Word: battalion
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It looks a little spooky out here," Captain Jon Stubbs shouts above the roar of his humvee as he leads two platoons of the 3rd Battalion of the 153rd Infantry Regiment on a patrol through the heart of Adhamiya, Baghdad's most dangerous neighborhood. The cause of Stubbs' concern: it's only 7:30 p.m., and the streets around Abu Hanifa Mosque are empty and dark. "This place is usually buzzing like downtown Manhattan late into the night," says Stubbs, 32, a native of Searcy, Ark. "If people have gone home this early, they must know something nasty...
Full-scale offensives like Fallujah inevitably exact a psychic toll. Yet the punishing strain of fighting a hydra-headed insurgency afflicts U.S. troops even on what passes for a normal day in Iraq. Sergeant Justin Harding of the Ramadi-based 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines, can't get one of those October days out of his head. His squad, Reaper 2 of Whiskey Company, was heading back to base along one of Iraq's most dangerous roads. The squad's convoy, towing a vehicle disabled by a roadside bomb, was running at slow speed, making it vulnerable to ambush. Sure enough...
...variety of means to try to stave off the aftershocks of trauma. Harding dealt with his anxieties by talking to other members of his company about them. Every time the events of that day ran though his mind, he said a prayer. He was reassured by visits from the battalion chaplain, who told the Marines to honor Halverson and their own good fortune by carrying...
Aside from the public-opinion debacle, questions still outnumber answers when it comes to the circumstances of the shooting. The bare facts are these: a unit of the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment went to the mosque with cameraman Kevin Sites in tow. The mosque had been taken the day before by other Marines, but Sites' unit had heard that insurgents had reoccupied it. As the Marines approached, shots rang out, but they could not tell if the shots had come from the mosque. The widely aired footage shows the Marines entering the mosque, their strides confident but their voices...
...Battalion, 2nd Regiment...