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Friday, July 1, 2005
48th soldier killed in Iraq patrol vehicle accident
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Kegley family photo
Sgt Timmy Pope (left), Staff Sgt. Walter Kegley and Sgt. Chad Mercer, members of the Georgia Army National Guard, enjoy Family Day at Fort Stewart. Mercer died Thursday in Iraq.
Friends and co-workers of Sgt. Chad Mercer of Waycross remembered him Friday, the day after he was killed in Iraq, as a devoted family man and a hard-working soldier.
Mercer, 25, was a member of the Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team.
“He’s an average guy,” Casey Caswell, a childhood friend, said in a telephone interview. “He did what he had to do to get by. He worked six, seven days a week to provide for his family.”
Mercer is survived by his wife, Pam, and three young children.
He died in a vehicle accident during a night patrol, the Waycross Journal-Herald reported in its Friday edition. National Guard officials in Georgia said Friday they had no information about the incident.
Mercer was a member of Bravo Company, 2nd Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment, based out of the Cordele armory. He graduated from Ware County High School in 1998 and Georgia Military College in 2000.
“He was a great cadet,” said Col. Pat Beer, the commandant of cadets at the military college in Milledgeville. “He had the biggest smile you could possibly believe, always very friendly.”
Mercer was a member of the Cadet Chain of Command, meaning he was among the top 40 of 250 cadets in his first year at the college. Being in the Chain of Command put him in a leadership position during his second year.
“He always had a very can-do attitude,” said Beer, who also remembered that Mercer could “run like the wind.”
Mercer is the third member of the 48th Brigade to die since the unit mobilized in January for a yearlong deployment to Iraq. All three deaths have been from vehicle accidents.
Pfc. Carlton Newman of Landover, Md., who was attached to the brigade, died when his Humvee rolled over in January during training at Fort Stewart. In May, Sgt. Charles Gillican of Brunswick was killed in a vehicle accident in Kuwait as the brigade was arriving in the Middle East.
Mercer’s death was among nearly 70 for June, one of the deadliest months for U.S. troops since the invasion of Iraq 28 months ago. At least 68 U.S. soldiers, Marines and sailors were killed by hostile fire in Iraq, according to Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, a Web site that compiles official casualty reports.
Caswell, who remembered shooting BB guns in the woods with Mercer, playing video games and pretending to be GI Joe, said they went together to sign up for the National Guard a few months before graduating from high school so they could get scholarships to the military college. The two were on the competitive rifle teams at their high school and again in college.
Eventually, Caswell said he got bored with the Guard and decided not to re-enlist. Mercer stayed in.
“He was a good man,” said Caswell, now a Waycross police officer. “He stood up for what he believed.”
Mercer was recognized in 2004 as the 48th Brigade’s Noncommissioned Officer of the Year.
Mercer served as a National Guard peacekeeper in Bosnia, and when he returned from that tour, he took a job as a salesman at Lee Hardware in Waycross in October 2001.
Co-owner Denise Lee said she and the store’s employees were still in shock Friday. She plans to close the store the day of his funeral, which is not yet scheduled.
Pete Pyrzenski, the Waycross city manager, said he asked the organizers of the community’s Fourth of July festivities at the local stadium to open the event with a moment of silence to recognize Mercer and his family.
GIs building Iraqi army from scratch
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Curtis Compton/AJC
Mindful of Iraqi sensibilities, Sgt. 1st Class Joe Dyer of Cedartown avoids eye contact and motions women and a child to proceed.
Mahmudiyah, Iraq — The bustling bazaar here has long been off-limits to Americans.
The crowded marketplace was considered too dangerous because it is at the center of a lawless, Sunni-dominated region south of Baghdad known as the Triangle of Death. Here insurgents plant roadside bombs every day and fire mortars and rockets at American military bases many nights.
It’s a labyrinth of tiny storefronts and narrow alleys set along ancient cobblestone streets and lined with two- and three-story stucco buildings with balconies.
