AJC.com > Iraq coverage > Blog > Archives > 2005 > August > 05
Friday, August 5, 2005
11 days, 11 dead: Time to fight back
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Camp Striker, Iraq â€â€? In the thick of night, most of this camp is dark and desolate, save the southern end, where the faded royal-blue tarps of the Georgia Army National Guard’ unit are lit up in the glare of headlights of Humvees and Bradley fighting vehicles.
The soldiers of the 2nd Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment, are outside their tents in night-vision goggles and full combat gear, loading their vehicles for a mission they have eagerly awaited.
Their goal: to round up suspected insurgents, some of whom might have been responsible for the deaths of eight men in Alpha Company. All from the same platoon, the eight soldiers lost their lives in the same grim fashion, a week apart.
On July 24, the first four died when their Humvee rolled over a massive bomb planted on nearby Route Aeros, an east-west artery in the Iraqi capital. Six days later, four more soldiers were killed in a similar attack on Route Red Sox, just minutes from one of the entrances to Camp Striker.
The deaths shook the brigade to its core. After the initial shock and disbelief, after the tears and quiet time, Alpha Company soldiers were angry.
Angry at an elusive enemy they could not see, fearful that in the days after the tragedy, they were still going out on three-Humvee patrols, waiting for their turn to die.
“I feel like we’re finally going out to fight,” said Spc. William Parham, of Social Circle. “We’re rolling out in force tonight.”
Word was spreading that a car bomber at a traffic control point not far away had killed three more soldiers of the 48th Brigade. This mission would be the first opportunity to avenge the 11 deaths the brigade had suffered in the last 11 days, Parham said.
“Spirits are high,” he said, getting into his Humvee.
Relying on faith
Last Sunday, Parham’s spirits had plummeted.
On that night of the second attack, he was called to the scene for cleanup and recovery. He stood guard all night and into the early hours of the following afternoon, watching over what was left of his friends.
The Humvee his buddies died in was reduced to two front tires, two back tires and an engine block. Everything else was in small pieces. “I’ve seen a lot of crap in my life, but I’ve never seen anything like this before,” said Parham, a Walton County sheriff’s deputy for seven years.
Sgt. Bill Jones, of Anderson, S.C., who accompanied Parham to the grisly scene, said: “These are people you knew, that you trained with, you laughed with. You become angry real quick. You want to get the bastard who did this.”
The problem is that there was no one to shoot at.
The roads around Baghdad are not like those in Georgia. Under the pavement is soft dirt in which insurgents can hide a bomb. Some soldiers believe the explosives have been there for years and are only now being used.
In his gunner’s turret, Parham cringes every time the Humvee hits a rock or goes over a bump in the road.
“My faith â€â€? that’s all I got to rely on,” he said.
“We didn’t come here to fill up body bags without returning the favor somehow. I would love to have one of [the insurgents] present themselves to me so I can fight. But we’re dealing with this new breed of cowards.”
“I wanted to come over here and make it to where my children will never have to fight their children,” he said. “But now, there’s so much frustration built up it scares me.”
Parham’s tentmates share the fear and frustration. Yet, day after day, they get in their Humvees and head out into southwest Baghdad, not knowing whether they will make it back.
“We need to put this brigade in that area and sweep it clean,” Parham said. “Think about it this way. If a police officer got killed at home in a bad neighborhood, we wouldn’t let that neighborhood rest until we found out something. We’d shake that area down.”
“Let’s go! Let’s go!” an officer shouted. “No time to lose.”
By 2 a.m., almost the entire 2nd Battalion was geared up to go.
The mission was planned after some local Iraqis passed information to the brigade, which is responsible for patrolling a large area of southwest Baghdad near the airport.
“Some of these insurgents were involved in the deaths of our soldiers,” said Col. Mark London, the brigade’s operations officer. “The informants identified specific targets. What we’re trying not to do is go into an area and go through everyone’s houses.”
No atheists in foxholes
Bravo Company’s Spc. Chris Youngblood, a forklift operator from Eatonton, waited â€â€? “nervous as usual,” he said – with Pfc. Daniel Morgan, a student at North Georgia College & State University in Dahlonega, for orders to go. Some of the soldiers told jokes to calm their nerves. Others stood quietly , their hearts racing.
“You ready?” Youngblood asked.
“As ready as I will be,” Morgan replied.
They gathered in prayer with the 48th Brigade commander, Brig. Gen. Stewart Rodeheaver. “There are no atheists in foxholes,” Rodeheaver repeated the time-worn adage.
Alpha Company soldiers would drive out four to a Humvee, as usual. But this time, they had almost an entire battalion supporting them. “Be safe,” Rodeheaver told his troops. “I’m sure you know we lost some more soldiers tonight.”
