Article published Dec 19, 2006
Company B's Christmas: Marines scour Iraqi highways for bombs
'The insurgents get sick of watching us pull up the IEDs that they put out.'

FRED DODD
Tribune Staff Writer

WEST OF FALLUJAH, Iraq -- Most sane people stay as far away from improvised explosive devices (IEDs) as possible.

Not the Marines of Engineer Company B.

The South Bend Reserve unit's main mission here is to search out and find the insurgency's weapon of choice.

"For every one of those that we pull out of the road, the chances are very good that we saved a life," said Gunnery Sgt. Todd Mansfield of Michigan City. "If you're getting these things out of there, they aren't going to go off on unsuspecting vehicles."

"Our job is to make the routes safe for everyone else," added Capt. James Hedger, who had been serving his tour with a unit in Phoenix before heeding the call to join Company B as its executive officer, just days before the unit left Camp Pendleton, Calif.The routes Hedger refers to are supply routes. Engineer Company B is responsible for clearing roads in a large chunk of Iraq's Anbar province, a huge area west of Baghdad. Lives depend on supplies and equipment hauled on those highways.

To ensure that convoys can pass relatively safely, a group of South Bend Marines scours the highways on a nearly daily basis.

"The insurgents get sick of watching us pull up the IEDs that they put out," Mansfield said. "They know that nobody's going to hit them; we're just going to pull them out."

Safe roads also enable Iraqi forces to move into insurgent strongholds, which previously hadn't been patrolled.

"We make it safe enough that Iraqi police will stay, the same with their army," said Master Sgt. Charles Daily of Niles."If they stay, it makes it easier for us to pull out," he added.

Marines of Engineer Company B believe they're up to the task.

"For the job the Marine Corps is asking us to do, we're probably the best protectors," Hedger said. "We have the most hardened route clearance vehicles in the entire area of operations."

Mansfield agrees: "We've got vehicles that there are very few of in this country. We use them every day. ... What we do is important for what goes on around here."

Company B Marines play down the danger involved in what they do, mainly because of the toughness of the equipment they ride in. The most heavily fortified vehicles travel at the front of the line; they're the ones most likely to accidentally set off an improvised explosive device."A couple of IEDs have gone off and Marines have got banged up just from the concussion," Mansfield said. "We've had to pull them out of the front vehicles. They didn't want to go. They wanted to keep doing their jobs. For their own safety, we pull them out and give them a different job in a different vehicle farther back."

The missions can easily last a dozen hours. It's slow, tedious work. Sometimes the Marines find nothing. Sometimes they find several IEDs.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Fred Dodd is a retired South Bend Marine Corps photojournalist who's been with The Tribune since 1998. On this, his third trip to Iraq, he will be photographing and writing about the Marines of Engineer Company B, a South Bend Reserve unit. For more from Dodd in the days ahead, watch WSBT-TV or go to our Web site, www.southbendtribune.com.

To reach Fred Dodd, send e-mail to freddodd@yahoo.com.

Ellie