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July 2005
Four more from 48th killed in Iraq
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Camp Striker, Iraq - Less than a week after four soldiers from the Georgia Army National Guard were killed in a roadside bomb attack, military officials said four more died late Saturday in a similar incident.
Members of the 48th Brigade Combat Team were shaken by the news Sunday. Some soldiers at Camp Striker trembled with emotion, while others spoke only in whispers or withdrew from their comrades to be alone.
Just Thursday, they had held a memorial service for the soldiers who were killed on patrol July 24. In Georgia, while the families of those men were still planning for funeral services later this week, a fresh wave of fear and grief spread through the network of Guard families as word of the new deaths started to get out.
Second Lt. Selena Owens, spokeswoman for the 48th Brigade, said the four latest casualties occurred when a roadside bomb exploded near their Humvee during a patrol.
“The brigade is in mourning,” Owens said Sunday.
Owens said she could not disclose any more information until all the families had been notified, in accordance with Army policy.
A U.S. military statement said the four were killed at about 11 p.m. Saturday in southwestern Baghdad, the area where the 48th operates.
Although some regular military units have seen larger single-day death tolls in combat operations, few National Guard brigades have seen so many soldiers die so early in their deployment. Georgia’s citizen soldiers left their civilian jobs and families in January to begin training and arrived in Iraq in early June for a year’s deployment.
The worst single incident involving National Guard soldiers occurred in January, when six members of the Louisiana Army National Guard were killed by a roadside bomb that destroyed their Bradley Fighting Vehicle in Baghdad.
Georgia’s 48th Brigade, which has about 4,400 soldiers, accounts for about 3 percent of the U.S. forces currently in Iraq. After the latest casualties, however, the brigade had the sad distinction of accounting for 16 percent of the U.S. deaths there in July, according to an analysis of data compiled by the independent Web site icasualty.org.
On July 24, a roadside bomb killed the first Georgia National Guard soldiers to die in combat since World War II. They were: Staff Sgt. Carl Fuller, 44, of Covington; Sgt. James Kinlow, 35, of Thomson; Sgt. John Thomas, 33, of Valdosta; and Spc. Jacques “Gus” Brunson, 30, of Sylvester. All were members of Alpha Company, 2nd Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment.
The 48th has now lost nine soldiers since arriving in Iraq less than two months ago. Another soldier from the 48th died in a vehicle accident in Kuwait in May.
At least 1,794 members of the U.S. military have died since the Iraq war began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
— Staff researcher Alice Wertheim contributed to this article. â€â€? Moni Basu reported from Camp Striker, Iraq, Anna Varela from Atlanta.
Families grieve, then must wait
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
For most of the families, the bad news came Monday.
Then, the waiting started. Waiting for news about when the body of their loved one would come home from Iraq. Waiting to find out when they can hold funerals for the four Georgia Army National Guard soldiers who were killed last Sunday by a roadside bomb.
Standing in his driveway in Valdosta on Thursday morning, the grandfather of Sgt. John Frank Thomas thought about the grandson he raised and reflected on his own life.
The 83-year-old man, also named John Frank Thomas, grew up in an orphanage in Macon with almost nothing to his name. Decades later, he’s retired from the Air Force, with his home and vehicles paid off.
“I’d give everything if I could get my grandson back,” he said quietly. “He was like a son to us.”
Hours later, an official from the Army’s Casualty Assistance Center arrived to tell the family about the transport of the 33-year-old soldier’s body, and to let them know they were the beneficiaries of his life insurance policy. Again, the senior John Thomas said he wished he could trade that money for his grandson’s life.
“I know,” Sgt. 1st Class Harris Cody replied gently, setting aside the papers that the grandfather needed to sign.
The soldier’s grandmother, Manuela Thomas, wanted Cody to know about the young man she referred to as “my baby.” She showed Cody portraits of her grandson when he entered the Marines in his early 20s, a photo of him at the National Guard Armory, and one of him with his pit bull mix, Annie. She wondered if she could display one at the funeral.
Because he died in a bomb blast, she didn’t think there could be an open casket. But she wanted people to see what a handsome man he was. Cody reassured her that she could display a photo. He told the couple their grandson’s body had arrived the night before at Dover Air Force Base and should be in Valdosta on Monday evening. He promised to return and update them on arrangements.
In Covington, the family of Staff Sgt. Carl Fuller is trying to work out the details of his funeral. Late in the week, they gathered at the home of his sister, Berlinda Alexander, where he lived for several months before going to Iraq.
Fuller’s parents were reluctant to talk about their son, as if doing so might open the wound further. Berlinda had made a small shrine to her brother, moving items from his first tour in Iraq â€â€? his medals and a folded American flag in a wooden case – from the bedroom where he had stayed to the mantel in her living room.
The family is guessing that they can have the funeral late this week. “We don’t know exactly what the process is,” Berlinda said. “We’re just waiting.”
In Sylvester, friends tried to find a way to comfort Cathy Brunson, the mother of Spc. Jacques “Gus” Brunson.
Peggy Tompkins, who works as a secretary in the Worth County sheriff’s office, also has a son in Iraq. She was struggling with what to say to Cathy. “I can’t talk about it,” Tompkins said. “It’s too upsetting.”
Her husband, Sheriff Freddie Tompkins, went to see Cathy and simply gave her a hug. “I told her we would think about her,” he said. “Really, there’s not a lot I could say.”
Gus Brunson’s father, Jeffry, who lives in Lawrenceville, hopes he’ll get a chance to sit with his son’s casket. Just one last chance to talk to his boy.
“It won’t get any easier, I don’t think,” he said. “I’d like to say it’ll get easier next week or next month, but I don’t think it will.”
Staff writers Rosalind Bentley, Shelia M. Poole and Charles Yoo contributed to this article.
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Hometowns cope with troop deaths
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Rich Addicks/AJC
Members of the Thomson High School football team, led by line coach Rodney Garvin, say a prayer for the Kinlow family Wednesday after practice. Chauncey Kinlow, 15, a defensive lineman for the team, is the son of James Kinlow. More photos
Lincolnton � A single electric candle burns in the balcony of the Lincoln County Courthouse.
At first, commission Chairman Walker Norman was unsure what to do when he learned Monday that a native son had died in the Iraq war. It had been so long since someone from this out-of-the-way town on the South Carolina border had perished in combat. The last one Norman could remember was during the Vietnam War, when he was a boy.
But the habits of civic grief are enduring. Norman asked someone to go to the courthouse attic and find one of those white candles they put out at Christmas. Then he ordered the flags lowered to half-staff and called a funeral director to see about engraving a 29th name on the memorial out front: Sgt. James O. Kinlow.
Although Kinlow was 35 and the father of two, Norman and almost everyone else around here knew him as “Chester’s boy,” the son of longtime courthouse custodian Alchester Kinlow.
“The war in the Middle East,” The Lincoln Journal began its front-page story, “has come home.”
The deaths of Kinlow and three other Georgia Army National Guard soldiers last Sunday have indeed brought home the war in Iraq as nothing before. Four communities across the state are simultaneously dealing with the loss.
The men were killed during a patrol in Baghdad when their Humvee was destroyed by a roadside bomb. They became the first combat deaths among the 2,500 Georgians who were deployed to Iraq in May as part of the Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team.
Georgia toll at 45
While last Sunday was the deadliest day of the war for Georgia, the human cost of the conflict has registered across the state from the beginning.
Since fighting began more than two years ago, 45 Georgians have died in Operation Iraqi Freedom, according to the independent Web site icasualties.org, which tracks coalition deaths in the war. Georgia’s war dead have come from 34 hometowns in every part of the state, from Mineral Bluff in the Blue Ridge Mountains to Blackshear near the Okefenokee Swamp. Twelve have come from metro Atlanta.
One town touched by the latest carnage had already suffered a war fatality. Thomson, where Kinlow moved from nearby Lincolnton seven years ago, mourned its first death in 2003.
The other victims of last Sunday’s blast came from three different parts of the state.
Staff Sgt. Carl Fuller, 44, lived in Covington, where he worked most recently as a warehouse supervisor. Family members gathered at his sister’s house to share memories and honor the man and the soldier.
Sgt. John Frank Thomas, 33, a former Marine, was raised in Valdosta by his grandparents. After the Army informed them of his death, a black and purple ribbon marked their mailbox.
Spc. Jacques “Gus” Brunson, 30, grew up in Sylvester, in the peanut country of southwest Georgia. The town rallied around his mother, Deputy Tax Commissioner Cathy Brunson. The Chamber of Commerce posted a memorial sign, and two black ribbons were affixed to doorknobs outside the tax office.
Kinlow was driving the Humvee that carried them all last Sunday. The reactions to his death in his hometown and in his adopted town have revealed something about the continuing shock and growing familiarity of this war.
In Thomson, most of the grieving has centered on Kinlow’s home, where he lived with his wife, Daphanie, and their two children, 15-year-old Chauncey and 10-year-old Chelsea. Chauncey’s high school football teammates said prayers for the family after practices, and his mother’s co-workers at the county Board of Education brought an ample supply of food. But outside the circle of family and friends, the mood of the town has been as subdued as Thursday’s moment of silence at the Rotary lunch.
Thomson’s emotions were more obvious two years ago when Army Command Sgt. Maj. Jerry L. Wilson, a native son, was killed during an ambush in Iraq.
“People were depressed for weeks,” remembered DeWayne Patrick, a retired three-star general who spoke at the funeral, which drew an overflow crowd of 500 to Springfield Baptist Church. “Everyone here knew Jerry and his family.”
Patrick, who returned to his native Thomson after he left the Army, had lunch with Wilson during a leave not long before he was killed. The general warned him to vary his routines in Iraq to thwart would-be ambushers.
Mayor Robert Knox Jr. agreed that Kinlow’s death felt different. “We don’t know James Kinlow like we knew Jerry Wilson. This death brought those traumatic memories back.”
The city is developing a memorial park to be named for Wilson. The mayor said he would like to commemorate Kinlow there, too.
Twenty-five miles north, Lincolnton is taking Kinlow’s death as personally as Thomson took Wilson’s.
“You see this happen on TV, but it’s always some other person and some other place,” said the Rev. Dennis Joe Quinn, pastor of First Baptist Church. “It’s never this close to home. We’re awfully hurt.”
Lincolnton, population 1,566, is one-fourth the size of Thomson but feels even smaller. Located on the banks of Clark Hill Lake, it’s best known for outdoor recreation and for the championship football teams of the Lincoln County High School Red Devils. Kinlow grew up here, finished school here, married and began a family here. Everyone seems to know his family, if only because of his father’s job at the courthouse.
“This is Mayberry,” said Lincoln Journal news editor Jacquelyn Johnson. “Everyone knows everyone.”
After news of Kinlow’s death spread early in the week, expressions of sympathy started appearing across town. The flags in front of the courthouse, library and City Hall were all lowered to half-staff. Tribute signs went up in front of the Huddle House restaurant and the Farm Bureau Insurance office, where the message struck notes of condolence and resolve. One side of the sign read, “Our Prayers Go Out to the Kinlow Family.” The other said, “Thanks to All Our Soldiers. Remember: Freedom Isn’t Free.”
There would have been another tribute, but no one has been able to kindle the eternal flame at the war memorial in front of the courthouse. It was last lit after the space shuttle disaster in 1986.
“We tried to light it the other day,” said commission chairman Norman. “We could hear some gas coming out, but we couldn’t get it going.”
The final tribute will come early this week at First Baptist, where Kinlow and his parents were members. Pastor Quinn knew the soldier well, not only as the son of one of his deacons, but as a spirited opponent in pickup basketball games.
“I’m pretty tall, and he couldn’t drive on me,” Quinn recalled, with a smile, “so he started backing away and knocking down those long-range shots.”
Twelve years ago, the minister conducted Kinlow’s wedding service. Now he’ll be leading his funeral.
Daphanie Kinlow wanted her husband to be buried in Savannah Valley Memorial Gardens, on the highway he drove so often between Lincolnton and Thomson. It’s the same cemetery where Jerry Wilson, the area’s first fatality, rests under the soil of home.
Staff writers Rosalind Bentley, Shelia M. Poole in Covington, Anna Varela in Valdosta and Charles Yoo in Sylvester contributed to this article.
Soldier uses music to chase Baghdad blues
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Bita Honarvar/AJC
Spc. Edward Middleton strums Green Day’s “Good Riddance” on a friend’s guitar in the searing afternoon heat Saturday in Baghdad.
Camp Striker, Iraq - Not too many folks would find it appealing to sit outside under a searing Baghdad sun to strum a few notes on the guitar. Much less find it relaxing.
