Ask Humvee gunner Spc. Tim Collins of the 3rd Battalion, 153rd Infantry Regiment of the Arkansas National Guard about what worried him most about fighting in Najaf, and the answer is surprising. It wasn't enemy fire, but rather low-hanging electrical wires and steel rebar. "Around here it's pretty bad," said the 27-year-old from Pocahontas, Ark. "It'll either pull you out or decapitate you."
He and his driver, Spc. Jimmy Ingram, 32, of Imboden, Ark., spent more than two weeks racing through Najaf's sometimes narrow and always debris-strewn streets, delivering personnel, supplies or providing supporting fire for Company C, 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment, all the while dodging low-hanging wires and rebar, the steel reinforcement bars used in construction. Their platoon was attached to Company C before the Najaf fight. "I believe that's what got [one soldier] last night," Collins said to Ingram. "One guy in the 2-7 Cav got electrocuted, but he didn't die." The soldier Collins referred to received cuts and bruises to his chin from either low-hanging wire or a piece of rebar that had flown up from the street.
Many of the power lines that run throughout the old section of town, where all the fighting took place, hang low above the street, having been strung by residents tapping into the main lines. When 2-7 Cav arrived in Najaf, hundreds of wires hung along the length of every street, like giant black spider webs. Realizing the danger, soldiers took steps to minimize it. "We sent the tanks through first," said Capt. Peter Glass, commander of Company C, 3rd Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment. His unit was attached to 2-7 Cav for the Najaf fighting. The tanks have a .50-caliber machine gun mounted highest on its turret, and when they came back from a mission "the .50 cal looked like a mummy," said Capt. Jason Toepfer, commander of Company C, 2-7 Cav. "We had a couple of guys helping them [remove wire]. They were taking off hundreds of feet of wire." | Geeez, no wonder the power won't stay up. |
Even after dozens of runs down Najaf's streets by dozens of vehicles, dangling wires remained a problem. Gunfire would cause a new batch of broken wires, which would drop straight down or loop down across the street. |