As Comrades Search, Fatal Bomb Wreaks Havoc

Team Infidel

Forum Spin Doctor
New York Times
May 23, 2007
Pg. 1
By Damien Cave
MAHMUDIYA, Iraq, May 22 — The ground exploded under an ashen sky at dawn. Dust, dirt, blood and military equipment filled the air, clearing after several seconds to reveal a frenzied scene of horror.
Where Sgt. Justin D. Wisniewski, 22, had just been standing there was now a crater five feet wide and three feet deep. His body lay nearby. The wounded were scattered around him.
The soldiers swore.
“It was Ski,” one said, using the sergeant’s nickname.
Sgt. Joshua Delgado, 23, the unit’s medic, rushed in and went to work on the most seriously wounded soldier, who lay with shrapnel wounds to the face, arm and side. Two other Americans and an Iraqi were also hurt.
One of the wounded, Staff Sgt. Robert Simonovich, 31, knelt off to the right. He had taken his body armor off and, with just a T-shirt on, it was clear he had not walked far enough yet to sweat. His hands rested on his knees, his head tilted down. Eyes closed, he said he couldn’t see.
“It’s not one of our guys, is it?” he said. No one answered.
Capt. Blake Keil, 31, who commanded the group of 11 Americans working with about 50 Iraqis, called for a medevac helicopter.
The bomb was the third planted away from a road that the soldiers had discovered since May 12, when they began searching for three soldiers from their unit who had been captured after an ambush that left four Americans and an Iraqi soldier dead.
After the attack on Saturday, the reality of the threat set in: the fields they had been crossing on foot for months might now be as dangerous as the roads they had learned to avoid. What they had just witnessed — a homemade land mine, or what the military calls a dismounted improvised explosive device — could be anywhere.
Some of the soldiers began to move more slowly. Seeking cover, they traced one another’s footsteps to an abandoned house. Sergeant Simonovich continued to kneel alone.
“I’m worried about my guy out front, Sergeant Wisniewski,” he said. His Ohio accent was thick enough to sound southern. Blood had splattered his face, which was bruised but intact. “I have a question,” he said, pointing to the left side of his head. “Is my ear still there?”
The army has a creed — no soldier left behind. The soldiers of Second Platoon, A Battery, Task Force 2-15, Second Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, lost one of their own on Saturday in an effort to follow that creed. Sergeant Wisniewski, 22, died at the start of a 10-mile trek through farms and over canals with the goal of finding the three missing Americans.
Both that ambush and the bomb that exploded beneath Sergeant Wisniewski reflected the changing dynamic the soldiers face in an area with unique terrain and a fresh set of American tactics intended to secure it.
Here, south of Baghdad, in the area known as the “triangle of death,” Iraq’s desert gives way to lush green vegetation. Sunni tribes are dominant, and irrigation canals are perhaps the area’s defining characteristic.
Since 2003, insurgents have focused on hitting military vehicles to undermine the American effort in Iraq. Most of those devices were planted along the major roads that could handle the weight of American vehicles. The craters appear everywhere, and American troops have named many of them, making them landmarks.
Because of that risk and the stepped-up counterinsurgency effort, troops have increasingly moved out of forward operating bases to smaller outposts where they can maneuver on foot.
But the shift to foot patrols has brought a progressively greater toll as insurgents have adjusted to the new tactics and begun placing bombs along footpaths and back roads. Since taking over the command in September, 42 soldiers from the Second Brigade, 10th Mountain Division, have been killed in hostile attacks. Of those, 14 were killed during dismounted patrols. The search has added to the risks.
“I’m not out here to win any medals,” said Capt. Michael Abercrombie, leader of a platoon from B Battery, which had the unenviable task of replacing Captain Keil’s unit. “If you see soft ground, walk around.”
The Iraqi and American soldiers moved slowly through the area, reminding one another to walk 10 feet apart so that if another explosion hit, casualties would be limited. After about 15 minutes, they came across a one-story stone house with a wide grass lawn, a cattle pen and five young men whom the Iraqi soldiers had lined up against a wall. Their names were checked against a list of insurgents wanted for questioning in relation to the May 12 attack.
None of their names appeared, but Captain Abercrombie ordered them arrested anyway, in light of the bomb attack that morning.
“I’m detaining them all,” he said. “For proximity.”