But Spc. Edward Middleton doesn’t mind the debilitating heat. “This weather doesn’t bother me one bit,” he said.
Besides, he said, it’s a great way get a tan.
Middleton, 22, of Macon, began playing guitar five years ago when he was in high school. He and several of his buddies had an Alvarez acoustic guitar shipped to Baghdad ahead of the 48th Brigade Combat Team’s deployment to Iraq. They share it to play a few songs after long, grueling days patrolling the uncertain streets of the Iraqi capital.
“I like all sorts of music - rap, oldies, rock,” said Middleton, on his second tour of Iraq. He was here in 2003, with a unit attached to the 3rd Infantry Division. “One thing I was never keen on though was classical. Really couldn’t get into it.”
His favorite piece to play is a Christian song called “Breathe” that he learned a long time ago.
While most other off-duty soldiers were hibernating in their air-conditioned tents Saturday afternoon, Middleton decided to wait outside on a friend to go play volleyball later.
Just a soldier, a folding chair and a few peaceful chords to take away the Baghdad blues.
So does he ever think of entertaining his tent buddies?
Middleton laughed. “Well, I try not to,” he said, “because they tend to show me up.”
Father to say goodbye to ‘Gus’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sometime in the next few days, Jeffry Brunson plans to sit next to his son’s casket in a South Georgia funeral home.
He’s not certain now, but he said he imagines he’ll spend those still, gray moments telling his boy, “Gus,” how proud he is of him. Of how much he’s missed already, in just a week.
Army National Guard Spc. Jacques “Gus” Brunson died in a bomb blast in Iraq.
If he could, Brunson would look down into the coffin at his son’s face, his body clad in his Army National Guard uniform and remember the man he was before.
Before the bomb on the side of a Baghdad road tore into the Humvee Spc. Jacques “Gus” Brunson was traveling in on Sunday. With Brunson were three other Georgia soldiers of the Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team. All died.
Jeffry Brunson said he figures the blast was ferocious because he’s been told the casket will need to be closed for the service.
The Lawrenceville man looked through photographs of his blue-eyed boy on Thursday, searching for just the right one to set atop the coffin.
“There’s this one where he just finished boot camp,” Brunson said softly in a telephone interview. “He looks great in his uniform. He was everything a man could be.”
Before he told stories about his son, the 30-year-old Guard specialist, he spoke of Gus, the rambunctious child, the second of Brunson’s four children.
They nicknamed him after the old Schlitz beer commercial with the slogan, “Go for the gusto.” At the time, the 10-month-old was proving to be a real handful himself, so his father decided to start calling him Gus.
He wasn’t sick much as a kid. Didn’t get a cold really until he was 18. Once, he (or maybe his little brother, Brunson said) set the curtains in his bedroom on fire, but he learned his lesson. For the most part, he was a pretty good kid. Could have had something to do with the time Gus and his siblings spent at Antioch Baptist Church in Sylvester, the town where he spent a good bit of his life. Worth County schools educated him and he gave the high school the best he had as a center for the football team, the Worth County Rams. His mother, Cathy, still lives there and is the county’s deputy tax commissioner.
He eventually had two children of his own, Kayla, who is 9, and Jake, who is 8. The job he had at Sumter County Correctional Institute as an officer wasn’t working as he’d hoped, and he needed better money to support his family. He moved through a series of jobs that didn’t pay much.
Eventually, he joined the National Guard.
His father was worried. Gus Brunson’s younger brother, Chris, 28, already was serving in the Army. Chris came home safely, after a tour in Iraq. The father didn’t want to wage that anguished vigil again. But Gus Brunson was proud to be in uniform.
In January, he was called up. His father’s heart sank. Jeffry Brunson said he told his son that he’d go in his place, which wasn’t possible if, for no other reason, than at 51, Brunson is not in any branch of the armed forces. Yet, if someone had to be in harm’s way, Brunson would rather it be him. When his son told him that he’d be behind a 50-caliber machine gun in a Humvee turret, Brunson grew even more alarmed. On their hunting trips when Gus was younger, the lesson was drilled home, “Don’t point a gun at anyone.” Now he’d have to do it as a matter of survival.
Then came Sunday’s road attack.
“I’d like the world to find a better way of solving problems than shooting each other,” Brunson said. “I mean, I don’t see the point in my son dying in something like that. No parent wants to have their son in something like that.”
A couple of nights this week, Brunson has stepped away from mourning to collect himself in the quiet outdoors.
The evening sounds brought to mind a night spent on the side of the Florida Turnpike more than 20 years ago when his family’s moving van ran out of gas. They were moving from Miami to Atlanta. As they waited for help, sitting outside the van, Gus heard the bugs’ sharp music and asked his father what it was. Crickets, was the reply.
Moments later, Gus piped up, “I’ll tell you what they’re saying, Daddy. They’re saying, ‘I love you, I love you.’ “
Brunson said he could almost hear his son’s young voice again this week as he stood listening to the crickets’ song carry across the warm evening air.
Georgia GI died ‘doing what he loved to do’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Last year, Carla Hall met her dad for the first time since she was 3 years old after tracking him down on the Internet.
Now, in a few days she will join her newfound family in saying goodbye to him.
Carl Fuller with parents Thomas and Rutha before he left again for Iraq in December.
Hall’s father, Staff Sgt. Carl Fuller of Covington, was among four 48th Brigade Combat Team soldiers killed Sunday in Iraq when their Humvee was hit by a roadside bomb.
“I was so surprised when they informed me he had passed away,” said Hall, who unknowingly followed her father into the Army and is stationed at Fort Bragg, N.C. “I just met him.”
Hall, an Army specialist who is a nursing assistant, cradled her 2-month-old daughter, Genesis, as she talked about the last e-mail she got from her father, in which he asked her to tell his granddaughter he said hello and that he loved her.
On Thursday, Hall joined other family members in the Covington home of Fuller’s sister, Berlinda Alexander, to talk about the man with a playful sense of humor, a love of baseball and a passion for the military.
“He loved his family and the military,” said his father, Thomas, a retired truck driver.
Carl Fuller, 44, was born in Troy, Ala., but moved with his family to Jacksonville, where he graduated from Ribault High School in 1979. He joined the Army that August, Alexander said.
It did not come as much of a surprise to some family members when Fuller announced he was enlisting. When Fuller and his four siblings played space games, Fuller always managed to land the role of Capt. Kirk of “Star Trek.”
He also talked about being a police officer and eventually realized his dream, first with MARTA and later with DeKalb County.
He even had the early bearings of a military man, all spit and polish, family members said.
“Everything had to have a crease,” said Alexander, a licensed practical nurse. “Crease the pants. Crease the shirt. He used to iron my clothes.”
This was Fuller’s second tour in Iraq. He and brother Willis served there together in 2003, said Presephoni Fuller, Willis Fuller’s wife. “They were soldiers sworn to protect and serve and that’s what they knew,” she said.
Alexander said her brother worked for a while as an independent trucker but most recently was a warehouse supervisor. She said he told her some time ago that he was thinking of joining the 48th because the unit was taking volunteers.
She said she and other family members talked to or e-mailed Fuller often. But the last time he called she missed it. She was at the hospital with her husband, Kevin, who was recovering from a motocycle accident.
He ended up talking to her daughter, Mya, 16. Alexander said her daughter told her, “Uncle Carl is so crazy.”
Alexander’s children were devoted to their uncle, she said. He would tell them both to “keep their heads up” in sports and school.
Michael remembered how his brother made him smile. He said as soon as he could, he wanted to play his brother’s favorite song in his honor, “Word Up” by Cameo.
The last time Alexander talked to him, Fuller said he was tired, which she found unusual because he never complained. “He said he missed being with my brother Willis, but he had to step up.”
She said the war has been costly for families of those serving in Iraq. But she takes some consolation in knowing her brother had loved serving his country.
“That’s what keeps my family going, because he was doing what he loved to do,” Alexander said.
A farewell to fallen comrades
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Camp Striker, Iraq � They gathered on a hot and dusty night, the thick haze blurring the normal fiery hues of the setting sun in Baghdad.
Photos from the memorial ceremoniesIn pairs, soldiers of the Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team stepped on the stage to say goodbye to four of their fallen comrades.
They knelt in front of the helmets, boots, dog tags and upended rifles that symbolized the four men from the 2nd Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment killed Sunday when their Humvee was torn apart by a massive roadside bomb in southwest Baghdad.
When the roll was called for Alpha Company’s second platoon, an eerie silence followed the names of Staff Sgt. Carl Fuller of Covington, Sgt. James Kinlow of Thomson, Sgt. John Thomas of Valdosta and Spc. Jacques “Gus” Brunson of Sylvester.
Hundreds of soldiers attended the memorial service for the four Georgians Thursday evening at Camp Striker, the second such somber remembrance the state’s citizen soldiers have attended since arriving in Iraq almost two months ago. Sgt. Chad Mercer of Waycross, also a soldier in the 2nd Battalion, 121st Infantry, died earlier this month in a vehicle accident.
As darkness began to blanket the camp, soldiers shared their memories of the four who died.
Lt. Col. Steve McCorkle, commander of the 2nd Battalion, said Brunson was a man who enjoyed the outdoors, especially hunting. Kinlow was looking forward to going home and buying a new truck. Fuller volunteered to deploy to Iraq with the 48th even though it was his third combat mission. And Thomas liked to dress up his pit bull and put him in the side car of his motorcycle as he roared through the streets of Valdosta.
“There was no warning, no visible enemy,” McCorkle said of the deadly blast. “We can take comfort that they are in a much better place. Now they are serving the Army of God.”
Then it was platoon leader 1st Lt. Joseph Latella’s turn to speak. Sunday evening, when the bad news first got back to Latella, he had thrust his fist into a wall. On Thursday, the 24-year-old recent college graduate from Dahlonega held it together â€â€? until he began talking.
“The bonds you make with a soldier will simply not let you be the leader the books tell you to be,” Latella said, choking over his words. “I miss them. I love them like brothers and they are unforgotten,” he said.
The word “brothers” surfaced throughout the evening, in every speech, in every conversation. Sobbing soldiers hugged and comforted one another the best they knew how. It was a moment to put soldiering aside and share their grief.
“I lost four good friends and we’ll never get them back,” said Staff Sgt. William Taylor of Valdosta. “I want to say they died for a good cause, trying to help the Iraqi people get their freedom. Right now there are no words to really describe how I’m really feeling.”
Among the line of 2nd platoon soldiers who formed behind the stage to shake hands was an Iraqi man named Ali, whose last name can not be revealed because of possible retribution. He served as interpreter for Alpha Company and stood in line with the soldiers as though he were one of them � a brother.
“He was a great man,” said Ali, wiping back tears as he spoke about Fuller, whom he had come to know well since the 48th arrived in Iraq. “He was my best friend. He was all the time so loving.”
The four Alpha Company soldiers were on patrol Sunday on Route Aeros, a dangerous east-west road in the southwestern section of the Iraqi capital. They were in the last Humvee in a three-vehicle patrol.
They had just passed a traffic control point when the improvised explosive devise exploded.
“It was the loudest noise I’ve ever heard,” said Sgt. William Rousseau of Milledgeville, who was in the lead Humvee. “My first response was to make sure my crew was OK. Then I went down to the middle vehicle to check on them. I was proceeding to the third vehicle, but it wasn’t there.”
Rousseau said he had been particularly close to the jovial Fuller. They went to the chow hall together, worked out in the gym and watched movies.
“I miss him. If I was having a bad day, he would pick me up,” Rousseau said. “If he was having a bad day …,” said Rousseau, pausing. “Well, he didn’t have a bad day.”
Doing the dish in the desert
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Bita Honarvar/AJC
Cpl. Bryan Kemp and an Iraqi contractor install a dish on the soldier’s tent Wednesday.
Camp Striker, Iraq — Cpl. Bryan Kemp doesn’t really get to use his computer skills on the job with the 48th Brigade Combat Team. He’s officially a supply clerk with Headquarters and Headquarters Company who has been assigned to fixing weapons here at Camp Striker.
But Kemp did manage to put his talents to use for personal gain.
The former Microsoft employee from Seattle, who once owned and operated an Internet service provider, hooked up with an Iraqi Internet contractor to install his personal satellite dish.
We’re talking enormous dish erected over a smallish canvas tent surrounded by sandbags.
“Not having communication was driving me nuts,” said Kemp who wants Internet access to chat with his wife back home in Macon.
The Internet cafe at Camp Striker was pretty good but the long waits and hours were limiting. He couldn’t always talk with his wife when she was free.
