SCOUTS OUT!

Good article on the Scouts...you may not know about these guys...but if they want to, they'll know about you.

That's sorta the point.

In Troop D’s sector in Baghdad’s northwest suburbs, trouble is inevitable.

Starlin, Burrus and company spent Sunday night and early Monday morning monitoring the edge of a town their commanders expect to be the next major flash point as the 2-week-old outbreak of violence continues.

The town — which is not being identified for security reasons — is so hot that the tiny scout teams are forbidden from entering.

About 10 p.m., a tip comes in that about 100 men, some with weapons, are collecting near the city center. For a few minutes, it looks like Starlin will win his solo bet, and the patrol prepares to move out of the shadows and onto a main road to block escape routes.

The tension dissolves when helicopters can’t locate the group. But from invisible locations, scouts use the latest ambient-light-enhancing ranging devices to watch for bomb planters, weapons runners and ambushers.

They’re watching. Always watching.

The Fort Hood, Texas-based 1st Cav is no longer literally a cavalry, with Kevlar-clad soldiers in armored Humvees long ago replacing horse-mounted, saber toting cavalrymen. But the mission of Troop D’s scouts in Iraq is essentially the same as their circa 1870 predecessors.

Scouts work clandestinely to find the enemy and take his measure before the main force fights him, or disrupt him before he can strike...

Asked how he would describe scouting, truck commander Sgt. Sam White smiles and says, “Fun.” He says he loves the freedom of working in small groups, matching wits with the enemy.

Troop D, open and unpretentious, may not have the polish and swagger of Special Forces types, whom they resemble in culture and autonomy. “I’m gonna warn you. We fight and cuss,” White says before a mission.