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Reporter’s notebook: Patrolling Adhamiyah

The day started out calmly enough. But it wouldn’t stay that way long.

At 6 a.m. Thursday, June 21, Military Times photographer Rick Kozak and I went out on patrol in Adhamiyah, Iraq, a town near Baghdad, with 2nd Platoon, C Company, 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry. Four Bradley Fighting Vehicles rolled into town, and the soldiers all tumbled out of the back to go door-to-door to make their presence known.

Ostensibly, the guys were tasked with reassuring local Iraqis that they were there to help, as well as to talk about the Sunni-on-Sunni violence that was making the neighborhood unsafe for families.

But the soldiers also knew their timing was bad; nobody wants soldiers at their door at 6:30 in the morning. Iraqis wandered into their living rooms in their night clothes rubbing their eyes. A small child atop a mound of blankets on the floor cried at the interruption of his sleep. The civilians looked decidedly annoyed, but they knew the drill.

The soldiers, most of them in their early 20s, did the best they could to reassure the Iraqis as they joked, checked out a toy M16 that shot darts, carried in cases of water and looked for possible explosive devices. A civil affairs soldier working with an Iraqi interpreter had chem lites attached with large rubber bands to the butt of his rifle. He cracked one and handed it to a girl dressed all in pink who looked to be about 7-years old. She smiled shyly and turned it side to side to watch the fluorescent liquid flow.

The goal is to build trust, and in some ways, it appears to be working. When Charlie Company first started going on patrol in the east Baghdad neighborhood a year ago, they found about 350 dead civilians a month. Now they find about 30 per month. They used to live at a bigger base — Forward Operating Base Taji — but now live in the neighborhood in a building that also houses Iraqi Army soldiers at Forward Operating Base Apache.

But as the numbers of deaths go down — and, according to battalion officials, enemy weapon technology decreases as a result of a decline in arms coming in from Iran — the insurgents aim more attacks at U.S. troops. So the soldiers don’t see the area as safer. Just how unsafe it is for American forces would soon become clear.

Second platoon drove back to FOB Apache to recover before the next patrol going out at about 10 a.m. Rick and I were following a medic, Pfc. Timothy Ray, for a story about the soldiers who have to work on their buddies when they get hurt.

We had also gone out with him the day before — Wednesday — on a miserable patrol. It was a good 111 degrees outside; seven people sat shoulder-to-shoulder outfitted in body armor and Kevlar helmets in a Bradley, a vehicle that has no air conditioning. It was like sitting in a tin can that had been left on a sunny beach, and sweat soaked everyone’s pants and shirts. During that patrol, the soldiers found one IED and intentionally detonated it.

Ray, known to his team as “Outlaw Stitches,” grinned constantly through his sweat — a sideways smile that popped a dimple in one cheek.

Rick and I had originally requested another day with these guys, but we decided to head up to Old Mod — a nearby forward operating base — Thursday afternoon to talk with a physician’s assistant known throughout the area as being the best. Soldiers see him as almost godlike because, the story goes, if he works on you, you’re going to live. So rather than go on the 10 a.m. patrol as we had planned, we hung back to talk with the other medics so we could leave for Old Mod between noon and 2 p.m.

About an hour after the patrol left, the call came in: A Bradley had rolled over an IED, which was powerful enough to flip the vehicle upside-down and leave a hole in the ground large enough for a Humvee to fit inside. The guys in the Bradley were trapped as it caught fire, and the gunner was also caught beneath. He tried to get out, but couldn’t.

At Apache, everyone remained hopeful on the outside. But an hour passed and the soldiers were still trapped inside.

“It shouldn’t be taking this long for them to get them back,” a soldier said.

The whole platoon hadn’t gone out, and the guys who had stayed behind desperately needed news. Some soldiers hovered around a Humvee radio.

Spc. Gerry Denardi, who carried a guitar everywhere and grinned always as he sweetly sang the raunchy songs he made up about his co-workers, stalked past the aid station and threw a magazine at a wall. Others rushed madly to set up cots and shade. They had to do something.

Ray said he jumped out of his Bradley — which was right behind the one that had flipped — but the Iraqis immediately opened up with small-arms fire. Ray still tried to get to the other Bradley, but the flames were too high and hot for him to get near.

A man dressed in shorts and a T-shirt walked up to me. I thought he was a soldier. He said, “I hate this country. Why can’t they understand that we’re trying to help?” I wondered about his accent and asked where he was originally from: Iraq.

He said he had spent three years with the soldiers as an interpreter.

“They’re like my brothers,” he said.

As Black Hawk helicopters hovered nearby, we all heard another explosion. A second IED had hit a vehicle, shearing off a soldier’s legs, though he would live. Soldiers began driving in with their buddies who hadn’t made it through the attack, and Charlie Company was sent inside the building until they were done. Ray walked past, his face a map of what had just happened. Within seconds, he was helping at the aid station. An Iraqi girl had burns over 60 percent of her body. Two Iraqi interpreters had gunshot wounds.

