MILITARY: Commanders moving operations north and preparing for Anbar handover

By MARK WALKER - Staff Writer | Thursday, May 22, 2008 4:43 PM PDT ∞

Editor's note: Staff Writer Mark Walker is traveling in the Middle East with Lt. Gen. Samuel T. Helland, commander of Camp Pendleton's I Marine Expeditionary Force.

MAMELUKE DESERT, IRAQ ---- After spending the last several weeks in this hot and largely barren landscape ferreting out weapons caches and hunting insurgents, three Camp Pendleton Marines say it is the simple things they miss.

"A hot shower and a hot meal," said 21-year-old Lance Cpl. Michael Stillfried as he sat beneath a sun screen, preparing his rifle for the next patrol.

Read a related story and Mark Walker's trip snippets.

For 23-year-old Cpl. Saul Mendez, it's music and Mexican food. The San Diego native is on his first combat deployment.

"We're just living the good life out here," Mendez laughingly said of the conditions that include sandstorms, scalding heat and MREs, shorthand for meals ready to eat.

Sgt. Daniel Saechao, 25, a Sacramento native on his second combat deployment, said he yearns to replace the bucket of water he uses to shave and bathe with a hot shower.

The three Marines from Camp Pendleton's 9th Communications Battalion are among some 11,000 troops from the Oceanside base and the Miramar Marine Corps Air Station in San Diego who are serving in Iraq's Anbar province this year.

The three are part of Operation DAN, a joint effort with U.S. Army and Iraqi army troops to cut off the "rat lines" of insurgents traveling from Syria to the Iraqi city of Mosul, considered one of the last heavy concentrations of the anti-government forces.

The Marines move across the deserts in heavily armored vehicles, hopping from point to point in search of the insurgents.

Operation DAN stands for "Defeat al-Qaida in the North" and is one of numerous combat and civil-affairs efforts throughout Anbar province being led by Camp Pendleton's Maj. Gen. John Kelly, Multi-National Force West commanding general and deputy general of Camp Pendleton's I Marine Expeditionary Force.

Kelly and his boss, Lt. Gen. Samuel Helland, visited some of their troops and commanders operating in the northern desert area on Wednesday, flying aboard CH-46 helicopters to reach their troops in the field.

Dozens of miles north of Kelly's headquarters at Camp Fallujah, Brig. Gen. Richard Mills is leading Operation DAN in the Lake Thar Thar region.

"We're working a 6,000-square-mile area we've taken over from the Army," Mills said. "We're trying to shut down the rat lines and stop any insurgents from moving through this area."

Since the operation began, Mills said, "we're also finding a lot of weapons caches, and we discovered an IED facility north of Lake Thar Thar."

After lunching on MREs with Mills and a contingent of his Marines, Helland, who is head of Marine Corps forces throughout the Middle East, visited another Marine unit that discovered several piles of old, spent shells and other material that could be used to manufacture roadside bombs.

It was a massive roadside bomb that killed four Camp Pendleton Marines two weeks ago in this once insurgent-laden province.

In an earlier briefing with two reporters in his office at Camp Fallujah, Kelly said five suspects in the beheading of 11 policemen and one policeman's son last week had been detained by Iraqi security forces.

The suspects are believed to be insurgents who crossed over from the Syrian border, he said.

Marine contingents of 25 to 40 troops, along with private security contractors, are embedded with 110 police units throughout Anbar to give the Iraqi forces extra protection and training, the general said.

As his troops conduct more combat operations in the northern desert region, Kelly said his goal in the seven months remaining on his assignment is to improve the economy and government in Anbar.

When the security in and around Fallujah has reached the point where he believes the Marines can move on, Kelly said he will move to close down Camp Fallujah and shift command center operations to nearby Taqaddum Air Base.

"We're making an evaluation now of what we can do to move the Marines north and move to more of an overwatch environment," he said. "The moment of truth is when we take the training wheels off for the Iraqi army and security forces."

Contact staff writer Mark Walker at (760) 740-3529 or mlwalker@nctimes.com.

First name only. Comments including last names, contact addresses, email addresses or phone numbers will be deleted. All comments are screened before they appear online, so please keep them brief. Comments reflect the views of those commenting and not necessarily those of the North County Times or its staff writers. Click here to view additional comment policies.