Kemp rounded up 20 other soldiers who each paid $180 for the hookup. On Wednesday, the Iraqi contractor was perched high on Kemp’s tent roof installing the enormous dish when a soldier walked by with this comment: “You said you were getting a satellite. I didn’t know you were doing this kind of [stuff].”
James Kinlow: ‘Almost as if he knew what was going to happen’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thomson â€â€? Daphanie Kinlow’s eyes rimmed with tears as she looked at the sheets of notebook paper folded neatly in her lap. It was her husband’s handwriting.
Sgt. James Kinlow
Seven months before, she recalled, he had summoned her and their two children into the bedroom. “Daddy wants to show y’all something,” he said.
Her husband was a member of the Georgia Army National Guard and was about to be mobilized for duty in Iraq. Ever the practical father, he had written out his own obituary and wanted to talk about final arrangements in case he didn’t come home.
“If two men in military uniforms ever come looking for you,” he warned his wife, “I’m gone. I’m dead.”
On Monday morning, they came.
Daphanie Kinlow was standing at a fax machine in the McDuffie County school offices, where she works as payroll manager, when two men in Army dress uniforms walked up and asked if they could speak to her privately.
Her husband, Sgt. James O. Kinlow, a 35-year-old truck driver in civilian life, had been killed the night before by a bomb as he drove a Humvee on patrol outside Baghdad.
Daphanie felt a sickening sense of déjàvu as she remembered that day when her husband gathered the family for a talk that upset her and their children, 15-year-old Chauncey and 10-year-old Chelsea.
“It was almost as if he knew what was going to happen,” she said Wednesday, as she sat in the living room of their tidy brick home in this east Georgia town near Augusta. She was surrounded by relatives, friends and co-workers â€â€? so many of them at times that some of the young ones had to sit on the shag carpet.
An image of her husband in desert fatigues stared out from a computer screen on one side of the room. He looked younger than his years. On the other side of the room, T.D. Jakes preached from a muted TV. Daphanie noticed the religious program and smiled. “I gave James his [Jakes’] latest book for his last birthday.”
‘We sort of grew up together’
It was a scene of grief and remembrance that has played out across Georgia this week as families in Thomson, Sylvester, Valdosta and Covington learned that their soldiers had become the first deaths from enemy action in the yearlong deployment of the guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team.
In this case, it was like a death in two towns. The Kinlows live in Thomson, but were raised up the road in Lincolnton, where James and Daphanie met at Lincoln County High.
“He was real skinny, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to date someone that scrawny,” Daphanie said with a laugh. But they were soon inseparable. “He was my best friend. He liked to dance and he liked to joke around. We sort of grew up together.”
They called each other “Bay,” short for Baby.
James Kinlow graduated from high school in 1988 and joined the Guard the following year. He enjoyed the part-time duty and planned to stay in until he qualified for a military retirement. When he found out he was being deployed to Iraq late last year, his parents were alarmed.
Carrie Kinlow, the slight woman sitting at the breakfast table, was opposed to the war and let her son know that she didn’t like him having any part in it. His father, Chester Kinlow, a retired custodian at the county courthouse, didn’t like it any better.
But Daphanie decided that her feelings about the conflict were irrelevant once her husband was involved.
“I felt like, right or wrong, I had to support my soldier,” she said, opening an album of photos James sent her from Iraq. One showed him posing in front of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle that he drove and nicknamed Daphanie. Another showed him in a Humvee with some of the soldiers who died Sunday night.
“I told him that things over there weren’t as bad as the news made it seem,” said Daphanie’s brother, Dave Ferguson, who served in Iraq as an Army supply sergeant during the early days of the war. “But I guess things are different now. We weren’t playing defense then.”
Blanketed with love
After she learned of her husband’s death, Daphanie said, she wanted to go home and crawl under the covers. Instead, her family and community blanketed her and her children with love and concern.
As she put away the photos, the back door flew open and a voice announced, “Coming in!” It was Daphanie’s mother, Gladys Ferguson, trailed by a procession of kinfolk bringing food and cartons of canned drinks.
Then there was a knock at the front door. A co-worker of Daphanie’s, Jamie Sikes, had arrived with plates of carry-out Chinese for lunch.
“Now, the middle school’s got your meals tomorrow, and the high school’s got your meals Friday,” she told her friend. “Your family is definitely not going to go hungry.”
The Kinlow children have a wide circle of friends, too. Chelsea is a gifted program student at Norris Elementary School. Chauncey plays football and basketball at Thomson High. When he found out about his father’s death after football practice Monday, his mother said, he vowed to quit the team because his No. 1 fan wouldn’t be there to watch him.
That afternoon, 30 of his teammates showed up at the house, still sweaty from practice, and told Chauncey that they were part of his family, too.
“They were smelling and everything,” his mother said, grinning and dabbing her eyes with tissue at the same time. “There wasn’t a dry eye in the house. They were so sweet.”
Chauncey was still in bed Wednesday when his defensive line coach, Rodney Garvin, showed up at the door wanting to speak with him.
Daphanie told him to go on back. “And get on him about what shape his room is in.”
Garvin reappeared a few minutes later and told her that Chauncey should take all the time he needed, but it might do him some good to come back and be with his teammates. “We’ll say a prayer for him again tonight.”
Daphanie’s cellphone rang. It was someone wanting to know about funeral arrangements.
She learned Wednesday that the body will return home this week and that her husband had been given a posthumous promotion from specialist to sergeant. She wants to hold services as soon as possible � probably this weekend, perhaps Saturday.
The funeral will be at First Baptist Church in Lincolnton, with pallbearers from the National Guard and Kinlow’s Masonic lodge, and flowerbearers from the Lincoln County High School Class of 1988.
Everything, she said, will be just as he wanted it on that day when he called his family into the bedroom to talk. Most of the details are right there in his own handwriting.
Jacques Brunson: Leaving kids ‘pained him’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sylvester â€â€? Before his 30th birthday last month, Spc. Jacques “Gus” Brunson asked his family not to send him any presents in Iraq.
Spc. Jacques Brunson
Instead, he requested coloring books, crayons, pencils, sunglasses and toys for the Iraqi children he would see while on combat patrols. “He was caring and he would do anything for you,” said Jennifer Hunt, 24, Brunson’s youngest sister.
Brunson, 30, was one of the four members of the Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team killed Sunday by a roadside bomb in Iraq.
As family members and friends of Brunson gathered Wednesday in this southwest Georgia community, they recalled an easygoing youngster with a reputation as a dependable friend and a devoted father to his own two children, Kayla, 9, and Jake, 8.
“He was a great dad,” said Hunt. “When it came to Jake and Kayla, that was his life. There was not one thing he would not do for them.” Brunson’s mother, Cathy, the deputy tax commissioner for Worth County, is still recuperating from a recent thyroid operation, her family and friends said, and is having difficulty dealing with the devastating news.
Friends said Brunson gave up a job as a guard at the Sumter County Correctional Institute two years ago in hopes of finding better-paying work. He joined the National Guard about that time.
But his plans did not work out as he had hoped, said Josh Reynolds, a close friend. Brunson worked at a number of low-paying jobs over the last two years. His last job before he was mobilized in January was as a meat cutter at a grocery store.
The regular paychecks of an active-duty soldier, supplemented by overseas pay and combat pay, were welcomed by Brunson.
“He put a lot of thought into it before leaving his kids,” said Reynolds, 30. “He could afford to support his kids and defend his country, too.”
“It really pained him to leave them,” Reynolds added.
John Thomas: Soldier kept up family tradition
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Valdosta â€â€? Sgt. John Thomas was fascinated with America’s space program.
Sgt. John Thomas
On Tuesday, the day Michelle Thomas got word that her son had been killed in Iraq, she paid tribute to him by going to a friend’s house near Florida’s Kennedy Space Center to watch the launch of the space shuttle Discovery.
“She was proud, obviously proud of what he did,” said Joe Perron, who spoke Wednesday on behalf of his sister, Michelle, who lives in Rockledge, Fla.
John Thomas, 33, a graduate of Valdosta High School, also loved the military. Men in his family had served for generations, including his grandfather and late father, who both served in the Air Force. Thomas attended Shimer College in Waukegan, Ill., for a year, then left to join the Marines.
He served for four years. In 2003, he decided to join the Army National Guard. In civilian life, he worked in construction and ran heavy equipment at a local bakery and supermarket.
Thomas’ relatives said he knew there was a chance he would be sent to Iraq.
He was excited when he got word that his Valdosta-based unit was being sent to Iraq, said an aunt, Elisa Thomas. “He was happy and proud,” she said. “He was scared, but he was looking forward to it.”
Grandparents John Frank and Manuela Thomas of Valdosta, who helped raise their grandson, remembered a sweet, spiritual young man. They said he didn’t belong to any one church, but spent time at several churches of different denominations, worshipping and learning about their beliefs.
Family members haven’t worked out the details of his funeral, though they plan to hold it in Valdosta. The grandparents say he will be buried at Florida National Cemetery in Bushnell, where his father, Antonio Thomas, is buried. Antonio Thomas died four years ago, but the family didn’t bury his ashes until about three months ago. The young soldier was there, and his relatives said he told them that was where he wanted to be buried someday.
‘They were the best bunch of guys’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Related:
Jacques Brunson: Leaving kids ‘pained him’
James Kinlow: Wife mourns ‘best friend’
John Thomas: Kept up family tradition
Camp Stryker, Iraq � When Spc. James Cribb accidentally fell into a foxhole during training at Fort Stewart earlier this year, Staff Sgt. Carl Fuller never let him forget it.
Sgt. Carl Fuller
“He would show how I fell and crack everyone up,” Cribb said Tuesday as he stood under the blazing sun at a rehearsal for a memorial service today for Fuller and three other 48th Brigade Combat Team soldiers.
The four Georgians â€â€? Fuller, of Covington, Sgt. James Kinlow of Thomson, Sgt. John Thomas of Valdosta and Spc. Jacques “Gus” Brunson of Sylvester â€â€? were assigned to Alpha Company of the brigade’s 2nd Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment. They died Sunday when their Humvee was hit by a massive roadside bomb in southwest Baghdad.
While his family could not be reached for comment, his comrades remembered Fuller as a gregarious, fun-loving soldier.
“He was such a clown,” Staff Sgt. Ernest Thompson of Albany said. “As I visualize him now, all I can see are his teeth. You never saw him without a smile.”
“This has been devastating,” Thompson said. “They were the best bunch of guys you could set your eyes on. It’s going to be a long road for us to pull back together.”
The casualties served as a grim reminder for soldiers who routinely leave the relative safety of Camp Striker and venture into the southwestern neighborhoods of the Iraqi capital, where there has been a recent flurry of insurgent activity.
“I think we’ve all come here to cheat death,” said Spc. William Parham, an Alpha Company gunner from Social Circle. “It’s a dangerous game cheating death.”
Sunday’s losses have been particularly hard for Alpha Company and other infantry soldiers who have had to continue their routine patrols of Baghdad.
“You just don’t know who’s friend and who’s foe out there,” said Parham, a Walton County sheriff’s deputy. “Those who were really close to those guys are in bad shape. Last night, I heard one of the guys hollering in anger. We want to avenge what’s happened.”
Sgt. John Miller, who works at Camp Striker’s combat stress clinic, said the men in the 2nd Battalion were a tight-knit group and have been vocal about their loss.
“They refer to one another as ‘brother,’ ” Miller said. “Their normal social support system has been taken away from them here. So all they have is each other.”
Thompson said Thomas was a physical fitness buff. Even after long, exhausting patrols, Thomas would return to Striker and take a run. Brunson was a “hard-charger,” Thompson said.
Kinlow, on the other hand, was so quiet that Thompson had to pry words out of him.
Then there was Fuller, the cutup of the bunch.
“The last couple of days I have not been able to get them out of my head and focus on our mission,” Thompson said.
At lunch on Sunday � the last meal the four soldiers had � Sgt. Bill Jones said he chatted with some of them about the perils of combat patrols in Baghdad.
“We talked about how we drive around until we get blown up,” said Jones, of Anderson, S.C.
Hours later, four of Jones’ friends were dead.
Tonight, Jones will stand with hundreds of other soldiers to remember them at the memorial service.
“I don’t think they’ll be the last,” said Parham, who was injured last month when his Humvee rolled over. “God, I hope I’m wrong.”
Comrades in 48th, families mourn 4
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
At midnight Monday, 200 soldiers from the 48th Brigade Combat Team gathered at Camp Stryker in Iraq to salute the caskets of their fallen comrades.
Back home in Georgia, the families of four citizen soldiers killed over the weekend in the deadliest attack on the unit since it arrived in Iraq absorbed the heartbreaking news and began planning funerals.
