Behind their ranks, a steely eyed sergeant named Ozro Hamblin jogs to catch up. It is rare, Hamblin knows, for these kinds of situations to end better than they normally do.

Communication is key. In this case, a patrol of U.S. soldiers in Humvees, wary of anyone who might be a suicide bomber, has been tasked with catching this car, which inexplicably has its headlights covered. The vehicle, in fact, is a taxi whose owner simply wants to keep his lights from being damaged by rocks.

But without Hamblin, the only member of the Utah-based 222nd Field Artillery who speaks Arabic, that distinction may be lost.

The incident ends with handshakes and smiles. No one ventures a guess as to how it might have ended without an interpreter.

Hamblin is not, in fact, a translator by trade. A Middle Eastern studies major at the University of Utah, he has been learning Arabic for a few years. He speaks enough to get by, and, he hopes, to help Iraqi citizens confronted by his unit to feel a little more at ease.

He gets no special perks for his special skills. And when he leaves this unit, as he is hoping to do soon, there will be no one to take his place.

Hamblin admires the men in his unit, knows their intentions are good. But he also worries that, without an interpreter in the adrenaline-soaked minutes following a roadside bombing or sniper shooting, things can get out of hand.

"I know how it is, you're ticked off, heated up, especially if one of your friends got hit," Hamblin said. "You want to get answers, but a lot of time they're scared and confused and, if you're yelling and screaming at them in a language they don't understand, it doesn't do any good."

A few weeks before the taxi incident, members of Hamblin's unit were charged with helping find the person who placed a roadside bomb before a U.S. convoy. Word was that the culprit had fled to a nearby gas station. At the time, the soldiers didn't know that piece of intelligence was more than an hour old.

"Some of the guys were very excited and ticked off, they were screaming and yelling and I was trying my best to interpret it," Hambin recalled.

The people at the gas station told Hamblin they didn't know anything about the bomber. He translated back to the soldiers.

"So one kid says, 'You know as well as I do that these guys know something,' " Hamblin said. "What a lot of these guys don't understand is that, if these people tell us something - anything at all - and there are other people watching, they will get killed, their families will get killed."

Though tasked with being the voice of America, Hamblin says he often feels, more important, that he needs to be the voice of the Iraqis.

"The way these people speak, you know if they're telling the truth," Hamblin said. "But a lot of these guys won't believe me when I tell them that, they accuse me of being on the other side."

He holds the middle ground somewhat grudgingly, noting that the Army didn't pay for his training and, during pre-deployment training, would not offer him or anyone else Arabic classes.

"I honestly thought there would be a lot more people that would speak at least a little bit of the language, and I thought there would be interpreters," said Hamblin, who is on his second tour of duty in Iraq. "The first time I was over here we never had an actual interpreter the entire time. It blew my mind. You'd think the big Army could fix these problems, but they can't."

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Reporter Matthew D. LaPlante and photographer Rick Egan are traveling in Iraq with Utah-based military units. Daily online dispatches, including additional information about, and photographs of, the troops with whom they are assigned, may be found at www.sltrib.com/iraq.

You may reach LaPlante and Egan at iraq@sltrib.com.