AL RASHID, Baghdad, July 30, 2004 — Soldiers from the 1st Cavalry Division’s 5th Brigade Combat Team and the Iraqi National Guard’s 304th Battalion detained six suspected anti-Iraqi forces during a massive cordon-and-search July 15 in southern Baghdad.

The search was part of the division’s mission to target outskirt areas of Baghdad where rockets are fired into the International Zone, said Maj. Cameron Leiker, the operations chief for 1st Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment.

The operation was designed to find anti-Iraqi forces and weapons caches in one of the most active areas of the brigade’s area of responsibility, Leiker said.

Units from the 1st Battalion, 21st Field Artillery Regiment, cordoned off roads leading to the area, while 1-8 Cavalry, and the Iraqi National Guard’s 304th Battalion searched the area.

The division’s Rapid Reaction Force air-assaulted from UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters onto an island in the Tigris to look for weapons caches.

Military working dog teams searched for caches. If any were found, engineer assets were on hand to dig them up. Civil Affairs specialists, from Company A, 489th Civil Affairs Battalion talked with the locals about projects the coalition will be doing for the area.

The Iraqi National Guard soldiers did most of the searching, Leiker said. “It was a very large organization going out into these areas,” he added.

Delta Company’s mortar platoon found two of them, who are brothers living next door to each other, at their homes along the river during the early morning operation.

Everything started off with a search and a knock, including the target homes, Leiker said.

“By doing it that way, we come across in a more positive, less threatening manner,” he noted of the search’s techniques.

There at the mortar platoon’s target homes, Sgt. 1st Class Jeff Mallo, the platoon sergeant for Delta Company’s mortar platoon, waited for the family to open the gate door. Once open, his soldiers and attached Iraqi National Guard troops flooded in to look for their target. Eventually two men were questioned.

“Is this you?” asked Mallo asked a man wearing a white “man dress.” He held up a photo of the man. Arrogance and nervousness flashed across his face.

“Yes,” the man finally said. An Iraqi soldier led him out, handcuffed him and put on a truck.

“We didn’t want to do that in front of his kids,” the sergeant said. All the insurgents captured that day would later be questioned. The other two men the platoon wanted weren’t home, Mallo noted.

Mallo and his unit passed out fliers to the locals asking for help identifying insurgents and for the locations of other caches. After the target homes, Mallo and his platoon began the tough task of searching the farm fields and jungle-like palm groves for caches.

“See that burlap bag? If you see another, pull at it. Something could be hidden under there,” Mallo said. He was advising the Iraqi National Guard troops on how to look for hidden weapons caches. Sunlight barely peaked through the dense vegetation.

The soldiers wearily spread back out in a line to continue searching through a palm grove. Crashes and the rustles of the dense vegetations echoed through the grove.

By the time they were done, uniforms were covered in tiny thistles and smeared green from falling.

It was exhausting, the heat started to affect everyone. Eventually two Iraqi National Guard soldiers with Mallo’s platoon fell out from heat exhaustion. One had to be evacuated.

Given the area’s past, cracking the insurgency there has been hard, Leiker noted. Years ago, the now-deposed leader gave five-acre parcels of land there to friends, family, a few military generals and Ba’ath Party leaders. As a result, many of the area residents are fervently pro-Saddam, Leiker said.

“Being able to break in (to the area) is a bit difficult, because there’s a lot of loyalty there,” Leiker said.