sfgate.com: '8 long, horrible hours' safeguarding a bridge

'8 long, horrible hours' safeguarding a bridge
Anna Badkhen, Chronicle Staff Writer
Friday, June 3, 2005

Samarra, Iraq -- At 2 p.m., Spc. Mike Rauch points his tank's massive, 120mm gun at the northeastern tip of the Southern Bypass Bridge that spans the dusty marshland outside Samarra.

Another day of highway patrol, Iraq-style, has begun.

Rauch's job, and that of his two crew members aboard the 70-ton M1A Abrams, is to protect the bridge on the outskirts of this Sunni town, a key link on the main route for civilian and U.S. military traffic from the southern port city of Basra to the border with Turkey in the north.

Every day, from 2 in the afternoon until 10 at night, Sgt. Saikichi Simram, the tank's commander, Pvt. Andrew Queen, the driver, and gunner Rauch, from Mariposa in Central California, watch this stretch of road for what have become the two deadliest threats to Iraqi civilians and the 138,000 American soldiers who are supposed to help protect them: cars that look like they might be driven by suicide bombers and insurgents trying to plant roadside bombs.

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NOTE: Article has pictures