Active Unit News

Posted on Sat, Apr. 19, 2003
Shots fired outside 4th Infantry Division command post
DAVE RISING
Associated Press
TIKRIT, Iraq -Three shots were fired outside of one of Saddam Hussein's palaces that was occupied by elements of the 4th Infantry Division on Saturday, hitting nobody but reminding soldiers that they are still in a war zone. Spc. Frank Sullivan was manning a sandbagged guard post outside the west gate of the building compound, used by Saddam to house VIPs, when the short burst of small arms fire rang out from the north. The 21-year-old with the division's 1st Brigade's headquarters company saw movement in the ruins of a large nearby, but then nothing else. The 4th Infantry is based at Fort Hood, Texas. "I've got my eyes on it just waiting, but I think it was just someone messing around," said the Pine Grove, Pennsylvania native without turning his head as he stared along the barrel of his machine gun at the building. "If it were a sniper, one of us would be hurt right now or dead." A Bradley fighting vehicle was sent from within the walls of the compound in support of a patrol of a half dozen soldiers to secure the area, but nobody was found. The 1st Brigade set up its tactical command post at the abandoned palace earlier in the day, a location that is one of several being contemplated for more permanent headquarters as the division continues moving greater numbers into northern Iraq, said brigade commander Col. Don Campbell. On arrival, a patrol of seven soldiers secured the building, which had already been captured by the Marines but then vacated, going into room after room opening closets and looking behind doors, their desert boots breaking the still silence with their clomp on the shined marble floors. Spc. Chiriga Moore, a combat camerawoman attached to the division, could barely believe her eyes as she looked along a 10-meter long dining table with four chandeliers overhead and a colorful floral oil painting at one end. "Gosh, he was doing his people wrong big here," said the 22-year-old from San Jose, California, looking around the room that was dusty but otherwise in good condition. She shook her head again. "My gosh." Maj. Steve Pitt, 37, sat in another dining room at one of 42 gilded chairs around a massive rectangular table looking up at still more crystal chandeliers and a finely detailed ceiling. "It's pretty nice," said the Springfield, Virginia native with the 4th Battalion, 42nd Field Artillery. "The man was an idiot giving up all this."