FORWARD OPERATING BASE UNION III, Iraq, May 14, 2007 — After spending the majority of the month of April providing assistance in Diwaniyah, Iraq, the soldiers of 1st Squadron, 14th Cavalry Regiment, attached to the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, are back in Baghdad and focusing their attention on to their next mission – taking over operations in the Haifa Street area in Baghdad’s city center. “It’s definitely a more challenging battlefield,” Troop A commander, Capt. Gerald Resmondo said of Haifa Street. “It’s probably the most challenging battle space or area of operations that we’ve operated in, just because of all the built-up and high-rise buildings.”
The people that are moving back into this area who weve talked to said that they moved out during the fighting and they feel safer now that there are (Iraqi army) checkpoints along Haifa Street.
U.S. Army Capt. Gerald Resmondo
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The sheer number of people living in the area is also a new challenge to “Apocalypse Troop,” the West Palm Beach, Fla., native added. “For the Strykers, the routes in and out of the area are very limited,” he said. “There are only so many roads, and we’re doing dismounted operations, as well. It’s a little bit more challenging, even though it’s a smaller area than we’re used to working. It’s got a lot more obstacles.” For the past couple of weeks, Apocalypse soldiers have been conducting reconnaissance missions on Haifa Street to familiarize themselves with the area and figure out how to overcome these new obstacles. “We’ve been gathering information on all the mosques, all the schools, all the apartment types and doing reconnaissance of these apartments in preparation for this operation,” Resmondo explained. Apocalypse Troop was back out on Haifa Street May 8 to conduct a small clearing operation and begin taking a census of the local residents. “We’re going to report it up to squadron and put it into a book for our area - basically like a phone book,” explained Clarksville, Tenn., native, Staff Sgt. Jason Jones. As they went from apartment to apartment in the high-rise buildings that line the street, residents were asked to fill out a personal information questionnaire, and Jones used a small device that looked similar to a large camera to take fingerprints, perform retinal scans, take photographs of each resident and store the information collected. All the information collected through the census and reconnaissance will help assist the brigade in its ongoing Haifa Street Project. “We want to record anything that the brigade can assess
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