Spc. James Kinlow (left) and Spc. Jacques “Gus” Brunson.
Family members released the names of two of the dead Tuesday: Spc. James Kinlow of Thomson and Spc. Jacques “Gus” Brunson of Worth County.
On Wednesday, the Guard identified the other two as 44-year-old Staff Sergeant Carl Ray Fuller of Covington and 33-year-old Sergeant John Frank Thomas of Valdosta.
The four were members of the Georgia Army National Guard’s 2nd Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment. They were on patrol Sunday night when their Humvee hit a roadside bomb.
Brig. Gen. Stewart Rodeheaver, commander of the 48th, called the deaths the “worst mass casualties” for the brigade since it deployed to the Middle East in mid-May for a yearlong tour of duty in Iraq.
They are also the first combat casualties for the Georgia Army National Guard since World War II, said Jim Driscoll, a Guard spokesman in Atlanta.
“These are tragic losses, and we will do everything we can to take care of [the soldiers] and their families,” Rodeheaver said.
A memorial service for the four soldiers is planned for Thursday evening at Camp Stryker, he said.
Kinlow, 35, a truck driver from Thomson, near Augusta, leaves a wife, Daphanie, a son, Chauncey, 15, and a daughter, Chelsea, 10.
‘The good of the country’
Kinlow grew up in nearby Lincolnton and joined the Guard almost 16 years ago after finishing high school. He was an ammunition specialist and had recently been transferred to the 121st Infantry’s Alpha Company in Valdosta, said Daphanie Kinlow, his wife of 12 years.
At first he wasn’t happy about being sent to Iraq, she said, but his attitude changed after he was mobilized. She remembered a spirited discussion he had with his mother during his last days at home, in May.
“She was dead set against his going,” Kinlow recalled. “He made this speech: ‘Mama, it’s for the good of the country.’ I still don’t think she bought it. But I did — or at least I acted like I did.”
‘Going to be on front lines’
Brunson, 30, joined the Guard two years ago, said his mother, Cathy Brunson of Sylvester. She said her son felt that by signing up he could make the world safer for his children, 9-year-old Kayla and 8-year-old Jake. He had worked for several years as a guard at the Sumter County Correctional Institute but was unemployed when the 48th was activated.
Cathy Brunson, the deputy tax commissioner in Worth County, said she opposed her son’s decision to join the National Guard because she knew he might get sent to Iraq. “I understood his call to duty, but I also understood that he had children.
“I am personally opposed to the war. I feel our troops should be brought home and let the Iraqis fight among themselves,” she said.
Another of Cathy Brunson’s sons, 28-year-old Chris, was an Army helicopter mechanic in Iraq and returned safely. But Jacques warned her that his role as an infantryman would put him in greater danger. “He said, ‘Mama, I’m going to be on the front lines,’ ” she said.
The 48th is responsible for security in sections of southwest Baghdad, and most of the dangerous patrolling of streets falls to the infantry units.
The four soldiers were killed about 7:30 Sunday evening after their Humvee hit a roadside bomb — also known as an improvised explosive device, or IED — on Route Aeros, Rode-heaver said. The vehicle was part of a convoy patrolling the east-west artery just south of Camp Stryker.
Humvees not invincible
Gov. Sonny Perdue, who is on a trade mission in Canada, issued a public statement offering his and his wife’s condolences to the families of the dead soldiers.
“As members of our Georgia family, we will mourn their passing and pray for the speedy recovery of the injured,” the statement said. “We will honor their service to our nation and their defense of freedom in the heart of the Middle East.”
Lt. Col. Tom Carden of the 48th said Sunday’s attacks were being investigated and that he had sought the help of a local leader to search for the insurgents who might have planted the bomb, which was estimated to contain 500 to 600 pounds of explosives.
Carden said Guard soldiers travel outside Camp Stryker in the Army’s factory-produced, armored Humvees. But even they are not invincible, he said.
“They are the best equipment money can buy, but if it is a big enough bomb, there is no such thing as 100 percent protection,” Carden said. “This was definitely the biggest bomb we’ve been hit with.”
Sgt. Maj. Calvin Wilcox, who has served in the 2nd Battalion of the 121st for 18 years, said the entire brigade was reeling from the tragedy. It is especially hard for the infantry unit, which also lost Sgt. Chad Mercer of Waycross in a noncombat accident in Iraq last month.
“You can look into their eyes and tell they hurt,” Wilcox said.
Staff writers Jim Auchmutey and Kay Powell in Atlanta and The Associated Press contributed to this article.
Anna Varela can be reached at avarela@ajc.com, Moni Basu at mbasu@ajc.com.
Four in 48th killed in bomb attack
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
In the deadliest attack against Georgia’s citizen soldiers since they arrived in Iraq, four members of the 48th Brigade Combat team were killed Sunday in a roadside bomb attack, military officials said Monday.
Sunday’s deaths were the first combat fatalities for the Georgia Army National Guard unit, which arrived in the Middle East in mid-May for a yearlong deployment.
Jim Driscoll, spokesman for the Georgia National Guard in Atlanta, said officials were notifying the soldiers’ families Monday.
“I can confirm they were members of the 48th Brigade, but beyond that I don’t have the details,” Driscoll said.
Cathy Brunson told The Albany Herald that Army officials notified her Monday of the death of her son, Jacques “Gus” Brunson. She did not know her son’s rank.
“Unfortunately, I did not like to talk to him about this because I did not like the idea of him going,” she told the newspaper.
Brunson had two children, Kayla, 9, and Jake, 8.
A fifth soldier was injured in the blast and was being treated at a military hospital in Baghdad, according to a report by the Macon Telegraph.
The attack occurred about 7:30 p.m. Sunday (11:30 a.m. EDT) when a roadside bomb exploded near a Humvee that was part of a convoy conducting a regular patrol on Route Aeros, the Macon Telegraph reported.
Route Aeros is a two-lane, blacktop road that runs east-west through a rural area southwest of Baghdad. Infantry units with the 48th are responsible for patrolling that area. In the past, there have been numerous bombs along the road, and one unit has had at least four Bradley Fighting Vehicles disabled by them, although no one was seriously injured or killed in those explosions.
Iraqi and U.S. forces — including members of the 48th — recently teamed up for Operation Scimitar, an effort to clear the area of insurgents and bomb-making materials. Immediately after the operation, the number of incidents involving improvised explosive devices — the roadside bombs referred to as IEDs — decreased.
But Route Aeros is built up from the surrounding farmland, with soft, sloping shoulders, making it easy for insurgents to dig into the road and hide IEDs under the blacktop.
Two regular Army soldiers also were killed Sunday and another on Monday in bomb and mortar attacks, according to the independent Internet site icasualties.org that tracks U.S. and other coalition troop deaths in Iraq. Details of those incidents weren’t available.
Since the start of the year, 180 of the 340 U.S. combat casualties, or 52.9 percent, have been caused by roadside bombs.
Three other members of the 48th Brigade have died in noncombat vehicle accidents since the brigade was activated in January.
Sgt. Chad Mercer of Waycross died last month in Iraq when his Bradley Fighting Vehicle rolled over. Sgt. Charles Gillican of Brunswick died in May as the brigade was assembling in Kuwait. And Pfc. Carlton Newman of Landover, Md., who was attached to the brigade, died during training at Fort Stewart.
With more than 2,500 Georgians and nearly 2,000 citizen soldiers from other states, the 48th Brigade represents the largest overseas deployment of the Georgia Guard since World War II.
Staff writer Dave Hirschman contributed to this article.
Getting there is half the battle
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Ali Al-Salem Air Base, Kuwait — Iraq certainly isn’t the world’s most popular destination these days — I can think of a lot of folks who would give anything to get out — but who would have thought it would be so difficult to get a flight into Baghdad?
Photographer Bita Honarvar and I have been waiting in Kuwait to catch a military flight into Baghdad International Airport for almost a week.
Our first attempt Friday was foiled by luggage lost on the way in from Atlanta. We waited patiently several days while Air France and KLM searched for our missing bags and finally were able to return them to their rightful owners — us.
Saturday, we were put on standby. The flight was full.
We tried again Sunday morning, starting our journey at 1 a.m.. With no sleep that night, we traveled by bus on a lonely highway to Ali Al-Salem Air Base, about an hour’s drive from Kuwait City. We waited while our papers were processed; our bags checked by a bomb-sniffing dog that arrived late and then had to be excused for a bathroom break.
About 20 soldiers going back to Baghdad after leaves at home joined the two of us and a dozen federal employees and American contractors from various companies such as DynCorp International, which provides a variety of services to the government from security to base operations.
The soldiers entertained themselves by playing cards. Others found a corner to stretch out and make up for lost sleep. I watched the Yanks battle the A’s on a big-screen television set in a modest on-base entertainment facility. I never did find out who won the game.
As the sun rose and breakfast time came and went, U.S. Air Force soldiers trickled in to catch a game of pool and chat with their buddies.
Finally, at about 9 a.m., word came that the flight had been cancelled due to a blinding sandstorm in the Baghdad area.
With droopy eyes, we drove back to Kuwait City and waited for a Monday morning plane. Shortly before we were to leave, that flight, too, was cancelled. The C-17 had been loaded with armored cargo and could not take any more weight on board. Guess who got bumped?
We’re on our way back to the air base Monday night to try again. We are eager to reach Baghdad, meet the soldiers of the 48th Brigade Combat Team and begin our assignment.
We’re hoping the third time will be the charm.
The AJC’s year-long coverage of the 48th Brigade Combat Team at war continues with reporter Moni Basu and photographer Bita Honarvar. Both spent time with the unit during training in California earlier this year and are experienced journalists with a number of previous overseas assignments. Bita spent time in Afghanistan following the fall of the Taliban and was in Iraq shortly after the end of major combat operations. Moni covered the devastating 2001 earthquake in India, traveled to Cuba in 2002 with former President Jimmy Carter, reported from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in late 2002 prior to the start of the war and teamed with Bita in 2003 for an examination of post-war Iraq.
Keeping the ‘Iraqi Express’ rolling
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Camp Arifjan, Kuwait — Brig. Gen. William Johnson keeps a poster from the trucking company Oshkosh pinned on his office wall. The slogan says: “When hell and back is a daily commute.”
Bita Honarvar/AJC
Brig. Gen. William H. Johnson in his office at Camp Arifjan, Kuwait, Friday.
As though Johnson needed reminding.
Here in the middle of the Kuwaiti desert, just a few miles from the Saudi border, sits the main deployment and redeployment hub for armed forces fighting in Iraq.
Since last October, about 165,000 troops have moved through Kuwait either on their way in or out of Iraq. That includes the soldiers of the Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team, who deployed in mid-May.
Johnson, a native of the Atlanta area, wears several different hats at Camp Arifjan, but the 55-year-old businessman from Morrow is primarily in charge of transportation of military equipment and supplies.
As director of Movement and Distribution for the Coalition Forces Land Component Command, Johnson is in charge of arranging convoys into Iraq and making sure that incoming units receive their equipment shipped in from the United States.
When the 48th arrived here, Johnson’s soldiers helped unload the vehicles and equipment shipped ahead of the brigade’s arrival. Much of the brigade’s supplies and containers were hauled up to Baghdad by Johnson’s team, which consists of about 3,500 mostly Reserve and National Guard soldiers.
Vehicles on tracks, such as M-1A2 Abrams tanks, have to be transported from Kuwait to Iraq on heavy-duty haulers because of the long distance.
“It’s 500 miles from here to Baghdad,” Johnson said. “Everything that you don’t want to drive has to be hauled. Also, if a vehicle is not armored, you can’t drive it.”
Convoys leave every day for the dangerous highways of Iraq carrying goods and equipment ordered by the various military units in Iraq.
Everything from lumber to uniforms to pre-packaged military rations is off-loaded from ships and warehoused in shipping containers that span the size of many football fields at Camp Arifjan.
From there they are clearly marked with the unit’s name and location and loaded onto trucks that are then escorted out by military vehicles.
The “Iraqi Express,” as it is more commonly known, runs daily.
Johnson estimates that 850 trucks cross the border every day. On average, the soldiers in the convoys are on the road for 8 to 10 days.
On the way back from Iraq, they often haul old equipment or vehicles damaged in accidents and bomb blasts. They are either returned home or are picked apart for spare parts.
“We do what we do so that the war fighter has what he needs,” Johnson said. “It’s been very satisfying to be here for a year.”
Recently, however, Johnson gained fame for a far less dangerous mission. He was the mastermind behind the local edition of the Peachtree Road Race.
Johnson, an Army reservist, had already received his Peachtree number when he was mobilized in June 2004.
