River walking nets caches for 3/6 Marines

Our correspondent with 3rd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, Lance Cpl. Christopher Zahn, brings us a recap of the battalion's latest operation, Operation Riverwalk:

The tribal awakening in Al Anbar made an enormous impact on an operation by Marines and sailors from 3^rd Battalion, 6^th Marine Regiment, Regimental Combat Team 6, recently.

“We clearly see that the Iraqi citizens have grown tired of what the insurgency has to offer; they do not want any part of it,” said Brig. Gen. Charles M. Gurganus, ground forces commander for Multinational Force West, during a recent news conference.

This weariness aided the “Teufelhunden” Battalion, based out of Camp Lejeune, N.C., when they swept the countryside around this town south of Fallujah May 4. Local residents turned out to point the Marines toward caches and alerted them to homemade bombs, called improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, during their patrols.

 “The Iraqi people are starting to realize that, unlike the Ottoman Empire or the British occupiers, the American military is not a military of occupation,” said Maj. Mark H. Clingan, 36, from Westminster, Md. “We are here to rid the country of the insurgency and allow the Iraqi’s their own self determination. That’s why the local nationals are now standing up to Al Qaeda and assisting Coalition and the (Iraqi Security Forces). This awakening is allowing us to focus our forces in areas where the enemy is seeking safe haven.”

This riverside area on a peninsula south of Fallujah has turned into base of operations for insurgent activity. Tight control over surrounding areas like Amiriyah to the east and Habbaniyah to the west have forced them into an ever-dwindling supply of terrain unoccupied by Coalition and Iraqi Security Forces.

The 72-hour operation, dubbed Operation Riverwalk, denied the enemy this terrain and disrupted his ability to plan and equip to target both the Coalition Forces and the Iraqi Security Forces in and around the city of Fallujah.

Read the rest of this story here.

And for those of you who have always wanted to know what a (relatively small) IED cache looks like:

IED Cache