CHECKPOINT 16, Afghanistan  Joao Silva, a photographer for The New York Times, and I set out on patrol at 7 a.m. on Oct. 23 with a squad of 10 or 15 American soldiers and a unit of Afghan soldiers and police officers.

As we came to this crossroads, Checkpoint 16, the Afghans took up positions in a field to the north and American soldiers in another to the south. Police officers began checking people passing on the road. The squad wanted to thoroughly search the place, about a half-mile from its base, for improvised explosive devices, or I.E.D.’s. The day before, another squad found and detonated a fertilizer bomb here.

“I don’t like this checkpoint at all,” Sgt. Michael Ricchiuti told me then as we took cover in a field behind a wall, while some of the men detonated the bomb. “This is where we find most of our I.E.D.’s. Mostly in the doorways.”

There is in fact no checkpoint here anymore, just an intersection that lies on the main road leading into the village of Deh-e Kuchay where a platoon of soldiers from Company C, Task Force 1-66, Fourth Infantry Division, is based at Combat Outpost Brunkhorst. The site became a focal point for attacks earlier this year, when a unit of the Fifth Stryker Brigade Combat Team, Second Infantry Division, was stationed in the village. It lost 22 soldiers during its time in the Arghandab District of Kandahar Province.