Portrait Of A Platoon

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NOV. 27: The platoon lives in two worlds--one beyond the steel coils that drape the compound, where the soldiers rely on one another to survive, and one "inside the wire," where they struggle to find space of their own. Today, to fill up the downtime between patrols, Beverly surfs the Internet for information on eArmyU, the military's online college program. Beverly describes himself as "the opposite of the typical Army recruit." He loves the soft rock of Sting and devours fantasy novels in his free time. When he joined the Army in 2002, two days after his 18th birthday, he wasn't looking for combat. "I asked the Army recruiter what he could do for me in terms of college. He said it would be free," he says. "But I didn't know I'd be paying for it in this way." Beverly's fresh-faced innocence makes him the target of barracks humor. "It's like a fraternity," he says, looking up at the writing on the hooch's walls, which feature unflattering allusions to his manhood. "If they don't screw with you, they don't like you," he says.

Actually, the soldiers rarely admit to any deep kinship. The ties that bind any platoon are fashioned by circumstance. "Out here, I'd take a bullet for any one of these guys," says Schermerhorn. "But there are probably three people here I'd give a s___ about keeping in touch with when I get home." Says Whiteside: "We get on each other's nerves because we see each other every day. But being stuck with someone 24/7, all there is to do is talk. Basically, it's like one big dysfunctional family."

Outside the wire, the dysfunction ends. On duty, "it's like butter, we're so smooth," says Whiteside. Everyone attributes the unit's cohesion to the man who became their platoon leader shortly after they arrived in Baghdad, Second Lieutenant Benjamin Colgan, 30. He was originally attached to the Tomb Raiders' battalion as a chemical and biological officer, responsible for managing preparations for unconventional attacks. But that position is a desk job, and Colgan, a 12-year veteran of the special forces, longed to be on the streets. "Use my skills," he told Rabena. At the time, the Tomb Raiders were leaderless, their original commander having remained in Germany for the birth of his first child, so Colgan got the job.

To break the ice with his new charges, Colgan made a point of hanging out in the platoon's common room--a rare occurrence in military culture, where social separation of officers from their soldiers is still the norm--and asked not to be addressed as sir. Says Talimeliyor: "When we first met, I thought, Man, this L.T., he talks a lot. I thought he was going to be annoying." A former enlisted man, Colgan could relate to the soldiers in his command. "He knew how to talk to the enlisted guys like normal people," says Whiteside.