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Resilient Sunni Stronghold Tests the Iraqi Army's Best
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"It's a wild ride. Plans change a mile a minute," said Stojic, who was following with his men to back up the Iraqis. "A lot of missions are done at the spur of the moment. A lot of times they act on impulse."
Stojic said he was aware of the intelligence a couple of hours earlier, but Iraqi officers leading the convoy would listen only to their base commanders. "The Iraqi army have their ideas. Then you have the coalition. We have our ideas. We're not quite on the same page," he said. "If we happened to go down that way, I would have probably told my guys to stay back."
A Promotion and New Orders
At 1:48 p.m., Muhammed received a phone call. A roadside bomb had ripped the arm and leg off another Iraqi soldier, who died. There was still no word on whether he would return to the Road of Hell. "This should be solved with our hands," he said. Later, he went to Shimil for his orders. Shimil decided to hold his promotion ceremony on the spot. An aide took the insignias off the shoulders of another major. Shimil placed them on Muhammed, as Lt. Col. George Benson, Shimil's U.S. military adviser, watched.
As he attached the shoulder insignia, Shimil told Muhammed that he needed him to clear the way into a known insurgent haven along the Road of Hell.
The Americans had cleared almost two more miles of the road. But the Iraqis wanted their ace bomb defuser to make sure it was totally safe.
"You go walking, you go crawling," Shimil told him. "Tomorrow we need you there."
"I will be there, God willing," Muhammed said.
Special correspondent Zaid Sabah contributed to this report.
