Thread: The cavalry rides again

http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/l...-4504706c.html

The cavalry rides again

MATT MISTEREK; The News Tribune
Last updated: June 3rd, 2005 05:22 AM

AL-JAZIRAH DESERT, Iraq – Two young cavalry leaders rode hard through the western border country, pushing their Fort Lewis troops nearly 185 miles from Tal Afar to the Euphrates River, then back again.
Their faces caked with dust stuck to a week’s worth of sweat, Capts. Keith Walters and Vince Maykovich watched the horizon unfold at 35 mph from the rear hatches of their Stryker.

Their troop of 15 vehicles rumbled over scrubland and dry lake beds, slowing now and then to clamber across the wadis – narrow desert gorges where water flows during the rainy season. The longtime friends joked about seeing a mirage in the distance. It was Safeco Field.

“Right-field seats. Second row. Garlic fries,” said Maykovich, 35, of DuPont.

Walters agreed. Five days into a six-day mission across parched wasteland, and what he thirsted for were Mariners box scores.

A long-distance trek across the desert is the kind of mission they’ve been doing since the earliest days of the U.S. cavalry – defend the outlands and probe the frontier. A century and a half ago they did it across the American West; today it’s Iraq.

“I think this is what they had in mind when they started us up,” said Walters, 30, from Browns Point, who will soon relinquish command of Blackjack Troop of the 2nd Squadron, 14th Cavalry Regiment to his friend Maykovich.

“A cav without boundaries – the wide-open spaces,” said

Capt. Kevin Beagle, from Headquarters Troop. “It’s nice to come out here and do our own thing where nobody messes with us.”

The scouts convoyed south May 26 to make a belated showing in a part of Iraq where smugglers have long trafficked in sheep, cigarettes and fuel. Now guns, explosives and foreign fighters move across the porous Iraq-Syria border, all intended to attack coalition soldiers.

The 2-14’s only contact with the enemy on this trip happened Sunday, when Charger Troop killed four men and captured four others north of the Euphrates. The men, who fired a rocket-propelled grenade at a Stryker, were from Saudi Arabia, Syria, Jordan, Algeria and Morocco, according to cavalry officials. One Iraqi civilian, taken as a hostage, also died.

American and Iraqi officials identified the man as Anbar Province governor Raja Nawaf Farhan al-Mahalawi. Foreign fighters abducted him May 10 and demanded that U.S. and Iraqi forces halt their offensive around the border city of Al Qaim.

A U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad said al-Mahalawi died of blunt trauma at the hands of his abductors and was not struck by the gunfire.

Maj. Bryan Denny, executive officer of the Fort Lewis squadron, said the encounter and the whole six-day operation were faithful to the heritage of the U.S. cavalry.

“It might be called a legacy mission, but it is relevant to what we do today: We go out and fight for information, we don’t just collect it and bring it back in,” said Denny, 38, of Lacey.

“A cavalryman does his best work when he is stealthy and unobserved, but the reality today is that it’s easier said than done.”

RATTTLESNAKES ON RECON

This week’s foray was only the second time the 2-14 scouts – they call themselves the Rattlesnakes – have ventured out on a multiday reconnaissance mission since they arrived in Iraq last fall.

The urban focus of this war has required all units of the 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division, including the cavalry and the field artillery, to work like a front-line infantry battalion. The 2-14 has had responsibility for Tal Afar: patrolling neighborhoods, going on house-to-house raids, hunting for weapons caches – then returning to base the same day for a shower, a hot meal and an air-conditioned room.

On a traditional cavalry mission, troopers wear the same dirt for days, eat prepackaged meals and sleep inside or on top of a Stryker.

When this one’s over, the 2-14’s nearly 500 scouts will be back to the urban landscape, rejoining the rest of the brigade in Mosul. Denny acknowledges that his Rattlesnakes will feel a little “caged in.”

They’ve turned over Tal Afar and the western border area to the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment from Fort Carson, Colo. The 3rd ACR has about seven times more soldiers in Tal Afar, giving it a potentially longer reach into areas heretofore barely touched. But some say the increasingly volatile city will dominate its time and attention, as it did the 2-14 Cav.

“We could have done a lot more good if we had the manpower to come out here more, while still looking after Tal Afar,” said Staff Sgt. Jacob Powell, a Stryker gunner from Spanaway. “We can make it all the way to the Euphrates in two days if we have to. That’s the one thing we bring to the battlefield: mobility and range.”

