Stryker Brigade News

"To my house to study," the trembling young man answered. "We have exams next week."

Kurilla questioned each of the young men separately, twisting their shirt collars around their throats throughout each interrogation. But the students soon were deemed harmless; everyone had a current university ID and told the same story.

As abruptly as they had appeared, the soldiers from the Army's 1st Battalion of the 24th Infantry Regiment got back into their Strykers to leave. As the ramps clanked shut, the wide-eyed young students stood on the sidewalk, their vehicle stopped in the middle of the street blocking carloads of gawking Iraqis in both directions.

On the receiving end of the U.S. military's increasingly aggressive patrol posture are many apparently law-abiding Iraqis - the college students in Mosul getting shoved face-first into a wall; the retired English teacher in Baiji thrilled to practice his language skills on U.S. soldiers until they barge into his home and search under his beds; the homemaker in Tikrit who begs soldiers with words they don't understand to take off their muddy boots before walking across her carefully maintained pastel carpets. [...]

"Some days you wonder if you've rounded up one bad guy but created 10 others," a tired Kurilla acknowledged in his Minnesota Vikings-decorated command post the night after stopping the three students in Mosul. "That's the balancing act we're left with at this point. ...

"But I've seen too many of my boys die out there, too many of them bleed out or get burned beyond recognition. I've seen too many limbs blown off. I can't do my work wearing kid gloves because if I do, it'll get soldiers killed."

Kurilla's battalion is an example of how the nature of the insurgency has changed the approach of U.S. soldiers on the ground. When his unit arrived in Mosul last fall, Kurilla often was a walking ambassador of American goodwill. A gregarious man, he would joke with residents that he was going to buy himself "a little flat in old Mosul."

But now, after having 11 soldiers killed and some 140 wounded, Kurilla is unapologetically aggressive on the streets of this city that has remained a hideout for insurgents. Patrol strategies he and his infantrymen employ can be linked to their experiences.

For example, when soldiers enter any home in Mosul, they do so with weapons drawn, running in teams throughout the house to clear each room. They learned the hard way - after an insurgent suddenly appeared from a balcony to shoot and kill a young soldier earlier this spring_ that in even an apparently welcoming home there may be those who will do you harm.

Street patrols rely on the same experience. The day before Kurilla pulled over the college students, he and his soldiers stopped another car. The two young men in it - who like the students did not appear suspicious - turned out to be running weapons for a local insurgent cell; their trunk held guns, ammunition and ski masks.