U.S. troops risk lives to rescue elderly woman during battle

HINDIYAH, Iraq -- "We've got to get her off that bridge," he said.

Capt. Chris Carter winced at the risks his men would have to take. Engaged in a lightning-fast raid for this Euphrates River town, they were battling for a bridge when -- through the smoke -- they saw the elderly woman. She had tried to race across the bridge when the Americans arrived, but was caught in the cross fire.

At first, peering through their rifle scopes, they thought she was dead, like the man sprawled in the dust nearby. But then, during breaks in the gunfire that whizzed over her head, she sat up and waved for help.

Carter, a 32-year-old Army Ranger, ordered his Bradley armored vehicle to pull forward while he and two men ran behind it. They took cover behind the bridge's iron beams.

Smoke cover

Carter tossed a smoke grenade for more cover and approached the woman, who was crying and pointing toward a wound on her hip. She wore the black chador, common among older women in the countryside. The blood soaked through the fabric, streaking the pavement around her.

Medics placed the woman on a stretcher and into an ambulance; Carter stood by, providing cover with his M16A4 rifle. Then she was gone, and Monday's battle for this town of 80,000, 50 miles south of Baghdad, raged on.

By the end of this day, the Army would fight street to street, capture and kill scores of Saddam Hussein's troops, blow up a ruling party headquarters and destroy heaps of ammunition and mortars -- and rescue one elderly woman from a firefight.

It was a brief incursion, one of many probing attacks into territory controlled by the Republican Guard -- deft strikes, seeking to determine the strength and positioning of opposing forces, while doling out punishment.

They lost no men, but it wasn't easy. From the very beginning officers in the 4th Battalion, 64th Armor Regiment described the mission as "hairy."

One town, one battalion.

"Yeah, hold a strategic bridge with one infantry company that has only two platoons, a hell of a mission," Lt. Col. Philip DeCamp, the battalion commander, said with a wry smile. He assigned a tank platoon to help the infantry unit -- Attack Company, aka A Company, 3rd Battalion, 7th Infantry -- take the bridge and search the police station.

They rolled in the early morning, reaching Hindiyah by 7 a.m.

Iraqi forces began shooting at Americans as soon as they reached the outskirts. One rocket-propelled grenade hit a Bradley at short range, punching a two-inch deep hole into its armor. The Bradley kept rolling, undeterred.

Tanks shot every military vehicle they saw, setting them on fire. One vehicle sparked and popped as hundreds of rounds of ammunition inside burned and exploded.

'Open fire!'

Fighters in civilian clothes, checkered Arab scarves pulled over their heads and faces, clutched Kalashnikov rifles as they weaved down alleyways and around shop fronts.

"There's a guy on the left, I think he's got an RPG," Sgt. Robert Compton of Oklahoma City shouted into the intercom of the commanding officer's Bradley, looking through a periscope at what he believed was a rocket-propelled grenade.

"Where? Where?" asked Staff Sgt. Bryce Ivings, the Bradley's gunner.

"Scan left," barked Carter, the commanding officer. "Open fire!"

The 25 mm cannon shook the Bradley and the smell of gunpowder filled the passenger compartment. No one stopped to see if the man was killed or wounded.

U.S. troops soon took over the center of the town and the western bridgehead.

Across town, a tank company battled Iraqi troops guarding an ammunition depot. The tanks killed 20 men but captured 20 others, all wearing the insignia of the Republican Guard Nebuchadnezzar Brigade, based in Saddam's hometown of Tikrit.

This could be significant. A senior official at U.S. Central Command, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the brigade may have moved south to bolster defenses that have been devastated by the U.S.-led forces.

As the American ended their mission, hundreds of Iraqi civilians began to fill the streets, waving white flags over their heads. The U.S. troops returned to the desert to clean their weapons and prepare for their next mission.