Active Unit News

Seizing, securing
Fort Carson soldiers among units taking Al Tiji airfield near Baghdad
By Charlie Brennan, Rocky Mountain News
April 17, 2003
Soldiers from the U.S. Army's 4th Infantry Division, based at Fort Carson and Fort Hood, Texas, are in the midst of their first war deployment since Vietnam. By Tuesday night, they had reached the northwestern fringes of Baghdad. As a rainy morning dawned Wednesday, soldiers from the 4th Division's 1-8 Battalion of the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, the 1-10 Cavalry and the 5th Engineers tackled the mission of seizing and securing Al Tiji airfield, a facility roughly comparable in size to Arapahoe County's Centennial Airport. The soldiers temporarily detained three suspected Iraqi fighters, but their status as enemy combatants was not readily confirmed. Members of those same units spent about five hours scouring the war-ravaged air base, kicking down doors as they searched for any remaining Iraqi fighters and took initial steps toward establishing the airfield as a command post that will be available to coalition forces' aircraft in future military or peacekeeping missions. The 4th Division soldiers found numerous signs of recent enemy occupation, including maps of Baghdad, gas masks, rockets, land mines and shacks containing evidence that Iraqi fighters had been getting their own training in how to survive possible chemical attacks. Also found at the airfield were bunkers, Iraqi tanks and even a U.S. Marine helicopter that appeared to be a remnant from the first Persian Gulf War. The soldiers seizing the airfield blew up things they felt might possibly put them in any future jeopardy - including the recovered Marine helicopter.