Publication:Chattanooga Times Free Press
Date:Saturday, February 12, 2005
Section:Front Page; Page:1

DISPATCH Iraq

Targeting Hideouts

By Edward Lee Pitts Military Affairs

FORWARD OPERATING BASE BERNSTEIN, Iraq — Minutes after the "fire" command came over the radio, the two mortar crews blasted a volley of four rounds high into the sky.

The 35-pound shells with a 75-meter kill radius were meant as lethal reminders to area insurgents that the 278 th Regimental Combat Team still is here keeping tabs on anti-Iraqi forces.

It is a message the regiment’s 2 nd Squadron delivers once or twice a week by targeting suspected hideouts in the surrounding baronlandscape where insurgents may be crafting their latest homemade bombs.

"We wanted to make the anti-Iraqi forces feel like they couldn’t breathe without seeing one of us around," said Capt. Chris Vineyard, 34, of Rutledge, Tenn., commander of the squadron’s E Troop.

Soldiers said the nearly two dozen-round mortar attack this week, is an example of the squadron’s aggressive posture since arriving here two months ago.

The 2 nd Squadron has kept a heavy presence in its sector’s towns and kept the insurgents off balance before the enemy could adapt to the 278 th’s tactics, soldiers said.

Squadron commander Lt. Col. Frank McCauley said his unit now holds the regiment’s record for most missions conducted in a single day at 51.

TWO RAIDS

In January the unit conducted two squadronwide raids to clean the streets of insurgents before the Jan. 30 elections.

The first raid simultaneously hit seven targets in locations around four cities. The second raid netted 17 suspected insurgents, mostly Saddam Hussein loyalists from the former dictator’s Baath Party now involved in weapons smuggling, according to Lt. Col. Miles Smith.

"It was all hands on deck," said Lt. Col. Smith, the squadron’s executive officer from Oak Ridge, Tenn. "Anybody who wasn’t on the raids was on the perimeter."

He said the squadron came with such overwhelming force not a single shot had to be fired in either raid.

The squadron has rounded up 46 detainees, the most of any squadron in the regiment, Lt. Col. Smith said. Included in that list is the "Rocket Man," so named because he averaged about two rocket attacks a month on Bernstein last year until the 2 nd Squadron put him out of business in January, according to Lt. Col. Smith. The 2 nd Squadron also captured an insurgent present at the videotaped beheading of a British hostage last year, he said.

Taking the fight to the insurgents has paid off by cementing relationships between the 278 th soldiers and locals who yearn for peace, according to 2 nd Squadron officers.

"Because we dealt with the anti-Iraqi forces pretty decisively, they (the Iraqi people) respect us for it," said Lt. Col. McCauley, of Kingsport, Tenn.

Area insurgents averaged five attacks on U.S. coalition forces a week through November, but they now are hitting coalition forces less than once a week, Lt. Col. Smith said.

Bernstein is also a safer place, Lt. Col. Smith said. The month before the 2 nd Squadron arrived here, the base suffered three attacks. But the attacks have stopped since 2 nd Squadron took over the base in late December, he said.

Lt. Col. Smith said the insurgents either are dead, in jail or in hiding. Those still in the fight are resorting to indirect attacks such as roadside bombs.

In January the squadron discovered 12 undetonated improvised explosive devices. Nine others went off, mostly in the week before the election, he said. So far this month two homemade bombs have exploded, and soldiers found two before they detonated.

Lt. Col. Smith said the bombs are "a poor man’s way of fighting the war."

He said they require less planning, manpower and risk than more direct ambushes or firefights.

WILD WEST The 2 nd Squadron’s sector includes 15 cities of 5,000 or more people as well as many villages with fewer than 1,000 Iraqis.

Soldiers said the towns largely are calm and friendly toward the Americans except one — Sulayman Bak, a city of about 30,000 that is exclusively Sunni Arab, the minority Muslim sect that includes Mr. Hussein.

There, where nearly everyone belongs to Mr. Hussein’s Baath Party, even the children throw rocks at the 278 th soldiers. Last Sunday insurgents fired a rocketpropelled grenade at the city’s police station, but no one was injured.

Spc. Glenn Barnett, 29, of Athens, Tenn., said the squadron members introduced themselves to the town by capturing a former major general in Mr. Hussein’s army who was a planner of the insurgency and helped finance it.

"We were the ones who cuffed him and stuffed him," said Spc. Barnett of the squadron’s H Company. He said that action made a lot of Sulayman Bak residents angry.

Sgt. Mike Lingo, 37, of Chattanooga, said the area reminds him of the wild, wild West, and that is why the squadron must stay on the offensive.

"It’s a throwback to early Western days. All you need are the swinging doors," said Sgt. Lingo, also with H Company. "Sometimes we see horses and mules, and the people get a little rowdy and carried away firing in the air."

A desire to keep the pressure on the insurgents is why Lt. Jared Britz’s scout platoon patrolled on foot Thursday night through the unpaved streets of Pir Ahmed. After recently finding several roadside bombs in the area, officers decided on a show of force to let the bomb makers know the regiment is not afraid, according to Sgt. 1 st Class Ronnie Houston, of Greeneville, Tenn.

The 40 soldiers wearing nightvision goggles paraded in two single-file lines on both sides of the muddy roads through a town lighted only by an occasional house light. The only sounds were a chorus of barking dogs and the steady hum of an unmanned reconnaissance plane, the size of a remote control toy, that broadcast an infrared image of the patrol. As the soldiers sloshed through mud mixed with waste, a few Iraqi men stood inside their front doors and watched.

The night foot patrol sent a message more silent than the mortar rounds fired earlier in the day. But Lt. Britz said it would be just as effective.

"To the good people we are saying, ‘We’re here to protect you,’" said Lt. Britz, of Harrisonville, Mo. "And to the bad people it says, ‘We are watching.’"

E-mail Lee Pitts at lpitts@timesfreepress.com

U.S. Army Photo by Staff Sgt. Russell Lee Klika - Soldiers with a scout platoon that is part of the 278 th Regimental Combat Team’s 2 nd Squadron looking for smuggling routes from Iran drive through an unnamed village in the Jabal Hamrin mountain range.

U.S. Army Photo by Staff Sgt. Russell Lee Klika - Sgt. 1st Class Ronnie Houston, of Greeneville, Tenn., with the 278th Regimental Combat Team, patrols a village in Iraq as a herd of sheep passes.

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