The young lieutenant looked miserable and helpless but didn't change the plans; he adjusted his glasses. He was only the map bearer, the reluctant middle manager, who knew before he walked out to the crews that over much of the planned route they had been ambushed or hit by roadside bombs. One street on the route is known to be mined with improvised explosives.

Butler instantly understood that the officers in the operations center had given the 1st Platoon the worst patrol in the Shia ghetto, a loop around the entire northern side of the city. It was also a provocative one. The Bradleys would go within blocks of the al-Hekma mosque, a place where the al-Mahdi Army has laid many ambushes and constantly fires at American patrols. This mosque is the pulpit for al-Mahdi Army clerics on Fridays when the street fills with thousands of followers who pray outside in the sun. Angry sermons go out over the loudspeakers while young boys with water sprayers cool the kneeling crowd. Across the ruined avenue from the Hekma mosque someone had spray-painted VIETNAM STREET in tall black letters on a blank stretch of wall.

Al-Mahdi spotters with rifle scopes watch for the approach of American convoys from the roof of the mosque. Farther down the route, Butler would pass through the site of the April 4 ambush, where the men would get out of the vehicles and perform a snap checkpoint. At each of the stops, someone fired a few shots from a rifle. "When you hear that pop-pop from an AK, they are tracking you. That's how they tell everybody where you are," a gunner explained. The invisible men were watching us and holding their fire. Three hours later, the cease-fire hadn't collapsed and Butler's platoon had only had to endure a hail of rocks thrown by Iraqi boys. They had trouble believing their good luck.

An al-Mahdi Army fighter I know named Muhanned, a young man I met two months ago in a Sadr City safe house, had told me how he was fighting the Americans in the area around the Hekma mosque, the central meeting place for the Mahdi Army leaders. Muhanned is the leader of a cell of young men in his neighborhood who move around, mostly at night, waiting for U.S. patrols and then ambushing them. Muhanned's technique is to attack and then disappear into the alleyways. When I learned about Butler's routes through Sadr City, it was clear that there was a connection -- Muhanned and his cell were attacking Butler's company. Butler patrols the area around the mosque, as he has done for months, and Muhanned lives inside Alpha Company's area of operations, planning and executing ambushes. The two men are joined by the invisible current of the war but they do not know each other. In coming to know both men I cannot shake the feeling that the conflict in Sadr City is nothing more than an unnecessary machine for mass-producing grief.

The vehicles in the Camp Eagle graveyard tell part of the Alpha Company story: Humvees with blown-out windshields, direct hits with rocket propelled grenades on windshields and doors, two burned Bradleys, other Humvees destroyed by roadside bombs. Rocket impacts give the steel a moth-eaten look. The million-dollar equipment is ragged, pushed to the edge from overuse. A number of the soldiers from Alpha Company who were in them during the attacks talk about recurring nightmares, trouble sleeping. Butler said he still had dreams about April 4 and the other bad days that followed. I asked Butler if Iraq was what he expected. "I didn't think it would be like this. No one is going through what we are going through," he told me.

On the morning of June 28, the Coalition Provisional Authority announced the transfer of sovereignty to Iraq, dissolving itself. It didn't amount to much beyond a political abstraction for Butler. The only development that matters to him is the cease-fire. Nothing else has changed -- he still has to take his platoon out on patrol, he still has to worry about an armed insurgency and ambushes. "They just don't want us here," Butler said. "I hope that all of us make it back. I pray that we all do, but I don't think it could get any worse. This is worse. I'll do everything I can to bring all the soldiers back. Anything."

Recent Stories