Photo By Staff Sgt. Michael Pryor | Sgt. Patrick Donlan (left), of Canaioharie, N.Y., a team leader with B Company, 2nd...... read more read more
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By Sgt. Mike Pryor
2nd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division Public Affairs
BAGHDAD – The sky has turned purple in the twilight, a gentle breeze is blowing, and Sgt. Adam Farmer has come outside to play his guitar. He sits on a plastic patio chair, a ball cap pulled low over his eyes, strumming a Dave Matthews song.
The music is so lulling, the warm breeze so pleasant, it would be easy to imagine he was someplace else. Maybe back in his hometown of Muskogee, Okla., playing songs on the front porch.
Then three loud explosions rip through the evening calm. Farmer pauses, mentally calculates the distance of the blasts, and goes back to playing his guitar.
The explosions are a reminder: this isn't anywhere else. This is east Baghdad, les than a half mile from Sadr City, the heart of the Shi'ite militia army. And paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division are right in the middle of it.
Coalition Outpost Ford, located in the Al Beida neighborhood of Baghdad's Adhamiyah District, has been home to a company of paratroopers from 2nd Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team since late February.
The new Baghdad security plan, dubbed Fardh Al-Qanoon in Arabic – meaning "enforcing the law," has put thousands more U.S. Soldiers on the ground in areas throughout the city, but few are as far forward as the paratroopers at COP Ford.
"Seeing as how we're surrounded on all sides, I'd say we're about as forward as we can get," said 1st Lt. Paul Benfield, of Old Town, Fla.
Our Own Little Castle
The sun was up and it was starting to bake. Sgt. Ilya Kopach, of Brooklyn, N.Y., was manning a .50-caliber machine gun on one of COP Ford's rooftop guard positions. Beyond Kopach's bunker, the maze-like streets of Al Beida stretched out into the horizon. Not 25 yards away, a woman was on her roof hanging laundry. Twelve-foot-high blast walls were all that separated her house from the COP.
"This is like our own little castle," Kopach said.
Kopach's analogy is one of the more common ones that come up when people try to describe the experience of a coalition outpost. The idea, according to counterinsurgency theory, is to live among the people in order to pacify them.
COP Ford's Commander, Capt. Dennis Marshall, of Hinckley, Ohio, was a history major in school. He can site precursors to the COP from throughout the ages.
"This is nothing new. Hadrian did it. The U.S. did it all throughout the west," Marshall said.
Marshall, who spent 12 years as an enlisted Soldier before receiving his commission, is as comfortable telling off-color anecdotes as he is dropping references to seventh century Roman emperors. He has an easy rapport with his Soldiers, who he speaks to with a mixture of locker-room vulgarity and big-brotherly affection. A couple times a day, he sneaks up on his radioman and shouts into his ear, startling the young man.
Marshall's leadership style seems a perfect fit for COP Ford, which lacks the rigid formality of other larger base camps. The circumstances don't permit it. There are no showers, no hot chow and no laundry, but there are no salutes and no parade-ground politesse, either. Weapons are always locked and loaded. It is a place where a grunt can feel at home.
"Out here, we can really focus on what we're supposed to do," said Kopach.
Out at the COP, only the essentials are important, said Staff Sgt. Jason Cabrera, a scout-sniper from Orlando, Fla. What matters is how clean your weapon is, not how clean your uniform is. It's a philosophy the grungy, battle-hardened troops at COP Ford have embraced whole-heartedly.
The COP strategy has risks. COP Ford's isolation makes it more vulnerable to attack than other bases. But Marshall said he is confident his troops can take whatever the enemy throws at them.
"I sleep very good at night, because I know there's a paratrooper up on the roof who can hit anything he aims at," he said.
They Feel Safer With Us Here
The community of Al Beida doesn't just stop at COP Ford's walls, it comes right over them. American music the paratroopers play inside is often drowned out by the call to prayer emanating from a nearby mosque.
Every day brings hundreds of interactions between the U.S. forces and the local community; from brief hellos to two-hour long lunches. And each one is important to the paratroopers' mission.
"You've got to have the people by your side," said Spc. David Higuera, of Phoenix.
Living in such close proximity has allowed the paratroopers to establish relationships and build trust. They know the people in the area. They know the old man who puts his chair out against the wall of the local girl's school and sits there all day. They know the shop owner who went to medical school. They know the woman who keeps a picture of the Virgin Mary on her living room wall, even though she's a Muslim.
That knowledge, they hope, will eventually help them defeat the enemy.
"If you say, 'Hey, let's go patrol this area,' no one is going to tell you anything that day.
It's when you've patrolled it every day for three weeks that you start to get information," said Benfield.
It is a challenge for the paratroopers, who are trained to seize airfields, not police neighborhoods.
One afternoon, Benfield's platoon was sent to the house of a young married couple who were complaining about threats from their neighbors. The grass in the yard was trimmed and green. There was a swing set and a slide for the couple's little children. Benfield talked to the couple at their kitchen table, next to a half-eaten plate of cucumbers. The suburban normalcy of it all seemed strange. Benfield promised them he would look into the problem.
The paratroopers say they are starting to see the results of the strategy.
"People tell us, 'I let my kids play out in the street now.' They feel safer with us here," said Spc. Christian Tobler, of Sachse, Texas.
Tit for Tat
Across Baghdad, U.S. Soldiers have been tasked with enforcing the law and improving local security. In some cases, that means going after Sunni rejectionists or foreign Jihadists. In Al Beida, it means cracking down on militia groups, who control the area like mob bosses. They even have mafia-like names: "Mustafa the Fat," "Adel the Barber" and "Kahtan the Butcher."
