After 6 deaths, Pa. unit is soldiering on in Iraq

The site along Smuggler's Road where a massive bomb killed four Philadelphia-area National Guard soldiers Aug. 9 still bears the scars of that terrible incident. So do the men of Alpha Company.

For the first time since the blast, which occurred within days of a bombing that had killed two other comrades, members of the stricken unit talked publicly last week about their struggle to go on.

"I pray that we can all finish this mission and just go home together, the rest of us," said Spec. Robert Jackson, 36, of North Philadelphia.

No other company here at Forward Operating Base Summerall can match the price paid by Alpha Company of the First Battalion of the 111th Infantry. Of the nine deaths in the 800-man Task Force Dragoon over 10 months, six have been in Alpha Company. Of about 60 wounds, about 25 have come from the company.

Capt. Anthony Callum of Chalfont, the company commander, said the men were continuing to do their jobs, and well. He said they continued to patrol the Beiji area, to train a company of Iraqi army recruits in infantry tactics, and to work with Iraqi officials in establishing local governments.

They are in harm's way every time they leave the base in armored humvees mounted with machine guns.

"We're in a dangerous situation; this is the Sunni Triangle," Callum said. "But at the end of the deployment, the soldiers are going to be proud of what they accomplished. They need to feel that pride. They don't need to go home feeling we failed because we lost six soldiers. "

Soldiers interviewed last week said they were frustrated by not being able to strike back at whoever laid the bomb in a culvert under Smuggler's Road that killed the four men. As in most bomb attacks, the insurgents melted away.

"You want payback, but you can't just go out and blow up Beiji," said Sgt. Brad Raudenbush, 23, of Doylestown.

Raudenbush, a senior at Temple University when called to active duty, was one of six men of Alpha Company selected by company leaders to give a joint interview. Military officials denied other access by a reporter to the roughly 100 men in the company, who live together on a military base nine miles in circumference housing more than 1,000 soldiers.

"For a lot of them, it's still too close to the event," said Army Lt. Col. Philip J. Logan of Camp Hill, Pa., commander of Task Force Dragoon.

'Brought us closer'

Jackson said the hardest part for him was returning to his two-man trailer after the loss of his "rack mate and buddy," Spec. Kurt E. Kraut, 43, of Spinnerstown, Pa., killed Aug. 6.

The soldiers, in the interview, were generally a bit reticent in discussing their feelings about the losses, but they agreed on one thing: "It brought us closer together," said Sgt. Michael Fisher, 28, of Philadelphia's Chestnut Hill section.

The men knew little about the Aug. 6 bombing, which killed Kraut and Sgt. Brahim J. Jeffcoat, 25, of North Philadelphia. It occurred outside of the battalion's area of responsibility.

But they provided eyewitness details about the second incident, which took the lives of Pfc. Nathaniel E. Detample, 19, of Morrisville; Spec. John Kulick, 35, of Harleysville; Spec. Gennaro Pellegrini Jr., 31, of Philadelphia; and Sgt. Francis J. Straub Jr., 24, also of Philadelphia.

'Hallowed ground'

They said a band of insurgents had begun shelling the nearby main highway at night in an apparent attempt to draw a platoon of American soldiers from Summerall, seven miles away.

The shelling came from a smaller, parallel road often used for black-marketeers. When soldiers from Second Platoon of Alpha Company rolled north along Smuggler's Road in four humvees, insurgents set off a blast that almost obliterated one vehicle. From a line of trees to the east, riflemen opened fire.

Later, after sweeps through Beiji and other areas, local Iraqis named several suspects. Capt. Leo J. Ciaramitaro, a battalion officer, said three to four were arrested and turned over to higher U.S. authorities.

As long as U.S. forces are in Iraq, no one will travel that section of Smuggler's Road, Logan said. "I consider this hallowed ground now," he said. "We're not going to have locals traipsing through it. "

Logan said that closing the roadway by felling trees and piling it with concrete debris had served a military purpose: It denied insurgents part of the back route into and out of Beiji, a key crossroads in north-central Iraq, about 110 miles north of Baghdad.

But he said the closing also was meant to be part of the emotional healing for Alpha Company, based at Plymouth Meeting. He said he considered it almost a memorial to comrades.

It's ours now," he said of the site, still raw with reddish dirt, "and they can't have it back. "

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Contact staff writer Tom Infield at tinfield@phillynews.com.