Black Hawks sent out flares as they continued to take small-arms fire. F-16s flew in fast for fire support.

Sgt. Erik Osterman had also been ordered inside, but he never goes. He insists on organizing the teams that clean out the vehicles — or he does it by himself.

“I can handle it,” he said, and then checked himself. “Well, I can’t. But I have to do this.”

It seemed as if he checked in with everyone, handing out water — including to Rick and me — and watching for stress signals. He sprinkled water on the roadway to try to keep the dust down.

“Are you OK?” he asked, and I was, until he made me think about it. My eyes filled, and then I went back to work. I needed to make it through the day, and Osterman didn’t need to deal with a weepy reporter — though he was willing.

We had been with these guys for only 24 hours, but even in this pit of a place, we saw that they had made a home. In some rooms, soldiers lined up their cots head-to-toe to sleep. They had port-a-johns in 111-degree heat. Every day, they went out on at least four patrols, and they had already lost about half a dozen people.

But, a soldier gave haircuts every day at 2 p.m., and completed the job with typical barbershop banter. The sergeant major brought out Girl Scout cookies and stacked boxes on all the tables in the mess hall. Denardi organized a karaoke night, and we could hear warbling even at 3 a.m. And medics and squad leaders made sure everyone had someone to talk to when they needed it, which, in this unit, was often.

Not only had they made a home for themselves, they tried to make us feel at home, too.

When the call came in about the Bradley, I thought we’d lost Ray. In the small amount of time we’d spent with him, he’d earned his way to the top echelon of people I admire. And he’s the medic — they needed him.

Rick learned that a soldier with whom he had spent some time, taking photos of the soldier’s cool tattoo, hadn’t made it.

Twenty-four hours in, we mourned men we’d met only briefly. But Charlie Company had been living together at Adhamiyah for a year. It almost felt as if I didn’t have a right to cry because I couldn’t relate to losing a brother.

In their grief and anger over the loss of their friends, the soldiers didn’t want us around to witness their pain. An aide-station medic asked us to go inside, saying the soldiers were on edge and didn’t want us taking pictures or writing about what would happen next.

At a moment like that, you don’t talk about freedom of the press or the importance of recording history or that our stories could help people understand what they face every day and why they are courageous. And as reporters and photographers, we can’t say, “This is what we do. We do this often, and we know to stay out of your way and to be unobtrusive. We’ve done this before.” It doesn’t matter how many tragedies we’ve covered well and thoughtfully, with an eye toward the feelings and well-being of those we’re following.

This was their tragedy, and on this day, anything we’ve done before didn’t matter.

We stood far back. As a human, I would have gladly went inside and left them alone. As journalists, this day showed why soldiers come back home with mental health issues and why there should be no stigma attached to seeking help for those issues. This day showed the courage and skills of 20-year-old line medics who perform tasks most civilian doctors haven’t done on their worst days, as well as soldiers who jumped in vehicles to go help their buddies even as they were attacked. This day showed that the enemy figured out a bomb under a Bradley is effective.

And this day showed that there is much work to be done in building trust in Adhamiyah. A soldier told us the bomb went off two meters from an Iraqi Army checkpoint, yet no one had noticed anyone digging a large hole in the road to bury it.

We heard another explosion. An RPG instantly killed an MP from the 630th MP Company. A second was injured and brought back to the FOB. The MPs had been coming by chance and immediately joined in to help.

Charlie Company came running back outside when they heard more injured were coming in. Several lined up against a wall, heads in hands. Others stood to the side for a solitary cigarette.

Some talked to us, and they let us in closer to work. Two apologized for trying to get rid of us earlier, and others added details because they wanted to make sure we had the story right. Others glared and still wanted us gone.

And another soldier said, “Please write about this and let them know what we’re dealing with.”

A medic from the aid station handed me a bottle of water and took me inside the aid station, and I realized I felt cold and had stayed out in the sun too long. He put me in a room by myself, and I wrote a little about what we had seen. As I wrote, the medics worked on the company chaplain, who was left bruised when shrapnel hit his leg but did not penetrate. They filled out casualty paperwork.

Finally, everyone was back inside the forward operating base. Charlie Company had lost five soldiers. The MPs had lost one. Several were injured.

Back inside the main building, a platoon sergeant who laughingly told everyone, “I’m just the driver,” took me aside. Sgt. 1st Class Tim Ybay quietly takes care of his soldiers with jokes and a willingness to listen. Thursday, his soldiers surrounded him to offer the same. He had been in the second Bradley, and he had lost his boys.

“Please say good things about these guys,” he said, working to remain composed. “They’re better than anyone.”