Looking for Battle, Marines Find That Foes Have Fled

The landowner, in the long white robe of Iraqi village men, spread his empty hands wide. "Mako-shi. Mako-shi," he said. Nothing, nothing.

Shrugging, another young Marine gently lifted a toddler out of the doorway, clearing the way for the search to start.

Down the road, a family having a breakfast of flat bread and yogurt on the porch invited a Marine search patrol to share the meal with them. The Marines refused, but gathered round when a woman called their attention to a toddler badly burned by a fall against a heater. Medical Corpsman John Jenkins treated the wound and covered it with gauze.

"Clear!" the Marines inside yelled. Chalking their squad number on the front door to show other Marines the house had already been searched, they moved on.

House-to-house searches are a mainstay of the Marines' work in Iraq. They work their way through towns to look for insurgents, weapons and bombmaking material and to draw fire from anyone who might be looking for a fight. The young Marines of the 3rd Battalion, 25th Regiment, estimated that in their first few months here, they had searched 1,000 houses.

Sometimes, the Marines busted up wooden furniture belonging to poor farm families and threw their polyester blankets and clothes in a jumble on the floor. A handful of the hundreds of Marines involved in Operation Matador walked out of homes with a pillow or blanket to cushion the ride in the Amtrac. Sometimes, Marines agreed at one commandeered house as they drank a rousted family's tea, they beat up suspicious-looking men if that was what it took to get information that could save lives.

At the end of a day of searches, Marines generally commandeer houses for the night, shooing the families out in case the Americans' presence makes the homes targets for attack.

At one house in Arabi claimed by Lima Company Capt. Bill Brown's platoon, a frightened teenage girl darted to catch a toddler who had conked his head on the floor. She fell, badly spraining her leg.

Young Marines clustered round the girl, pulling out an Arabic phrase book and calling the corpsman. "Doctor, doctor!" they said, pointing to the corpsman. They pointed to their eyes, slapped their legs and pointed to the girl: The medic wanted to see her leg.

Mother and father strained across the culture gap to keep the well-intentioned young American men from looking at the thigh of their 13-year-old daughter. "Yalla," the father said. Go away. He smiled widely and politely, shoving the Marines out of the room. "Yalla." The family quickly scooted out of the house afterward, leaving it to the young Americans.

The Marines hauled in boxes of plastic-pouched rations and bottled water, and pulled out the family's blankets, pillows and chairs to place in front of the family's satellite television. Circled round it, they hung on each word of a BBC report on Malaysia. It was their first word from the outside world in weeks.

Across the street, Marines sprawled in a rare air-conditioned bedroom watching a guest on CBS's "The Early Show" grate Parmesan onto roasted asparagus.