‘You can’t win this war with bullets’

[unhappycamper]

Staff Sgt. Luke Crawford, left, and 1st Lt. John Tallarico, get the rockstar treatment from local kids during a foot patrol in the Shulla district of northwest Baghdad earlier this month. Before Crawford’s 1st Platoon, Company B, 1st Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment arrived in November, U.S. forces hadn’t patrolled the area since April.


‘You can’t win this war with bullets’
By Geoff Ziezulewicz, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Wednesday, February 27, 2008

BAGHDAD — The men of Company B didn’t know what they would face when they entered the Shulla district in northwest Baghdad for the first time last year.

Arriving in November with the rest of 1st Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment, the soldiers were the first to patrol the Shiite slum of about 350,000 since April 2007.

“All reports we had got were, ‘You don’t go into Shulla without making some kind of contact,’” company commander Capt. Jeremy Ussery said of those apprehensive first days.

The unit had no formal transfer-of-authority from their predecessors and only about three days with them on the ground, said Ussery, of Monticello, Fla. Then, the Company B “Bulldogs” stepped onto the Shulla streets.

“When we walked in there, people looked at us like, ‘Wow, we haven’t seen you guys in a while,’” Ussery said.


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=52846