Storied division draws the ace

To the 600 soldiers from the US Army's most modern, high-tech infantry unit, it began as just another of the dozens of recent raids in the heartland of the deposed Ba'ath Party. But when they arrived at the farmhouse near the Iraqi town of Tikrit, they soon learned what was in the cards: the "Ace of Spades," former dictator Saddam Hussein.

Bedraggled and bewildered, Hussein didn't put up a fight when he was pulled from his subterranean hideaway. For the division's First Brigade Combat Team -- commanded by Colonel Jim Hickey and led by the special forces' Task Force 121 -- there was cause for jubilation after a series of disappointments and even tragedies. Hickey and his troops had been searching for Hussein and his loyalists around Tikrit for months. In July he expressed confidence the hunt would succeed. "Life is uncomfortable for these people," Hickey told Arab News in an interview. "These guys are having a hard time just getting on. They are losing their freedom of action. One by one they are going away."

Since setting up shop in Hussein's old presidential palace in Tikrit in April, the division has conducted patrols, skirmished with Iraqi resistance, and sought to win "hearts and minds" by rebuilding schools -- exemplifying the range of missions undertaken by a modern soldier. Along the way, they have buried 19 of their comrades, 10 of them since Nov. 1. About 500 have been wounded. Yesterday was a day to celebrate.

"They have been fighting a tough battle, day-in, day-out," Lieutenant General Thomas Metz, commander of the III Corps, of which the Fourth Infantry Division is a part, said at the division's stateside headquarters in Fort Hood, Texas. "For it to pay off the way it did today has got to be a major reward."

As word spread across the country at dawn, the news was a welcome surprise to family. "At first I was taken aback, but then my mother said, `Your brother was part of a very historical moment,' " said Nancy Patterson, the sister of Major General Raymond Odierno, the division's commander. "We are just proud of my brother, but we are especially proud of the men of the Fourth Infantry Division who carried out this mission."

Others chimed in to congratulate Odierno and his troops. "I served in the Fourth ID twice . . . I know General Odierno," said Democratic presidential candidate and retired Army General Wesley K. Clark. "He worked for me in Europe; he's an outstanding officer. That's a great unit. They've been fully modernized and I'm very proud of him."

Along with the rest of the US forces in Baghdad and the "triangle" north and west of the capital, the division last month began using much harsher tactics in dealing with the insurgents. It called in airstrikes using satellite-guided 500 pound bombs to attack enemy outposts. Troops cordoned off entire Iraqi hamlets with razor wire, requiring residents to have identification cards.

"The Fourth Infantry Division is the division that has been in the center of what we call now the iron triangle," said Owen Cote of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Security Studies Program. "To the extent there's been this debate about our methods and how vigorous we are . . . the Fourth Infantry Division has been in the middle of that. They're probably the division that has faced the most challenges in the resistance."

But at least for a while it was an open question whether the division would see any action at all.

The Fourth ID, called the "Ivy Division" for the Roman numeral four, was originally slated to be the northern force in the invasion of Iraq, crossing over the Turkish border and pushing south to Baghdad. Yet months of stalled negotiations with Turkey forced the division to swing around to Kuwait and drive north into Iraq after other divisions reached the Iraqi capital of Baghdad.

Since the division arrived, it has been on the front lines.

"The perception out there right now is that we are sitting back and being defensive," Odierno told his officers last month, according to the Washington Post. "I know that it is not true in your sector. But I want to make sure you understand my intent: that I want to be lethal. Make them understand, when they come up against us, they're going to be killed or captured."

Although it has a storied history like many Army units -- it dates back to World War I, saw its first action in Europe in 1918, and its Eighth Infantry Regiment was the first allied unit to assault the Normandy coast in World War II -- the Fourth ID is unique in the modern Army.

It is the first-ever "networked division," meant to be the cutting edge of a revamped Army. It is labeled the "EXFOR," or experimental force, and all of the divisions' vehicles are linked by computer. Commanders and soldiers have unprecedented clarity on where their allies are and where the enemy is. They are the first unit in Iraq to get the Army's Strykers -- lightly armored, highly mobile vehicles using speed and information superiority to overwhelm their enemy.

"The unit that made the capture was what the Army calls a combined arms unit, meaning that it subsumed a variety of skills, including aviation, reconnaissance, and unconventional combat tactics," said Loren Thompson, a military analyst with the Lexington Institute. "This is really the wave of future warfare. It's unconventional, ad hoc, and mostly low-intensity in character."

Tatsha Robertson and Anne Kornblut of the Globe staff contributed to this report from New York and Boston.