Dispatches From Zambar, Afghanistan

ZAMBAR, Afghanistan, Jan. 1, 2008 — -- The slop tasted good. Spam cubed with a jack knife, rice, Ramen noodles and a cup of chicken soup, dumped in a steel pot and cooked on a gas burner, until the ingredients reach the right temperature: hot.

The sun slunk back behind the snow-capped mountains to the west. The temperature dropped faster. Delta Company, a light infantry unit farmed out to the 82nd Airborne's Second battalion Airborne field artillery regiment, had seized a compound in this hostile village of seemingly identical mud-brick compounds.

Just a few miles away are the remnants of the training camp in which Muhammad Atta and other 9/11 hijackers trained. Also nearby is Osama bin Laden's training camp, Al Masadah, or the Lion's Den, where he gained fame in 1988 following a bloody battle with the Soviets.

The men of this platoon, infantry men all, accustomed to eating battle rations and sleeping in sub-zero temperatures for months on end, had come looking for a fight. Now they were just trying to get warm. They greedily slurped down Sgt. Rodolfo "Marty" Martinez's slop from the battle rations bag they had sliced in half and used as a bowl.

It was the first hot meal in a couple of days, and they were grateful to eat something other than battle rations.

Their Humvees were stuffed with thousands of rounds of ammunition. Gunners manned the cannon-ike .50 cal machine guns. And behind each gunner was a LAW anti-tank missile.

But five days in and they had not fired a shot.

They rumbled into this village as part of a mile-long convoy that ferried in the first coalition troops this town had seen in a year. This was the biggest mission of their 15-month deployment with more than 850 American and Afghan troops involved. The operation was set to last 30 days, with the troops searching each house twice.

Zambar had become this province's insurgent stronghold, home to bomb makers and dispatchers of suicide bombers. They received their orders from insurgent networks inside Pakistan.