Ski, as he was known, was a sarcastic joker. A native of Standish, Mich., he was tall, blond and decisive. He was young for a platoon sergeant. A winner of the Bronze Star and a Purple Heart, he was promoted by his commanders because he had the ability to inspire. And to goad.
At one point, his friends said, he made his soldiers wear their helmets and goggles on base — where no one else does — so that they would remember to keep them on at all times while on patrol.
In return, on his 22nd birthday, his friends gave him a gift they thought he would appreciate: they threw him in a Dumpster.
Losing Ski and seeing three other friends wounded brought out a mix of uncharacteristic honesty and anger in the platoon. Immediately after the explosion, the soldiers swore and kicked whatever they could find. One said he wanted vengeance.
But “I love you, man” was far more common. Huge, strong men hugged, tears streaming down their faces. When it was not clear whether the seriously wounded soldier on the ground would make it, “I love you” was said repeatedly, blurted out as if it was something they wished they had told Sergeant Wisniewski.
When one of the wounded soldiers insisted that the mushy stuff had gone too far, there was friendly resistance. “What, I can’t love someone now?” a soldier said.
“I love you,” he said. “I can say ‘I love you’ if I want to.”
The group had been fighting together for 10 months. Covering central Mahmudiya and parts of the surrounding area, they had been attacked by rockets, gunfire, mortar shells, grenades and roadside bombs. They had always survived. Ski was their first killed in action.
“I haven’t really accepted it,” Sergeant Simonovich said, after returning to his unit with minor shrapnel wounds to his face and a burst eardrum. “I haven’t accepted it.”
His eyes were open and intact. He had been wearing his goggles when the bomb exploded.
Four hours into Saturday’s search, the soldiers received more news they did not want to accept: a sniper shot hit another member of A Battery in the head. He had been on the roof of a house that was being searched, oblivious to the threat.
Capt. Aaron Bright’s unit, a platoon of B Battery, received the news, too. It was a few hundred yards north of Captain Abercrombie’s group when the call came in. The men were disappointed, angry, frustrated.
Seconds later, the word came down that the unit up ahead did not have a medic. Captain Bright’s unit did, so the group ran several miles to the house only to find that a helicopter had already picked up the wounded soldier. His friends sat on the floor, on stairs, their faces showing they had been crying. A flak jacket with some blood on it rested next to a soldier leaning against a set of white kitchen cabinets. The body armor belonged to the soldier who was shot.
Captain Bright, 29, the battery commander, said the group would have to keep moving. “We have some more objectives we have to hit,” he said.
The search operation continued in the midday heat. Captain Abercrombie’s unit walked through farms, searched houses and struggled through a wide swath of mud that nearly claimed a few pairs of boots.
In a house close to where helicopters would later deliver bottles of water in black body bags, they rested once again. Sgt. Stephen Byers, 31, of Detroit said that Friday night was the first time he had a chance to call his wife and kids since the search started.
He said that he was too tired to say very much, but that his wife was clearly worried. He had begun to wonder himself if the search was becoming more dangerous. “The more we chase them around,” he said, “the more they know where we’re at.”
But, he said, in a war without front lines and goals that are hard to achieve, the search offered the comfort of certainty, of a clear and noble goal. “If we find them, we accomplish something specific,” Sergeant Byers said. “It’s not like trying to bring peace to the area then finding out later that you didn’t.”
Saturday’s searching turned up nothing significant. The three soldiers — Pfc. Joseph J. Anzack Jr., 20, of Torrance, Calif.; Specialist Alex R. Jimenez, 25, of Lawrence, Mass.; and Pvt. Byron W. Fouty, 19, of Waterford, Mich. — were not found.
On Sunday, the group welcomed the return of two of its wounded soldiers — Sergeant Simonovich and Pfc. Nicholas Barker, who had slight shrapnel wounds to the face. American soldiers are not allowed to drink alcohol here, so they had a barbecue. They celebrated. They talked.
And on Monday, it was back to work. The men of Second Platoon prepared their Humvees for another day of walking, another day of searching. They reviewed the route for what would be a seven-mile march that they hoped to do in three hours.
Wearing dark glasses, his uniform bloodstained from two days earlier, Sergeant Delgado, the medic, was a picture of calm. “We had our time to grieve, but after that you have to detach from your emotions and drive on,” he said. “We’re going to be here for another six months.”
 
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