The GI in Iraq: jack-of-all-trades

On patrol in a dusty Baghdad back alley, Lt. Mark Grado stops to talk with the man known as the "eyes and ears" of this dense urban neighborhood.

"Ali Baba [thieves] - no," says Abbas Hassen Auda, speaking in broken English. This, it turns out, is the only good news from Mr. Auda, the mokhtar, whose job under the old regime was to snoop on everyone for several blocks around.

"Power - no good," he says.

"Water - no good."

And, by the way, men from poor families have no jobs.

"All right," says Lieutenant Grado, earnestly scribbling notes in a small pad. "We're going to report this."

But moments later, Grado has something more urgent to think about. The clock has started ticking on a medivac drill for Grado and his 1st Armored Division soldiers.

"Someone just tossed an explosive out of a car - two of your men are down!" Lt. Col. Peter Jones alerts the young platoon leader.

Charged with everything from electricity repair and liquor control to intelligence gathering and combat, US soldiers like Grado serving in Iraq are jacks-of-all-trades in the extreme - and will be for the foreseeable future.

Under a new troop rotation plan announced by the Pentagon this week, tens of thousands of active duty soldiers will be assigned to up to one-year tours in Iraq. The overall size of the coalition force in the country is expected to stay at its current level of nearly 160,000 - until the latter part of 2004. In all, 368,000 Army personnel are deployed overseas this year, including three quarters of the 33 active-duty combat brigades.

With the total number of incoming foreign troops still uncertain and the training of Iraqi security forces in a fledgling phase, US forces can't look forward to finishing their duties in Iraq anytime soon - leading the Army to look "very hard" at upping its manpower, according to Gen. John Keane, acting Army chief of staff.

"Certainly we are stretched," General Keane told a Pentagon briefing on Wednesday. "We need more infantry. We need more military police. We need more civil affairs [troops]."

Indeed, a four-hour patrol with one of Grado's nine-man infantry squads vividly illustrates how American soldiers are challenged - not just in terms of numbers, but also by the kaleidoscopic nature of their mission in Iraq.

As the soldiers move down a narrow side street, they return children's waves, admire a baby, and pose for a snapshot at the request of robed Iraqi women cloistered behind the window bars of their first-floor apartment.

"These kids will try to get behind you just right so they can see through your [rifle] sights," says Pfc. Benjamin House of Grand Rapids, Mich., as two little boys eye his weapon. "They ask: 'What's your name? Chocolate?' but it can get distracting," says Private House, crouching by a wall, on security duty.

As if on cue, the drill commences. Private House rounds a corner and is hit by a fictitious grenade.

Flat on his back, House is "treated" and bandaged by a medic. Three minutes later, two Bradley Fighting Vehicles assigned to the squad charge onto the scene drawing a crowd of Iraqis. House's buddies roll him onto an olive-green stretcher of heavy plastic and then hoist him into the back of one of the vehicles.

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