 Operation Iraqi Freedom: Each day and night whether patrolling streets, conducting search operations, securing convoys or engaging in activities to rebuild Iraq’s infrastructure or improve the welfare of its people in some small way American soldiers remain on the front line. They are surrounded by the front line. It is a 360-degree fight as much as it is a multitiered fight, the full spectrum of combat that can find American soldiers clearing a neighborhood one day and nailing up blackboards in schools or refurbishing clinics in the same neighborhood the next. Raw and deadly combat continues throughout much of Iraq. The fight in the squalid section of Baghdad called Sadr City that began last spring, for example, has continued into the fall.
Sgt. Justin Bradbury, featured on the cover of this year’s Green Book, was photographed as he led his infantry team on patrol in Sadr City. He is assigned to Company C, 2nd Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division. Sgt. Bradbury is from Corpus Christi, Texas, and plans to enter warrant officer flight school when he returns from his tour in Iraq. His self-assigned combat load is: 12 40 mm grenades for his M203 launcher, 13 30-round magazines for his M4 carbine, 25 12-gauge shotgun rounds for his breaching gun, four fragmentation grenades, one smoke grenade and a knife. And I’m working on a pistol, he said at the time the photograph was taken. He is one of more than 123,000 soldiers of the U.S. Army who are currently serving in Iraq. (Cover photograph by Dennis Steele)
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