Tikrit’s new bridge, said to be the longest floating river bridge assembled in a combat theater since World War II, provides a second lane of traffic across the Tigris River. According to the Army, the Iraqi military blew two holes into the main bridge during the opening days of the war, effectively blocking a lane on the only bridge on the 60-mile stretch between the commercial centers of Samarra and Baiji.
The soldiers’ tomfoolery belied the hostilities still simmering in Iraq. Officially, there’s no ceasefire in the war and U.S. military personnel are still dying while fighting pro-Saddam holdouts. Tikrit is still a town where people proudly hang Saddam’s picture–outdoors–and defiantly kiss the likenesses in front of U.S. soldiers. In one unassuming house, full of women and children Monday, soldiers found a rocket-propelled grenade sight, the equivalent of $75,000 in cash, four AK-47 rifles as well as a Republican Guard uniform–a common garb in the city from which Saddam pulled his trusted officers. Indeed, locals told Army intelligence officers that 1,000 Fedayeen Saddam militia members were in the area and planning to kill American soldiers as a birthday gift for Saddam. Monday, however, passed peacefully in Tikrit. A heavy Army presence, provided by the big-gun vehicles of the Fourth Infantry Division’s 1-8 Infantry, may have helped tamp down violence here while firefights raged in other northern cities.
The irony couldn’t be resisted when the time came to name the bridge. The generals had ordered the rebuilding project seven days ago, and by serendipity the pontoon bays and boats converged on Saddam’s birthday. “Think we’d get in trouble for calling it the birthday bridge?” asked the assistant to Lt. Col. Dick Hornack of the 565th Engineering Battalion. Work on the bridge was as swift as the Tigris. Six hours and three-dozen boats were all it took to push 78 sections of floating bridge into nearly a quarter-mile-long span. That was after telephone poles in the flooded river valley were dynamited out of the way. In all, it was an impressive engineering feat given a raging, spring-thaw river velocity that fluctuated between 10 and 12 feet per second. Army engineering boats now run 24/7, nosing against the bridge to keep it from washing downstream before a permanent replacement is built.
New technology will ensure that the next phase of the project will take a fraction of the time it would have taken a generation ago. Following the pontoon bridge, the short-run fix for the repaired bridge will be construction of a Mabey-Johnson bridge, a 21st century adaptation of the old Bailey version popular in World War II. That will rise in less than a week, thanks in part to tele-engineering advances that allow the Army’s structural experts in Vicksburg, Miss., to view and design the band-aid span with computer-aided design programs. Sometime in the next five months, the Pentagon’s Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance will accept bids for the bridge’s permanent reconstruction. Col. Gregg Martin said the United States hoped to give the contract to an Iraqi firm. “We want Iraqi people rebuilding their own bridge and earning their own money and rebuilding their own country,” he says.
Already, the bridge-completed on a day with blue skies and temperatures in the 80s–has improved moods on both sides. “The day is beautiful,” said Col. Martin. “We build a float bridge in [Saddam’s] town, sitting in his palaces–I mean, if he’s alive and hears about this it gives us great pleasure.” At least some Tikritis were also happy to see their river-crossing line reduced to 15 minutes from more than an hour. The first truckload of men over the Birthday Bridge gave soldiers the thumbs up as they made the crossing. Their chant: “Bush good, Bush good!”
