When the soldiers were returning from the mosque, they stumbled upon a bomb: a 155mm artillery shell attached to a transistor radio and a blasting cap. Just before the polls closed, the bomb, which an Iraqi soldier had defused, lay about 20 feet from the voting room inside the polling site, an elementary school with Mickey Mouse and the Road Runner painted on its walls.
A reporter who briefly visited all four sites patrolled by C Company saw a total of four voters, all of them women.
An Iraqi soldier patrols outside a polling location in Mosul marked by previous violence. Turnout was light in the city's southeast quadrant.
(Jim Macmillan -- AP)
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Photo Gallery: The end of Iraq's Election Day brought indications of strong turnout, but also reports of at least 30 people killed.
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Live, 11 a.m. ET: Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post foreign correspondent Anthony Shadid will discuss the elections and the latest news from Iraq.
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Graphic: Voting Sites Attacked
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The low turnout appeared to reflect the influence the insurgents are still able to wield, particularly in areas where they have strength. U.S. troops have repeatedly clashed with insurgents in southeast Mosul, and commanders spent much of last week trying to find the ones who were behind the Jan. 22 killing of 1st Lt. Nainoa K. Hoe, leader of C Company's 2nd platoon, who was gunned down in the Palestine neighborhood.
The C Company commander, Capt. Rob Born, of Burke, Va., began his day in the dark doing 6 a.m. security checks at the four polling sites, but he was diverted back to the same neighborhood where Hoe was shot. The 3rd Battalion had received intelligence that a cell of suicide bombers was planning to attack a polling place and was operating out of a cluster of houses in Palestine.
Born waited for the Stryker to drop its rear ramp, then sprinted across the same muddy field that had stood between Hoe and his assailant. He rounded a corner and burst into a house where it was thought the cell might be.
Born found a family sitting in an unheated home watching a Ted Danson movie.
After establishing that the family was not part of the suicide bomber cell, Born then tried to persuade the adults to vote.
"We have no gas, no kerosene, we care about that more than voting," a woman told him dismissively.
A man dressed in a T-shirt and gray sweats said there was no way he would vote. "They said anybody who votes will get their head cut off. I'd vote, but I'm scared to go vote," he said.
"But tell him his country needs him to go vote today," Born said to the interpreter before sprinting back across the field to the Stryker.
Born had planned to return to the polling sites, but soon he was dispatched to another raid in search of a suspected high-ranking insurgent. This raid targeted the al-Sabrine mosque, where insurgents have occasionally taken potshots at U.S. troops. Across the street from the mosque was more graffiti warning voters they would be beheaded. Just before Born arrived, a dozen men fled the mosque, and Born and his men from C Company searched for them in houses in the area.
In each house, they also urged people to vote. Each time the people told them they were too afraid. "You guys are out here in Strykers; I just have a pistol, how am I going to fight the terrorists?" asked a man who said he worked for the Ministry of Electricity but declined to give his name. "And tomorrow, after the elections, you'll be gone from this neighborhood. Who will protect me then?"
It was 4 p.m. when Born finally made it back to a polling site, No. 34. Inside were 10 representatives of the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq and no voters. The director of the site, who declined to give his name because he said he was afraid, said about 60 people had voted that day, the last one an hour before.
Just then, Hamdin Majid, 70, walked in with her 9-year-old granddaughter, Marwa. Dressed in a black abaya, a garment that covered all but her face, Majid announced she had come "to vote for Allawi," a reference to interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi.
After showing her identification, Majid was given ballots for the national and provincial assembly and was led to the cardboard voting booth. "You are braver than a thousand men," Mario, the Iraqi interpreter, told her.
"I'm not scared of anybody," she said when asked why she decided to vote when others were too timid. "I just want a government."
