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Thursday, June 9, 2005
Blackhawk flights hone in on sniper posts, Saddam weapons site
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Forward Operating Base St. Michael, Iraq — A dozen staff members of the 1st Battalion, 108th Armor Regiment had something akin to a 45-minute out-of-body experience when a pair of UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters took them skimming over the area the Georgia soldiers’ will soon be patrolling.
With the side doors off, the soldiers had a breezy, unobstructed view of the 40-square kilometer area where they plan to live, work and fight for the next 12 months.
As the helicopters flew low Wednesday afternoon over the palm trees, power lines, neighborhoods, canals and the impoverished villages south of Baghdad, soldiers marked potential trouble spots on paper maps. The whole purpose of the aerial reconnaissance was to learn the area and spot places where insurgents might ambush them or hide bombs.
Afterward, Capt. Scott Jackels, commander of the 108th’s Bravo Company, said he was encouraged.
“Now that I’ve seen the terrain, our task seems less daunting,” said Jackels, a DeKalb County police officer. “I know I can put my tanks just about anywhere they might have to go.”
Capt. Brad Buek (pronounced “Book”), a full-time National Guardsman from Chattanooga, Tenn., who spends most of his working hours inside the battalion headquarters, said the flight made the area real to him.
“It’s more than just a picture on a map now,” he said. “It’s a known quantity. I’ve got a better idea of exactly what our patrols encounter when they go out.”
The 108th’s area is marked by stunning contrasts: Mud huts with satellite TV receivers; the emerald Euphrates River, palm trees and irrigated farmland next to parched desert where shepherds, goats and donkeys roam while multi-million dollar, computerized helicopters fly overhead.
The soldiers flew over a vast Saddam-era ammunition factory and storage area that had been ripped apart with savage precision twice in the past 14 years - the 1991 gulf war and again during the 2003 invasion.
Acre upon acre of seemingly impregnable cement buildings surrounded by sand berms were smashed and vacant. The skeletal structures that still stood had telltale holes in the roofs marking where bombs had hit, strewing rubble on all sides.
There were obvious environmental problems, too. Raw sewage flows directly into canals and streams and garbage, abandoned vehicles and industrial waste are strewn haphazardly across the landscape. Still, the soldiers saw flocks of doves, pigeons, egrets, ducks and geese proliferating in the harsh environment.
This area between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers is reputed to have been the site of the Garden of Eden. There are verdant farm fields, and every place that has water is lush and green. Buek, who grew up on a Kansas farm, said he was impressed by the ingenuity of the Iraqi canal builders.
“They really do a good job of moving the water around,” he said. “Not only is it channeled, but they rotate the irrigation system for different crops at different times of the year. That’s not easy.”
Buek said there was only one thing he regretted about the flight.
“The thing I really hate about flying helicopters is that, when I get down, I think, ‘Geez, maybe I should have been an aviator,’” he said.
Deployment can leave families in financial lurch
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
When Sgt. Luther Boyett deployed to Bosnia in 2000, he wanted to make sure his wife had reliable transportation while he was gone.
He leased a new Ford Explorer that he figured would keep Donna Boyett well-wheeled for the five-year term of the deal.
But before the lease ended and before Boyett left for another deployment — this time to Iraq with the Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team — the car was gone.
Shortly after Thanksgiving last year, just days before Boyett, 55, reported for training at Fort Stewart, a tow truck pulled into the driveway of the Boyetts’ Gulf Breeze, Fla., home. The couple watched their Limited Edition Explorer being carted off, repossessed by the finance company.
For Donna Boyett, 64, who was already having a hard time coping with her husband’s imminent deployment, the repossession seemed grossly unfair.
“It was heartbreaking to see them take it away,” she said. “I knew he was going to go and I wouldn’t have a way to get anywhere. That was the only vehicle we had.”
Car repossessions, home foreclosures, evictions and other financial headaches are not uncommon for soldiers and their families. Money woes can be especially difficult for Guard and Reserve soldiers, who often have to make a rapid switch from civilian to military life when they get called up.
Financial stress at home can also be a distraction for soldiers on military missions.
“I’m in no position to deal with car problems, financial problems or lawsuits at home,” Sgt. Boyett said. “I just want to do what’s right and focus on my mission the best way I know how.”
