Insurgents blew up the center support for this highway bridge near Forward Operating Base Summerall on Nov. 13, 2004. (Steve Liewer/Stars and Stripes)
This article first appeared in Stars and Stripes, Nov. 29, 2004. It is republished unedited in its original form.
FORWARD OPERATING BASE SUMMERALL, Iraq — What in the world has gone wrong in Bayji?
By Iraqi standards, this crossroads city of 125,000 on the Baghdad-Mosul highway used to be peaceful. But military leaders worry that a spate of recent attacks have eroded months of U.S. work to rebuild the region.
Attacks against U.S. forces averaged fewer than one a day in the 80-by-60-mile region around Bayji, patrolled by the 1st Infantry Division’s Task Force 1-7.
Then on Nov. 9, all hell broke loose.
That day, insurgents attacked Task Force 1-7 patrols in several parts of the city at once and turned Bayji’s main north-south artery, Highway 1, into a shooting gallery. The firefight lasted more than five hours. There were no U.S. casualties, but about 25 enemy fighters died.
On Nov. 13, rebels blew up the center support of a crucial bridge along a city bypass near FOB Summerall, forcing convoys supplying the base to roll through the heart of the city. The next day, the rebels provoked another firefight that lasted all morning and caused more destruction to Bayji’s business district.
And on Nov. 17, a suicide car bomber attacked an Army Bradley fighting vehicle, killing a dozen Iraqis and injuring more than 20 other people, including three U.S. soldiers.
Capt. Deric Holbrook of Task Force 1-7 emerges from the rubble of a burned-out building on Bayji’s Market Street. The Iraqi city’s business district was destroyed during firefights between U.S. Army troops and local insurgents Nov. 9 and Nov. 14, 2004. (Wayne Sanders/U.S. Army)
A fuel tanker burns in downtown Bayji during a firefight Nov. 9, 2004, between U.S. forces from the 1st Infantry Division’s Task Force 1-7 and Iraqi insurgents. A tank shot a rocket at the fuel tanker because rebels were using it as cover. (Henry Byard/U.S. Army)
Under a sooty cloud from a nearby oil refinery, Sgt. Melvin Davis, 32, of Battery B, Task Force 1-7, surveys the empty main street of Bayji, Iraq. (Steve Liewer/Stars and Stripes)
Task Force 1-7 soldiers talk with Bayji shopkeepers. (Wayne Sanders/U.S. Army)
“The last two weeks have been pretty intense,” said 1st Sgt. Michael Grinston, 36, of Jasper, Ala., the senior noncommissioned officer in Task Force 1-7’s Battery C.
During the first three weeks of November, insurgents attacked coalition military or civilian targets 82 times in the Bayji region. That was more than double the previous record of 37 attacks, set in July and equaled in October.
Task force commanders were most surprised by a big jump in roadside bombs. Soldiers have gotten better at both finding them and protecting against them; they’ve defused nearly half of the 56 bombs discovered this month before they detonated, and injuries have been few.
Tactically, the Bayji battles have been a huge victory for the U.S. forces. No Americans have died, and only a few have suffered injuries, while dozens of insurgents have been killed.
But Lt. Col. Kyle McClelland, the task force commander, said the battles have eroded months of strategic progress in rebuilding Bayji — especially its downtown shopping thoroughfare, which Americans call Market Street — into a busy commercial hub.
He said the insurgents have staged most of their battles from the Market Street shops, because few Iraqis live there and American vehicles make easy targets on the narrow street.
The fighting has left the downtown in ruins. Those shops not shattered by rockets and gunfire now rarely open up for business. Since the car bombing, McClelland has shut down traffic on Highway 1 from early morning until late afternoon each day so U.S. supply convoys can get through safely.
“You’re not winning the hearts and minds of anybody this way,” McClelland, 41, of Chicopee, Mass., said sadly. “All the work we’ve accomplished in nine months was basically destroyed in two days.”
McClelland’s troops are working to restore some semblance of normalcy to the strategic city, which is home to Iraq’s largest oil-refinery and two major power plants that together generate about one-third of the country’s meager power supply.
Spc. Greg McMeekan, 23, front, and Sgt. Melvin Davis, 32, scan the Bayji skyline from the roof of the mayor’s office, Nov. 25, 2004. The main street had been closed to Iraqi traffic during the day for the previous weeks during a violent uprising in the city so that U.S. supply convoys could safely pass. McMeekan and Davis were members of Company A of the 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment from Schweinfurt, Germany, but were then attached to Task Force 1-7. (Steve Liewer/Stars and Stripes)
A building in Bayji’s business district burns during the Nov. 14, 2004, firefight between soldiers from Task Force 1-7 and Iraqi insurgents in the key northern crossroads that is a center of oil and power production. It had been the scene of heavy rebel activity since Nov. 9. (Henry Byard/U.S. Army)
Iraqi insurgents in Bayji fought against U.S. troops from storefronts like this one in pitched battles Nov. 9 and Nov. 14, 2004, severely damaging the city’s business district. (Wayne Sanders/U.S. Army)
An M1 tank from Battery C of Task Force 1-7 rolls down Highway 1, the main north-south street in Bayji, Iraq, Nov. 25, 2004. The street had been shut to daytime traffic, except for U.S. supply convoys, because of rebel attacks. (Steve Liewer/Stars and Stripes)
First Lt. Mark Dilts, 31, is supervising a 22-member team of Ohio National Guardsmen from the 216th Engineer Battalion that is building a gravel bypass road around the bombed-out bridge. His soldiers and 10 pieces of heavy equipment have worked sunup to sundown each day, spreading rock and constructing a new railroad crossing while Task Force 1-7 soldiers guard them from attack.
“It’s almost a mile of road that we’ve built,” Dilts said.
The road, which Dilts hopes to have open in a few days, would let trucks bypass the city again and would allow McClelland to reopen Bayji’s main road to traffic.
Like all military units in Iraq, Task Force 1-7 has funded construction of schools and medical clinics in the city. On Thursday, soldiers placed concrete barricades in front of the showpiece project, a gleaming, new $700,000 bank.
Two new turbines also are being installed at one of the power plants, which should begin boosting the country’s electrical capacity before the end of the year, according to a 1st ID news release.
“For the most part, we are making forward progress. We meet roadblocks, and we overcome them,” McClelland said. “We’ll leave [Bayji] better than we found it.”