The general said that he knew the men were on edge but that he had faith in their discipline and was not concerned about anyone being trigger-happy. “They know the right thing to do,” he said.
Alpha Company soldiers returned to Camp Striker weary from the all-night mission. But it was a good kind of tired, they indicated. “It felt a little bit like get-back,” said Spc. Derek Mack, a security guard from Valdosta.
Soldiers searched 14 houses and buildings early Thursday morning, seizing 45 people. London said several Egyptians were among the suspects brought back to Camp Striker for interrogation. “We did detain some folks who had nothing to do with it,” he said. “We let those people go.”
Rodeheaver called the operation a “significant hit on enemy capabilities” and said it was important psychologically, especially for the infantry company that lost eight soldiers.
“Nobody likes to work, work, work and feel they are not accomplishing anything,” he said.
Giving meaning to the work
Sgt. 1st Class Joel Lumley, who works at a packaging plant in Royston, said his men were in charge of escorting the 5-ton truck with the detainees back to the base. “When we heard last night that another unit had lost some people â€â€? that gave even more meaning to what we did,” Lumley said. “As long as we know some of them will get convicted, it’ll help.”
For the soldiers of Alpha Company, the rest of their deployment, expected to last at least until next May, seems like an eternity. Thursday’s manhunt, however successful, was over. Parham and his buddies still will have to patrol the perilous roads of Baghdad.
Parham, who turned 30 last month somewhere in the wheat fields of Iraq, said the mission boosted his resolve. But it didn’t erase the fear.
“It felt so good to go out there and know that whatever we encountered, we had it outmanned, outgunned and outsmarted,” he said. “But now, we’re back to riding around and praying we don’t get blown up.”
Mathew Gibbs: ‘He is always in our hearts,’ family says
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Ambrose � The open flaps on the cardboard box stuck out like wings. Raegan Gibbs gazed down at the container. Inside were cookies, crackers and a neatly folded shirt atop a pair of blue jeans.
The package was for her husband. Spc. Mathew Gibbs was supposed to get a two-week leave from duty in Iraq next month, and he had asked his wife to send his favorite yellow-and-blue striped shirt. He wanted something nice to wear home.
The couple was going to celebrate their wedding anniversary and their youngest daughter’s fourth birthday. Also on Mathew’s list was a lunch date with his 5-year-old daughter at her elementary school.
But a pair of soldiers in dress uniforms showed up at Raegan’s door Thursday. Her husband had been killed Wednesday by an insurgent’s car bomb attack. On Aug. 28, the Georgia National Guard soldier would have turned 22.
Raegan had talked to him by telephone Wednesday morning. He sounded tired. “He used to always say, ‘Don’t worry about me, I have 60 other people watching my back. I’m more worried about you,’ ” Raegan, 25, recalled. “I told him that I loved him and to be careful and he said, ‘Always.’ “
Mathew wanted to become a science teacher when he got out of the 648th Engineer Battalion. She wants to be an English teacher. They would have their summers off with their children. And he wouldn’t have to return to his exhausting job at a mobile home manufacturing plant.
As Raegan picked through old photos of her husband, her daughter Ariana burst through the door, home from her first day of kindergarten. The 5-year-old plopped her pink camouflage backpack on the dining room table and fished out a crayon drawing. She had drawn herself in purple. Her grandmother, Lee Carver, was in green. A blue ant and a little boy completed the picture.
“That little boy is taking good care of the ant, and that is why he is so happy,” she said.
Ariana’s mother told her and her little sister, Arissa, about their father’s death on Thursday evening. On Friday, as the family sat in the living room and talked about Mathew, Ariana spotted tears welling up in her grandmother’s eyes. The little girl crawled into the rocking chair and told her not to worry.
“He is always in our hearts,” Ariana said, reassuringly.
The two rocked together slowly, hugging tightly in the still, soundless room.
Charles Warren: Toy becomes memento of a young father’s love
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Until Wednesday, the toy automobile carved of wood was a favorite of Jackson Warren, one the toddler was allowed to play with whenever he chose.
It arrived about a month ago, bought from an Iraqi vendor by a young father thousands of miles away. A father eager to get back to the quiet Duluth subdivision where his son, new baby girl and wife waited. A father eager to resume work at the hospital and the routine chores of a suburban life without roadside bombs and car bombs and ever-present danger.
So when the news came that Jackson’s father, Sgt. 1st Class Charles Houghton Warren, had been killed Wednesday in Iraq, the wooden car became more memento than toy, to be played with only on rare occasions.
On Friday, Jackson rolled around on the plush carpet of the family room while his mother, Carol Warren, his grandparents and a brace of aunts and uncles made arrangements to bury his 36-year-old father. Sleeping quietly in a swing was Jackson’s sister, Madeline, born six weeks ago â€â€? after her father left for Iraq.