The 25-year Peachtree veteran wasn’t about to sit one out.
“I brought my number with me and ran my own personal race,” Johnson said.
He mapped out a 10K course at Camp Arifjan, ran it alone (his driver picked him up at the finish line) and sent in his results to the Atlanta Track Club.
He then worked with the club to organize the Peachtree at Camp Arifjan this year. More than 1,000 runners participated. Soldiers also ran the Peachtree in Baghdad and at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan.
At Camp Arifjan, Johnson’s desk sits opposite a large digital clock on the wall that displays four time zones. There’s Zulu, the term used by the Army to indicate Greenwich Mean Time. There’s Kuwait time as well as time at Scott Air Force Base in Illinois, where the U.S. Transportation Command is headquartered. Then there’s Atlanta, home of Third Army, the lead organization for U.S. military operations in Kuwait.
Johnson, who works for the health-care textiles firm Encompass Group in McDonough, expects to be heading home soon.
He keeps two photos of his granddaughter taped on his computer monitor and said he just found out another grandchild is on the way after son-in-law Capt. David Key of the 3rd Infantry Division, went home on leave from Iraq a few months ago.
And there is one more thing Johnson can’t wait to see again, he said.
“Green trees.”
A farewell letter to the families and friends of the 48th Brigade soldiers
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Camp Stryker, Iraq — This is our final blog entry and there are a few things we’d like to tell you before resuming our joyful, mundane lives at home in Atlanta.
First, getting to know some of Georgia’s citzen-soldiers and share a bit of their lives here has been an honor, a privilege and the highlight of our years as journalists. Your soldiers welcomed and protected us and at times made us laugh so hard we were in physical pain.
Through all the hardship and sadness in this woeful place the soldiers persevere because they love each other — and they know they’re loved by you. You’re their rock, their foundation and their source of pride and strength.
Your shared comments on this web site reflect the bottomless reservoir of faith that defines and sustains them. Their bravery and nobility come from you and they’re the first to give you credit. They believe in themselves because you believed in them first. They’ll succeed because you knew they would — and they knew that you knew.
Through our words and pictures we’ve tried to give you a glimpse into some of the extraordinary experiences your family members and friends are sharing here. Cruel conditions expose the best and worst of human nature and your loved ones are in the midst of it. Some of the images we’ve sent home are searing and ghastly, others are tender and heart-warming. The soldiers get through this bewilderment with resilience and grace that comes from you.
Thanks for your thoughtfulness, your inspiring words of encouragement and prayers during the last few months. They’ve meant more to us than we can express. To those who have been critical of some of the things we’ve written or photographed, we respect your feelings and the right to disagree. We’ve never meant to hurt or slight any soldier and we apologize for any pain we’ve caused.
As great a sacrifice as the soldiers here are making, yours is equal if not greater. We admire and honor your courage.
Thank you for the decent, fallible, magnificent people you’ve sent to represent our country.
We now join you in anxiously awaiting their safe return.
Affectionately, Dave Hirschman Curtis Compton
Editor’s note: The AJC’s year-long coverage of the 48th Brigade Combat Team at war will continue with reporter Moni Basu and photographer Bita Honarvar. Both spent time with the unit during training in California earlier this year and are experienced journalists with a number of previous overseas assignments. Bita spent time in Afghanistan following the fall of the Taliban and was in Iraq shortly after the end of major combat operations. Moni covered the devastating 2001 earthquake in India, traveled to Cuba in 2002 with former President Jimmy Carter, reported from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in late 2002 prior to the start of the war and teamed with Bita in 2003 for an examination of post-war Iraq.
Score one for the 48th, Iraqis
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Forward Operating Base Mercer, Iraq — The Iraqi soldiers were two minutes from letting a detained driver continue on his way.
The soldiers had stopped the blue Opel sedan because the driver tried to avoid a military checkpoint and didn’t have registration papers for his vehicle.
The soldiers had a hunch the driver might be part of a deadly Sunni-led insurgency whose fighters plant massive roadside bombs, fire mortars and rockets at U.S. bases, and try to incite sectarian violence by killing Shiites in this rural area southwest of Baghdad.
Then the driver’s cellphone rang. An Iraqi soldier picked it up.
Impersonating the driver, the soldier spoke to a man who said he had a new shipment of bomb-making materials and wanted help assembling them.
“Where should we meet?” asked the soldier-turned-detective.
“The same place we always meet,” the caller replied.
Armed with that information, the soldiers immediately interrogated the driver. They learned the names of suspected conspirators and that the group planned to meet at a nearby gas station that evening.
Backed by members of the Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team, the Iraqi soldiers raided the gas station and several adjoining homes and arrested 19 men. They also confiscated a mountain of Syrian currency, blasting caps, detonators and a substantial amount of explosives.
The raid, part of a weeklong offensive known as Operation Scimitar, suggests U.S. and Iraqi soldiers are starting to work well together to root out insurgents in this area, which is part of the “Triangle of Death.”
During the two months Georgia soldiers have been fighting here, their attitude toward their poorly equipped and trained-on-the-job Iraqi counterparts has gone from suspicion and mistrust to appreciation and, in some cases, admiration.
GIs call Iraqi troops a plus
Instead of keeping the Iraqis at arm’s length, Georgia citizen soldiers are rapidly coming to regard them as essential to their mission.
“The information that came from the cellphone call is the kind of thing our guys never would have been able to obtain on their own,” said Lt. Col. Ben Sartain, 42, of Cleveland, leader of about 70 Georgia soldiers assigned to work with and train the Iraqi army’s 4th Brigade. “The Iraqis are the best intelligence gatherers I’ve ever seen. They know how things should look and sound around here, and they notice right away when anything is out of place.”
Operation Scimitar was the first sustained, multiday operation in which the Georgia soldiers operated with Iraqi troops.
Maj. Jeff Dickerson, 38, a leader of the Cordele-based 2nd Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment, said having the Iraqi soldiers in on the operation helped considerably, because citizens offer information to them that they would never volunteer to Americans.
“The locals are much more comfortable talking to fellow Iraqis than talking to us,” said Dickerson, a parole officer before becoming a full-time National Guard member. “They know who belongs here and who doesn’t. They recognize subtle differences in accents and customs that we as outsiders would never notice.”
During a week in the field, American and Iraqi soldiers were together around the clock. Between missions, they shared food, drinks and cigarettes, communicating through an elaborate series of gestures when interpreters were absent.
The Iraqis brought watermelons and cantaloupes from local fields and markets. Americans handed out Gator-ade and girlie magazines and traded knives and other equipment for Iraqi army patches.
In addition, the Iraqis are receiving better equipment. A fleet of new, larger trucks arrived recently to replace the decrepit Nissan pickups the Iraqis have used for years. Air conditioners, batteries and small improvements are being installed at their training compound in Mahmudiyah.
In Operation Scimitar, U.S. forces provided food, water and logistical support and used their armored vehicles to provide security. Iraqis manned road checkpoints, searched homes and buildings, and interrogated detainees.
Trust, mutual aid growing
The Iraqis do much more than put an indigenous face on American military muscle, Dickerson said
“They’re doing a lot of the heavy lifting themselves,” he said. “They’re extremely courageous and enthusiastic, and they’re doing meaningful work.”
Dickerson said integrating Iraqis into every aspect of military operations eventually would enable them to take over, the goal of American military commanders here.
“As we show increasing confidence and trust in them,” Dickerson said, “the Iraqi army is beginning to trust itself.”
Sartain, a full-time Guard soldier, said the most lasting benefit from the weeklong effort was broad acceptance by U.S. military units that the Iraqis can increase the overall effectiveness of all units involved.
“Our military units are starting to beg to have the Iraqis participate in their operations,” he said.
Living and working together also has helped allay fears among U.S. soldiers that the Iraqi army has been thoroughly infiltrated by insurgents and isn’t trustworthy.
“People who have resisted the Iraqi army are seeing the light,” Sartain said. “These guys aren’t the enemy. They’re here to defend their country, and they’re saving American lives at the same time.”
Weary troops face life-or-death tasks
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Forward Operating Base Michael, Iraq — It’s not easy to awaken a group of dog-tired soldiers in the middle of the night, especially when most are wearing earplugs and eyeshades.
But Spc. Jonathan Roberts accomplished that feat recently with an angry, guttural yell in the wee hours, followed by shouts of “Bring it on! Bring it on!”
The neat, mannerly soldier from Lawrenceville also was sound asleep and remained that way during the verbal outburst apparently sparked by an especially vivid and violent dream. He’s taken the resulting ribbing in good humor and says he doesn’t remember anything about talking in his sleep.
But it’s understandable that the line between being asleep and awake is blurring to Roberts and fellow members of the 1st Battalion, 108th Armor Regiment’s Headquarters and Headquarters Company. They’ve been on guard duty at this regularly assaulted base virtually around the clock for weeks without a day off.
“We fire warning shots on every shift,” said Roberts, a married father of an 8-year-old daughter. “Everyone who tries to look over the wall or stops their vehicle gets one.”
Roberts, who in civilian life works as a technician for a medical equipment manufacturer, is an Army mechanic who expected to be repairing heavy equipment in Iraq. But his unit was short of guards to stand watch in medieval-looking towers and at dusty gates here so he and dozens of other soldiers were given the open-ended, front-line assignments.
Unlike other military bases far removed from populated areas, Michael is in the town of Mahmudiyah directly on Route Jackson, a major highway leading to Baghdad.
A solid concrete wall is all that separates road traffic from the base, and every car is a potential threat in a country where car bombs have become one of the most deadly and frequently used insurgent weapons.
Roberts and his crew typically arrive for work at midmorning and are at their posts before lunch. They stay at sweltering gates and towers in four-hour shifts, then remain on standby for other missions for eight hours, which often keeps them awake well into the night.
Then they go back on duty at the gates and in the towers before midnight for four more hours before returning to their tents to sleep sometime before dawn.
At midmorning, they go back on duty. It is a mind-numbing, sleep-deprived life that they now lead, working 16 hours a day with eight hours each day to catch some sleep or do personal chores.
It’s been that way for them day after stressful day almost since they arrived here.
“We’re short-handed right now,” Roberts said, “but everyone is short-handed. We’ve worked for so long without a day off that I’m not sure I’d know what to do with myself if I had one.”
Roberts keeps a journal, and this entry from June 22, a few days before his “Bring it on!” wakeup call, is fairly typical.
It starts at midday when an Iraqi man driving a battered minivan comes to an unexpected stop directly in front of Roberts’ gun tower. He points his M16 rifle at the driver and must decide whether to pull the trigger:
“I remember the look of fear in the man’s eyes ? and felt sorry for him. I really felt bad for him and hoped that he wouldn’t see my actions as personal.
“I didn’t want to take this man’s life, but I would have had he become a threat to me or my brothers. Would his last thoughts have been about friends? Family? Allah? I had no anger toward the man. We were simply two men caught up in a situation beyond our control.
“He worked feverishly to get his minivan going again. When the driver of a car behind him blew his horn, the man jumped due to his already frayed nerves. He made a symbol of an “O” with his hands [an obscene gesture] toward the other driver.
“His luck got better when another minivan pushed him [and his vehicle] down the road.
“We both got lucky that day.”
Guard members sign on for more
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Curtis Compton/AJCSpc. John Wilkerson, 34, of Hinesville (right) raises his right hand along with fellow members of the 48th Brigade during a re-enlistment ceremony inside Saddam Hussein’s former Al Faw Palace at Camp Liberty in Baghdad.
The soldiers took turns raising their right hands and solemnly swearing their allegiance to President George W. Bush, Gov. Sonny Perdue and their military superiors.
The only thing unusual about this recent re-enlistment ceremony for 10 members of the Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team was the location. They were standing in the ornate, marble corridors of the Al Faw palace, a massive cement and stone residence near Baghdad International Airport where Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein used to reside.
Each soldier re-upped for at least six years, and each will receive a $15,000 tax-free bonus for their willingness to stay on. Will there be more year-long deployments to combat zones? It’s impossible to tell. But the soldiers know exactly what they’ll do with the cash.
“I’m going to buy a house in Georgia,” said Spc. Tashana Luz, 23, of Columbus, a former shoe store manager. “I’m not sure where in Georgia. But the bonus will help with a down payment.”
Before and after the 20-minute ceremony, soldiers posed for pictures under a massive crystal chandelier hanging from the 100-foot domed ceiling, standing on spiral staircases or sitting on a gold-trimmed, throne-like chair in a waiting room.
The palace was built after the first Gulf War, but Arabic slogans on the walls recalled an earlier conflict, the 1980-88 war against Iran: “Victory and glory to the warriors who freed the city from the enemy — the Persians,” an inscription read.
