None Left Behind (3 page)

The division fought its way across Italy, crossing the Po River and securing Gargano and Porto di Tremosine before German resistance ended
in April 1945. The division earned fame in climbing unscalable cliffs in order to surprise and assault German positions.

Deactivated after the war, the division would be reactivated and deactivated three times during the next four decades. The 31
^st
Infantry Regiment, however, remained on active duty status. General Douglas MacArthur assigned it to the 7
^th
Infantry Division for occupation duty in Korea, where it remained until the occupation ended in 1948.

The regiment moved to the Japanese island of Hokkaido, but its stay was cut short by North Korea's invasion of the South in 1950. The 31
^st
returned to Korea as an element of General MacArthur's invasion force at Inchon.

After Inchon, the regiment launched a second assault landing at Iwon, not far from Vladivostok, Russia. Polar Bear troops pushing toward the Yalu River suddenly encountered the Red Chinese Army sweeping down from Manchuria. Surrounded in a steel corridor of death, only 365 members of the task force's original number of 3,200 survived. Lieutenant Colonel Don Faith, who took command of what was left of the 31
^st
Regiment after Colonel Alan MacLean was killed, also died trying to break out of the trap and lead his survivors to safety. He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.

Battered and bloody and all but decimated, the 31
^st
evacuated by sea to Pusan where it rebuilt and retrained, then plunged back into battle to stop the Chinese at Chechon and join in the counteroffensive to retake Central Korea. By 1951, the line more or less stalemated along the 38
^th
Parallel.

For the next two years, the 31
^st
slugged it out with Chinese and North Koreans across a series of cold, desolate hills that bore such names as Old Baldy, Pork Chop Hill, Triangle Hill, and OP Dale. By the time the war ended, the Polar Bear Regiment had suffered many times its strength in losses, and five of its soldiers had won Medals of Honor.

In 1957, the U.S. Army reorganized infantry regiments into battle groups. The 31
^st
Infantry of the 1st Battle Group remained in Korea with the 7
^th
Infantry Division while its counterpart, the 31
^st
Infantry of the 2nd Battle Group, formed at Fort Rucker, Alabama. After 41 years, for
the first time in its history, the regiment's flag flew over its U.S. homeland. Until then, it was the only regiment in the army never to have served inside the continental United States.

The Vietnam War was beginning to build up some steam by that time. In 1963, the army abandoned the battle group concept and brought back brigades, regiments, and battalions. The 4
^th
Battalion of the 31
^st
Infantry Regiment (4/31
^st
) was activated at Fort Devens, Massachusetts, in 1965. Less than a year later, it was operating in Vietnam's War Zone D and around Tay Ninh near the Cambodian border. The 4
^th
Battalion was part of the last brigade to leave Vietnam.

The Reagan buildup of the armed forces in 1985 finally merged the 31
^st
Infantry Regiment with a reconstituted 10
^th
Light Division to permanent status as the 10
^th
Mountain Division (Light Infantry). No longer strictly “ski” or “mountain” troops, the division's strength lay in its ability to deploy by sea, air, or land anywhere in the world within 96 hours of being alerted, prepared to fight under harsh conditions of any sort.

Throughout the 1990s and early 21
^st
Century, the 10
^th
continued to add to its reputation for being the most deployed unit in the U.S. Army. Its list of tours in far-flung and war-torn regions circumnavigated the globe: Haiti, the Horn of Africa, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Bosnia, Somalia, the Sinai, Qatar, Kuwait, Kosovo,
Desert Storm
in Iraq, Afghanistan, Operation
Iraqi Freedom
. . .

During the Battle of Mogadishu in Somalia, made famous by the book and movie
BlackHawk Down
, the 10
^th
Mountain provided infantry for the UN quick reaction force sent into the embattled city to rescue Task Force Ranger. Two division soldiers died in the fighting.

In 2001, 10
^th
Mountain soldiers were involved in the famous rescue of downed Navy SEALs during Operation
Anaconda
in Afghanistan.