A LOT OF GROUND TO COVER

The ground covered by Fort Lewis troops in Iraq is exceedingly vast for a force of only 4,000 soldiers.

That’s a point made repeatedly in a report last December by the Center for Army Lessons Learned, based on the experiences of the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division. The first Fort Lewis Stryker brigade replaced the 101st Airborne Division in northern Iraq in January 2004.

The brigade’s 5,000 or so soldiers replaced the division’s 20,000 to cover 23,500 square miles.

Consequently, “the brigade faced significant command and control and support challenges,” the report said.

The second group of Strykers inherited the same chunk of Iraq last fall, with virtually the same number of soldiers and other assets. The 2-14 scouts represent about one-eighth of the brigade’s total personnel, yet they’re responsible for more than 10,500 square miles – nearly half the brigade’s battle space.

All the more reason this week’s mission to the hinterlands was important, and arguably overdue. The Rattlesnakes even moved beyond their own normal boundaries, exploring a zone north of the Euphrates that’s supposed to be the responsibility of the U.S. Marines.

Several Iraqi Army trainees came along to show villagers the future face of security. When the coalition eventually leaves, several battalions of Iraqi soldiers will remain in the western border cities – and natives will come to realize they don’t have to relent to smugglers and terrorists, Walters said.

Another objective of the mission was to take an informal census of small villages that might have been mapped but rarely if ever visited by Americans.

“Part of what we’re doing is like a National Geographic expedition,” said Maj. Tim Gauthier. “We’re trying to find out who lives there, who their muqtars and other leaders are, what tribes they belong to. We’ll roll up to a small village and it won’t even have a name.”

Lt. Ed Mikkelsen, executive officer of Blackjack Troop, said the soldiers visited 18 villages. None had schools, mosques or reliable local sources of water, electricity and sanitation. Few had established leaders the soldiers could talk to.

The information they collected will be passed on to the 3rd ACR so its civil affairs teams can possibly pursue humanitarian projects.

“It will be useful to them if they can ever afford the combat power to go down to this area,” said Mikkelsen, of Lacey. “You really don’t have to do much down here to win the people’s affection.”

Blackjack Troop did have at least one encounter with locals who’d clearly already been exposed to U.S. soldiers and dietary customs.

“We found Girl Scout cookies in one town,” Walters said. “We thought, ‘How in the world did they get Girl Scout cookies all the way down here?’”

A note left behind indicated the natives had received guests from the 2nd Battalion, 8th Field Artillery Regiment, another arm of the Stryker brigade.

COILED TO DEFEND

As the sun started to go down early this week, the soldiers of Blackjack Troop finished their meals-ready-to-eat and tossed the brown plastic pouches into a fire pit they dug in the desert.

Their Strykers were arranged in “coil formation,” like covered wagons circled together for protection.

Lt. Lanelle Pickett daydreamed about going back to base in a few days. He rested on the back ramp of a Stryker, his shaved head so encrusted with dust from the Al-Jazirah Desert, it looked like he’d dyed the roots yellow.

“I look forward to the silliest stuff,” Pickett said. “Handwritten letters – there’s nothing like ink on paper. Powdered Kool-Aid. Just being on the phone, even if I have to wait an hour to get on. Warm water so I can shave.”

Maykovich said a long cavalry operation is hardest on the families back home. The soldiers can’t tell them much, only that they’ll be out of contact for several days.

Sgt. Donald Rummer and Lt. Keith Neanover dropped to the dirt in an impromptu moment of Wrestlemania, with Rummer quickly pinning his smaller friend. Pent-up aggression got the best of several other soldiers, too, as they made a dogpile on top of Spc. Alex Scott in honor of his 25th birthday.

It was nearly dark when an Iraqi soldier approached the troop medic and reported he might have a scorpion bite. U.S. soldiers clustered together and told stories about the giant camel spiders they’ve spotted with flashlights.

They started to bed down for the night, some in the troop compartments of the Strykers, others sprawled atop the steel roofs. Iraqi soldiers crawled under blankets on the desert floor.

Over the next two days the Rattlesnakes would pursue one of the most-wanted smugglers in western Iraq, a man they’d had on their black list for six months.

This would likely be their last chance to find him. They would need their rest.