Feb 23, 2005
Today is our 3rd day in the town of "Hit" and I have been meaning to write in the record for weeks. After the elections, we seemed to step it up a notch and raid a couple of targets before we turned over our zone in Ramadi. The first house we hit with little success. Driving into the village and having mortars provide illumination; I guess we scared them off with them hearing our vehicles. There was said to be around 20 of them fleeing the target house. Nobody we caught was who we were looking for.
The next raid was in the town of Saqlawiyah. The Capt., myself, and my scout team linked up with Red Plt at OP 11A along with an Italian reporter. We patrolled about 2K into the town at midnight. The first house was on the outskirts of the town. After we had surrounded the house, a green chemlight was cracked and thrown into the air for the signal to move in.
We stormed in kicking the door down and pulled five guys out of bed, along with finding just as many AK's. After zip tying their hands and blindfolding them, we dragged them with us to the next objective. Working our way deeper into the town, we continued to kick down doors, stringing along our train of detainees, hitting all four objectives with the only casualty being my new guy Skraba falling into a waist high puddle of shit.
We ended up with eleven detainees – all bad guys. Even the HIET (Human/Intelligence Exploitation Team) was surprised at how successful the raid was.
Great read. I heard a funny story about marines passing the time by swimming in a local river, worked our really great he said yolk we found out the locals were shitting in it. I asked him if the locals were doing before our after they found out about the swimming, he thought after...hilarious I think!!!
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