In Mosul, a battle ‘beyond ruthless’

Last week, for example, a suicide car bomber tried to blow himself up next to one of C Company's platoons. As the car approached, U.S. soldiers opened fire from Stryker attack vehicles. The bomb went off about 20 yards from the nearest Stryker, causing only minor injuries to the Americans.

Born arrived to find parts of the bomber's body scattered in all directions. His initial reaction, he said, was "euphoric" -- relief that none of his men had been killed or badly injured. Of the bomber, he said, "I felt absolutely nothing."

The violence "kind of becomes your reality," he said. "If a year ago you would have told me that seeing that kind of carnage would have little to no impact on me, it would have surprised me. I don't think I'm any less sensitive or less compassionate . . . but I have really developed my thoughts on the [insurgents]: I have no sympathy for them. It's funny how you can detach yourself from normal human feeling for a group of people but you're able to retain it for everybody else."

‘Carpe Noctum’
Pvt. Adam McCamant, 19, of New Philadelphia, Ohio, arrived at the scene with Born. "It kind of made my day better," he said. "It was like, yeah. He killed himself without accomplishing what he wanted."

Infantrymen with C Company said no soldier is more ruthlessly proficient at fighting the insurgents than Ruiz, a son of Puerto Rican parents who grew up in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn. Ruiz's unit, the 4th Platoon, has killed at least 15 suspected insurgents in the past two months, according to soldiers. Commanders said the unit encounters more enemy contact than any other platoon in the battalion.

The platoon calls itself the "Violators." Its patch depicts a leering skull clad in a green beret, blood dripping from its mouth. Its motto is "Carpe Noctum," or "Seize the Night," a reference in Latin to the platoon's propensity to operate after dark.

A self-described "greaser," Ruiz wears a pencil-thin mustache and slicks back the dark hair on the top of his head with Rebound Activator Gel. The lower half of his scalp is shaved.

Around the platoon's barracks, he has a friendly, energetic, exuberant presence and can be almost fatherly with his men, eight of whom are Hispanic and sometimes speak with him in Spanish. His living space is immaculate, with two ornate rugs and a stylish clock/lamp shaped like a saxophone -- items he purchased in Mosul shops while on patrol. On a recent afternoon, he was watching a DVD of "The Motorcycle Diaries," the chronicle of Ernesto "Che" Guevara's journey through South America, for what he said was the third time. Ruiz said he dreams of riding horseback through Latin America when he gets out of the Army.

Overhearing a staff sergeant describe him as "ghetto," Ruiz joked: "I'm urban."

Although Ruiz is not the highest-ranking soldier in the unit, his command over the 4th Platoon is absolute. Last fall, commanders transferred a platoon leader just 48 hours after he tangled with Ruiz.

When another young platoon leader, Lt. Colin Keating, 23, of Clinton, Md., arrived Feb. 6, Ruiz greeted him warmly and introduced him to every soldier in the platoon, but told him: "Just let me fight my war."

Coney Island Cobras
It is a war that Ruiz said reminds him of his youth as a member of the Coney Island Cobras, a Brooklyn street gang. He said he applies many of the principles he learned in the rough neighborhoods where he grew up: Bay Ridge and, later, the projects in Caguas, Puerto Rico, where he moved with his mother as a teenager.

"What I see here, I saw a long time ago," he said. "It's the same patterns."

Staff Sgt. John Garrison, 36, of Manhattan, who referred to Ruiz as "ghetto," said: "People hear the word 'ghetto' and they think of that as a bad thing. But it's not a thing, it's a place. And it gives you certain advantages over other people that don't come up from there."

Ruiz recalled fighting turf battles in New York with "whatever you had in your pocket." In Mosul, he presides over an infantry unit that Born built from scratch for maximum lethality. The platoon is built around four 21-ton Strykers -- two mounted with TOW missiles, two designed to carry infantrymen.

Keating said Ruiz "pretty much wrote the book on this particular style of unit. This is the first time it had ever been done, and he basically figured out how that system works."

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