'Combat Linguists' Battle on Two Fronts

No way, his friend said. He'd try to save him, not kill him.

"But if you can't save me," Jihad persisted. "Please shoot me."

Tarik recalls being approached by a stranger one day at Baghdad's city hall. "How many Iraqis have you killed today?" the man asked in Arabic.

"I told him: 'I don't need your oil. I'm here to help. Sit down. Let's talk.' "

The man shouted to others that Tarik was a traitor. "They wanted to kill me," he said. Fellow soldiers hustled him to a waiting Humvee, Tarik says, and he stayed away from the city hall for months after a contract on his life was reportedly issued.

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Security precautions have often placed 09 Limas in awkward roles. Although they wear aliases on their uniform name tags, military IDs bear their correct names. And because the program is so new, not every soldier has heard of it.

Tarik recalled being detained by a military policeman who insisted that he was a terrorist.

"Who are you?" the policeman asked, seeing his conflicting credentials.

"Don't you trust me?" Tarik responded.

"You're a spy, I know it. And I'm going to prove it."

Stahl said many of the ID problems faced by the first graduates have been solved. Interpreters now carry documents explaining why their name tags don't match their identification.

Many 09 Limas believe they have left a positive impression on Iraq. Eyad, 20, had assisted U.S. Marines in Iraq's Kurdish north during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. He remembers them giving him candy. "When I went back," he said, "I did the same thing."

The 09 Limas recently suffered their first casualty. Saeed said a young Jordan native, who was "like everybody's little brother" in his class, was seriously injured by a roadside bomb in Baqubah. He was flown home to the U.S., where doctors are trying to save his arm and leg.

Saeed was pensive when he discussed his comrade: "His mother doesn't even know he's in the Army."

Glionna reported from California and South Carolina, Khalil from Baghdad.