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Monday, June 13, 2005
Front-line soldiers stay upbeat
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Camp Stryker, Iraq - It’s puzzling but obvious that the 48th Brigade Combat Team soldiers who have the most reason to be miserable are actually the happiest.
At dangerous, uncomfortable, squalid outposts like camps Row and St. Joe south of here near the city of Mahmudiyah, soldiers face insurgent bombs, rockets, mortars and gunfire almost daily.
They are surrounded by abject poverty and hostility in the so-called Sunni Triangle of Death, yet the soldiers are strangely, almost incomprehensibly, cheery.
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Staff Sgt. Scott Brown, 42, a millwright from Trion, said of life at the bombed out former potato factory where members of the 1st Batallion, 108th Armored Regiment, have taken up residence.
“The unit we’re replacing survived it. We will, too,” Brown added.
At relatively plush camps like the Baghdad International Airport, where soldiers wake up to custom omelets, fresh Kiwi fruit, ripe avocados and unlimited coffee and ice cream, they gripe about the slow speed of Internet connections, crowded weight rooms and unreliable bus service to Camp Liberty’s swimming pool and Super Wal-Mart-sized PX.
There seems little, if any, linkage between objective reality and soldier moods. If there is one, it’s backwards.
Some say front-line fighters are more robust and optimistic by nature, but there are plenty of tough, hardy men and women at Camp Stryker. And as a recent mortar attack at Camp Liberty shows, no one in Iraq is completely out of harm’s way.
Others suggest the front-line units are populated by younger, more enthusiastic soldiers who want to prove themselves in combat and seek out hazardous assignments.
But there are plenty of 30- and 40-something combat veterans at the austere forward operating bases here. They’re not shy about saying they’d rather stay home with their families, fish and play golf than push themselves to exhaustion in this cruel and desolate place. But as long as they’re here, they’re going to laugh at their fate and make the best of it.
Tom Draude, a retired Marine brigadier general, wrote of a similar experience in Vietnam. There, some communications specialists were sent to a rifle company to learn how their equipment was being used in the field. Despite the drastic change in lifestyle, several communicators soon asked to leave their relatively cushy, air-conditioned confines and join their comrades in the jungle.
Maybe they wanted to be part of the camaraderie that seems to develop so naturally among people who share hardships. Maybe they saw purpose in the things the front-line soldiers were doing and thought they could contribute.
At the very least, there’s immediacy and consequence to the decisions front-line soldiers make on every mission. The same can’t be said of camp-bound soldiers whose lunchtime conversations inevitably turn to mundane discussions of retirement, insurance and mortgage rates.
As a sergeant at spartan FOB St. Michael paternally told the lower enlisted soldiers in the squad he leads, “If you ain’t a Joe, you’re nobody.”
Wound worsens in dirt and dust
Curtis Compton/AJC
Spec. Bobby Morris wipes his face as he recalls getting injured in a rocket attack.
Spec. Bobby Morris, 23, of Vidalia had been in Iraq less than 24 hours when he was wounded in a May 31 rocket attack outside the Camp Liberty PX.
Now, he says the shrapnel wound in his thigh has become infected and he blames the dusty conditions at Camp Stryker for ongoing medical problems.
“I can’t keep it clean in this place,” said Morris, a member of the 148th Support Battalion’s Dublin-based Alpha Company. “I’ve got to walk a quarter-mile on crutches just to get the bandage changed.”
Morris said he had gone to the PX to buy sunglasses and call his girlfriend and let her know he had arrived safely in Iraq when the rocket struck without warning.
The explosion killed one soldier and seriously injured two members of the 48th Brigade. Morris said his wound was considered minor, but he says he hasn’t returned to work because his leg is too swollen to wear his military uniform.
“All I heard at the time was the blast,” he said of the 7:15 p.m. attack. “It didn’t seem real. It was more like something you’d see on TV.”