The alleys are perfect for ambushes, the elevated windows ideal for sniping.
Many of the streets are too narrow for armored vehicles, and American soldiers know they could easily become trapped or lost in the urban maze.
Despite the danger, a group of about 30 Iraqi soldiers and their trainers from the 48th Brigade Combat Team patrolled the market on foot this week for the first time. Walking in two evenly spaced rows with their weapons drawn, the troops sought to convince residents — and themselves — that nowhere in this hostile region is out of reach to them.
“Stand tall and smile,” Sgt. 1st Class Joe Dyer, 33, of Cedartown told an Iraqi soldier through an interpreter. “Wave at the kids. Be friendly but ready to fight.”
The joint patrols mark a crucial milestone in American efforts to build a new Iraqi army from scratch after the 2003 overthrow of Saddam Hussein and dissolution of his army. If the Americans are successful in training the Iraqis to fight on their own against a raging insurgency, there is hope that some of the more than 135,000 U.S. troops now in the country could be sent home.
No-nonsense sergeant
The 48th Brigade soldiers are part of what President Bush referred to in his speech Tuesday night as transition teams that are embedded with Iraqi units.
“These teams are made up of coalition officers and noncommissioned officers who live, work and fight together with their Iraqi comrades,” Bush said. “Under U.S. command, they are providing battlefield advice and assistance to Iraqi forces during combat operations” and training the Iraqis between battles.
Curtis Compton/AJC
Sgt. 1st Class Michael Conley of Canton reaches out to an Iraqi boy in a gesture of friendship during a recent patrol.
But these patrols with poorly trained and inadequately equipped Iraqis also expose American soldiers to greater danger. Iraqi security forces have become a principal target for insurgents. Since January more than 1,100 Iraqi police and military have been killed by insurgents, 586 of them since the April 28 announcement of the formation of the Shiite-led government.
About 70 Georgia citizen soldiers have been working directly with about 400 Iraqis, and they see their training mission as the linchpin of U.S. efforts here.
“The most critical thing the United States is doing in Iraq right now is happening right here,” said Lt. Col. Joe Hoffman, 48, of Duluth, an animated, earthy career officer whose soldiers tease him about his bushy “Saddam-style” black mustache. “If we do this right, it’s our ticket home.”
During the patrol through the Mahmudiyah market the soldiers encountered a mélange of exotic sights and smells: playful children and stooped old women in black burqas; vendors selling blocks of ice, lamb kebabs and tea by the glass; butchers hawking bloody hunks of foul-smelling meat; and donkeys pulling everything from produce to satellite dishes in wooden, two-wheeled carts.
The patrol also attracted menacing stares from hundreds of silent, stone-faced men lining the sidewalks and shops.
Dyer, a platoon leader with the 1st Battalion, 108th Armor Regiment, and a cop in civilian life, used a combination of military hand signals, a few words of English and Arabic, and other gestures to direct the Iraqi soldiers around and through the swarms of Iraqi civilians. Throughout the 90-minute patrol in 100-degree-plus heat, he had them speed up, slow down, split up, rejoin and stay calm as they moved slowly and deliberately through the town, watching for ambushes and snipers.
Dyer previously worked as an instructor at a military-style boot camp for parolees in Bremen, on Georgia’s western border, before joining the Polk County Police Department. He’s accustomed to giving strict orders and working in austere conditions.
When he suspected a translator was softening his harsh comments to the Iraqi soldiers, Dyer threatened to fire him on the spot.
“You better tell them everything I say, the way I say it, or I’ll put your [butt] to walking right now,” he drawled to the translator.
“I don’t care if I offend them,” he said. “I’m here to get things done, and I know my way works.”
Dyer said his primary task was to teach sergeants and other enlisted Iraqi soldiers to lead and make decisions independent of officers. When he organized a first-aid class for 10 sergeants and two officers wanted to attend, he threatened to toss them out. “I said I wanted 10 sergeants,” he told his Iraqi counterpart. “This isn’t a negotiation. Now bring me 10 sergeants.”
