by Ayman Kafel
It was the middle of the night in the cold Iraqi desert. It sounds funny to say “cold desert,” but that’s what it was. The Praetorians and Spartan 6 were conducting a combat patrol during an Iraqi election. Every time an election came around in Iraq, it was met with violence and intimidation from various terrorist groups throughout the country. Our mission that night was to ensure the ballots made it through our Area of Operations (AO) without any problems.
One of the gunners reported that someone up ahead was digging at the side of the road. As we moved toward him, he ran off. We gave chase but lost him in one of the local villages. We ended up clearing all the mud huts in the village. As we went through each hut, I ordered the occupants to keep their hands where we could see them. Unfortunately, we were unable to find this person. We went back to where we initially saw him and found the improvised explosive device (IED) he was assembling. It was safe to be close to it since it hadn’t been completed. We called in the explosive ordnance people to get rid of the device….