Lance Cpl. Kendall R. Strop, team leader, Military

Lance Cpl. Kendall R. Strop, team leader, Military Police detachment, 1st Marine Logistics Group, storms into a building with fellow Marines, Nov. 9. The Marines of the Military Police detachment here completed their first security and reconnaissance patrol in Iraq's northern Nineweh province, Nov. 9. Strop, 21, Klamath Falls, Ore., and the MPs here shoulder the task of base security here, which includes presence patrols through adjacent towns and abandoned structures. Their mission, Nov. 9, was to clear out and secure an old, abandoned town located just a kilometer west of Camp Sinjar. As insurgent activity continues in Mosul, a city located East of Sinjar, Marine presence in smuggler jump off points and safe havens serves to choke off possible enemy supply routes. The MPs are just one part of the first Marine Air Ground Task Force outside Anbar in Iraq since 2004. They traveled to the Nineweh province to kick off Operation Defeat al- Qaida in the North II, an operation aimed at stamping out the insurgency just west of the restive city of Mosul.