Four Brigade Combat Teams composed the 10
^th
Mountain Division—the 1
^st
BCT known as “Warriors;” the 2
^nd
BCT “Commandos;” 3
^rd
BCT “Spartans;” and 4
^th
BCT “Patriots.” During its 2004–2005 deployment to Iraq, the 2
^nd
BCT assumed responsibility for the entire sector of western Baghdad, from Abu Ghraib and Monsour to the notorious “Route Irish” running from Baghdad Airport to the International Zone. The
area harbored the largest number of enemy in the country, resulting in the highest concentration of casualties among American soldiers operating there.

And now, in August 2006, soldiers of the 10
^th
Mountain Division were once again going into harm's way.

As a show of solidarity, of faith in a common mission, Iraqi Army soldiers in their dark-patterned combat uniforms stood formation with U.S. soldiers when Lieutenant Colonel Michael Infanti uncased 4/31
^st
colors during a brief ceremony at Camp Striker in Baghdad on 17 September 2006. Standing at attention under the desert sun, every soldier in the battalion from the greenest private to the commander himself couldn't help being aware that this war had changed from the lightning strike of 2003 that brought U.S. troops all the way to Baghdad in a matter of weeks. Never in U.S. history before now had American forces been required to participate in large-scale urban fighting while simultaneously rebuilding the combat zone.

Iraq had descended into a sectarian hell in which thousands of Iraqis were being killed and millions more forced to flee the country. A particularly militant strain of Sunni Islam called Wahhabism flourished as the Sunni minority backed the insurgency in an effort to preserve the political power and economic benefits it had enjoyed under Saddam Hussein. Insurgents and terrorists were attempting to impose draconian Islamic law throughout the country. They carried out summary executions in the streets and villages of those who opposed them or cooperated with Coalition troops and the fledgling Iraqi government; conducted suicide martyr bombings against police stations, schools, and other public facilities; and posted cash bounties on the heads of Iraqi security personnel, National Guardsmen, and foreigners.

It wasn't unusual for a village to wake up and find the severed heads of its elders posted in the middle of the road. Even as the 4/31
^st
prepared to move into its AO (Area of Operations), terrorists stopped a van at a checkpoint near Kharghouli Village, doused it in gasoline, and set it afire with the driver still inside. His crime: driving while Shiite.

American military forces were ill-equipped to cope with the new brand of urban warfare based on raw terrorism. No comprehensive doctrine existed for counterinsurgency outside relatively small units such as Army Special Forces. After the Vietnam War ended, the U.S. military focused training on rapid maneuver and combined arms, the so-called “Air-Land-Battle” concept that worked amazingly well in the quick “conventional” fight to liberate Iraq.

As the insurgency gained momentum after July 2003, U.S. troops pulled back into huge Forward Operating Bases (FOBs) far removed from the population and began executing “offensive operations” to destroy enemy forces. The U.S. military sallied forth daily in search and destroy missions against insurgents in civilian clothing whom they could rarely identify and whom the general population concealed and protected. American commanders launched large-scale sweeps to roll up enemy leaders and members, fired artillery to interdict insurgent activity, and used airpower to level the houses of those suspected of supporting the insurgency. After each operation, the Americans retreated to their consolidated FOBs and, instead of attempting to secure and hold ground, conceded the cities and countryside back to street gangs of insurgents.

Each division, brigade, battalion, and even company was left to its own devices on how best to secure and stabilize its AO, “doing its own thing.” Predictably, the situation throughout Iraq deteriorated. Attacks against Coalition forces had grown from about 70 per day in January 2006 to more than 180 per day by the time the 10
^th
Mountain's 2
^nd
BCT arrived in-country.

The 2
^nd
BCT commanded by Colonel Mike Kershaw was relieving a BCT of the 101
^st
Airborne Division. To Lieutenant Colonel Michael Infanti's 4
^th
Battalion and its four infantry companies fell the fertile area south of Baghdad, a hellish hotbed of subversion that had been appropriately dubbed “The Triangle of Death.” During his long reign, Saddam Hussein had given this now-treacherous swath of land to loyal Baath Party members and close friends.

