A MEANINGFUL DEATH:

A Death in the Family: The loss of a corporal in Iraq changed the way an Army unit pursued its mission. In the end, a promise was kept and top suspects arrested. (David Zucchino, March 5, 2005, LA Times)

When his battalion took charge here in mid-February, Lt. Col. Roger Cloutier made a vow to himself and his soldiers: If one of them was attacked, the entire battalion would respond swiftly and violently.

"We will hunt down the enemy if he attacks us," the colonel told his staff. "I don't want to give him any rest or refuge. I want to haunt his dreams."

A week later, Cpl. Jacob Palmatier, a 29-year-old administrative clerk, asked to be relieved of desk duty to man a grenade launcher on a convoy headed south. He was in the turret of a 5-ton truck when two slivers of shrapnel from a roadside bomb tore into his midsection.

Minutes into one of his first combat missions, Palmatier bled to death on the side of the road, the 1,481st American troop to die in Iraq.

It was the first combat death in Iraq for the Battle Boars of the 1st Battalion, 30th Infantry Regiment of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division, and it set in motion a series of events that transformed the battalion's very presence here.

It triggered a manhunt that penetrated an insurgent cell, leading to the capture of eight suspected cell leaders. It precipitated a showdown that redefined the relationship between Cloutier and local sheiks and mayors. It forged tighter bonds between the Battle Boars and the local Iraqi army battalion, energizing an investigation into that unit's infiltration by insurgents.

But more than anything, the repercussions of that single American death fulfilled a commander's promise in a way that gave his soldiers a measure of grim satisfaction and a sense that they were somehow more secure.

"It was the catalyst," Cloutier said, red-eyed and weary after two days of round-the-clock raids and firefights after Palmatier's death. "It was like pulling out the one log that breaks the logjam. Everything just started flowing."

The colonel confronted the local political establishment, threatening villages with an invasion of tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles.

"This will not stand," he told tribal sheiks and village mayors, demanding that they divulge the names of the insurgents who were responsible for the bombing.