Unit Ponders the Hard Lessons of Loss

BAGHDAD, April 16 -- By now the soldiers know the ceremony by heart, but Monday afternoon, on day 62 of the Iraq war's escalation strategy, they rehearsed it yet again, starting with the display that people would want to look at and to touch.

Photograph on the bottom. Then the boots. Next, the rifle. Then the dog tags. Finally, on top, the helmet. Five days after his death, it was all that remained here of 29-year-old Army Sgt. Raymond S. Sevaaetasi.

"After the official party comes in, you can leave the back doors open. It's not like there's going to be a party out there," Command Sgt. Maj. Eddie Gilbert instructed some soldiers in the rear of the chapel who would serve as ushers, and then, to a few who were staring at the display, he said, "Hey guys, we're still the Army. We don't just gaggle."

Can a soldier get used to death? That's what the soldiers of the 1st Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment, 2nd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, out of Fort Hood, Tex., are finding out here in an area of eastern Baghdad teeming with snipers and roadside bombs. They are also learning hard lessons about the consequences of President Bush's troop escalation that other battalions have so far been spared.

Since U.S. and Iraqi forces began implementing their new Baghdad security plan Feb. 14, nine soldiers from the battalion have been killed. No battalion has had more. Even harder, after a relatively uneventful deployment that began last November, those nine deaths have occurred in the past 32 days.

"It just seems like it's been blow after blow after blow," said the battalion's chaplain, Capt. Roger McCay. "They're sad. Very sad," he said of the battalion's 750 soldiers. "They question, 'Is this how it's going to be from now on out?' "

When the escalation began, it came with predictions of a corresponding escalation in casualties, especially in Baghdad, the focus of the strategy. Two months later, the predictions have become fact: There have been 76 deaths of U.S. soldiers in Baghdad between Feb. 14 and April 14, compared with 42 hostile deaths in the period between Dec. 16 and Feb. 13.

Within the 1-8, however, soldiers were for the most part unscathed. Between late November, when they began patrolling a sprawling, heavily populated, mostly Shiite patch of eastern Baghdad, and Feb. 14, there were 20 or so minor injuries, one serious burn injury and one fatality, according to the battalion commander, Lt. Col. Jeffrey Sauer. The fatality, from a roadside bomb that killed Pvt. Joshua C. Burrows, 20, occurred Nov. 26, the night before the battalion officially took over its assigned area.

"So that was an eye-opener," Sauer said. His soldiers wondered: Is this what's ahead?

It wasn't. There were no fatalities in December, none in January, and none through Feb. 14. Then came the escalation, and the 1-8 consolidated its operations to an area that rubs up against the vast Shiite district of Sadr City. As the soldiers increased their presence, patrolling more and establishing neighborhood outposts, the number of roadside bombs also increased, especially armor-piercing ones known as EFPs, for explosively formed penetrators, against which Humvees and Bradley Fighting Vehicles have been defenseless.

Still, for 28 more days, through February and into March, the good luck continued. But then came March 15, and as Sauer put it, "All of a sudden, bam, bam, bam."

It started with a roadside bomb that detonated as some of his soldiers were passing by in two Bradleys. There were no injuries, but nine soldiers got out to scan the area to make sure it was safe, and that was when a second bomb exploded.