Major John Casper was the operations officer for Task Force 1-26 Infantry during the Easter Sunday Battle of Samarra in April 2004. Casper describes the background of the battle, including the challenges of supervising a Shi'a religious festival in a predominantly Sunni town and constructing a good security plan with the Iraqi security forces (ISF) in the lead. Unfortunately, when insurgents attacked the Iraqi police during the festival, Casper said the ISF "quickly melted away also. When I say melted away, I mean they basically disappeared - except for about a third of the unit, which stood its ground. The rest of them disappeared and some never came back to work." This represented a special problem for Casper's unit because Samarra was far larger than a single battalion could control. Additionally, one of their three company teams was a National Guard air assault company which, according to Casper, "was basically relegated to truck-mounted infantry because we didn't have a habitual relationship with a helicopter unit." In the process of establishing a cordon and search operation, the truck-borne company was ambushed from a mosque with improvised explosive devices, rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and small arms as they moved into a blocking position. After suppressing the enemy and evacuating the wounded, fire continued from a mosque and was engaged by another company. Casper explained, "They had very good effects with the tank main gun rounds and 25 millimeter from the Bradleys and they quickly silenced any activity from that area." Some non-combat methods helped improve the security situation, such as contacting the town council and using an imam to broadcast a curfew order over the mosque loudspeakers, while others, like appealing to the police chief, yielded nothing. The brigade and division headquarters became quickly involved in the situation and fire support from Paladins became available, but direct feed from their unmanned aerial vehicles did not. Casper states that the 155 millimeter rounds, while missing their targets by at least 100 meters, were quite effective in driving the enemy to ground. Another important factor in defeating the enemy was their willingness to fight at night without the night vision devices his battalion was well equipped with.

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