It’s Hot, Dusty and Dangerous -- but Not L.A.

The soldiers sensed trouble as they pulled into the gates of the old Marlboro cigarette factory in Sadr City. Charred vehicles littered the yard. Iraqi civilians were hurrying away -- a sign that they were expecting trouble.

Within half an hour, mortar rounds began slamming into the compound, progressively closer to the convoy.

“There were children on the rooftops being used as spotters, giving them directions,” said Cpl. James Threadgill, 32, a National Guardsman from San Diego. “They use kids because they know we won’t shoot the kids.”

After eight mortar rounds exploded within the factory grounds, the 2nd Platoon made its escape. It piled into armored Humvees, stomped on the accelerators and plowed through the narrow, trash-strewn streets of the Baghdad slum.

For The Record
National Guard -- This story originally reported that California, with 2,000 National Guard troops in Iraq, has sent more than any other state. North Carolina, with more than 4,000 National Guard troops deployed in Iraq, has sent more.

After about 200 yards, Sgt. Juan Jimenez, 35, of Torrance spotted a man who appeared to be holding a detonating device. He fired his rifle at the man, and as he collapsed, an explosive planted in the middle of the street erupted. Then another.

Threadgill, who had lowered the phone-book-thick window on his door so he could shoot, was thrown back by the blast as shrapnel punctured a rear tire.

“I threw my window up and we pulled the gunners down and hauled it out of there,” said Threadgill, who suffered a concussion. “We were inches from it when it blew up.” The platoon limped back to base safe but shaken.

Such encounters are becoming routine for the citizen-soldiers who are shouldering much of the responsibility for the war in Iraq. About 40,000 of the U.S. troops here are from the National Guard, pulled from their day jobs in the civilian world into soldiering in a combat zone. The largest contingent, 2,000 strong, is from California.

These, members of Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 160th Infantry Regiment, based in Orange, are known as the “Maddogs.” They bunker down in Baghdad’s mortar-pocked International Zone, the heavily barricaded sector in the capital’s center housing foreign embassies and Iraqi government buildings, formerly known as the Green Zone.

Their mission is to escort embassy personnel, supply trucks, prisoner transports and cash deliveries. Every day, the Maddogs ride shotgun on Iraq’s busiest and deadliest roads.

They’ve been peppered with machine-gun fire and targeted by insurgents with rocket-propelled grenades. Operating in five platoons of four Humvee gun trucks each, the Maddogs have traveled throughout Iraq, rolling through such hostile zones as Baghdad’s Sadr City, Fallouja and Baqubah.

Most of the missions, which begin at dawn and end in the afternoon, are uneventful. It’s the eventful ones that stick in their minds.

“It’s like the lottery that way,” said one Maddog. “Nothing happens, and then one day it’s like: ‘Whoopie! You win a million pieces of shrapnel!’ ”

Such was the case at the Marlboro factory on a recent Sunday.

A job like this requires a certain amount of gallows humor. With its haze, heat, heavy traffic and violence, Baghdad invites jokes about sister-city status with Los Angeles.

“We know how to do drive-bys!” yelled Sgt. Damien Holmes as his Humvee barreled down a particularly dangerous stretch of road leading to Baghdad’s international airport. The 31-year-old former construction worker clocked the horizon for gunmen and scanned the shoulder for explosives.

“It’s a high-threat mission, but it’s not that bad because it’s 9 to 5,” said Capt. Brook J. Ford, company commander.

A 33-year-old Moreno Valley electronics salesman, Ford said the Maddogs had yet to suffer a fatality -- a coincidence of training and luck that has helped maintain high spirits.

But as insurgents expand their reliance on suicide car bombings -- more car bombs were detonated in September than in any month since the start of the war in March 2003 -- Ford said the chance of losing men has increased substantially.

“We haven’t been hit in a long time, and our time is coming,” Ford cautioned his men during a recent company meeting. “When we do have a bad day, we’re going to have an extremely bad day. A lot of people will be killed by car bombs.”

The Iraq deployment is the first time since the Korean War that the 1-160th -- as well as National Guard units nationwide -- has gone to war.

But 1st Sgt. Paul Balboa said at least some in the unit had experienced hostile gunfire.

During the 1992 riots in Los Angeles, when this unit was mobilized, it wasn’t uncommon for people to take potshots at the troops’ positions.

Like most Guard units, there’s a broad range of age and experience in Bravo Company. At 57, Balboa is the oldest, most decorated member of the unit, having served four combat tours in Vietnam. A month after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Moreno Valley resident retired from his supervisor and engineer job at Pacific Bell and volunteered for full-time National Guard service.

He and 96 other Bravo Company Maddogs are quartered in a sturdy underground garage that reportedly housed a fleet of cars pillaged from Kuwait by Saddam Hussein’s sons, Uday and Qusai. The garage is near the so-called Assassin’s Gate, the main entry point to Hussein’s former palace compound, and is flanked by two of the former Iraqi leader’s administrative buildings that were heavily bombed during the invasion.

“This is Fort Apache, basically,” Balboa said. “The bad guys are over the fence.”

Insurgents on nearby Haifa Street -- a “no-go zone” for U.S. troops -- have destroyed armored vehicles with rocket-propelled grenades and explosives. They also have detonated car bombs at International Zone checkpoints, raining vehicle parts and human tissue inside the zone’s perimeter. Attackers regularly lob mortar rounds onto the base and once hit the Maddogs’ motor pool, injuring several troops.

“Occasionally an AK-47 round hits the ground out of nowhere,” Balboa said. “It’s no different from L.A.”

The troops’ living area, divided into bays by hanging tarpaulins, is furnished with couches and coffee tables and jammed with modern conveniences: televisions, laptop computers, stereos and refrigerators. Soldiers unwind after missions by playing DVDs and obsessively cleaning and oiling their machine guns. Others play combat video games at full volume.

Since their escort work takes them to many other military bases, the Maddogs have taken full advantage of the military stores.

“There’s really nothing else to do, so you end up spending your money on crazy stuff,” said Sgt. Joseph Cabra, 24, of Long Beach. A nurse in civilian life, Cabra had just purchased an electric abdominal exerciser.

Throughout their tour in Iraq, the Maddogs have worried about how the American public perceives their work.

They are troubled by the images that came from the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, and say the media don’t fairly depict what they do. More than a few worry about whether they will be scorned when they return to the U.S.

“On CNN, you only see the bad stuff,” Cabra said. “They don’t show you pictures of us handing out candy to children or pictures of me bandaging a little girl’s arm after it’s been blown off by an explosion.”

Threadgill said he doubted that most Americans could comprehend what life was like for U.S. troops in Iraq, or realize how long they were likely to be there.

“I wish I had a video camera on my truck so I could show people what’s happening here every single day,” Threadgill said.

“The IEDs [improvised explosive devices], the small-arms fire, the rockets, all of it. We’re not going to restaurants, we’re not drinking, we’re not partying. We’re getting up early every morning, putting on our combat gear and going out there ready to kill, and we’re doing it every single day.”

The Maddogs are scheduled to come home in six months.