First Sgt. Zeneido Gonzalez of F Troop, 2nd Squadron, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment watches as a tank and Apache helicopter take part in destroying a house used as a trigger-point for an improvised bomb attack that killed three of the troop’s soldiers on March 10. (Michael Gisick / S&S)
First Sgt. Zeneido Gonzalez of F Troop, 2nd Squadron, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment watches as a tank and Apache helicopter take part in destroying a house used as a trigger-point for an improvised bomb attack that killed three of the troop’s soldiers on March 10. (Michael Gisick / S&S)
A tank from F Troop, 2nd Squadron, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, is seen moments after firing its main gun at a house used as a trigger point for an IED attack that killed three people and injured another. (Michael Gisick / S&S)
BALAD RUZ, Iraq — F Troop had some unfinished business involving a building in the desert.
The building wasn’t much to look at — one soldier compared it to a “porta-john looking thing,” if they made porta-johns out of concrete.
It was plopped down in the middle of a nowhere that could have been a set from the planet Tatooine.
But from the building stretched command wires that set off a terrible scene on March 10 — the commander’s Humvee blown upside down and burning, the driver, who was the only one to survive, running away on fire.
So take that, building: a tank round in the side. Take another. Have a third.
“Anytime you get to use your vehicle for what it’s made for, it’s a good feeling,” said Sgt. James Allen, 22, of Georgetown, Mass., a crewmember on one of the Bradley fighting vehicles that unloaded its 30-mm cannon on the building for good measure.
Clearly, the simple satisfaction of firing a big gun was only half the point. The first tank to fire had been the one commanded by Capt. Torre Mallard. Mallard was killed, along with his gunner, driver and interpreter, as they drove in their Humvee near that building on March 10.
“It was a little bit of a psychological operation,” 1st Sgt. Zeneido Gonzalez said on Saturday.
After destroying the building — a pair of Apache helicopters had swooped in for the coup de grâce — the tanks and Bradleys pushed forward and soldiers emerged with body-bags, pretending to remove corpses from the rubble.
“We want to let the enemy know we’re out here, still looking,” Gonzalez said.
The troop, part of the Ft. Hood, Texas-based 2nd Squadron, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, has detained four people in recent days but is still searching for the brothers believed to have been behind the IED attack.
But now, at least, no one can use that building again, with its long views over the desert tracks. On their way out, two of the tanks drove over the rubble a few times.
“Now its just a pile of rocks,” said Corp. Keith Reimer, 22, of Oklahoma City.