As grand as the building appears on the outside, the workers who know it best say it has plenty of flaws.
Mustafa Bulbul, 50, a Jordanian electrician who spent the morning replacing light bulbs, said the “quality of the construction is not so good.”
“It was built in a hurry,” he said. “There are many problems that are hidden.”
The building now houses U.S., British and Iraqi military administrators who fill the hallways with cubicles.
Capt. Mike Lipper, 45, a Bibb County teacher in civilian life, came to the palace to administer the oath for some of his soldiers. He said they deserve major financial rewards for rejoining the military in a time of war and uncertainty.
“You never know what the Army has in story for you,” Lipper said. “But this is a just reward for their efforts. They deserve every bit of their bonuses.”
One Last Note From The Absurdity File
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A popular line of T-shirts at the Camp Stryker PX indirectly addresses the policy question of whether the U.S. military is stretched too thin by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The T-shirts come in varieties that say my brother, sister, son, daughter, aunt, uncle, mother or father is “over there,� superimposed on a map of Iraq. The latest models say my grandma or grandpa is over there.
When we’re sending grandmothers and grandfathers to fight overseas the question about the military being overburdened seems pretty well answered.
Photo by Curtis Compton
Some Ga. troops blister tattered desert uniforms
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Soldiers in the 48th Brigade Combat Team were thrilled to be the first to march off to war wearing the Army’s new mint-green, digital camouflage uniforms.
But after almost two months in the sands of Iraq, the reviews on the new duds are decidedly mixed.
Some Georgia Army National Guard soldiers say the uniforms are falling apart and aren’t ready for prime-time combat operations.
“They’re just not holding up,” said Staff Sgt. John Shaw, 43, of Long County as he stitched pants seams in two of his four uniforms. “Six uniforms might last a year over here. I doubt four will.”
Georgia Guard soldiers were supplied in February with four uniforms each. They say the seams wear out first, followed by the material in the seats. In addition, the Velcro used to affix rank insignias, name tags and unit patches creates problems because it gets clogged with sand.
Army officials said they will stand behind the uniforms until they have evidence that the problems are widespread and not isolated to a few soldiers. They said the changes in the Army’s battle clothing were not purely cosmetic, but were designed to improve a soldier’s performance in combat.
Officials who work for the Army’s soldier equipment division suggested that the 48th’s complaints are surfacing because Guard soldiers are not used to wearing any uniforms around the clock and have unrealistic expectations of normal wear and tear.
“I will tell you that I will be the first one to be called a goat if these uniforms don’t work out,” said Sgt. 1st Class Jeff Myhre, a member of the 2nd Infantry Division’s Stryker Brigade from Fort Lewis, Wash., which tested the uniforms in Iraq from October 2003 to October 2004.
Lt. Col. John Lemondes, who heads the Army agency that developed the uniform, said the new 50 percent cotton, 50 percent polyester uniforms are made of the exact same material and have the same thread count as their old summer-weight predecessor.
“For many of these Guard soldiers â€â€? this is the first combat uniform they have worn,” Lemondes said. “They have no basis for comparison.”
Myhre said that Stryker Brigade soldiers, when given the new uniforms � known as the ACU for Army Combat Uniform � for testing, preferred them over the old Desert Combat Uniforms, now worn by most soldiers in Iraq.
“They loved them,” Myhre said.
Soldiers from the 48th Brigade are the only ones wearing the new uniforms in Iraq. However, all soldiers are likely to begin wearing them within a few years. Having a single uniform rather than one with a green, woodland camouflage and the other with a tan, desert camouflage, was the whole point of developing ACUs.
The uniforms differ from their predecessors in about 20 ways. Buttons are gone; zippers are in. Slanted chest pockets and shoulder pouches were designed to make them more accessible while wearing body armor. Velcro patches mean soldiers don’t have to sew name tags, insignia and unit patches.
But 48th soldiers say that in addition to filling with dust and dirt, the Velcro frequently snags on other material and loses its fastening ability in harsh desert conditions.
Sgt. Timothy Hass, 33, of Kennesaw said the Velcro has another drawback.
“Every time I take my flak vest off, I end up inadvertently removing unit patches,” said Hass, a Cobb County Police motorcycle cop. “Sewing them on would be a lot better.”
Myhre said soldiers get specific instructions for cleaning the Velcro patches with a small green brush that comes in their weapons cleaning kits. “For the guy who is doing this every single day it becomes these little tricks of the trade. These are all learned behaviors,” Myhre said, referring to uniform maintenance habits.
The Army Combat Uniforms are more expensive � about $88 a set, $30 more than the old style.
But Lemondes said the no-iron fabric and Velcro patches end up saving money � as much as $6 to $20 per uniform for patches and even more in laundering costs since no professional care is required.
Spc. Darryl Wilson, 37, of Jonesboro said soldiers from other Army units frequently ask him about the new uniforms when he travels to larger bases near Baghdad International Airport.
“I feel like a fashion model whenever I go up there,” said Wilson, a loadmaster at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in civilian life.
Wilson, who is based at Forward Operating Base Michael in Mahmudiyah, said, “Some of the guys think the ACUs look futuristic and like them a lot. Others don’t like the look at all.”
Wilson says he recommends the uniforms because they’re lighter, more comfortable and dry faster than other uniforms. Wilson also has a desert camouflage uniform that he says is heavier and less comfortable than the ACUs.
Shaw said comfort should be secondary, though.
Desert combat uniforms are “more durable, and over here durability is more important than comfort,” he said.
Hass said the new uniforms are well-designed but could have been made a bit tougher.
“It’s not strong enough,” he said. “I like looking cool, but it ruins the effect when you sit down and the crotch seams rip.”
Rebels in Iraq kill people, then booby-trap them
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mahmudiyah, Iraq — The deadliest weapons of the Iraqi insurgency — roadside bombs — are growing in size and sophistication and are being hidden in a bewildering variety of places.
Buried under patched asphalt on narrow country lanes, embedded in dog carcasses on highways, hung from overpasses or burrowed into the soft embankments beside irrigation canals, “improvised explosive devices,” or IEDs, are the most feared and common threats to U.S. troops.
Now, the ongoing cat-and-mouse game between insurgents who build and plant IEDs and the American bomb disposal experts who disarm them has taken a ghoulish turn. Insurgents have begun hiding bombs in the corpses of murder victims in an effort to kill people who retrieve the bodies and those who try to defuse the bombs.
“The IEDs are becoming more potent all the time,” said Staff Sgt. John Mason, 31, leader of a two-man explosives ordnance disposal team assigned to the Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team. “The insurgents who make them are getting smarter, so we have to get smarter, too.”
Of the 323 American combat deaths in Iraq since the start of the year, 165, just over 51 percent, have been caused by IEDs, according to the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, an independent Web site that tracks deaths in Iraq.
On a recent morning in Mahmudiyah, a city just south of Baghdad, Sgt. Mason and Pfc. Brian James, 28, both members of the 717th Ordnance Company based at Fort Campbell, Ky., were called to three IED sites before noon. The final one would prove to be the trickiest and most dangerous: a series of artillery shells wired to the body of one of five men killed execution-style and dumped beside a rural irrigation canal.
The bomb team’s day had started in the heart of Mahmudiyah, where an Iraqi soldier reported a suspicious-looking white sedan parked near a mosque.
James unloaded a “Talon” robot, a surprisingly speedy tracked vehicle that looks like a department store toy. The camera-toting robot is the favored method for getting up-close looks at bombs without soldiers getting too close.
The driver steers the robot with a computer joy stick while watching a computer screen.
After other soldiers blocked traffic and cleared the area, James guided the robot to the suspicious car and used its mechanical arm to drop a thermite grenade into a side window.
The grenade quickly set the car afire and set off the hidden explosives inside with a series of destructive blasts.
It takes about a year of intensive training for U.S. soldiers to become explosives experts. About 60 percent of those who start the rigorous program wash out, Mason said.
In Iraq, bomb disposal experts serve six-month tours, half the length of the typical Army tour, because their work is so stressful.
They typically work 24-hour shifts — one full day on duty followed by a full day off.
But the workload here has been so heavy lately that the teams sometimes are called into action on their days off.
Man replaces robot
The morning car bomb was dispatched quickly and with only one casualty — the Talon.
The robot’s mechanical arm got stuck on the burning car’s door and caught fire. Mason and James had to replace it with a new robot on their next mission, and that’s when the real trouble started.
The two soldiers were wary when they arrived at the rural execution site in the midafternoon heat.
Despite the verdant farmland and 6-foot sunflowers that lined the route, Mason said he had a bad feeling about the mission. Would they face an ambush along the vulnerable canal road? Was the killing site mined?
It is widely believed that insurgents have placed a bounty on American explosives experts, who are frequently targeted by insurgents using guns, mortars and secondary IEDs.
One of the five bodies found at the site was wired with explosives. When James dispatched the replacement robot toward it, the team quickly ran into technical problems.
The new robot’s video images came back garbled and useless.
Mason would have to investigate the grisly scene himself.
Despite the searing 118-degree heat, he donned a stifling, four-piece protective suit that left him looking like a leaden Pillsbury Doughboy. A Kevlar helmet, yellow sunglasses, earplugs and gloves completed the cumbersome outfit.
Mason carried a telescoping metal pole with a hook at one end in case he needed to move anything.
Sgt. Guillermo Thorne, a member of the 1st Battalion, 108th Armor Regiment, who was providing security for the team, marveled at Mason’s willingness to approach a live bomb.
“Whatever they pay you, it’s not enough,” Thorne said. “You’re absolutely, without a doubt, nuts.”
Life-or-death moment
A few minutes later, Mason saw what the faulty robot could not show them. One of the decomposing bodies was attached to a homemade, remote-controlled detonator. That was connected to a length of electrical cord linked to a series of artillery shells.
Knowing that a lookout with a cellphone could trigger the bomb at any moment, Mason extended the hook to its full length and reached for the detonation cord.
He hoped to sever it from the explosives. But he also knew it might be wired to go off if moved, so he crouched low as he began to pull.
The remote control moved about four inches before an artillery shell exploded.
The blast engulfed Mason in smoke and dust and left him sprawled on the ground.
A member of Mason’s security team started to rush toward him, sure that he had been injured or killed. But Mason quickly stood and waved him off.
The concussion “went right through me,” he said later. His ears were ringing and he was covered with dust and debris, but he was alive.
“The only time I was really scared was after the explosion when I couldn’t hear anything and felt a trickle running down my neck,” Mason said. “I was afraid it was blood and that I’d busted my eardrums. But it was just sweat.”
He collected the detonator, carried it back to his vehicle a few hundred yards away and shed his protective suit.
“Jesus, you scared me with that one,” James told Mason.
“Yeah,” Mason replied. “Scared myself, too.”
After a drink of water and a 15-minute pause, the married father of two got back into his protective suit and returned to the gruesome bomb site.
Only one artillery shell had exploded. The rest were still dangerous.
Mason placed a plastic explosive next to the remaining shells and slowly walked away.
He yelled “Fire in the hole!” and detonated the shells with a violent roar that shook the ground hundreds of yards away.
Amazingly, the five bodies remained mostly intact.
“I’m glad the families will have something to bury,” Mason said. “I know that’s important in this culture.”
On the trip back to their base, Mason resumed his teasing banter with James.
“No IED is going to kill me,” he said. “Your driving, dude. That’s what’s going to kill me.”
For James and Mason, it was all in a day’s work.
“Not many people do what we do,” said Mason, who formerly served as a crew chief on Black Hawk helicopters.
“We keep other soldiers from getting killed or injured, and that gives us a lot of satisfaction. Even after a day like today, I’d much rather do this than work on helicopters.”
Sand fleas feast on Georgia troops
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Curtis Compton/AJC
A soldier treats his flea-bitten feet after Operation Scimitar.
If they gave out Purple Hearts for bug bites, just about all the soldiers involved in Operation Scimitar would be getting medals.
During a week in which the 48th Brigade Combat Team teamed with U.S. Marines and the Iraqi army to hunt insurgents south of Baghdad, sand fleas feasted on fair-skinned Georgia troops.
Ankles, necks and arms were favored delicacies for the microscopic bugs. They burrowed inside sweaty combat boots and soaked shirt collars and left trails of itchy red welts. Soldiers slathered themselves with insect repellent, but the fleas treated DEET like part of the buffet.
Most soldiers slept outside on cots or atop Humvees — the higher the better to get away from the bugs that live on the ground. But the soldiers were essentially camping in a landfill, and the sand flea residents loved the company. By the time the mission ended, it looked like a chicken pox or measles epidemic had broken out among the Georgians.
