"I love being over here man," 'Cold Steel' making a difference

(Spc. Matt Heckman (left), of Rochester NY, on his third tour and Spc. Mike Brown, of Penn Valley, CA, on his second tour with an Iraqi Policemen before the joint sweep through the eastern desert.)

Patrol Base Woodcock-
They live inside the serpentine halls of an old factory that used to make communications equipment for the Iraqi Army. The Soldiers of Charlie 1st/327th Infantry Regiment of the 1st/101st Airborne are so used to the power going off, every 20 minutes or so, they don't flinch when the lights go dead.

Their area of operation, the city of Adwar, ten minutes south of Tikrit is famous for being the town where Saddam was pulled from his spider hole without firing a shot.

Now Charlie company of the 1st/327th, or 'Cold Steel' as they call themselves do more work to boost local Iraqi police and CLC checkpoints than shooting it out with the Ba'athists who used to control this area and lived in opulent houses along the Tigris.

On Monday night, 39 soldiers from 2nd platoon rolled out into the early morning darkness as part of a larger Iraqi Police mission to search the vast tracts of eastern desert where insurgents are reported to be hiding out.

"I love being over here man," Specialist Mark Mahurin, 21, of Fayetteville NC, said while gearing up for his 12-hour job as an MRAP turret gunner, "I mean it sucks, but I love it."

That's pretty much how the mission went. After the excitement of seeing scores of the white and blue Iraqi Police pickups and possibly 150 coalition and Iraqi forces, including other elements of 1st brigade of the 101st stationed in Tikrit, coming together, the drive into the desert and the night and early morning hours turned into a long waiting game, as the Iraqis zoomed ahead with their sources who were providing specific locations on insurgents.

It was their mission, that was the word. Probably the first mission in which Charlie company wasn't called to dismount to support the police in clearing houses. But there might have been other reasons. One, the Iraqi police chiefs tend to deviate from the set plan. Instead of performing a combined sweep of the whole area, they went to a series of houses where the source said there were insurgents.

Also, the Iraqi Police tend to be a little trigger happy out in the open, and U.S. commanders were wary of their soldiers getting clipped, said Staff Sgt. Timothy Griffin of Way Cross, GA.

"These missions are us acting as enablers and support," said Captain Michael Gacheru, 30, of Evanston, IL, Cold Steel commander, who admitted that seven suspects were detained but some were relatives of the targets. "It was a good plan, but the intelligence wasn't that good," Gacheru said.
(Capt. Gacheru modeling the correct push up for the new Iraqi force.)

That's how it goes sometimes. Two days later Capt. Gacheru and Staff Sgt. Griffin were out training a group of Iraqi Police to form a special unit that will be doing similar operations to the one two nights before. But this time the 1st/327th will train them.

The rag-tag group, a mix of veterans and extremely young looking guys in patch work soccer warm ups, didn't lack for effort. They went through the runs and chin ups albeit awkwardly and they responded to Sgt. Griffin's teams exact modeling on how to do a four-man stack to enter a room on a raid. "The hardest thing is to get them to work as a team," he said.

"They pick up real quick, but sometimes they have problems," Spc. Mahurin said, "They like to argue. But it's a good thing we're training them. Maybe it will pick up their confidence a little bit, move us closer to pulling out."

Staff Sgt. Griffin made a speech to the Iraqi group, "Clearing rooms will be your mission from now on." He warned that in the eastern desert Al Qaeda is known for detonating their suicide vests when they surrender.

More than anything Griffin emphasized how to treat detainees. Apparently on the big clearing mission two nights before, one of the Iraqi Police was caught roughing up an insurgent suspect.

"If you beat someon in Adwar and he doesn't have a weapon, you're setting a bad example to the people. You have to start winning their respect," Griffin said. "If I see it, that individual will be arrested by the Iraqi Police. You're just as wrong as the ones you were shooting at."