Word: platooner
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Colgan was determined to transform the platoon into a combat unit that could handle street patrols and raids on enemy safe houses, neither of which the Tomb Raiders had ever conducted. And so the hooch became a training center. Every afternoon the platoon practiced close-quarters combat and house-clearing techniques in the basement. Colgan rearranged the furniture to simulate different settings and ordered three $300 battering rams for kicking in doors. "Get in loud, fast and violent," he told them, while insisting that they treat those they found inside with respect. "They're young, they're new," Colgan wrote...
...took just three raids, Whiteside says, for the team to gel. Over the next three months, the platoon conducted more than 40 raids on houses of suspected insurgents and former members of Saddam's regime in Adhamiya. In July, Colgan led the platoon on midnight searches of a Muslim cemetery next to the Abu Hanifa mosque, where insurgents were believed to be storing weapons. Colgan instructed the soldiers to bang the lid of each crypt; if it sounded hollow, the troops hoisted the 250-lb. granite slab and looked inside. On its second graveyard hunt, on July 4, the platoon...
Colgan's most valuable asset was his skill at gathering intelligence. "He was better and quicker than anyone else," says Lieutenant Lucien Ilardi, leader of one of the two other platoons in the Tomb Raiders' battery. Platoon leaders usually act on intelligence passed down from their commanders or from special-ops units, but Colgan generated tips himself. He cultivated informants on the streets and dined in the houses of new Iraqi friends. One gave Colgan a gold charm bracelet for the baby he and his wife were expecting. He memorized the names, residences and descriptions of top Baathists. On patrols...
With Colgan at the helm, the platoon's morale soared. Even in 130° heat, the Tomb Raiders sometimes ran patrols five times a day on four hours' sleep. No one minded. "The first five months just flew by," says Whiteside. Colgan's disarming style seemed to soften the hearts of the people of Adhamiya. "There are very few people who can break into your house, arrest your husband and then by the time he leaves, have everyone waving and smiling. It takes a special person," says Whiteside. "We all thought, This cat is invincible...
When Whiteside woke up the next morning, his fingernails were still stained with dried blood. Before the platoon went to bed, Grimes had told them Colgan was in stable condition. "I thought he'd be just fine," Whiteside remembers. At 8:30 a.m., the platoon was told to fall into the horseshoe formation that commanders use to disclose personal information to troops. Captain Mike Kielpinski, the Tomb Raiders' battery commander, sobbed as he broke the news of Colgan's death. Talimeliyor ran back to his cot, disconsolate. "I didn't read my Bible," he remembers. "I didn't wash...