Everything about The Plus Ultra Brigade totally explained
The
Plus Ultra Brigade, or
Brigada Hispanoamericana, was a military contingent of mixed personnel from
Spain (some 1,300 troops), the
Dominican Republic,
El Salvador,
Honduras, and
Nicaragua (about 1,200 troops between the four), which was commissioned to support coalition troops in the
Iraq War. The deployment started in
July 2003. The brigade's name was a reference to
Plus Ultra, the national motto of
Spain(External Link
)
The
battalions of the four Hispanic-American countries were equipped and transported by the U.S. military, and received some specific training in
Germany prior to their arrival to the Gulf.
The Spaniards were based in
Al-Qādisiyyah, and the Hispanic-Americans in
Najaf, in South-central Iraq, near
Dīwānīyah. Their objective was to relieve U.S.
Marines in the area so they could be transferred to other, more problematic, regions in the country.
During their tenure in the region, the Plus Ultra Brigade's troops had few hostile clashes with insurgents. Some of their camps were harassed with
RPG and
grenade attacks, but there were few casualties. There was only one serious incident, a skirmish in early
April 2004 involving radical
Shiites in Najaf, which left 1 dead Salvadorean soldier and at least 18 dead Iraqis
(External Link). The
Rules of Engagement that the units followed were very restrictive and the authorization to use
deadly force needed high command clearance, due to a directive seeking to "avoid or minimize at all costs
collateral damage to people or property"
(External Link) .
The Plus Ultra Brigade finally dissolved in
April 2004, when the recently-elected new Spanish socialist government decided to withdraw its troops (a decision that somewhat tensed U.S.-Spanish relations), as well as lack of public support for the deployment and the war in Iraq in the other four nations, though the Salvadorean military pledged to keep their forces there until August of the same year.
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