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In Iraq’s Bread Basket, it’s 18 men and a baby

Jan-15-2008 » Filed Under: 2nd SCR

AMIT R. PALEY; The Washington Post

TAIYEH, Iraq – The distress call rang out over the radio. In the midst of one of the largest current military operations in Iraq, Capt. Mike Stinchfield recognized this was, so far, his most urgent mission of the day.

A captured insurgent? A fallen comrade? Not quite. A local woman had gone into labor, and within minutes about 18 U.S. soldiers endeavored to help.

“That’s a lot of men to secure a baby,” said Stinchfield, 37, of Vancouver, Wash., the commander of Company H, 3rd Squadron of the Army’s 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment. “But that’s what this war is like. It’s slow and boring most days, and not much happens.”

Thousands of U.S. soldiers are moving against one of the largest-known concentrations of fighters from the group al-Qaida in Iraq here in a 50-square-mile pocket of Diyala province known as the Bread Basket.

The Fort Lewis connection to this operation runs deep. Troops from the 2nd Cavalry used to be based at the local post, when they rode Strykers into Iraq in 2004 as part of the 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division. Another Stryker unit with families back at Fort Lewis, the 4th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, is leading the current fight in Diyala.

Company H expected resistance from 40 to 50 fighters from the Sunni insurgent group, but most of them appeared to have fled by the time the unit rolled in.

In the end, Company H didn’t fight a single person. What had been envisioned as a combat mission instead became a day of emergency-service work, hours of boredom and finally tragedy, as word of fallen comrades reached them over the radio inside their Strykers, eight-wheel armored vehicles.

“I’m sitting here eating Cheez Whiz and Cheez-Its, which I realize might seem weird,” Stinchfield said. “But I’d rather be doing things like delivering a baby than shooting people.”

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