Back to Iraq: Gaining trust amid gunfights

MOSUL, Iraq - Muzzle flashes came from every direction as bullets battered the armor of five Humvees that made up a convoy of Fort Carson soldiers.

Not 20 minutes earlier today, the soldiers were surrounded by children and greeted warmly — if warily — by shopkeepers during a patrol to gauge public sentiment on the city’s east side.

The staccato of machine gun fire and the whoosh and smoke of rocket propelled grenades rapidly changed things.

The firefight started on a block of businesses specializing in car parts and heavy equipment. American gunners reacted in seconds, firing away at the enemy positions as the few locals on the dusty street fled indoors.

The enemy was all around. The whizzing bullets came too rapidly to tell their direction by sound alone.

The soldiers, from Company D of Fort Carson’s 1st Battalion of the 8th Infantry Regiment, were coldly patient, calmly calling out targets while working to defend the convoy.

“How’s your ammo, Howard?” Sgt. Timothy Rutledge, of Portland, Ore., yelled over the din of the .50-caliber machine gun to his gunner, Sgt. Issac Howard of Tacoma, Wash.

“Half a box. I’m good,” Howard yelled back between bursts.

“Watch your sectors,” Rutledge encouraged.

Howard focused on the muzzle flashes he could see in a nearby field as targets for his half-inch bullets.

“I’ve got them over here,” he yelled as he squeezed the firing grips.

The Humvee’s driver, Spc. Robert Huth of San Antonio, Texas, worked to trick the enemy’s aim by moving the armored rig back and forth.

Each of the three worked like a piece of a machine designed to keep them alive during the 15-minute battle.

Unable to compete with American firepower, the enemy fled shortly after a helicopter arrived. The Americans raced to hunt them down, but the rushing Humvees had little luck amid the city’s Byzantine network or roads, alleys and paths.

During a house-to-house search about 30 minutes after the firefight ended, the enemy machine guns opened up again. Soldiers on the ground ran for their Humvees.

Howard held his fire and kept his gun turret aimed away from the insurgents, watching to ensure the convoy wasn’t surrounded.

“They’re still out on the ground. If I turned my gun, they’ll be wide open,” he yelled as bullets zinged by overhead and the distinctive crack of the Russian-designed AK-47 clattered behind him.

When the gunfire stopped, soldiers couldn’t determine if any of their enemies were dead or wounded, but a rapid series of radio calls showed members of the company were unharmed and there was little damage to vehicles.

Earlier in the market, the locals smiled and the kids swarmed the Americans asking for candy and soccer balls.

The battalion, part of Fort Carson’s 3rd Brigade Combat Team that came to Iraq in December, is in the initial phases of a neighborhood-by-neighborhood plan to destroy the insurgency that has targeted them with as many as 10 attacks per day in eastern Mosul.

Today’s patrol was aimed at getting locals to buy into the battalion’s plan.

“Try to smile at the kids and make friends with the store owners,” 1st Lt. Donald Maloy of Santa Fe, N.M., told the soldiers before they left Forward Operating Base Marez on the city’s west side. “We need these people.”

The battalion needs the residents of Mosul, a city of 1.8 million people, to stop supporting the insurgent groups that have burrowed their way into the city’s disenfranchised Sunni Muslim majority over the past year.

Once considered a backwater in the war, Mosul has erupted in violence in recent months, driving commanders to order the Fort Carson battalion here from its planned assignment in Baghdad. At the same time, Baghdad, 225 miles south, has seen significant security improvements as American reinforcements, including the brigade’s other five battalions, have gained the upper hand.

In the market place, Maloy noted the eyes of many wary men, unable to tell if they harbored fear or hatred.

“We don’t have a good feel for these guys yet,” he said. “I don’t think it’s very friendly.”

Maloy spoke to a man who runs a furniture store, asking his help in tracking down insurgents.

“I am in charge of keeping this area safe,” Maloy told the man.

The storeowners, though, have more belief in the brutality threatened by the insurgency than the security promised by the Americans.

“We are scared to cooperate with you,” the man said in rapid Arabic that was translated by an interpreter. “You should know that.”

Across the street, Sgt. 1st Class John Bernard was encountering shy children and wary adults. He said the key to building trust is to keep coming back to the marketplace so his soldiers can build relationships.

“We hope they’ll invite us in for tea and tell us a couple of things that may help us,” he said.

A few blocks away, Maloy brought out his ultimate weapon: Candy.

Kids surrounded the lieutenant, who had to buy more supplies at an open-air store to give candy to them all.

Across the street, soldiers spent a few bucks on pastries and treats to take back to their base.

At the next stop, Maloy was out of his Humvee for just a few minutes when the enemy opened fire.

The man who’d been passing out candy moments earlier ran to the safety of his vehicle and ordered his gunners to locate and blast the insurgents.

Back at the base after the firefight, soldiers laughed and smiled as they examined the new bullet craters in some of their Humvees.

“Just another day in Iraq,” Rutledge said with a laugh.

Today, Iraq was a place of deep divisions and neck-snapping changes that challenged soldiers to be kind-hearted neighbors and life-or-death fighters on the same mission.

At the base, as he relaxed after the mission, Maloy thought about the irony.

“One minute they tell you they love you,” he said. “Then you see the other side of the coin.”

CONTACT THE WRITER: tom.roeder@gazette.com