‘Hearts and minds’ task makes target of Marines

The mission was humanitarian: Marines were taking free sheep -- sheep -- to impoverished villagers, and candy, T-shirts and toys to their children.

Before it was over, the mission would serve as a real-life tutorial in the tactics and morality of the daily gun battle between Marines and insurgents in this barren stretch of desert along the Syrian border.

A seven-vehicle convoy of heavily armed Marines from the 1st battalion, 7th regiment of the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit had ventured overland to buy sheep from Bedouin shepherds. Marines jokingly called the effort Operation Mutton.

What better way to convert hearts and minds than to distribute wooly mammals in a region where a family’s wealth is measured by how many sheep it owns.

At first it appeared the Marines had met their match. Bedouins were expert hagglers long before America was a country or had a Marine Corps. Two Bedouins, owners of a flock nibbling on desert grass, said they had no sheep to sell. We have no need for money, they said, standing beside their mud huts and barefoot children. The session seemed destined to fail.

Chief Warrant Officer Dan Sierra, working through a translator, found the soft underbelly of the Bedouin culture: hospitality. Bedouins are famed for never turning away a request from a traveler.

Sierra had the translator make one last plea: We have come all this way to buy your sheep, please do not reject us. The Bedouins looked at each other and, as an icy wind blew in from Syria, they decided to humor the rich Americans.

A deal was struck: five sheep for $350 and several boxes of shoes. The sheep were loaded into a trailer. A bahhhhh-ing sound mixed with the rough roar of the Humvee engine.

Off the convoy went to Ubadey, a farming village near the Euphrates River where the Marines have supported the health clinic and the Navy is working to improve the water system.

Respects were paid to the mayor, a dignified figure in black gown and gold brocade. The local imam, an aging and blind cleric of great influence, was given a fat sheep. If he said thank you, no one heard it. Toys, candy and trinkets were given to the children.

A small knot of men in their 20s stayed aloof, looking disapproving. Even as Marines maintained a tight cordon and watched for trouble, a festive feeling prevailed.

“This is something I never thought I’d be doing -- driving around Iraq and giving away sheep,” Lt. Josh Watson said. “They never told us about this in supply school.” The sheep having been distributed to families picked by the mayor, the initial leg of the midafternoon return trip to the Marines’ main base was over rutted off-road trails to avoid detection by insurgents.

The going was slow and bumpy. Within a few miles of the camp, the convoy switched to a paved road.

A car traveling toward the Marines slowed but refused to stop, causing the Marines to wave their arms in the air and warn the driver to pull over. Suicide cars have taken a toll.

Suddenly, from the opposite side of the road, came a tremendous explosion beneath one of the Humvees, followed by small-arms fire, probably from AK-47s.

“Here we go,” Sierra shouted into his radio. Sierra had been concerned that the hourlong stop at Ubadey had given insurgents time to spot the Marines and plot an attack.

Later the Marines would disagree whether the explosion was from a roadside bomb, a rocket-propelled grenade or both. But its power was undeniable. The blast and fireball flattened all four tires on the Humvee and ripped shrapnel holes in its side, windows and trunk. A Marine gunner was knocked unconscious.

The Humvee was one of the newly armored ones. If the explosion had struck one of the thinly protected Humvees used in the assault in 2003 on Baghdad and Tikrit, Marines inside most assuredly would have been killed.

Marines yelled that a triggerman dressed in black was visible in the window of a farmhouse about 100 yards away. A Marine squeezed off four shots from his M-16.

Their vehicles pushed rapidly through the “kill-zone.” Dismounted Marines spread out to return fire if the insurgents opted to stand and fight. The injured Marine was rushed to the base, where Navy doctors determined he had suffered a concussion but no other injuries.

Towing the crippled Humvee slowed the rest of the convoy to a crawl. Marines scanned the horizon and prepared to respond to a possible second attack. There was no small talk.

Even before the convoy made its way to the base, the injured Marine was aboard a Black Hawk helicopter on his way to a trauma center near Baghdad for further examination and a reassuring telephone call to his wife.

Once back at the base, Marines reported that Iraqis in buses had seemed overjoyed by the attack. A detailed debriefing was held. It was not the first convoy attack for most of the Marines; none thought it would be his last.

One Marine said that he, too, could have taken a shot at the farmhouse, but from his angle there were children in the frontyard and a woman taking clothing down from a line in the back.

He had declined to shoot.

Officers had not yet appeared at the debriefing. An unofficial mini-debate ensued among young enlisted about whether the Marine should have fired at the farmhouse.

There were dissenters, but the consensus was that firing into the farmhouse from such a questionable angle could have cost the Marines the moral high ground in their struggle with the insurgents and hurt their chances to win the confidence of a terrified populace.

About a man who would use women and children as shields -- a common tactic among insurgents -- there was no disagreement.

“He’s a coward,” one Marine said in disgust. “I’d like to kill him.”