Infanti's AO encompassed roughly twenty square miles of terrain whose major feature, the Euphrates River, curved across the bottom to
border the AO to the south, southeast, and southwest. The three towns of Mahmudiyah, Yusufiyah, and Latifiyah formed the apexes of The Triangle of Death. Yusufiyah, the regional township of Baghdad Province, lay fifteen miles south of Baghdad. It was a small center of about one hundred major buildings, fewer than ten of which were over five stories tall.

The road through Yusufiyah, designated as Route Sportster by the military, crossed the Euphrates River into Anbar Province at the Jurf Sukr Bridge. Control of the roads and the bridge allowed insurgents free movement into and out of Baghdad and Anbar.

Mahmudiyah, the larger of the three towns, was situated six miles to the east of Yusufiyah along a major north-south highway that connected Baghdad to Karbula further south. About three miles south of Mahmudiyah along the same road lay Latifiyah. Small, dirty, and impoverished, it was considered the most dangerous of the three towns.

Terrain around the towns was primarily river farmland broken into small family plots and sliced by numerous canals and irrigation ditches.

“It's a real mix of bad guys,” 101
^st
Airborne officers advised their incoming counterparts. “Thugs and criminals as well as insurgents. It's a crossroads for terrorists. They move in and out along lines that stretch in all directions.”

Three 101
^st
Airborne soldiers had been attacked near the Jurf Sukr Bridge three months before. One was killed outright while the other two were kidnapped. Four days later, their bodies turned up near the old Russian power plant on Route Malibu. They had been burned, beheaded, and booby trapped with explosives between their legs. The Mujahedeen Shura Council, a prominent insurgency group operating in the Yusufiyah enclave, claimed responsibility and released a video to Al Jazeera TV showing the soldiers being executed and mutilated.

“These people had rather kidnap soldiers than kill them outright,” 101
^st
officers explained. “Makes better TV propaganda. Al Jazeera is always eager to display terrorist atrocities to the Arab world—and the Arab world is always eager to view them.”

This would be Lt. Colonel Infanti's second combat tour to Iraq. During the 2004–2005 deployment, he had served as deputy brigade commander.
That experience convinced him that the old methods of conducting the war simply weren't working. Having been promoted to battalion commander, with the autonomy that provided, he had utilized the “downtime” between deployments to study everything he could find on counterinsurgency. He discovered a paper issued by General Creighton Abrams nearly forty years before—the PROVN (Provincial Reconstruction of Vietnam) Report—to be particularly helpful. It recommended that soldiers
clear
areas of the enemy, then
stay
and
hold
those areas while living among the people. Pound hell out of the bad guys while at the same time protecting the locals in order that the communities could rebuild.

In Infanti's judgment, the key to winning lay in securing the population. The primary reason why the Iraqis weren't rising up to throw terrorists out of their country was because of fear. They remembered 1991 when the U.S. failed to follow through. People then who backed change suffered terribly. Why should the Americans have the stomach to see it through this time? People not only in Iraq but around the world, judging from the statements of politicians and international pundits, were already urging U.S. forces to withdraw, with the collateral effect of leaving those who assisted them to the mercy of terrorists and fundamentalists.

“The turning point will come when the Iraqis see we're going to stay and not run,” Infanti argued.

He would try out his theories in The Triangle of Death. The 101
^st
Airborne Division had already started the process by fighting its way into The Triangle as far as Mahmudiyah and Yusufiyah and establishing more-or-less stable FOBs. Infanti's battalion task force would push even further. Rather than conducting large sweeps and operating out of a central base, his soldiers would begin manning small patrol bases and battle positions in the heart of troubled areas where they could work directly with the people. Like police precincts. Or, more appropriately, like forts in the heart of “Indian Country.”

Colonel Infanti was a tall, broad-shouldered, plain-spoken man of about fifty with a chiseled jaw and piercing eyes. He firmly believed in keeping his soldiers informed, from the highest level to the newest private. Only in knowing the raw facts could a soldier comprehend his position
and the role he played in the “Big Picture.” He had started laying out the mission for his men even before the battalion left Fort Drum.