When Sander’s men and the Iraqi army returned, they learned that five of the six people they detained were on the high-value target list. “I think we got them at their homes and not their base of operations,” Sanders said. “It was the first raid I had ever been on with the [Iraqi army].” The Angel Company soldiers involved in the capture were Sanders, Sgt. Christopher Hjuler, Pvt. Michael Zuercher, Spc. Adam Gillingham, Pfc. Dean Roe and Pfc. David Fuchs. Sanders said they all searched the homes and assisted with the captures, while Hjuler and Fuchs found the weapons in a well. On the final day of the operation, Sanders and his crew also uncovered another small cache in a farmhouse, which included three British-style individual body armor vests with the plates in them, a helmet, various other pieces of military equipment and other small weapons. Another find for the company occurred when Sgt. Timothy McCaskill and Staff Sgt. David Hubert, both soldiers in 1st Platoon, uncovered two improvised hand grenades. The soldiers said they found the grenades, about 20 blasting caps and two bags of propellant hidden in a small hole which was dug in the side of a berm outside a farmhouse on the first day of the operation. Hubert also questioned one of the people in the area who gave up the high-value targets Sanders and his soldiers later captured with the Iraqi army. “We dug it all up and called the explosive ordnance team,” McCaskill said. The Iraqi soldiers found several hundred PKG machine gun rounds on the final day of the operation. U.S. Army 1st Lt. Carl Puglis, 3rd Platoon leader, said the citizens of Iraq seemed appreciative of the mission. “A lot of the people we talked to were very cooperative,” Puglis said. “They seemed to understand that in this area there is a threat, and the ones who said they had been threatened in the past were very understanding of what we were doing because they want to see the insurgents captured and killed as much as we want to.” The company conducted two days of non-stop house searches traveling with military vehicles from one location to another, following an air assault insertion. At the mission’s conclusion, the company was also air assaulted out. “I can’t honestly tell you how many houses we searched and how many people we detained, but every house we went to we searched, and every person we saw we talked with.” “It was a lot of areas to search and a lot of driving around, but the guys still did a very good job,” Puglis said. “They never let their guard down.” |