No other company here at Forward Operating Base Summerall can match the price paid by Alpha Company of the First Battalion of the 111th Infantry. Of the nine deaths in the 800-man Task Force Dragoon over 10 months, six have been in Alpha Company. Of about 60 wounds, about 25 have come from the company.
Capt. Anthony Callum of Chalfont, the company commander, said the men were continuing to do their jobs, and well. He said they continued to patrol the Beiji area, to train a company of Iraqi army recruits in infantry tactics, and to work with Iraqi officials in establishing local governments.
They are in harm's way every time they leave the base in armored humvees mounted with machine guns.
"We're in a dangerous situation; this is the Sunni Triangle," Callum said. "But at the end of the deployment, the soldiers are going to be proud of what they accomplished. They need to feel that pride. They don't need to go home feeling we failed because we lost six soldiers."
Soldiers interviewed last week said they were frustrated by not being able to strike back at whoever laid the bomb in a culvert under Smuggler's Road that killed the four men. As in most bomb attacks, the insurgents melted away.
"You want payback, but you can't just go out and blow up Beiji," said Sgt. Brad Raudenbush, 23, of Doylestown.
Raudenbush, a senior at Temple University when called to active duty, was one of six men of Alpha Company selected by company leaders to give a joint interview. Military officials denied other access by a reporter to the roughly 100 men in the company, who live together on a military base nine miles in circumference housing more than 1,000 soldiers.
"For a lot of them, it's still too close to the event," said Army Lt. Col. Philip J. Logan of Camp Hill, Pa., commander of Task Force Dragoon.
'Brought us closer'
