720th
January 2007 Battalion Time Line
~ 720th Military Police Battalion Reunion Association History Project ~
89th Bde.
This Page Last Updated ~ 6 October 2008
 
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410th

23 January, Baghdad, 410th Patrol Ambushed A convoy escorted by members of the 410th MP Company escaped serious injury when it was attacked with an IED (improvised explosive devise) and small arms fire while on a mission in Baghdad. The MP's were responding to a report of a burning Iraqi Police vehicle when the attack occurred. The explosive devise was hidden in some bodies on the shoulder of the roadway.

     The massive explosion rocked the convoy blowing out the tires, several windows and damaging the exterior of two of the HUMVEES with shrapnel. Immediately following the explosion the hidden enemy

directed heavy small-arms fire on the MP's and their the crippled vehicles. The MP's immediately returned suppression fire on the enemy positions until another military unit arrived to assist them in providing cover fire while the crippled vehicles were removed from the roadway.

     Accompanying the MP's on this patrol was imbedded ABC news anchor (Good Morning America) Chris Como, the son of Marion Cuomo former New York governor.  Como was trapped inside one of the damaged HUMVEES during the fire fight. Cuomo had nothing but praise for the way the MP's of the 410th performed under fire. Here are several quotes from Cuomo in a national broadcast with ABC the next day.

 

     "To a man, no one flinched. They were screaming but screaming orders — not the kind of screaming I was doing that only German shepherds could hear. I have never been more impressed."

     "It's just mind-boggling to me that something that has really shaken me to my very core is something that they absorb, dismiss and then unequivocally say they'll be back tomorrow."

     What impressed him most, Cuomo said, was the way the gunner, still spitting glass from a shattered window, sprang into action without complaint.

     "This is their routine," Cuomo said. "They go out day after day while people are trying to blow them up. . . . It’s one thing to question the mission. To question the soldiers is completely without basis."

     "I’m trying not to deal with it. I’m trying to deal with it like a soldier, just do my job."