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thedrifter
02-12-06, 07:53 AM
Feb. 12, 2006, 2:50AM
AMERICA IN IRAQ
Luck runs out for the 22nd
Deadly roadside attack shatters two months of relative peace for Marine unit patrolling the streets of a Sunni stronghold

By NELSON HERNANDEZ
Washington Post

HIT, IRAQ - The troops of the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit had every reason to feel a sense of accomplishment.

Violence in this ancient town along the western Euphrates River had dropped sharply since their arrival. They were only a few days from heading home. And they had not lost a single Marine during two months in Iraq's most dangerous province.

Until Monday.

Word spread around the 22nd's main camp, among those who had stayed awake late to watch the Super Bowl: Five Marines in a Humvee were hit by a roadside bomb at 1:30 a.m.

In the morning, the Marines learned three of their comrades were dead.

The 2,300 troops of the 22nd, many of whom are veterans of combat in Afghanistan and Iraq, are familiar with war and its consequences. But their tour in Hit, a city of 30,000 to 40,000 in Anbar province, had been unlike the others.

They walked the streets, passing out candy, chocolates and the occasional soccer ball to waving children.

No unit was more involved in the Hit campaign than Charlie Company. Its 200 men did the majority of the patrolling here. And it was Charlie that had seven Marines wounded and three killed in attacks during the past week.

Led by Capt. David Handy, the company hadn't previously suffered a single man killed or wounded since coming to town in December.

Handy recorded 18 violent incidents a week when he arrived, and said it was down to four thanks to an aggressive program of patrolling the city's streets 24 hours a day.

On Feb. 5, the Marines assembled a convoy of five vehicles to make the day's "chow run" to two other bases in the city.

The three Marines in the last Humvee, accompanied by a reporter, were grousing about the wet weather when the sharp sound of an explosion ended their conversation. The second-to-last vehicle was hit.

"It's an IED!" a Marine in the front passenger seat shouted, using the military's term for an improvised explosive device.

The explosion had ripped the Humvee's tires off and sprayed the cab with shrapnel. Three Marines sitting in the rear stumbled out in a daze, deafened and shaken by the blast. The two others, who sat in the cab, were bleeding.

Cpl. Tadeusz Zych, of New York, the convoy commander and leader of 2nd Squad, 3rd Platoon, sped back to the main camp northwest of Hit, leading the remains of his convoy.

Zych reached the base and stepped out of his Humvee, enraged. "When I go out there again there are going to be a lot of dead hajjis, I'll tell you that," he said.

Two days later, Zych felt no need to use the nickname given to insurgents.

He had walked the city again since the attack. He was still shaken, but his anger had softened.

"We didn't take it out on kids," he said.

The second blow came that night, around 1:30 a.m. Monday. A roadside bomb had exploded beneath an armored Humvee from Charlie Company on a routine pickup mission.

The explosion killed two Marines almost immediately. A third died later of his wounds, and two others were injured in the explosion. "The bad guys got lucky," said McKenzie.

Ellie