A British Exercise in Stealthiness

The men of the British 1st Fusiliers got the word a few hours in advance that this would be the night. As darkness descended over the Al Garma bridge, along one of the front lines between British and Iraqi forces fighting for the southern city of Basra, the 25 men slipped unobtrusively into no man’s land.

Most of the Geordies, a term used to describe residents of Newcastle, England, felt a bit jittery about the high-risk raid to snatch a man out of Iraqi-controlled territory. But members of the team said Tuesday that they calmed themselves by focusing on the job ahead.

Many people, including the British troops most likely to enter Basra, have been wondering when the allied forces would take the city, Iraq’s second-largest and an important strategic and political goal.

In the meantime, British soldiers have been probing Basra’s defenses, gathering intelligence and blunting the Iraqis’ ability to attack, members of the 1st Fusiliers said, by using raids like the one that took place last week.

It took longer than expected last Friday night for the soldiers to reach their target, a house at the edge of Basra, as they slogged through marshland that sometimes left them up to their ankles in mud. The men stayed 30 to 40 feet apart, moving cross-country to avoid detection. A few had night-vision goggles, but most relied on ambient light.

After about an hour, the soldiers reached a nondescript house used as a reconnaissance post by the Iraqi military and paramilitary forces who had been raining mortar shells on British positions.

The Fusiliers called in artillery strikes behind and to the right of the house so the occupants would think they were being threatened from those directions. Heat imagery from surveillance aircraft had alerted the soldiers to the likely presence of two guards, whom they managed to avoid.

Within seconds of the artillery shells’ landing, the Britons kicked down a door of the building and half a dozen troops rushed in, grabbing their suspect as he emerged from a room.

The building’s inhabitants had weapons at hand. But the 1st Fusiliers seized the man -- identified by soldiers only as a member of an Iraqi militia -- before he could react. Two Iraqis who tried to flee were killed.

Two of the beefy British soldiers then frog-marched the prisoner out the door as platoon members outside opened fire to cover their retreat. Minutes after the soldiers had left, a radio operator accompanying them called in an artillery strike that saturated the area. Three Cobra helicopter gunships circled overhead to provide additional cover.

The soldiers’ return was far more direct than their journey in, with speed this time more important than stealth. As they approached the Al Garma bridge, they were met by armored vehicles that carried them into British-controlled territory.

The Fusiliers say these operations help boost British troop morale during the wait for an attack on Basra. They also provide valuable intelligence and unsettle the Iraqi forces by sending the message that the Britons can reach them anywhere.

“In a fairly static battle, they can get too confident,” said Maj. Paul Nanson, who led the raid. “By extracting someone in their midst, it unsettles them. I expect the next night they didn’t sleep. The last thing you want is to wake up and find 25 Geordies in your bedroom.”

In Friday’s operation, the Fusiliers also helped knock out at least some of the eyes and ears of the Iraqi military, undermining its ability to identify targets and strike back. The British soldiers patrolling the bridge in the days after the raid reported fewer attacks on their position.

“If they have eyes on our position, they can direct any artillery or mortars at us,” said Capt. Craig Taylor of the Fusiliers. “Taking them out effectively makes the enemy blind. They might know you’re there but not where you are.”

The Fusiliers handed their prisoner to others for interrogation.

Nanson said high-tech weaponry helps give the soldiers a little more warning, but these sorts of operations are ultimately about guts. “At the end of the day, you’re going head to head with the enemy,” he said.