June Walbert, a certified financial planner and a major in the Army Reserve, said the letter informing a part-time soldier he is about to deploy can sometimes feel like a sucker punch.
“Deployment affects every aspect of a soldier’s life,” said Walbert, who works for USAA, a company that provides insurance and financial services to soldiers and their families. “It’s something they really need to think through and have detailed discussions on.”
Hurricane rebuilding
Although the Boyetts admit they were financially overextended, they managed to keep up with the payments on the auto lease until last summer, when four hurricanes ripped through Florida within six weeks. The Boyetts spent months helping relatives rebuild broken homes. That’s when they fell behind on the payments.
Sgt. Boyett said World Omni Financial Corp. not only repossessed the car but socked the couple with more than $15,000 in penalties and fees that he says were unjustified.
The finance company would not discuss details of the case, citing confidentiality rules.
With the help of a military lawyer in Iraq, Boyett is trying to end the aggressive collection calls he said his wife has been getting and settle the dispute that threatens to distract him from his mission in Iraq.
“My wife is dealing with the stress of me being gone and the financial stress of me taking a pay cut while I’m on active duty,” he said.
Sgt. Boyett, a Vietnam veteran, said his income was cut nearly in half when the 48th Brigade was activated in January and he left his job as an Air Force civilian employee, which he has been for 20 years.
About 30 percent of National Guard soldiers endure pay cuts when they are activated for full-time military service, 40 percent stay at about the same wage level and 30 percent earn more, the Government Accountability Office said.
Boyett said that as a sergeant in a war zone he expects to make about $30,000 over the next 12 months.
“I’m not trying to get out of paying my bills,” he said. “But I’ve already paid for that car.”
Boyett said he has paid $43,000 in lease payments and fees for the Explorer over the last four years. The original sticker price of the car was about $27,500, he said.
But the Boyetts said the company sold the Explorer at auction for about $4,500 and sent them a bill for $21,964. World Omni later offered to settle for $15,000, Sgt. Boyett said.
“It was like when he told them he was going to [Iraq], they really came down hard on him,” his wife said.
Capt. Phil Botwinik, 39, an Atlanta lawyer who is on the 48th Brigade’s legal staff, faults World Omni for failing to give Boyett proper notice of its intention to repossess the car. He suggested the company may have violated the law that gives active-duty soldiers extra protection from punitive actions taken to force payments.
The 2003 law, which replaced the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Civil Relief Act of 1940, was designed to help soldiers who deployed on short notice and found themselves in disputes with landlords, credit card companies and other lenders.
A deployed soldier’s family, for example, cannot be evicted for missing a rent payment that is $2,465 or less a month if the soldier’s ability to pay has been affected by a cut in salary.
“The notice World Omni gave in this case appears inadequate,” Botwinik said. “They didn’t give him enough time to fix the problem, they didn’t allow Sgt. Boyett to be heard, and they bullied him into giving up his car.
“The company ought to realize it’s been adequately compensated already,” the lawyer added.
In a statement, World Omni said the company “has helped many customers with Servicemembers Civil Relief Act claims and will continue to do so in a timely manner. Currently, our records indicate that we have not received a SCRA request for relief from this customer.”
The statement went on to say that World Omni takes “the rights of our service men and women very seriously and encourage them to apply for the benefits provided by the [SCRA].”
33-year-old truck
Rich Strickler, the deployment assistance team manager for USAA, said the law is intended to protect soldiers in trouble but if the Boyetts were unable to make payments before the deployment, they might not find much relief through the law.
Donna Boyett said she is now driving a 1972 GMC pickup that her husband inherited from an uncle. Sgt. Boyett said he worries about his wife’s safety in the 33-year-old truck.
“I bought that [Explorer] because I didn’t want to have to worry that my wife would be stuck by the side of the road while I was deployed in a war zone halfway around the world,” he said. “I’m an old soldier, I was born on the Fourth of July and I’m here because us old soldiers have a responsibility to pass along some of the lessons we’ve learned to the young ones.”
Dave Hirschman can be reached at dhirschman@ajc.com, Moni Basu at mbasu@ajc.com.
