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Saturday, May 28, 2005
Convoy enters Iraq, sees poverty and speeding motorists
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Somewhere in Southern Iraq — Crossing the southern Iraq border involves little more than a perfunctory nod and a wave from a lonely looking border guard.
There’s a tiny Iraqi flag blowing in the dusty breeze, and a single, bearded guard in military fatigues.
“Go to condition amber,” said Maj. Matthew Saxton, 38, operations officer for the 108th Armor Regiment, as his Humvee rolled into the war zone Saturday.
Cpl. Rodney Bettis, an Atlanta Police Department motorcycle officer, stood in the vehicle’s turret, his machine gun moving from one potential target to another.
“You’re in Iraq,” said Saxton. “This is the real thing.”
While some members of the Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Teeam flew into Iraq aboard transport planes, others went by road; a long, scorching, perilous ride.
The most striking change upon entering Iraq isn’t the geography. Southern Iraq is as hot, dusty and desolate as northern Kuwait. It’s not the military posture, since U.S. soldiers are wary in Kuwait, too.
The difference is the abject poverty that comes in the faces of the begging children who line the roadside when a U.S. military convoy passes by. They have proud, energetic faces, and some of the little girls’ dresses are bright and festive, despite the dreary filth and crumbling mud houses surrounding them.
The boys give the thumbs up sign, wave and a few even manage heartbreaking, stiff salutes. Others plead and rub their tummies.
Local driving customs are equally horrifying in Kuwait and Iraq. Kuwaitis drive too fast in late-model Mercedes and Lexus sedans. Iraqis drive too fast in 25-year-old Delta 88s, smoke-belching buses and a few late-model Mercedes and Lexus sedans.
When an American military convoy of about 20 slow-moving armored trucks and Humvees took the center lane of the main north-south highway and prohibited cars from passing, the Iraqis immediately adjusted by driving on the wrong side of the road and blazing ahead of the convoy. In moves that would have been beamed around the world by TV helicopters if they had happened in the United States, Iraqi drivers commonly topped 80 miles an hour as they drove toward oncoming traffic on the shoulder of the highway.
Sometimes, multiple cars were driving the wrong direction on the Iraqi equivalent of Interstate 75 — and they were passing each other.
About 30 miles from the border, Saxton got on the radio to warn other members of the convoy of another danger. A herd of camels was on the highway.
The soldiers searched overpasses, berms and canals for signs of ambushes and “improvised explosive devices,” or IEDs, the most deadly weapon of the insurgency. As the convoy drove north, each passing mile raised the danger level.
But a few soldiers seemed impervious to the tension.
Ever since he arrived in the Middle East, Sgt. Timothy Hass, 33, of Kennesaw, a Cobb County police officer, has stubbornly clung to the amusing premise that the 48th Brigade is really in Arizona. Affecting his most convincing country bumpkin manner, he dismisses the subject of Iraq every time the subject comes up.
“Hey man,” he said pleadingly to a fellow soldier. “Let’s just hop in a car and go to Las Vegas. You ever seen Wayne Newton? I’ve got a friend in Yuma. I bet if we go out the gate and hop on Interstate 10, we can be there in time to catch a movie.”
As the military convoy stopped for its first night in Iraq, tired soldiers stepped out of their trucks and into a scalding, 120-degree afternoon. The soldiers had been drinking quarts of water, Gatorade and other fluids during the long drive, and Bettis, the gunner, asked an officer where he could find a latrine.
“We’re in Iraq, corporal,” the officer said. “This whole country is a latrine.”
Georgia unit begins rolling into Iraq today
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Camp Buehring, Kuwait â€â€? The soldiers worked quietly and efficiently late into the night, packing and repacking their rucksacks as a CD player churned out ’70s rock.
“Sweet Home Alabama,” “China Grove,” and “Cat Scratch Fever” played over and over as the soldiers prepared, seemingly oblivious to the music, lost in their own thoughts of what the morning would bring.
For soldiers of the 48th Brigade Combat Team, it was their last night in the relative safety of this camp before they hit the long and dangerous road to Iraq this morning.
Sgt. Robert Graham, a tank gunner in the 108th Armor Regiment, closely checked the magazines for his rifle one more time to make sure they were fully loaded with live ammunition.
Graham, 39, a fire alarm technician and former Marine who joined the Georgia Army National Guard soon after the Sept. 11 terror attacks, said the last few days of preparations have been a reality check for the entire brigade.
“It’s a little hard not knowing what comes next,” he said. “There’s always a little uncertainty. But I feel like this is where I should be right now.”
The mood among soldiers was pensive and tense Friday. There was little practical joking or frivolity.
They said they had their “game faces” on and seldom talked about Iraq or Baghdad.
Instead, they called their trip “going north,” or “crossing the berm.”
Most seem relieved that the training and waiting were over and that they are finally getting started on their yearlong mission, despite the dangers that await them.
“I’m ready to get this show on the road,” said Pvt. Jeffrey Baker, 27, of Cedartown. “I’ve been away from my wife and family a long time already. The sooner we get on with it, the sooner we get home.”
Over the last few days, soldiers watched tanks, artillery pieces, armored personnel carriers and mountains of other sand-colored military equipment move from logistics bases in Kuwait toward the Iraqi border.
They practiced tactics and worked on their marksmanship.
They also walked over an oversized map of Iraq painted on a wooden floor about half the size of a basketball court to acquaint themselves with the route and the hazards they might encounter.
At this remote desert base, a crossroads for soldiers coming to and from Iraq, they’ve asked questions of returning veterans and learned all they could.
“I have confidence that the boys I’m with are trained, and they’ll react properly to any threat we encounter,” said Sgt. Joe Picon, 40, a member of the 108th and a Gordon County detective in civilian life.
Picon, a paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne Division while on active duty in the 1980s, said he joined the 48th in December knowing that a deployment to Iraq was imminent.
He watched the 108th soldiers training in Georgia and said he felt compelled to sign up.
“I was skeptical about coming back [to the military] at first,” said the father of four teenagers. “But then I saw all these young guys and I felt I had something to contribute. I couldn’t stay away.”
Sgt. Ricky Stanley of Dublin drives a 5-ton truck with the 148th Support Battalion and knows he will be a big target once he gets to Iraq. He is among a large number of the brigade who are flying in rather than driving.
“The Lord gave me the feeling we’ll be blessed,” said Stanley, a lay minister. “I know our trucks will be rolling a lot when we’re in Iraq and I know that we’re a target. But if you sit around and worry and get aggravated you’re not going to be able to function under pressure.”
Others said they would trust their training and those around them to get them through.
“I’m with a good bunch of guys,” said Graham. “We’ve trained hard. We’re ready to go. I know what we can do.”
