Members of Company C, 3rd Battalion, 509th Parachute Infantry Regiment, walk Thursday morning toward a group of houses to do a final check after a raid at daybreak. The raid went well — there was no resistance, and they found a target from their wanted list. The raid was atypical for the soldiers because they parked so close to their targets. Usually, the soldiers walk miles before reaching their mission's destination. (Teri Weaver / S&S)
Members of Company C, 3rd Battalion, 509th Parachute Infantry Regiment, walk Thursday morning toward a group of houses to do a final check after a raid at daybreak. The raid went well — there was no resistance, and they found a target from their wanted list. The raid was atypical for the soldiers because they parked so close to their targets. Usually, the soldiers walk miles before reaching their mission's destination. (Teri Weaver / S&S)
Two members of Company C doze off after an early-morning raid Saturday that netted six detainees. (Teri Weaver / S&S)
Soldiers escort two men back to military vehicles for questioning on Thursday. Sometimes, the soldiers round up possible detainees, secure the area and wait for their trucks to move in to transport the suspects and found weaponry. Sometimes, the company makes the detainees hike back to the trucks. (Teri Weaver / S&S)
BABIL PROVINCE, Iraq — It was an unusual mission for Company C, paratroops with the 3rd Battalion of the 509th Parachute Infantry Regiment.
The goal of the early-morning raid last week was familiar — sneak up on a small collection of farmhouses and wake up men suspected of placing hidden bombs along the main north-south route from Kuwait into Baghdad. Look for weapons and ammo hidden in the nearby fields. Question any adult male, whether he’s on the wanted list or not.
But the staging before the hunt was out of the ordinary for the soldiers with the 4th Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division. For this raid, just a kilometer outside of Forward Operating Base Kalsu, the soldiers drove right up to the houses and merely walked down the driveways toward their targets.
Normally, Company C walks much, much farther, and for one simple reason: “Walking is much safer,” says Capt. Stewart Lindsay, 27, of Freeport, Pa., the company’s commander.
Since deploying to the Babil area late last fall, the company has developed a basic security plan. Roadside bombs target trucks, so they have largely gotten off the roads, left the trucks behind, and saved lives.
In months of walking through mud, jumping canals and dealing with loud, barking dogs, only two members have stepped on bombs, said 2nd Lt. Jason Franklin, 28, of Catoosa, Okla., the leader of the company’s first platoon. One soldier suffered burns and lived. A second, a lieutenant, stepped on a bomb that didn’t detonate.
The company has lost four soldiers. All were riding in trucks at the time, according to Lindsay. In one case, a truck was hit with an EFP — an explosively formed projectile — and killed three men in the single strike.
But safety isn’t the only reason these soldiers have been walking farther, building up their endurance as the heat and days get longer in Iraq. On foot, the soldiers can sneak up on their targets without rolling in loud trucks and tanks. Soldiers are also able to make contact with local residents face-to-face, rather than waving from behind a Humvee window. They also learn the terrain better, they say.
But there are challenges, Franklin says. They worry about deep irrigation canals that cut through fields. Even in 110-degree heat, fields remain soft quagmires, and it’s common to take a step and sink down to the knee. Barking dogs warn of the soldiers’ movements. The other challenge is exhaustion. On Saturday, Lindsay took the soldiers on an early-morning raid that, in reality, started at 8 p.m. the night before. Shortly after sunset on Friday, the group drove to an outpost, picked up more soldiers and vehicles, then waited a couple of hours before driving to an area about a mile from a target, about an hour before sunrise.
There was no lack of motivation to find their targets. Lindsay said they were part of an al-Qaida cell wanted in connection with the toppling of a highway overpass a few days earlier that had killed three soldiers. Members of Company C were among the first to arrive at that massive explosion, and they spent much of that night trying to recover the victims.
Before the sun rose Saturday, the soldiers hiked to the houses. They found one named target, detained six men in total. As the day lightened, the trucks drew in closer to collect the soldiers and the detainees. No shots were fired, no bombs went off. But by 9 a.m., the crew was exhausted.
“I am going to sleep like no man has ever slept,” one soldier said after he climbed into a vehicle for the ride back to base. He drifted off before the tracks started rolling.
