Iraq War Unit: 'They Are A Different Breed'

Team Infidel

Forum Spin Doctor
Boston Globe
April 1, 2007
Pg. 1

Two Mass. natives among 5 recipients of the Bronze Star
By Michael Levenson, Globe Staff
Their mission was to track insurgents. And so they did. They hid in wells, bombed-out houses, and bushes by the side of roads plagued by improvised explosive devices. And they waited for 48, sometimes up to 72 hours.
Many times, the soldiers of the 173 d Infantry Detachment of the Rhode Island National Guard waited in vain. Sometimes their patience paid off. One day, when a carload of gunmen opened fire on two Iraqi police officers, the soldiers fired back, driving away the assailants. Once, as they were patrolling on foot, they met a villager who led them to a buried cache of mortar rounds, the sinister building blocks of improvised explosive devices. After each mission, they returned safely to their base.
Now, 17 months after the soldiers returned from Iraq, five of their leaders were awarded the Bronze Star for meritorious service.
The honorees include two Massachusetts natives, Staff Sergeant David Raymond of Wrentham and Sergeant Robert Carrigg of Dracut.
The 173 d is an elite reconnaissance unit of 56 soldiers from seven states who undergo specialized training. They move quickly and stealthily, and operate on their own in hostile territory for long periods; they can parachute out of airplanes, patch their own wounds, and fire their rifles with the accuracy of snipers. In Iraq, they were the eyes and ears of the 42 d Infantry Division, relaying to commanders whatever they saw, whether they were hiding in the reeds along the banks of the Tigris River or collecting intelligence from villagers who had not seen Americans since the US-led coalition invaded in 2003.
"They are a different breed, a cut above," said Captain Michael Manning , a 32-year-old Hingham native who led the unit during its tour from March to October 2005. "Across the Army, you're going to find great soldiers, but in the 173 d, these guys were just so good that there was nothing that I asked of them that they were unable to accomplish."
Raymond, 29, credited his fellow soldiers, who included woodworkers, police officers, firefighters, and teachers, many of whom had previously served in the active duty military.
"I had a great team, and they made my job really easy," said Raymond, a squad leader in the unit. "Everyone did their job and did it to the best of their ability. And we all made it back in one piece, so that's good."
The unit spent much of its time scouting in the desert villages and dusty roads near Samarra, a hotbed of the Sunni insurgency north of Baghdad. The soldiers typically traveled in squads of six, sometimes patrolling just outside the gates of their base and other times driving to villages 30 miles from the nearest coalition forces.
"A lot of it is really pretty boring, and of course that can all change really fast," Raymond said.
Carrigg, 33, recalled driving on a road near Bayji, north of Baghdad, when he saw two men in a white Toyota pickup that matched the description of a vehicle that had been used by insurgents.
He ordered his squad to stop the men and search the truck. Inside, Carrigg found a list of vehicles that had been used as car bombs and instruction manuals for building improvised explosive devices, he said. He had the men arrested.
Raymond recalled hiding his Humvee in a giant well near Samarra and watching a roadway known to the Americans as a supply route for insurgents. Suddenly, the driver of a car traveling in front of an Iraqi police car slammed on the brakes, and gunmen inside the car opened fire on the police, Raymond said. As bullets whizzed over Raymond's head, his soldiers, who were hiding in the ruins of a house, fired on the gunmen, chasing them off.
"What David and his people did was to engage and interdict these insurgents and save the lives of these Iraqi police officers, and that's pretty significant," Manning said.
Though they traveled with an interpreter, the soldiers said it was often hard to gain the confidence of Iraqis, whom they relied on for tips. Carrigg said he would try to make conversation by asking villagers about their crops and livestock.
"They'd lean more to the insurgency, because they're from the same type of people," Carrigg said. "And then you start talking to them and they realize everything they've been told about Americans isn't true, and they'd come more to our side."
Sometimes the Iraqis seemed eager to help them. One man opened the trunk of his car and offered Raymond a fish to eat, he said. Another time, a shepherd near Samarra pointed him toward a cache of explosives. In another such encounter, a man with a wounded leg guided him to a cache of mortar rounds, which had been buried in the ground. To thank the man, the medics of the 173 d patched up his leg, Raymond said.
Because the insurgents look so much like peaceful Iraqis, the soldiers said, they tried to track strange behavior to identify danger. When they saw a car driving through the grass on the side of a road near Samarra, Carrigg said, they stopped it. The driver, it turned out, had been retrieving a cache of 15 antiaircraft artillery rounds, which he had buried in the ground, Carrigg said.
Besides Raymond and Carrigg, the recipients of the Bronze Star included Staff Sergeants Thomas O'Hare and Justin Hunt of New York and John Shimkus of Rhode Island. The soldiers received the honors last night at the Quonset 'O' Club in North Kingstown, R.I.
"You're always in awe when you're surrounded by guys who are as good as these," Manning said. "But we expected greatness and that's what we got."
 
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