"They're just thugs, basically," said 1st Lt. Larry Graham, of Springfield, Mo., the company's fire support officer. "But they start small and they get involved in bigger things."
Graham said the militias have a hand in criminal activity ranging from dealing black market gasoline to importing sophisticated bombs from Iran. Al Beida's still-fledgling police force means the paratroopers are the only security force in the area that can effectively oppose the militias.
"Our message is, we don't care if you're Sunni or Shia or Kurd, if you violate the law, there's a penalty for that," Graham said.
At first, people in the community were afraid to come forward with information about the militia's criminal activities, but that has started to change, said Graham. The confidential tip line card the paratroopers hand out on patrols has been a big part of that. Sgt. Fred Kuebrich. Kuebrich, an intelligence specialist from Hauppauge, N.Y., is the one who answers the calls that come in. His cell phone rings constantly.
One afternoon, he got a call from a particularly frantic informant. Kuebrich passed the phone to his Moroccan interpreter, Jamila. Jamila was wearing lipstick and eye shadow along with her body armor. Jewelry came spilling out of her uniform as she leaned over to talk. The tipper told her an attack was being planned on the COP.
"Three cars, seven guys," Jamila scribbled in a notepad.
"What time?" bellowed Marshall, who was hovering behind her.
"That's what I'm trying to find out," she snapped back at him.
That attack never materialized, but others have. The COP has received mortar, rocket and small arms fire. One day a man pushed a fruit cart up to the gate with a rocket hidden inside it and fired it at the guard bunker.
In a way, the attacks mean the paratroopers are achieving success. If they weren't a threat to the militia's dominance in the area, there would be no reason to attack them.
"It's tit for tat," said Benfield. "The more we do that's good, the more they're going to respond."
On the Offensive
Despite the attacks, there is no siege mentality at COP Ford. In the paratroopers' way of thinking, a good offense is the best defense.
"We could sit here and wait for them to attack us, or we could go out and take them off the streets," said Spc. Zachry King, of Jacksonville, Fla. "What do you think we're going to do?"
Using the tips they get from people in the neighborhood and information they pick up during their day patrols, the paratroopers spend their nights conducting hard-hitting operations against criminals in Al Beida.
An operation the paratroopers mounted April 26 was a typical example. The plan was to conduct a quick succession of raids against militia leaders in six different houses. All the targets had previously fought against coalition forces in Sadr City.
The mission began at two in the morning. Marshall sent one mounted platoon, led by 1st Lt. Derrick Syed, from Jersey City, N.J., to hit the farthest of the first three targets. He accompanied Benfield's platoon on foot to hit the other two. The raids were supposed to go off simultaneously.
The dismounted element left first. The paratroopers walked out of the gates, moving silently through the ghostly streets until they arrived at the objective. The targets lived only houses apart, on opposite sides of the road. Benfield split the platoon in two. The team led by platoon sergeant Sgt. 1st Class Thomas Applegate took the house on the left. They used bolt cutters to breach the first gate. Inside the courtyard, they found a second, sturdier door.
"Shotgun breach." The words were passed back in a whisper.
Seconds later, the shotgun blew a hole around the door, and the paratroopers swarmed inside. Minutes later the house was secure. They put the suspects they detained in the living room and began searching for evidence.
Just across the street, Benfield had led his team into the other target house and took two other suspects into custody.
As the suspects were being taken out and loaded into humvees, there was a huge explosion, followed by gunfire.
"Get the detainees back inside!" shouted Marshall.
The paratroopers pushed them back into the kitchen. Marshall yanked his radio operator into the garden, trying to get a situation report from his other platoon. No one knew where the fire was coming from. Syed's platoon was only a few blocks away.
"Delta-Two-Six, are you engaged?" Marshall asked him over the radio.
"I don't know, but there are a lot of bullets flying around," Syed replied.
Sgt. William Kok, of Sacramento, Calif., sprinted upstairs to set up a fighting position for his team on the roof.
"Hell yeah!" he exclaimed, taking the steps two at a time. He was ready for a fight.
Outside, Sgt. Joshua Dover, of Phoenix, took cover behind a car parked on the side of the road. The gunfire seemed to be rolling towards him.
"Sounds like it's coming this way," he said, sighting his M-4 down the street.
Then, just as quickly as it began, it was over. The explosions turned out to be coming from a coordinated ambush on an Iraqi Army unit traveling parallel to the two U.S. platoons. The Iraqi troops had fought through it and continued moving.
Calm returned. Non-commissioned officers went around checking their personnel, coming out of the darkness to put a hand on their shoulder.
"You up?" they asked.
As soon as everyone was accounted for, the platoon picked up and moved out. They still had two houses to hit before the night was over.
By daybreak, it was all finished. The final tally of the raids was nine detainees, an assortment of weapons and several huge trash bags full of hard drives, computer discs, and other evidence. Back at Ford, the paratroopers worked until mid-morning processing it all.
Finally, it was done, and the weary paratroopers dragged themselves off to bed. The COP was quiet.
Out on the patio, a single person was stirring. It was Farmer, quietly plucking his guitar strings, dreaming of Muskogee.
| Date Taken: | 05.30.2007 |
| Date Posted: | 05.30.2007 09:48 |
| Story ID: | 10569 |
| Location: | BAGHDAD, IQ |
| Web Views: | 1,645 |
| Downloads: | 1,294 |
This work, East Baghdad Coalition Outpost home to paratroopers, by SSG Michael Pryor, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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