Two teams of a Rhode Island National Guard surveillance detachment go on a scouting mission along the Tigris, and make a point to question everyone they encounter.

10:03 AM EDT on Tuesday, May 17, 2005

BY JOEL P. RAWSON
Executive Editor

SAMARRA, Iraq -- Teams 2 and 3 of the 173rd Long Range Surveillance Detachment of the Rhode Island National Guard went poking around by the Tigris River yesterday.

Journal photo / John Freidah

Children and shepherds approach the soldiers of the 173rd Long Range Surveillance Detachment as they perform a scouting exercise along the Tigris River, looking for places to plant teams to secretly watch for insurgents.

They went through the wire at 11:05 a.m. and crossed a short stretch of desert and Route 1 -- which the Army calls Tampa -- and a railroad track.

They park their three Humvees off the four-lane highway.

Capt. Michael Manning, of North Kingstown, confers with Sgt. Robert Carrigg, of Manchester, N.H., and Sgt. Justin Hunt, of Troy, N.Y.

They will walk from here to scout an approach route to the river.

"We'll take the three of us plus Neuenfeldt," Manning says. "Sgt. Crowell will be in charge." He means Chet Crowell, of Cranston, will remain with the vehicles and command their drivers and gunners while Manning goes forward.

It is not Specialist Christopher Neuenfeldt, of Newport, but rather Specialist Christopher Azevedo, of New Bedford, who comes along as rifleman. Carrigg walks in front and Azevedo covers the rear.

Immediately on their left, 12-foot tall reeds stand like a wall of green. The reeds grow in water and the soldiers are looking for a path through them when a blue pickup pops out from the reeds as if from a secret gateway.

The truck drives away and then a boy emerges on foot. The boy is dressed in a dark brown tunic and looks about 14.

Carrigg calls to him in Arabic. "Shaku, maku." It's slang meaning, "Hey, what's up?" None of the soldiers are fluent but they know a few phrases.

The boy responds by making a washing motion with his hands, which, roughly translated, means "nothing's up."

The pickup came out at the opening of a narrow dirt road leading into the reeds. Carrigg turns down the road with Hunt following him. Manning looks back to the boy and beckons for him to come. The boy waves and shrugs. Manning beckons again and the boy comes to him, anxiety written on his face. Manning speaks evenly and smiles, but it is clear the boy doesn't understand.

The soldiers walk a short distance before they see a parked white pickup and two men looking back at them.

Manning tells Carrigg to have the Humvees follow to provide cover. Manning says they are probably the first American soldiers to come back here.

As the soldiers approach the truck, they see into an open field where seven men and boys are playing soccer with a white ball. Standing behind them, like spectators at a match, is a flock of sheep and long-eared goats. It is as unexpected as if you had walked into Filene's and found a baseball game in progress.

The game stops and the boys hang back as the men approach the soldiers. One of them steps forward. He is darkly tanned and wears a red-and-white-checked shawl over a black T-shirt. He is also wearing a broad military web belt.

He greets the soldiers. He says his name is Rahib.

Manning asks if he is a fisherman. The man looks blank and Carrigg turns his left arm palm up and puts the fingers of his right hand at the crook at his elbow -- a sign for fish.

The man nods -- yes, yes -- and leads them to the stream that flows beside the road, pointing to a small gill net.

"Any visitors? Any foreigners? Syria?" Manning asks.

"No, no," Rahib says.

Carrigg sees the man's fingers are tattooed. Carrigg previously had worked for four months in Iraq for a private security firm assigned to the Dutch FLT, their special forces. He learned that Saddam had prisoners' hands tattooed.

Rahib also has a cell phone, which is unusual for a shepherd. When one of the boys, trying to be helpful, offers to write down the number for the Americans, the shepherd stops him.

All of the boys and men cluster around the three soldiers. Azevedo stands back, watching away from them. Across the road from the soccer field and a couple hundred yards away is the shepherd's camp, where a woman is working. Another pickup truck is parked there.

Manning points to the military web belt. "I like your belt," he says. "Where'd you get the belt?"

