Engineers' mission: detect and disarm
Today's dispatch from reporter Hal Bernton and photographer Thomas James Hurst comes from a U.S. base near Ad Dujayl.
By Hal Bernton
Seattle Times staff reporter
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 THOMAS JAMES HURST / THE SEATTLE TIMES |
| Maj. Matt Cadicamo surveys the damage after an improvised explosive device (IED) hit a military convoy last week on Highway 1 outside Ad Dujayl, Iraq. Cadicamo's 4th Engineers Battalion out of Fort Carson, Colo., tries to detect and disarm the IEDs, a deadly tool of Iraqi insurgents who oppose the U.S. occupation. |
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FORWARD OPERATING BASE VANGUARD — The explosion comes at midmorning, a dull boom that reverberates through the fog that hangs over this small U.S. Army base. It is the sound of an IED — one of the infamous improvised explosive devices that have claimed the lives of so many American soldiers here in Iraq.
Maj. Matt Cadicamo, a slender, bespectacled combat engineer, pops open a Pringles potato-chip can he keeps on his desk. He reaches in, grabs a handful of bullets and loads the magazine of his Beretta pistol. Then he jumps into a Humvee and heads for Highway 1, where a southbound convoy carrying heavy machinery struck an IED and then was shot at by insurgents.
Cadicamo is not surprised. Fog is an insurgent's ally. "It gives them the initiative. They can choose the time and place of attack, and they know we can't see them," he says.
Over the past six months, these IEDs — jury-rigged in increasingly ingenious and deadly ways — have emerged as a weapon of choice among insurgents. Even when they do not kill, they can maim in ghastly ways, shredding legs, severing arms or paralyzing with shrapnel to the spine.
Trying to detect and disarm these homemade land mines is a major preoccupation of the U.S. military, including these combat engineers, drawn from the 4th Engineers Battalion out of Fort Carson, Colo., and the 14th Engineers Battalion from the Washington Army National Guard.
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 THOMAS JAMES HURST / THE SEATTLE TIMES |
| During a search of a home in Ad Dujayl, Iraq, last week, soldiers from the 4th Engineers Battalion of Fort Carson, Colo., run to the roof to secure the area. |
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These soldiers watchdog a 24-kilometer (15-mile) stretch of Highway 1 near the central Iraqi town of Ad Dujayl. It is a low-profile, occasionally dangerous job as they search for signs of freshly dug holes, suspicious footprints or objects found along the road.
Just last week, a morning patrol was ambushed with small-arms fire and an evening patrol was targeted with what appeared to be rocket-propelled grenades. Neither attack resulted in U.S. casualties.
The IEDs can be hard to spot. They might be stuck inside a dead dog, hidden under a discarded tire or buried with only a slender antenna peeping above ground. Still, in recent months, these and other patrols have been able to locate roughly half the IEDs planted on the highway.
The small ones are forged from mortar shells and are roughly the size and shape of bowling pins. Larger ones can be made from plastic explosives or artillery shells the size of scuba tanks.
Last month, an IED destroyed a $2 million Fort Lewis-based Stryker — the Army's newest fighting vehicle. And in October, Pfc. Kerry D. Scott, of Concrete, was killed when his patrol hit an IED.
Even once found, they are treacherous.
Some are set out as bait, with the insurgents hoping that in the process of dismantling one, Army demolition experts will inadvertently set off a second, hidden explosive.
That's what happened to an Army National Guard soldier from Michigan the day after Christmas. The soldier suspected a second IED. So, four times he sent in a robot that searched unsuccessfully for the device, said Cadicamo. It turned out that the second bomb was hidden directly beneath the first. It exploded as soon as the soldier tried to disarm the first.
"They were crafty bastards," Cadicamo said. "You just couldn't tell where it was."
At this base, the 36-year-old Cadicamo is point man for IED attacks, assisting in the response across a 110-square-kilometer (68-square-mile) swath of central Iraq. This area includes some of the strongholds of resistance by Sunni Muslims, who most benefited from the regime of Saddam Hussein. In a recent 13-day period, at least 21 IEDs exploded in the area; 11 of them either disabled vehicles or injured or killed soldiers.
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| THOMAS JAMES HURST / THE SEATTLE TIMES |
| Two Iraqi girls sit against a wall as U.S. soldiers question a man while searching their home for weapons and insurgents. |
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Cadicamo, like a lot of officers here, is a workaholic. He routinely tackles 16-hour days. A Skoal-chewing West Point graduate, he is with the Fort Carson, Colo., battalion. But on a 1998 tour of duty, he fell in love with Seattle — and a Seattle woman — and plans to return.
In Iraq, though, he demonstrates a fervor for the challenges of his job. He speaks with a museum curator's pride about the base's growing collection of IED shells, fragments, antennas and other blast remnants. And he has a professorial knowledge of the brief, postwar history of IEDs.
Cadicamo says the bomb-making technology has taken a giant leap forward since the summer, evolving from crudely placed artillery shells to bombs that could be remote-detonated with garage-door openers, pagers or cellphones.
More recently, some have been pieced together with collapsible circuits that detonate when demolition experts cut the wires. A few bombs have been outfitted with photoelectric cells that explode when a demolition expert pushes away the dirt and the sun warms the circuits. Cadicamo says the only other place the Army has come across such photoelectric cells is in Afghanistan.
U.S. Army intelligence sources suggest that al-Qaida operatives have moved into Iraq, and Cadicamo wonders whether there may have been a technology transfer among insurgents to bolster the effectiveness of IEDs.
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| THOMAS JAMES HURST / THE SEATTLE TIMES |
| An Army Explosives Ordnance Disposal team searches the blast crater and surrounding area for clues about an improvised explosive device used against a military convoy. This particular attack resulted in no U.S. casualties. |
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On Dec. 28, soldiers from the Fort Lewis-based Stryker brigade unearthed an Osama bin Laden videotape along with a large cache of missiles, explosives and two ready-to-go IEDs packed with plastic explosives outside a farm near Samara.
By IED standards, this day's foggy blast proves fairly routine. It damages two trailers and a piece of heavy equipment in a huge convoy that has now stopped on the highway, triggering a big traffic jam.
Still, there are clues to be considered. So Cadicamo doubles back up the highway to join several members of an Explosives Ordnance Disposal team inspecting a small crater.
This time, there are no booby traps. The solders comb the earth, retrieving fragments from what appears to be a modest but well-placed artillery round. Cadicamo speculates that it may have been placed largely to stop the convoy, giving insurgents time to take aim and open fire.
The crater is a short distance away from a soccer field, where several local youths have gathered. They say they heard a boom and then shots, and point to the direction from which the gunfire originated. They munch on cookies offered by Cadicamo's commander, Lt. Col. Laura Loftus.
But as for who set the IED, no one seems to know.
The youths resume their soccer game.
Cadicamo returns to his office to file his report.
Hal Bernton: 206-464-2581 or hbernton@seattletimes.com
Copyright © 2003 The Seattle Times Company
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