As members of the Rhode Island National Guard's 173rd Long Range Surveillance Detachment prepare to move to another assignment, they show the ropes to their replacements.

09:19 AM EDT on Friday, May 20, 2005

BY JOEL P. RAWSON
Executive Editor

SAMARRA, Iraq -- Two cops from the 173rd Long Range Surveillance Detachment of the Rhode Island National Guard turned over their beat yesterday, a beat they had developed over several months, a beat of villages and miles of desert, a beat of a few precious sources.

Journal photo / John Freidah

On his final mission out of Forward Operating Base Brassfield-Mora, Staff Sgt. Thomas O'Hare, a New York City police officer, visits with a nurse while bringing medical supplies to the clinic in a nearby village.

Sgt. 1st Class Robert Saquet, a Brockton, Mass., policeman, and Staff Sgt. Thomas O'Hare, a New York City policeman, led the 173rd's last mission from Forward Operating Base Brassfield-Mora through the wire at 7:35 a.m.

With them in the three Humvees are two of the men who will take over from them and a veterinarian who is checking the health of sheep.

Capt. Rod McCauley, a civil affairs officer from East Lyme, Conn., will look at what the Iraqis in the area need.

Capt. Justin Colbert, an infantry officer from Lancaster, Pa., will take over patrolling for bad guys.

Capt. Jim Pratt, of Sikeston, Mo., is the veterinarian.

As the Humvees head south, Saquet gives Colbert a running briefing.

"See the smoke in the distance, sir?" Saquet says. "By the pipeline? That's Rhakmani. Rhakmani's the guy we did a raid on his house. He had $700,000 in cash, but it was all legit. If they had banks over here, he would have had it in a bank."

Rhakmani owns asphalt, concrete and paving businesses, all of which are in the desert west of Samarra.

As we pass, Saquet points to a road.

"Oddly enough, the road to the asphalt plant is paved," Saquet says. "I think he got a good deal."

"It's harvest time, sir, for wheat. They have two seasons here for wheat.

"One guy up on the bypass politely asked, 'Hey, could you guys lay off the flares.' Just a consideration for those three weeks out of the year," Saquet says.

The flares start fires in the dry, ripe wheat.

THE HUMVEES turn down the dirt canal road and pass the pipeline where last Saturday the team led by Staff Sgt. Justin Hunt, of Troy, N.Y., checked an empty house. Now there are men at the house.

Saquet says that a month ago the guards complained of not getting paid.

Journal photo / John Freidah

Capt. Jim Pratt, of Sikeston, Mo., a veterinarian, examines a sheep, part of a flock that a local shepherd says has taken ill.

"Since the change of command, everybody's getting their salaries skimmed," Saquet says.

The Humvees arrive at their first stop. A rickety car bridge crosses the canal. There is no way the bridge will hold the six-ton Humvees.

The men get out and walk.

"We had OPs out here. Saw people bypassing on the canal road," Saquet says. The men in the observation posts saw civilian traffic leave the paved highway that the soldiers call "Golden." The highway is bomb alley and the 173rd has been hit there.

"Hey, why's everybody getting off Golden?" Saquet says. "Boom."

The civilians had been warned of the bomb and took the dirt road to avoid it. The soldiers didn't know. Now they do and Saquet passes that piece of hard-won knowledge to Colbert.

On the far side of the canal, seven men and a boy wait in front of a low house, part of which is a store. A man washes a white car. An old GMC pickup truck has a busted windshield.

These people have complained about the health of their sheep.

Pratt, the veterinarian, asks, "Where's the flock? Can we see them?"

"They're going to bring the sheep down here," O'Hare says. He changes the subject, telling the interpreter, "Ask if it's quiet. What about the main road? We have mostly problems up north with the road bombers."

"Last bombs we found were on the road and situated to blow up the towers as well," O'Hare says.

O'Hare switches his talk to the watermelon crop. They bring a sheep to Pratt and he looks at it.

O'Hare says this is the first they heard about the bombs at the electrical towers. It would shut down their power.

"You let them know the terrorists hurt them as much as they hurt us," O'Hare says.

Pratt asks where they go for veterinarians for their sheep.

Fallujah, he is told. They used to sell their vegetables in Fallujah. After the fighting there, they can't do it anymore.

McCAULEY ASKS about the bridge. It is constructed of steel with steel plate decking covered with asphalt. It sags in the middle, the asphalt on the deck is falling off and the steel plates are cracked.

Who owns it? How old is it?

The people in the neighborhood collectively raise money to maintain the bridge. It was built in 1994.

How many kids live in the area, McCauley asks.

There are 200 houses with six to eight children to a house.

