'Your feet melt to the concrete'
by Kimberly Johnson

HADITHA, Iraq –- Cpl. Nathan Noble leaned on his knuckles over a laminated map of Haditha.

“Alright, you guys ready to kick this?” The face of the 22-year-old leader of 3rd squad, 1st Platoon, gave way to seriousness as he began his evening patrol briefing for the roughly dozen men in the room. He rattled off military street names: Mouse, Market, Nut. He traced routes with a finger. His squad surrounded the big plywood-topped table in a makeshift conference room, sitting on wooden risers that outlined the room’s perimeter. They would be conducting a census patrol, which meant they would go into homes to document those who lived there.

“We’ve got three hours, so we’ll see how many houses we can hit,” he said.

I had met the tall squad leader, a native of Woodford County, Ky., not long before the meeting. Iraq marks his third deployment in the past four years. “The face of this war is a lot different from Afghanistan,” Noble said, making a comparison to his last deployment. “The operating tempo far exceeds Afghanistan. We keep a constant presence in the streets.”

And unlike patrols in Afghanistan, here in Iraq, “Your feet melt to the concrete,” he said.

Noble began to quiz his squad on what they were to do should they lose communications or begin taking sniper fire. Each Marine he called on parroted back the standard operating procedure with flat voices, seemingly verbatim from well-practiced military code.

Within minutes of his briefing, Noble and his squad quietly lined up at the barrack’s door with their weapons ready right before they spilled out into the darkened city streets.

“The best way to keep a pulse on the city is going to some of the key leaders' homes at night,” the company commander, Capt. Andy Lynch, 31, of Chicago, told me earlier in his office. India Company is part of 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marines. His quarters are in the office of the former school superintendent in what was once the city’s education administration building. A cobalt blue oriental rug covers the stone tile floor. Heavy black printed fabric drapes the windows. Two neatly made-up beds flank the room on either side of a stately desk in its center.

India company patrols the same stretch of ground patrolled by the previous unit, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment. A small number of Marines in 3/1, which has since returned to the United States, are under investigation for the deaths of Iraqi civilians in an incident last November. The investigation is examining charges that the Marines killed civilians after a Marine was killed by a roadside bomb. Marines from India company, 3/3, who deployed here in March, however, have no knowledge of what happened that day, and Lynch believes locals understand that. “They know that there was a different captain who came to talk to them before me.”

Haditha investigation aside, locals are naturally standoffish of U.S. troops who wear so much protective gear, he explained. “A lot of civilians are –- I wouldn’t say afraid of us, but intimidated by us,” he said. To combat that, he added, “You have to interact with them on a personal level.”

Marines here will continue to face a hectic patrol pace until Iraqi security forces ramp up, a goal that presently seems daunting. According to 3/3 battalion commander Lt. Col. Norman Cooling, 41, of Baytown, Tex., an Iraqi army battalion here that once had more than 600 soldiers now has been whittled down to about half that strength, a product of poor pay and liberal leave policies, he said. Deadly insurgent intimidation campaigns aimed at dissuading locals from participating in the new government are succeeding here -- there is no city police force.

“No one wants to collectively step forward,” Lynch said.

Ellie