As the sun dipped to the horizon on Friday, and the temperature dropped with it, the Marines moved the command post to a neighboring compound, an empty corral with eight-foot mud-and-rock walls.
On Friday morning, the colonel returned to the staging area, where his staff had set up a forward command post -- a tent and a series of antennas in the compound yard of an abandoned three-room house with barrel-vault ceilings made of mud brick.