AR RAMADI, Iraq -- Lance Cpl. James E. Hilliard and his comrade, Cpl. David L. Salgado, felt stares from people at the marketplace here as they escorted an Iraqi man, whom they suspected to be an insurgent, down the street to their detainee vehicle – a high-back humvee.
Some seemed pleased for the man’s apprehension, others shot looks of disgust at the two Marines with Company A, 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, as they blind folded the man, bound his hands with zip cuffs and loaded him up in the back of the up-armored vehicle.
Ten minutes earlier, Hilliard and Salgado had kicked off a foot patrol through the city’s bazaar with their fellow 1st Platoon warriors. Hilliard, a rifleman in the platoon’s 3rd Squad, was walking along the sidewalk, which was teeming with people, when he spotted the man in a crowd of shoppers a few yards down. He stuck out like a sore thumb to Hilliard.
To the untrained eye, the man looked like any other local hunting for a bargain this day. But the 23-year-old from Tulsa, Okla with his keen attentiveness noticed what the man was wearing and thought otherwise.
“He’s wearing (tennis) shoes and overalls,” explained the 2000 Thomas Edison High School graduate.
Hilliard was quick to snatch the guy up given his garb.
“He had two layers, too. It’s hot out here, and he’d only be wearing two layers if he were up to something,” he said. (Insurgents) will shoot at us, take off a layer of clothes and take off running. That’s why I made the decision to bring him in for questioning.”
The man will be taken to Camp Hurricane Point, which is 1st Battalion, 5th Marines forward operating base while here supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom, where he’ll be interrogated. The man will either remain in custody or released depending on whether he’s a suspected insurgent or innocent civilian.
Salgado, who’s a rifleman and the squad leader of 3rd Squad, was optimistic about the earlier incarceration.
“It’s always a good thing when we take an insurgent off the street,” said the 25-year-old from South Jordan, Utah. “It’s one less bad guy that can come up and bite us.”
Hilliard and his fellow Marines continue to conduct these type patrols through the city here making it a safer place for the Iraqi people.