The man takes off the belt, stoops and touches his back, signalling a bad back. Then he puts the belt back on.

"You in the army?" Manning asks.

"No, no," Rahib says.

As the men talk, the Humvees arrive, stopping a hundred yards from them.

Hunt shares his chewing tobacco with the Iraqis.

Rahib speaks to Manning.

"Your home?" Manning says. "We have to keep working. Thank you."

On the far edge of the soccer pasture, the soldiers encounter three men in a small tin boat coming out of the reeds. Carrigg notices they are better dressed than the shepherds and that one man has a tattoo on his face. Carrigg doesn't know the significance of the facial tattoo.

"They said they are fishermen, but then they pointed to the [expletive deleted] sheep," Hunt says.

Manning shakes hands. "Salaam. Salaam," he says. "Do you speak English?"

Everybody smiles. No.

"Ali baba. Ali baba," Hunt says, meaning, any bad guys?

No.

One of them gets into the boat and effortlessly paddles down a narrow channel through the reeds.

The soldiers walk along the edge of the reeds for a few hundred yards and turn back without having found a good route down to the Tigris River.

The Iraqi boys cluster around the parked white Toyota pickup, asking the soldiers for their sunglasses, watches and drinking water. Azevedo gives them two bottles of water from the back of his Humvee.

Back on Tampa headed south, they pass a wrecked locomotive and several rail cars off the track. Earlier, an engine and three passenger cars had passed by, headed north, and Manning said the railroad had been open for about a month.

"You guys see anything?" asks Specialist Neuenfeldt.

"Little boat came in all the way from the Tigris," Azevedo says. He is eating crackers from MREs.

Carrigg pulls his Humvee off the main road and drives up onto an earthen mound, where he can see a tent camp they were told may house their enemies.

The other soldiers block the four-lane highway and hold up traffic while Carrigg and Sgt. Crowell look at the camp. The roadblock serves two purposes. It hides the true reason the soldiers stopped. The Iraqis will think it is a surprise checkpoint. It will also prevent drive-by shootings and vehicle bombs.

They stop and search three cars before letting the traffic flow.

Journal photo / John Freidah

Capt. Michael Manning, of North Kingstown, left and Sgt. Justin Hunt, of Troy, N.Y., greet three Iraqi men who climbed out of a tin boat, background, in the marshy reeds next to the Tigris River. Manning says the river, which the highways follow, serves the enemy's purposes well, providing roadside bombers an unpatrolled route obscured by the dense cover of tall reeds.

Farther south, they stop again to look at the marsh they need to cross if they want to put up hidden surveillance sites on the river. It is a formidable obstacle, wide and thick with reeds and wet with water.

Hunt says if they had boats they could come up the river.

Manning says he can request boats, but he's pretty sure he won't get them.

They joke about using a hovercraft or parachuting in, but there is an edge to it.

In the Humvee again, now headed north, they discuss the news they may be moving soon.

"I hope this is the last one," Azevedo says. "I hope we don't move again. We ain't going to get nothing accomplished."

From a hill in the desert, the soldiers look back over the plain of the Tigris River, which at this spot is not one river, but several, looping and turning, creating islands and the broad marshes.

All life in the desert clings to the edge of this river and the land it irrigates. From where the soldiers stand, it is barely five miles across to where the desert begins again.

The river also serves his enemies well, Manning believes. They travel on the water, enjoying complete freedom because the Americans have no boats to intercept them. The marshes and islands provide good hiding places. And the supply roads the Americans use run right along the rivers, making it easy to sneak out to plant bombs that kill Americans.

The soldiers stand on the hill and plan where they will put surveillance posts along the river and where they will make a hiding spot to watch over them. Their job is to make it work, boats or no boats.

When they get to base, they learn all the planning is no longer needed. They have received orders to move to a new base in another part of the country. There are rumors of trees and porcelain toilets and a better mess hall. There will also be new terrain to learn and new people to develop and the danger of ignorance in a combat zone. Today they will go check it out.