Hillah Province, Iraq – Rolling out on a reconnaissance patrol through Iraq’s deadly “Mixing Bowl,” Pvt. Martin Gaymon tucked two white prayer cards inside his bulletproof vest.

They give added “protection,” he says, against the remote-control bombs that worry the Colorado-based soldiers of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment.

Before the sun set on Saturday night, the 19-year-old hip- hop music fan from Brooklyn, N.Y., would earn a medal for extending that protection to his fellow soldiers.

The Mixing Bowl area south of Baghdad, named for the melange of traffic and people driving and wandering about, looms as one of the most dreaded hot spots in Iraq. Here, in this high-traffic gnarl of roadways and dust pits littered with metal debris, Iraqi fighters and suicide bombers, sometimes drugged, have killed dozens.

U.S. commanders call controlling the area a priority in putting down the insurgency. They’re regularly sending out 20-soldier, four-Humvee patrols like this one Saturday to find out who’s planting the remote-controlled improvised explosive devices, or IEDs. These often are mortar shells wired to cellphones.

Grinding along in one of the Humvees, Gaymon and his crew moved cautiously from their base camp. They clicked in their ammo clips as the sergeants pressed radio receivers to their ears. Gaymon scanned fields of blowing grass and palms from atop a Humvee in a rotating turret. He gripped a .50-caliber machine gun.

The soldiers saw barefoot boys waving, farmers bent near ancient Mesopotamian canals, small birds singing, a few cattle grazing. Here and there along roadways, men squatted by apparently disabled cars watching the troops pass.

Through the double-paned clear glass from his armored Humvee, Command Sgt. Maj. John Caldwell, 44, saw a black sedan parked on the side of the road facing traffic. He waved to a family inside. Eight or so tiny hands in the back seat waved back while a veiled mother looked out silently.

“When I wave, and they wave back, that’s a good deal,” Caldwell said.

The troops stopped periodically, checking suspicious debris, studying Iraqi vehicles.

In the middle of the Mixing Bowl, parked U.S. tanks provided support for 30 Iraqi national-guard soldiers atop an overpass.

Caldwell spotted one U.S. tank gunner who had taken off his helmet. He launched his 250-pound ex-Alabama State linebacker’s frame at the gunner.

“Hey!” he shouted – just the start of an enthusiastic warning to the gunner not to let down his guard or remove his protective equipment.

He later explained that “energizing” troops this way, “is a matter of saving lives. … Something can go bad here any second.”

On his gun, Gaymon stayed alert even as the hours wore on. “Run the gun, scan” is how he describes his existence out here. And in the 90-degree-plus heat, he spotted it – a green box the size of a footlocker hidden in a heap of concrete rubble. Red wires ran from the box.

“Whoa,” Gaymon shouted down to the crew in the Humvee.

Staff Sgt. Jeff Marjerrison, 28, of Widefield broke in on the radio keeping the Humvees connected. He alerted the others and the convoy stopped.

The troops then stopped traffic and called in an explosives disposal team as Iraqis leaned out of their windows to watch.

As Gaymon and crew headed back to their base camp, the bomb exploded, detonated remotely. No one was hurt.

In camp, the regiment commander, Col. H.R. McMaster, called them to join him after an intelligence briefing. He put a hand on Gaymon’s shoulder – “a powerful man, owns the regiment,” Gaymon later said he was thinking – and pinned a green commendation medal on his uniform.

Gaymon then went back to work, repairing fuel leaks and cleaning his gun.

“I guess one of them could have got blown up,” he said. “Hope we can find all the IEDs before someone gets hurt.”