I started counting bug bites on one shirtless soldier but gave up when I got to 200 and was only half done.
“It’s the luck of the Irish,” the freckled soldier said. “I’m glad there’s something in this country that loves us. Too bad it’s fleas.”
Friendships with GIs put Iraqi kids at risk
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Curtis Compton/AJC
A boy kicks the ball away from Spc. Victor Gonzalez during a soccer game near Yusufiyah. An offensive kept Gonzalez’s unit in the area a week, and children grew to know the GIs.
Baghdad, Iraq — Mention American troops to tiny, 8-year-old Mehdi Talal and the Iraqi boy grins wide even as his mother shakes her head and clutches him to her side.
“He likes them. They take his picture,” said his mother, Sausan Majeed al-Hasnawi, 32. “I know the Americans are targets. I tell him it’s dangerous.”
Baghdad’s close-knit neighborhoods have long been safe play areas for Iraqi kids on summer break.
But amid what may be shaping up as the deadliest of the three summers since U.S. troops invaded Iraq in 2003, a suicide bomber Wednesday attacked children taking candy from soldiers on a Baghdad street. Eighteen children and teenagers were killed.
An American soldier, Spc. Benyahmin B. Yahudah, 24, of Bogart, Ga., also was killed. Yahudah was assigned to the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Battalion, 64th Armor Regiment, based at Fort Stewart.
The attack was a blow to the friendly, human side of Iraqi-U.S. relations.
Peaceful encounters between troops and children allow soldiers to get a morale boost out of making little friends. Kids get close up to the giants in high-tech gear, with those intricate rifles and armored cars.
Widad Salman Kareem, an Iraqi mother of three, said she recently watched kids kick a soccer ball with U.S. troops in a Baghdad park and that it was “very beautiful.”
Wednesday’s suicide bombing was the second such attack in less than a year. A bomber struck another crowd of children and soldiers in September, killing about 35 people.
Since the insurgency gathered momentum two years ago, Iraqi parents have worried about their children’s proximity to U.S. soldiers, who often position themselves in front of houses or shops.
Principals tell children to avoid troops near their school, and warning posters are plastered on walls. Parents and older siblings try to coax the young ones to other distractions, such as housework or computers, to keep them inside.
Some parents warn their children, seeking to persuade them by citing the many examples of troops firing in error on innocents.
In some neighborhoods, the rapport between American soldiers and Iraqi kids doesn’t come so easy.
At a community center swimming pool in western Baghdad on Thursday, children from neighborhoods heavy with insurgent activity said they did not try to approach the troops — sweets or not.
Omar Salem, a smiling 12-year-old in baggy swimming trunks, explained why he stayed away from soldiers: “I cannot accept anything from my enemy.”
He lives in the restive Sunni Muslim suburb of Ameriyeh. A group of neighborhood children around him chimed in with stories of raided homes, shot or detained neighbors and a father killed in a traffic accident with a tank.
In some neighborhoods, especially Sunni areas, children will throw rocks, or at least aim cold stares at troops.
But in the more prevalent Shiite Muslim areas of the city, there is more goodwill.
“Wherever we go in Baghdad, Iraqi civilians and children are drawn to us,” Maj. Russell Goemaere, a spokesman for the 3rd Infantry Division, said after Wednesday’s attack. “To put it simply, the Iraqi people are just as interested in us as we are in them. When we travel the streets, the people come out of their doors just to wave and give us a thumbs up.”
But many Iraqis want their children to keep their distance.
“The fault lies with the soldiers. They know they are exposing [children] to danger,” said Ibrahim Khalil, 43, an electrician with five children living in Baghdad’s Karrada district, which is generally friendly to U.S. forces.
One parent suggested that if the soldiers wanted to give children candy they should send it to the schools or include it in the monthly food rations all families receive. Another accused troops of using kids as “human shields.”
Mosque preachers have warned children to keep their distance, and there are rumors of tainted or poisoned treats.
U.S. troops say they will not let bombers deter them from making personal contact with the people they are supposed to be protecting.
One Iraqi woman said that although she tried to keep her younger relatives away from the soldiers, she understood why American troops wanted to see friendly faces.
“They are human,” said Zaman Hamid al-Daraji, 21. “They have children also. They love them.”
Scenes from Iraq: Life in the war zone
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Reporter Dave Hirschman (left) and photographer Curtis Compton meet an Iraqi policeman.
Baghdad, Iraq — My older brother asked me halfway through this assignment whether Iraq has changed me. I answered in all sincerity at the time that one hot shower and a cold beer would cleanse me of this place forever.
After all, I’ve only been with the 48th Brigade Combat Team about three months, not the full year that soldiers must spend in the war zone. And I’m an observer, a bystander, not a combatant.
While soldiers carry rifles and kick in doors, I scribble in a notebook, usually from the safety of a distant tent, an armored Humvee or a Bradley fighting vehicle with steel sides as thick as a bank vault. But certain images — some horrible, some hilarious — won’t go away with a shower and a drink.
Georgia’s citizen soldiers, at once magnificent and petty, generous and profane, have won a special place in my heart. My mental pictures from this place come in no particular order:
— Sgt. Tim Hass, an irrepressible Cobb County motorcycle cop who recovered from a life-threatening traffic wreck just in time for military deployment, standing at the machine-gunner’s position as his Humvee enters Iraq. “Yeah! I eat pork!” the former Marine bellows in his thick Southern drawl. “Whatcha gonna do about it?”
— Maj. Matthew Saxton, the serious professional soldier from Cedartown, calmly humming the 1980s Boy George tune “Do You Really Want To Hurt Me?” as tracers from insurgent rifles arc over his Humvee in the middle of the night.
— The casual reaction of Cpl. Rodney Bettis, one of my tent mates, to the whistling sound and thunderous explosion of a rocket aimed at Forward Operating Base Michael. “Missed us by a mile,” he yawns.
— The popping report of an AK-47, the rifle of choice among Iraqis — insurgents, soldiers and police.
— Iraqi drivers speeding the wrong way on the highway shoulder, directly toward oncoming traffic.
— A little girl with penetrating brown eyes nobly standing by the side of the road in a vibrant, handmade yellow dress, hoping a soldier will toss food or water from a passing convoy. She looks about the same age as my daughter.
— A yellow puppy with a black face walks up to Spc. Leomar Jackson’s machine-gun nest and playfully chews on the muzzle of his rifle, then lies down and falls asleep in the shade.
— A smooth-skinned, 20-something Iraqi man with a stylish haircut, hands bound behind him, executed on a dusty, rural road. There are two gunshots in the back of his head. His fingers are broken, shoulders dislocated, burns on his arms and welts on his back. He’s wearing a red golf shirt and tan corduroys with a black leather belt cinched tight around his waist. The pants are obscenely ripped in front — a final desecration.
— Sitting in an Iraqi army general’s office with a group of heavily armed Iraqi soldiers, watching the interior minister smoke from a water pipe that looks as if it comes from a Cheech and Chong movie and wondering, “Do these guys know I’m Jewish?”
— A dozen Chevy pickups loaded with suspected insurgents, all blindfolded, heads bowed, awaiting interrogation by the Iraqi army. Jubilant Iraqi soldiers strutting like tuna fishermen unloading a bountiful catch.
— Standing at an insurgent’s abandoned lookout in a crumbling roadside hut, a stack of empty water bottles, metal cot and wood stove attesting to his patience and solitary determination. Wondering if he truly expects to find salvation by killing in this desolate spot.
— The wreckage of a suicide bomber’s white Chevrolet Suburban, no piece bigger than a shopping cart. The bomber’s charred torso, ripped from the vehicle, resting on a highway overpass 30 feet above the road where he ended his life vainly trying to kill Americans.
•— The smell of a corpse rotting on the roadside in 115-degree heat.
— The droning sound a cloud of black flies makes while swarming over a decapitated, decomposing body on the muddy bank of an irrigation canal. Not only will this crime not be solved, but the identity of the dead man — and at least seven other corpses in the same field — probably will never be known.
— An Iraqi woman carrying a water jug on her head, so accustomed to gunfire that she doesn’t flinch or alter her step when a nearby soldier fires an ear-splitting .50-caliber machine gun.
— Hundreds of youthful soldiers running the Baghdad edition of the Peachtree Road Race on a steamy July dawn. The route takes them around one of Saddam Hussein’s ornate palaces — as well as the high-walled prison where the former dictator now resides.
— nconsolable grief and despair on the tear-streaked face of a young Bradley fighting vehicle driver who accidentally veered off a narrow road at night, causing the death of his friend and mentor, Sgt. Chad Mercer of Waycross.
From cheerleader to GI Jane
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Dublin, Ga. — Brean Hancock knows she’s one of the unlikeliest soldiers in the Georgia National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team.
Little more than a year ago, she was a cheerleader at Dublin High School, a popular senior whose sense of style led one teacher to call her “Miss Lip Gloss.” Once she joined the Guard, the petite size that had seemed so cute on the football sidelines became a liability.
Killing field belies pastoral setting
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mahmudiyah, Iraq — The droning sound of swarming flies gave the soldiers their first sign they were approaching a human dumping ground.
As a group of 10 Georgia Army National Guard soldiers walked along a narrow dirt road at the edge of a farm field near sunset, the pastoral setting was reminiscent of just about anywhere in the central or southern part of their home state.
Doves and swallows flitted overhead and a white egret walked stealthily along the overgrown edges of an irrigation canal, looking for frogs, fish or other prey.
These soldiers couldn’t be sure whether they were the hunters or the hunted on this orange evening. Earlier Thursday, soldiers patrolling this same area became targets for insurgent mortars and guns.
Now, with their own weapons drawn, they followed a set of fresh tire tracks along the canal. The tracks ended where the cloud of black flies began.
“This one looks like he’s been here for awhile, maybe a few weeks,” said Staff Sgt. Sean Sibert, 36, a leathery-skinned former landscaper from Martinez, as he surveyed the headless, decomposing body of an adult male on the muddy bank of the canal below.
Then, turning to his left, he pointed out another shallow grave. A few steps beyond, he knelt at a fresh pool of blood and a knotted leather belt.
“They bound this guy’s hands with his own belt before they killed him,” Sibert said. “Then they dumped him in the canal, too.”
The soldiers found eight bodies before dusk. They suspect scores more may be concealed by tall grass and weeds in the rural killing field south of Baghdad. Other soldiers aren’t so sure and guess the corpses they saw are the only ones they’re going to see at this quiet, horrid place.
They planned to go back the following day, or the day after that, to perform a more thorough search. But this isn’t CSI Baghdad, and no one really expects to solve the mystery of what happened to these people, or even identify them.
Two months into their year-long deployment in the so-called Sunni Triangle of Death south of Baghdad, soldiers with the 1st Battalion, 108th Armor Regiment have already recalibrated their internal cruelty meters to the point that a mere eight executions is all in another day’s work.
In the United States, such a grisly discovery would be national news.
In Iraq, it’s a Thursday.
On the short drive back to their military home at Forward Operating Base Michael, the soldiers debated whether their find amounted to a “mass” grave.
How many bodies does it take to reach the “mass” threshold?
Do the bodies have to be buried to be a grave, or does just dumping them count?
They agreed 100 would qualify. Maybe 50. At least double figures. Probably not eight.
The mood on the ride home was strangely upbeat, as if the soldiers weren’t affected by the horror they had just witnessed.
Spc. Jeremy Greer, the irreverent scout driving the lead Humvee, smiled and waved at Iraqis congregating outside their homes near the execution site.
“How you doing, neighbor!” he’d say as the four-vehicle convoy drove past. “Betcha didn’t know about all the killing going on right in your own neighborhood. Did you?”
The Humvee’s bullet-proof windows were up, and no one could have heard Greer’s sarcastic comments over the din of their diesel engines.
Unlike other soldiers who load their vehicles with ice chests full of cold drinks, Greer and his fellow scouts stuff theirs with extra weapons. A spare shotgun, a rocket launcher designed to destroy suicide car bombs, even a sling-shot, jostled around the rear of their Humvee as it sped along rutted, rural roads.
The gunner, Staff Sgt. Jeremy Davison, tried to use the sling-shot as a non-lethal means of warning Iraqi drivers to stay away from U.S. convoys. But the toy didn’t have enough range, so he’s reverted to using heavy-duty weapons like the .50-caliber machine gun mounted in a turret atop the vehicle.
Each shot sounds like a lightning crack, and Davison, 35, of Marietta, let fly with about six single shots during the 40-minute round trip to the killing field and back.