Where do they go to school?

There are no schools here. It's a problem.

At the next village, the school was wrecked by American bombs and classes have been moved to the clinic. However, it appears no child is in school -- as kids swarm the Humvees.

The older people are less friendly.

"They all worked for the government," Saquet says. The country up around Samarra and Tikrit was favored by Saddam. "I can see them all sitting around the table saying they had it better under Saddam and to hell with Americans."

Crime is a big problem here. People won't say anything about terrorists but hijackers and robbers move on the main highway outside the village. They have a chain link fence and gate.

O'Hare tells them, "We want to work together to defeat the criminals on the road."

It is here that the soldiers score their best tip when a man passes the interpreter a name and tells him where the terrorists meet. They consider it a breakthrough. This is the third time they've visited the village.

They stop at a man's house, where O'Hare returns a pistol that he had earlier confiscated. The man needs it to protect his family from the criminals. O'Hare hands the pistol to the man, who gives it to a little boy who, dragging it by the barrel, disappears behind the house.

The house is nice, part of a former Iraqi army barracks. Flowering oleander grows in the yard. But all around the house, the wreckage of war -- twisted angle iron, mangled tin roofing, torn earth -- turns the landscape into a junkyard.

IN THE VILLAGE of Aljeeko, the team medic, Specialist Sean Judge, of Narragansett, gives the nurse medicine for the children. The people here live in former government houses. They are prefab and made of fiberboard. Many are falling apart and people have hung cloth for doors. Tile has been stripped from the floor and water comes from a small pump outside the door supplying a garden hose laid on the floor.

The village has many graduate engineers and they have pooled their resources and talents to fix an old diesel generator.

On a previous visit, they told O'Hare how they were raising money bit by bit for the generator. Could they use some help? Some money would be good, they'd said, but we can handle the rest. O'Hare reached in his pocket and gave them everything he had on him, $500.

Today they have the cylinder heads off the engine and parts are being cleaned in gasoline.

They also band to together to fight the criminals who come through on the highway.

TO REACH the next man, the soldiers cross several miles of open Iraqi desert. The ground is stony with pebbles. At first the Humvees follow an elevated road bed. It is slow-going through drifted sand and over washouts. Then the road ends and they follow barely discernible vehicle tracks before picking up a line of utility poles.

"Guy paid $10,000 to have those poles taken out to his house," Saquet says.

The team pulls up at a large low house with yellow construction equipment and a large tractor. There is a flat-roofed barn.

Abdullah Teri, the man they have come to see, is in Nasiriyah, but his 20-year-old son invites the soldiers into the guest room. In contrast to the shepherd's house they visited, this room is plush. The floor is fully carpeted and there are cushions and pillows decorated with bright flowers.

The son is well-dressed in western shirt and slacks; his hair is neatly barbered and he wears a closely trimmed beard. A boy with him wears a white smock made of quality cloth.

Pratt asks the son about the sheep and looks at the medicines for them.

O'Hare asks about a criminal, a bad man who has been robbing people out on the highway.

His name is Rocahn.

Are they afraid of him?

Yeah, he has a group.

How big?

Three or four. He says he's with the terrorists.

He hasn't threatened him or his family?

No.

Is he a local guy or did he move in recently?

He is a local guy.

They ask the son to show them to the sheep. He says one is dying every other day or so.

"Too bad Abdullah Teri's not here," Saquet says. "The guy's a trip -- 86 years old. He's got five wives. One died and he's thinking about getting another one. He has a two-year-old son."

Abdullah Teri also owns a vast amount of land on the southern edge of Lake Tharthar on which he grazes sheep and raises wheat.

Near the lake, the soil is better with no signs of stone.

Three boys and a man tend a flock of sheep. Pratt pulls on green latex gloves and catches one lethargic male. Pratt clears crusted mucus from the sheep's nostrils. He has explained that with the change to hotter weather the sheep will start getting better because the ultraviolet light in strong sunlight will kill many of the organisms that attack them

He also explains that flies lay their eggs in sheeps' nostrils and the resulting larvae invade the sheep's sinuses and can kill them.

The day ends with a visit to the man at the asphalt plant, but he, too, is not there.

O'Hare and Saquet and their men return to Brassfield-Mora for the last time. They have done their best to show their replacements the terrain and the people they know. Today they will move north and start learning the hard-won lessons taught by a new place and unfamiliar people.

Digital Extra: Find more reports and photos from Iraq by Journal executive editor Joel Rawson and staff photographer John Freidah, on assignment with the 173rd Long Range Surveillance Detachment of the Rhode Island National Guard, at:

http://projo.com/extra/2005/iraq/rawson/