. Several Soldiers providing security at the detainee collection point noticed that, although the entire set of detainees looked similar in manner of dress and appearance, something about this group was out of the ordinary
   Within the group were several local Iraqis that were undoubtedly only guilty of being near the site of the raid. Intermixed was a second group of actual Sunni extremists. The challenge for the commander was distinguishing the two separate groups.
   The commander along with his terp immediately began the tedious question and answer process that would eventually lead to the elimination and separation of innocent Iraqis from the Sunni extremists.
   The terp was immediately able to identify some within the group as foreign fighters based on language dialects; to the US Soldiers overseeing the process, oblivious to Arabic dialects, they completely missed the nuance and importance of this action.
   Simultaneously, all participants began receiving non-verbal visual cues from the faces of the remaining detainees. Although all maintained a common story line in response to the tactical questioning, something about their eyes and body language inexplicably revealed a sense of fear from a minority within the group. Subtle body language cues seemed to expose fear in some, not towards the US questioners, but rather at a nearby subset of fellow detainees.
   These cues caught the attention of the Soldiers providing security. They trusted their instincts and passed their perceived hunch along to the solitary terp busily questioning the detainees.
   In time, the commander and terp were able to differentiate the innocent from the guilty. By focusing their questioning on the individuals unconsciously recognized as foreign by the majority, they were able to crack their short-lived cover stories and connect them to previous insurgent attacks.
   In this case, our Soldiers were able to cut through the fog of culture and language and hone in on seemingly innocent local nationals that were in fact hardened terrorists based on recognizing and acting on non-verbal visual cues. They deduced by listening with their eyes.
   Terps serve a vital function of translating language and cultural subtleties for the patrols. They understand the nuances, gestures and local mannerisms that they see and hear. American Soldiers will never fully comprehend these cultural nuances but they continue to gain more and more insights with each successive deployment and as they gain experience.
   In some cases, patrols must rely on other means to engage the populace without the aid of a terp. It is in these terp-free patrols where unconscious hyperawareness moves up in the order of importance.
   Challenges in Iraq are many. Much of the public discourse lately has centered on the negative effects of repetitive combat tours by our Soldiers. However, most have ignored the hidden benefit to the nation that battle-hardened Soldiers bring to the American arsenal. Combat experience is good.
   Our Soldiers are gaining the upper hand in Iraq’s ungoverned tribal lands due, in part, to their ability to harness an instinctive, often unconscious, and seasoned ability to read their operational environment. Life-saving snap decisions, founded on the recognition of visual cues can transcend the cross-cultural challenges inherent in winning the counter-insurgency fight in Iraq.
   In some cases, terps serve as a vital bridge in enabling Soldiers to connect with the populace they are trying to influence. In the absence of this critical enabler, Soldiers must rely on trusting their instincts in the face of environmental change.
   Our sustained experience in Iraq has honed the discriminating, instinctive skill in the American Soldier.

 

Iraq Blog:  March 2007
2nd Brigade, 10th Mountain Division Commandos
Page Copyright © 2008 Kirk S. Ramsey
Last modified: September 14, 2008