“I wanted to use the sling-shot for warning shots,” he said. “But it can’t keep the cars far enough away. The gun sure gets their attention, though.”
Sibert, the sergeant who led two different groups of soldiers to the dead bodies Thursday, said concentrating on the military mission keeps his mind off questions like who the murdered people were, what their lives were like, or who misses them after their lives were taken so mercilessly.
Was each of them somebody’s everything?
“If you don’t personalize it, you can do your job and go on,” Sibert said. “It hurts to know that there’s nothing we can do to help the people at the bottom of that ditch. But the security of my people is paramount. Everything I do in this country is meant to bring them all home alive.”
Television brightens spartan quarters
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Forward Operating Base Row, Iraq � They patrol one of the most hostile regions of Iraq and must endure some of the most primitive living conditions of any American soldiers in this war-torn country.
But thanks to some clever bureaucratic maneuvering, soldiers who so far have been given the worst of everything scored one luxury â€â€? a 42-inch plasma TV, which they weren’t supposed to get.
But 1st Sgt. Delston Branch, a normally upright member of the 1st Battalion, 108th Armor Regiment’s Bravo Company, was able to convince staff officers that the $4,000 TV had been promised to his soldiers.
“I told them that the sergeant major gave us the TV,” said Branch, a Georgia State Patrol trooper in Washington County in civilian life. “Then I saw the sergeant major and told him we ought to have it, and he went along.”
A few days later, the battalion operations center where the TV would have been placed burned.
At Row, the TV holds an altarlike position at the center of the base’s main building â€â€? one of the few with an intact roof.
The TV has an audience nearly around the clock, and most soldiers watch from five overstuffed leather chairs on a raised wooden platform.
When a particularly popular movie is playing, up to five more soldiers sit on the platform itself â€â€? a configuration they mockingly call “stadium seating.” On a recent afternoon, soldiers saw a triple feature â€â€? “Spiderman II,” “Van Helsing” and “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” â€â€? between combat patrols through a restive Sunni area south of Baghdad.
Hostile area
The soldiers here are allowed just one shower every three days and 20 minutes of weekly telephone calls at a base so vulnerable to rockets, mortars and small arms fire that they wear helmets and body armor any time they step outside. But they say they’re making the best of the bad circumstances and actually prefer their situation to more comfortable, yet mundane, living conditions at larger, more established bases.
“The thing we like about this place is that there’s no busywork,” said Staff Sgt. James Dunkle, 37, of Phenix City, a member of Alabama Army National Guard’s 167th Infantry Regiment. “We do our missions, and then we come back and relax. The things we do serve a purpose.”
The infantry soldiers from Alabama and the Georgia Abrams tank operators based here also train and perform daily missions with Iraqi army soldiers at an adjoining military compound. They operate road checkpoints and conduct raids throughout a mostly rural area lined by canals, palm trees and farm fields.
The bucolic setting is deceptive, though.
The soldiers have encountered multiple roadside bombs and they get shot at and mortared regularly.
Instead of complaining about their austere conditions and exhausting schedule, they seem to take pride in having it tougher than anyone else in the 48th Brigade Combat Team.
“Two days before we left Kuwait we found out we were coming here,” said Sgt. Jeremy Birchfield, 27, of Leeds, Ala. “It might have been nice to live in one of the bigger FOBs but this is where I’d rather be. I came here to fight a war and there’s no doubt living here that we’re in a war.”
Unlike some of the larger, more established U.S. bases where soldiers eat catered meals, work out in air-conditioned weight rooms and sleep in one- or two-person trailers, soldiers here sleep on cots in dusty, bombedout buildings with no plumbing.
Their cafeteria is a small, plywood-enclosed room that reeks of foul drainage water.
There’s only one sink and it has no faucet or running water.
The tile floor is broken in so many places that it’s more concrete than tile.
But they have a seemingly inexhaustible supply of DVDs � and the best TV in the region. Do they ever argue about what to watch?
“No way,” said 1st Lt. Leo Deason, 39, a firefighter from Trussville, Ala. “Whoever shows enough initiative to get up out of their chair and put a DVD in can watch whatever they want.”
Two-week leaves coming! But expect some necessary adjustment to being back in States
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
CURTIS COMPTON / AJC
Spc. Jenna Simmons, Milledgeville, prays over July 4 meal at Camp Stryker. Next to her is U.S. Rep. Jim Marshall.
— Driving: In Iraq, U.S. soldiers drive down the center of the road and ram or shoot cars that don’t get out of the way. They jump curbs and barriers to avoid traffic and perform frequent U-turns to see if they’re being followed. (In Atlanta, they should fit right in.)
— Flushing toilets: Most of the Georgians here haven’t seen a toilet that flushes since May. Expect a few surprises.
— Acronyms: Soldier language is peppered with words and acronyms that only make sense to other soldiers. If one says he’s going to the DFAC (pronounced D-fak), he’s hungry. An “SP” is a planned departure time. “PT” is exercise. “Roger” means yes. All bathrooms are “latrines” and all food is “chow.”
— Changing clothes: In Iraq, the Georgia soldiers wear the same kind of uniform every day. Most soldiers wear their uniforms at least two or three days in a row - and someone else does the laundry.
— Beer drinking: The soldiers here only have access to alcohol-free “near beer,” and they get no hard liquor whatsoever. Their tolerance for the real thing is likely to be greatly reduced.
— Leave my weapon? Soldiers are required to keep their rifles with them at all times and are subject to severe penalties if they show up anywhere — even the DFAC or the PT area — without them. Expect them to feel uncomfortable going outside without their constant companions.
— Car keys? Military vehicles from Hummers on up don’t require keys to start. There’s going to be a lot of fumbling around looking for misplaced keys at home.
— Nasty habits: Many soldiers say they smoke and chew tobacco much more in Iraq than at home. They promise to reform immediately upon their return — but who knows?
— Out of practice: Most of the Georgia soldiers haven’t cooked, washed dishes mowed the lawn, changed the oil or gone to a grocery store for months. All those mundane activities will seem wondrously new.
Rep. Marshall, a Vietnam Vet, pays visit
U.S. Rep. Jim Marshall (D.-Macon) ate a July 4 dinner with about 30 hand-picked troops from the 48th Brigade. During a tour Monday of the U.S. military camps surrounding Baghdad International Airport, he told the troops to ignore critics of U.S. policy in Iraq.
“Disregard the stuff you’re hearing about a quagmire,” said Marshall, a Vietnam combat veteran. “We’re going to be here as long as it takes to get the job done.”
Marshall’s job was done quickly.
The member of the House Armed Services Committee left Baghdad for the United States the same day he arrived.
Peachtree Road Race — Baghdad style
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Camp Liberty, Iraq - The temperature at dawn Sunday in Baghdad was 85 degrees, but I got inspired and decided to run the Peachtree Road Race at Camp Liberty with about 600 other runners, most of them members of the armed forces. (Photos)
The circular route went around a man-made lake where one of Saddam’s former palaces is located, along with a half-dozen majestic marble homes. The palace was intact - but most of the other buildings in the compound had one or two massive holes in the roof or walls from American bombs.
“We really (messed) that place up!” said Capt. Josie Hobbs, 39, of Rex, admiring the precision devastation after the race.
I couldn’t help wondering what Saddam would think of the spectacle.
Imprisoned at Camp Cropper, a high-security facility along the 10K route, he might have been able to watch flag-draped American soldiers running around celebrating the July 4 holiday, albeit a day early. On other days, he might see off-duty soldiers fishing in his lake. (They sell rods and reels for that purpose in the Liberty PX.) That’s got to hurt the old hit man.
Unlike the real Peachtree Road Race, the Baghdad 10K course is pancake flat. There’s no shade, but there’s no “Heartbreak Hill” either. The few spectators don’t flash runners, and no one plays music on the sidewalk, drinks beer or acts foolish. And there aren’t 55,000 pairs of running shoes beating the pavement.
In fact, with most of the younger and faster soldiers running way out ahead of me, the Baghdad run was a largely solitary affair.
Organizers had expected about 200 runners, but three times that many showed up. Some, like 1st Sgt. Barry Smallwood of Griffin, were running their first Peachtree. Others were veterans like Col. Dan Kornacki of Peachtree City who ran his 13th consecutive road race, but his first in Baghdad.
This is the second running of the Baghdad race and organizers promised an even bigger and better event next year. That’s a worthy goal, but personally I hope they have a much smaller pool of Americans here to draw from - like, say, none.
Organizers didn’t have enough T-shirts for everyone this year, but they took down the names and e-mail addresses of all participants and promised to mail them to all who ran.
I’ve already got a pair of road race T-shirts in my dresser at home. But I know this year’s model with “Baghdad Division” on the sleeve will be my most prized.
From the Absurdity File
I ran afoul of Army intelligence officials when I mentioned in a blog two weeks ago that Saddam Hussein is being held at Camp Cropper, a walled prison at Baghdad International Airport. Apparently, Army security experts are unaware, or don’t care, that Google turns up 9,350 items listing the former dictator’s whereabouts. With this posting, that number should rise to 9,351.
The Army’s 3rd Infantry Division summoned photographer Curtis Compton and me to Baghdad to pick up a vitally important media credential that would allow us to get on and off Army bases in Iraq. Never mind that we’ve been doing exactly that for many weeks without the vitally important media credential. After scheduling, then canceling, multiple appointments to pick up the credential, Army bureaucrats apparently lost interest and we returned to the field. Now, however, they tell us we may not be able to leave the country without the mysterious piece of paper that supposedly proves we were here.
Fellow soldiers laud fallen sergeant
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Camp Stryker, Iraq — Sgt. Chad Mercer of Waycross had a special request for his buddies before he left for Iraq.
“He said that if something happened to him he didn’t want a wimpy maple” planted to remember him, said Staff Sgt. Walter Kegley, a friend and co-worker.
Kegley, 35, of Nashville, Ga., said Mercer was not impressed by the Eastern redbud trees planted along Warrior’s Walk at Fort Stewart to honor soldiers of the 3rd Infantry Division who have died in Iraq.
He wanted something bigger, something more substantial, planted in his honor if he died, Kegley said.
Mercer, 25, a member of the Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team attached to the Fort Stewart unit, was killed Thursday when the Bradley Fighting Vehicle he commanded rolled over during a night patrol.
His name will be among those added to one of the plaques at the base of each tree. But Kegley has something else planned for his friend.
“We’re going to plant a towering oak for him at the armory in Cordele when we get back,” Kegley said.
Mercer is the first member of the Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade killed in Iraq since the 4,400-member unit arrived last month.
Two other brigade soldiers have died since the unit mobilized in January, one in a Humvee accident during training at Fort Stewart in February and one in a vehicle accident in Kuwait in May.
Mercer was remembered by those who served with him as a consummate soldier and fierce competitor who had an encyclopedic knowledge of all things military.
“Chad epitomized what a soldier should be,” Kegley said. “He had more knowledge of tactics, techniques and regulations than anyone should ever have.”
Mercer, a member of Bravo Company, 2nd Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment, won the 48th Brigade’s noncommissioned officer of the year award for 2004 for his dedication and professionalism. He served with the unit in Bosnia in 2001 and worked at a hardware store in Waycross in civilian life.
He is survived by his wife, Pam, and three children.
Mercer attended Georgia Military College in Milledgeville for one year and was on track to become an officer when he finished the two-year program. But he told friends he preferred to remain a front-line enlisted soldier because he could have a greater influence.
His fellow soldiers said Mercer was a die-hard Florida State University football fan, kept a football by his cot in Iraq and already had begun researching the college football rankings
First Lt. Nathan Childers of Atlanta said Mercer was commanding a Bradley Fighting Vehicle near Baghdad before dawn Thursday when the 25-ton vehicle went off a narrow dirt road and rolled into a canal. Four other soldiers inside suffered bumps, bruises and cuts. Two were hospitalized overnight but returned to duty the next day.
Mercer, who rode in a turret atop the vehicle, alerted the other soldiers by calling “Rollover!” on the intercom as the Bradley left the road and tumbled down a 15-foot embankment, said Childers, 27.
“It was dark and dusty, and the road was narrow,” said Childers, who was leading the mission in a Bradley just ahead of Mercer’s. “The accident wasn’t anybody’s fault.”
About 15 hours earlier, Mercer was commanding another Bradley that was struck by a roadside bomb. One of his arms was cut and bloodied. But he had it bandaged and insisted on participating in the next mission.
Kegley said faith and friendship will allow Mercer’s fellow soldiers to continue despite the devastating personal loss.
“We’ve built strong relationships, and those bonds of friendship will carry us through. If Chad was here, he’d tell us to go back out there and finish the job.”
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.”
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