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thedrifter
03-05-07, 11:08 AM
The road back from ‘chaos’

After deadly explosion, soldiers work to secure bustling Baghdad market
By Michelle Tan - Staff writer
Posted : Monday Mar 5, 2007 11:40:02 EST

BAGHDAD — The charred remains of the two-story storefront are a stark reminder of the two devastating car bombs that ripped through the bustling marketplace in New Baghdad on Feb. 18.

News reports put the death toll at 60, with 180 people injured.

“People were everywhere, smoke was everywhere, body parts were everywhere,” said 1st Lt. Clarke Brown of 1st Platoon, D Company, 1st Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment. “Mayhem is probably the best word to describe it. It was chaos.”

Soldiers with 1st Platoon, D Company, and 2nd Platoon, A Company, of the 82nd Airborne’s 1-504, were in the marketplace earlier in the day. Their mission was to scope out the marketplace because 2nd Battalion, 17th Field Artillery Regiment, planned to place barriers around the marketplace to secure the area from car bombs.

Elements of the 1-504 are attached to 2-17 while in Iraq.

It was about 3 p.m., and the soldiers were about to return to Forward Operating Base Loyalty when the bombs exploded. The soldiers rushed to the scene and stayed there for almost three hours. They found dead bodies, residents desperately trying to find their loved ones, and screaming emergency vehicles rushing the wounded to local hospitals.

“It’s something you have to put behind you,” Sgt. Jayme Singleton said about what he saw that day. “You never forget, but you can’t let it affect you. In this job, you can’t wear your feelings on your sleeve.”

Singleton is with 2nd Platoon, A Company, 1-504.

The marketplace is located in New Baghdad, also known as Al Jadidah. Located in the eastern part of the city, it is part of Security District Karadah, which is one of nine security districts in Baghdad.

From the beginning, the Americans identified the marketplace as key terrain in 2-17’s area of operations, leaders said. It’s a high-traffic area filled with residents shopping for food and farmers selling their goods, and the way it spills out into the streets makes it vulnerable to attacks.

“This is where you can affect the most people. For the same reason, the enemy wants to blow it up,” said 1st Lt. Dan Capozza, of 2nd Platoon, A Company, 1-504. “It turns into key terrain because you can get so much influence out of it, and you want to encourage the economy as much as you can.”

After the bombings, soldiers from 1-504 and 2-17 spent 12 hours every night for five nights putting up concrete barriers around the entire marketplace. Soldiers estimate that the marketplace, if stretched from end to end, would be 1 kilometer long.

“It was kind of ironic that the day after the bombs went off, the barriers went in,” Brown said.

Traffic control checkpoints manned by the Iraqi army are set up throughout the marketplace to search every vehicle that enters the busy streets lined with stalls offering fruit, poultry and vegetables, and barber shops and vendors selling everything from hardware and bread to cigarettes and candy bars.

The Americans also patrol the marketplace on foot, escorted by two Humvees following closely behind.

“We’ve focused a lot of our efforts on securing the marketplace because it’s the lifeblood for the people,” said Sgt. 1st Class Jonathan Gammon, platoon sergeant for 1st Platoon, D Company.

On Feb. 27, soldiers from Brown’s platoon went to the market to check out reports that members of the Jaysh al-Mahdi militia were hiding weapons in the fruit stands.

They brought with them Frisko, an Air Force dog trained to detect explosives, and his handler, Senior Airman Adam La Barr, of 4th Security Forces Squadron at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, N.C.

As the 6-year-old dog worked his way through the market, curious shoppers stopped to stare. Despite their fascination, men, women and children were afraid to go near Frisko, a long and lean 78-pound Belgian shepherd.

Frisko didn’t find any explosives that day, but the soldiers got a chance to walk through the market, talk to the locals and check on the Iraqi soldiers tasked with manning the checkpoints.

“For the most part, it’s trying to get [the Iraqis] to understand that when we tell them to do something, it’s for their own good,” Gammon said. “Our main goal is to show the Iraqis what right looks like. If we show them and do things correctly, hopefully they can take a page from that book and run with it. Ultimately, they’re going to have to make it work, so we’ll show them the way.”

Everything the soldiers are doing has a purpose, and the Americans are trying to convey that to the Iraqis, Brown said.

“We have checkpoints there for a reason,” he said, citing an example. “They’re only as good as the people who man them.”

The day after Brown and his soldiers patrolled the marketplace, Capozza and his soldiers took their turn to walk through the market.

The market was a little quieter that morning, as many stalls had yet to open for the day. The early risers shopped freely, away from the crowd that often packs the marketplace later in the day.

As the soldiers prepared to return to their Humvees, a fight broke out among some Iraqi men. As the locals ran away from the fight with their fingers in their ears, ready for gunshots, the American soldiers didn’t have to respond to the melee because Iraqi soldiers at a nearby checkpoint fired warning shots into the air and ran to break up the fight.

The effort to secure the marketplace is a work in progress, Brown said.

“You see an increased presence of the Iraqi army and Iraqi police,” he said. “It’s all about us getting the Iraqis’ face out there. The ultimate goal is to get the Iraqis to secure themselves, for them to be self-reliant.”

Gammon agreed, saying the area seems to be improving.

“Overall in the [New Baghdad] area, things have quieted down quite a bit since we showed up,” he said. “People are still apprehensive to talk to us in the open, but once you get them inside they tell us they’re glad we’re here.”

Sgt. Brian D’Apice, a member of Capozza’s platoon, is on his second deployment to Iraq. The first, from November 2005 to February 2006, was in the relatively peaceful northern part of Iraq, and the soldiers were assigned to guard a prison. This deployment will be very different, D’Apice said.

“It’s a lot more action, a lot more excitement,” he said. “They actually try to kill us here.”

But D’Apice, who joined the Army because of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, is not complaining.

“I’m glad I get to do what I signed up to do,” he said. “The biggest challenge is not being able to tell who’s who. The enemy blends in. Another big one is how little we know about their culture.”

Even though 1-504 has been in country only since January, the soldiers are quickly learning their battle space, Gammon said.

“We’re starting to get to the point where we can discern when something’s out of place,” he said. “Bit by bit, you start to get focused; you start to know what’s going on.”

But the year ahead will not be easy, Gammon said.

“Military operations in an urban terrain have always been a challenge. That’s nothing new,” he said. “Counterinsurgency operations have always been a challenge. That’s nothing new. Put the two together and it’s difficult, but you can’t shy away from it.”

Capozza agreed.

“Obviously, everybody wants to bring everyone home,” he said. “You have to do what you can to make sure that happens, but you have to do it in a way that doesn’t handicap you. The easiest way to bring everyone home is to put everybody on the [forward operating base]. But that means we’ll be back here for OIF 35.”

Ellie