In Iraq with 'reservists that fight'

But the seriousness of their task is always close. On their last foray into Hit, in October, the first platoon of about 60 men was pinned down in a six-hour gun battle with insurgents. The day before, roadside bombs killed US military contractors and rocket-propelled grenades hit a US convoy. US commanders decided a show of force was in order.

All seemed quiet as the first platoon approached.

Then came the call to prayer at about 4:45 p.m. Hundreds of insurgents opened fire from houses and from the palm groves.

"They had everything you could think of, heavy machine guns, AK-47s, propped up on window sills and coming out of houses,'' says Capt. Shayne "Skinny" McGinty of Bossier, La. "They were the most formidable enemy we faced, worse than in Fallujah, pouring fire out of the grove, then maneuvering, then firing again."

A smaller group of marines were pinned down a few hundred yards away, taking what cover they could on river banks and behind struts of a bridge. Sgt. Kris Haines, from Novato, Calif., spent "45 minutes behind a piece of steel" weathering a hail of bullets.

The rest of the marines pulled back. They couldn't fire for fear of hitting their own men and because they wanted to call in bombs on enemy positions. But malfunctioning radios meant they couldn't get the word out. So two young sergeants - Armando Sanchez and Rick Mendoza - volunteered to run up to the position, braving fire.

"They were running forward throwing grenades while shots were coming out from the palm grove - there were guys up there in the trees and we had to shoot them out like squirrels,'' recalls Captain McGinty.

Sanchez and Mendoza make light of what they did. "You just get kind of attached to the guys you're with, you want to make sure that nothing happens to them,'' says Sanchez, a community-college student from San Antonio, Texas.

Sgt. Byron Hancock, a sniper with an easygoing country manner and competence that makes him seem like Bravo's Brett Favre, is another who commands company respect. In Fallujah, Sergeant Hancock, who works as a police sniper in Bryan, Texas, killed two insurgents setting up a mortar station at a distance of 1,050 meters, the longest sniper shot in Iraq.

"It feels good to just play my part, help everybody get back home safe,'' says the father of four, who grew up hunting squirrel and deer in Texas. "A sniper's worst enemy is another sniper, and an enemy sniper can paralyze your operations,'' he says. In Fallujah last April, before Bravo was here, two Chechen snipers killed 15 marines in one day.

In Hit, his position came under fire. He spotted the shooter moving through distant buildings. "He had his egress planned, his routes laid out, he knew what he was doing," he says.

After staying up all night looking for him, Hancock expected the man wouldn't take another shot till late in the day, with the sun behind him. But he didn't wait. "We saw the sun glinting off his scopes - that was his mistake," he says.

Hancock grabbed his rifle, took a deep breath, and hit the man before he could fire. Though Hancock has the adulation of his comrades, he shrugs it off as "doing my job."

"My wife, Kristi, deserves more recognition in this whole thing than I do,'' he says. "She's home, she sees kids with their fathers around, whole families. That's tough. The one thing I've learned here is to appreciate my family even more."

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