Dyer isn’t completely unbending.
The Iraqis have taught him to drop everything at lunchtime — just as they do — and avoid talking about work during meals.
“I’ve come to realize that lunch is a really big deal around here,” he said. “They’ll talk about anything during lunch except work. And that’s OK with me. I like to eat when it’s mealtime.”
But mealtime with the Iraqis has its own peculiar dangers for Americans.
During his first week on the job at the dusty Iraqi army compound, Dyer drank tea and ate roast chicken and rice with his hosts, then became violently ill and was feverish for a week. Other Georgians suffered similar reactions.
“No microbes or parasites can bother me now,” said Dyer, a stocky, no-nonsense soldier. “In fact, I’ve come to like their chow much better than our own.”
Magnet for Iraqi children
Despite his gruff demeanor, Dyer is something of a Pied Piper with Iraqi children. During the patrol, the father of a 7-year-old — with another child on the way — struck up a conversation with a boy named Ali, a crew-cut kid about the same age as Dyer’s son.
“I’m Joe, like GI Joe,” Dyer said, patting himself on the chest. “How old are you?”
Before long, Ali was joined by a group of boys who energetically and persistently tried to sell tea and kebabs, asked for dollars, and wrote their names and drew pictures with a pen and paper Dyer gave them.
Another soldier was about to hand them money, but Dyer stopped him.
“Smile and wave, pat them on the head if you want to,” he said. “But keep your money in your pocket. If you start giving out money, we might lose control of this situation. This is a combat patrol, and it’s not over yet.”
The soldiers ended the patrol without incident in a vacant lot where their vehicles were waiting with gunners in position and engines running. There the disparities in equipment and resources were painfully obvious. The Iraqis clambered into four beat-up Nissan pickup trucks with four soldiers and a machine gun in the back of each. The Americans boarded armored, air-conditioned Humvees for the return to the Iraqi army compound.
Still, Dyer said he was learning more from the Iraqis than they were from him.
“These guys don’t march and salute like we do,” he said. “If you try and compare their military manner and discipline to an American unit, you’re wasting your time. These guys aren’t garrison soldiers.
“But if you want to talk about personal bravery and dedication, we could learn a lot from these guys. They put their lives on the line every day and endure levels of risk that we as Americans would never tolerate. They deserve medals just for being here.”
The risk Iraqi soldiers face in Mahmudiyah was demonstrated last month when eight soldiers were gunned down at a traffic checkpoint.
Just last week, a sergeant in the Iraqi unit the Georgians are working with was killed by insurgents who ambushed him at his home when he returned onleave. The Iraqis got a tip about where some of the killers were located and, with the 48th Brigade’s help, quickly cordoned off and searched the neighborhood.
They spotted two Sudanese men and discovered they didn’t have proper visas. Those men led them to six others, and all were quickly taken into custody.
Hoffman said the Georgia soldiers’ most lasting influence must be among enlisted soldiers, who will be the foundation of this new army.
“We’re trying to have an impact at the soldier level, not the [tea]-drinking officer level,” said Hoffman, a veteran of the 1991 Gulf War. “We’re not buying new furniture for the commanders. We’re bringing the soldiers welding sets, tools, lights, batteries and air conditioners, things they can use to improve their daily lives.”
Hoffman said he was frustrated by the lack of funding for what the U.S. Army says is its top priority. He gets only $2,000 a month to buy incidentals for the Iraqis.
But he says the Georgia trainers are making strides by forming personal bonds with Iraqi soldiers and serving as an example.
“This is a work in progress,” Hoffman said. “If we can win over the Iraqi soldiers, their leaders will follow. When we got here, the Iraqi soldiers were quitting and we couldn’t get them to stay. Now they don’t want to leave.”
