We moved from a Sunni-rich environment, where we really didn't experience any EFP attacks, towards a Shia-rich environment, which was pretty much all Shia, is where we experienced nearly all of our EFP attacks. And I guess throughout the course of our 15 months, our company had about 200 EFP strikes.

We did experience a large amount of casualties there, and that was tremendous, that was a tough pill to swallow there. And there were actually some very difficult days. You know, just talking to my first sergeant, remembering having to go the chapel for yet again another memorial service for some soldiers that we had lost. And those were the toughest days, and that walk to and from the chapel for a memorial service. And there was one day we had lost six soldiers in one IED strike. And that was tremendous.

I think for me my hardest day was when we lost the only guy in my company, PFC Jacob T. Tracy, on 18 June 2007....

I remember when the IED went off, I was on top of our combat outpost, which was a four-story building, and I could actually see the IED explosion from where I was. And by this time we'd been through several months, it was June, so I was pretty experienced as far as the daily threats that were out there, and I think for -- for that moment I kind of became complacent. You know, in retrospect, thinking back, that I knew everything and that I had a great understanding of what the threats were.

And second platoon, which was an armor-infantry mixed platoon, was making a move back towards the FOB [forward operating base] for a refit day. They'd been out for five days, five to seven days I believe, and they were going to go back for two days of refit where they would do maintenance, recovery, get a hot meal, and then come back out. And they were maneuvering through another company's sector. And they had the heavier armored vehicles, the tanks and Bradleys, forward, and the last vehicle in the platoon was a Humvee. We needed to bring the Humvees out at certain times to transport all of the soldiers. And the insurgents waited for the last vehicle in the convoy, which was the Humvee, and they set off an EFP charge and disabled the vehicle, sent some shrapnel through the Humvee, severely injured a couple of soldiers. But the Humvee driver, he was taught to accelerate through the ambush site, and in doing so there was so much dust caused -- that was thrown up from the IED explosion, the EFP explosion -- that he lost sight of the road, it curved to the right, and then the Humvee continued into an untreated sewage creek. And from there, the Humvee started submersing into the sewage and the patrol had stopped.

Staff Sergeant [Maxwell] Davis had jumped out of his Humvee in an attempt to open up the Humvee and extract some of the soldiers out of there. And boys were dazed. Staff Sergeant [Mathew] Benson had a fractured skull and he was dazed, but they had helped pull some soldiers out. But Jacob was submerged in that untreated sewage. They finally got him out and were able to evacuate him to the green zone but, uh, he wasn't able to pull through. I think he'd had too much of that sewage ingested that they couldn't clean out....

There were five guys in that Humvee, and we fortunately only lost one of them.

We really never were able to break through with the Shia and establish that good working relationship. There were a couple of Christians that lived just south of our combat outpost, and they were very supportive of us and they actually provided us with some good, helpful information that we were able to capture some insurgents with, but it came at a cost.

When we first came into the combat outpost, and we were doing local patrols in and around that area, and just trying to meet the neighbors, we came across this family. And they were really receptive, very happy we were there, because we brought a level of security to them. But I think we may have overstayed our welcome to a point where -- you know, when we talk to somebody, they obviously draw attention from the militia, and I think they became targeted because we had frequented their home more than we should have, I think, and stopped and talked with them, and became very friendly.

So their -- they had actually four daughters, I think, and two of them were teenagers. One was 16, one was 17. And they were kidnapped one day from a bus stop and shortly found murdered after that. And the militia wanted to make a point, so when they executed them, one girl they shot through the hands and then shot her in the back of the head, trying to make the statement, don't touch the Americans and don't think about them. And the other girl they shot through the eyes and then -- they -- trying to make the point that you shouldn't even look at the Americans.

So that's kind of the intimidation tactics that some of the militia members were using to try to influence the civilian population. Those kind of scare tactics -- which actually worked against them, because after that the mother, I guess, was inspired to provide more information to us....

She was the only known source that we had that observed any kind of retribution. I think, from that, we really learned a valuable lesson about how much interaction and public exposure we have with our sources. And that's where we kind of developed some of the TTPs [tactics, techniques, and procedures] of passing out the cell phones and only have our interpreters answering those phones.

While his Iraqi informant faced the loss of her daughters, Rosen's wife was pregnant with their first child.

We found out pretty late, or just before my deployment, that she was pregnant....

I missed all of the pregnancy. And actually, when I was able to take my mid-tour leave, my daughter was already born and she was two months old before I'd finally gotten to see her.

You know, before she was born, I was kind of freewheeling, thinking I was impervious, and I would probably take some chances I probably shouldn't've. And then after my daughter was born, it kind of had me reconsider, you know, hey, maybe what I'm doing right now is probably not the smartest thing to do....

You know, my wife still laughs at me. She has pictures of me when I first came back from Iraq on leave and I was, I guess, hesitant -- I didn't know how to really hold a baby and didn't want to hurt her. You know, I was afraid, yeah, I was probably more afraid than I ever was in Iraq.

And it kind of changed my mentality too, you know. After holding my daughter, coming back on patrols, you know, after leave, there's -- there's something else that you're living for. You know, you always had your wife, or I always had my wife, but then after that, you know, I've got this daughter that I've got to take care after that. So it really had me reconsider some of the riskier things I was doing while I was on patrol.

Like often I would go and hang -- go on patrol with one of my other, you know, platoon leaders or some of the other tank commanders, and I'd allow them to TC [command] the tank and I would hang out of the loader's hatch. And our loader's hatch, we didn't have the additional armor there, so while we were riding through the neighborhoods, I would have pretty much the top half of my body exposed out of the tank. And then after a while one of the platoon sergeants kind of got onto me and wouldn't allow me to do that any more.

And then actually in one incident... one of the platoon sergeants I was supposed to go on patrol with, he purposefully left me at the combat outpost. I still get onto him about that....

I guess now I was a new father, he just saw some of the risks I was taking and just -- I guess he was just trying to send a message to me.

This interview was conducted on Feb. 6, 2009.

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