“He was at a point in his life where it would have been easier to stay home, but he was proud to serve,” said his mother-in-law, Margi Papenhausen.
Charles Warren was yet another member of the Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team to be killed over an 11-day period in Iraq. Bombs planted in a Baghdad road took the lives of eight. For Warren and two others, it was a car bomb at a checkpoint.
Warren had always been fascinated by military life. Perhaps he came by it honestly, since his grandfather was a captain in the British Royal Navy and fought in both World Wars. Veronica Warren and her husband, Stephen, raised Charles and his nine siblings in London. Veronica had been born there; Stephen was an American citizen who taught at an International school there.
While in London, Charles was a member of the British Territories, that nation’s version of the National Guard. When he moved to the Washington, D.C., area 16 years ago, he joined the National Guard.
But at 20, and in a new country that was his by birth but not experience, Charles floundered. Finally, the woman who he’d met on a blind date and married and moved to Georgia with told him he should go back to school. He chose nursing. On the weekends he’d do his National Guard duty.
He got his associate’s degree and began working at Children’s Health Care of Atlanta last May. His new co-workers on the night shift tried to figure out which of the male nurse stereotypes he’d fill â€â€? flirt, joker or lone wolf, said Paul Ocon, director of critical care at Children’s. He fit none of them, instead rapidly developing the reputation of someone who was calm under pressure and compassionate.
One memory posted on a bulletin board at the Scottish Rite facility was of how Warren cared for the parents of a dying child, making sure they had private time as the child slipped away.
Warren would have been a medic in the Guard, but he needed an advanced degree, his sister, Rachel Elliott said. Instead, he helped remove bombs from roads.
He’d planned on going back to school when he came back from Iraq. Somehow, he’d juggle it with the rest of his duties.
In a letter he wrote to Madeline after watching a video of her birth sent to him by Carol, he told Madeline how excited he was to see her and how proud he was to be her father.
Along with the letter, Charles sent a teddy bear for her to sleep with until he got home and could hold her himself.
Jerry Lewis Ganey: Soldier completed his family
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Folkston � Debbie Cisco remembers her wedding in 1978, when her new stepson, Louie, inaugurated the family.
As the ring bearer, he was supposed to hand over the bride’s wedding band and engagement ring. But he kept the band. After the ceremony, as bride, groom, stepson and stepdaughter headed home, 3-year-old Louie held up his thumb with the ring on it.
“We’re married now, aren’t we?” he announced happily.
The memory tugged at Cisco on Friday as she mourned Spc. Jerry Lewis Ganey, 29, a soldier with the 48th Brigade Combat Team killed Wednesday in a car bomb attack in Iraq.
He is one of 11 Georgia soldiers who died there in an 11-day period that began July 24.
“We were complete, you know? As a family,” Cisco said.
Ganey, a former Marine, was working as a diesel mechanic in Jacksonville before he was mobilized in January for duty in Iraq.
In December he had secretly married his sweetheart of 3¸ years, also named Debbie.
Both were starting out again after divorces, and each had a child to bring to the family. Ganey became stepfather to Jay Michael, 14, with whom he rough-housed for hours and went four-wheeling. Debra became stepmom to Vanessa Elizabeth, 6.
On Thursday, when military officials came to the door to tell her of her husband’s death, Debbie Ganey said she begged her son to keep them away. She hadn’t gotten her daily call from her husband, and she knew something was wrong.
Then she had a seizure, a result of Crohn’s disease, a debilitating intestinal ailment that has put her in the hospital several times for surgery and requires her to take daily medication.
It was her illness that had prompted the couple to make the relationship official before he went to Iraq. She is not able to work because of the disease, and he wanted her to be taken care of financially if anything happened to him.
But they only went to the courthouse in nearby Alma, her hometown. They were delaying a church wedding � and breaking the news to family and friends � until his return, in part to give the children a chance to get used to the idea.
At her home, Cisco pulled out a file folder bulging with newspaper clippings, sports photos and ribbons from Ganey’s days as a defensive end on the Hilliard High School football team just across state line in Florida, where he had lived with his father for several years. “Hard to believe this is a life, isn’t it?” she mused.
The last time she saw him, she said, they met by chance at a gas station as he headed to Brunswick for training. They chatted a little, then she stood on tiptoes on the curb where the pumps were so she could kiss him goodbye.
“I’ve always been short,” she said. “We used to laugh about that.”
Road to danger
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Baghdad, Iraq — The medians along the road were dotted with the stumps of date palms that once provided cover for insurgents taking aim at foreigners.
The three-Humvee convoy driven by soldiers of the Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team avoided giant craters in the four-lane road, reminders that this was once deemed the most dangerous stretch of highway in Iraq, maybe even the world.
Bita Honarvar/AJC
A Humvee rolls along the BIAP (Baghdad International Airport) Road, or Route Irish as the military calls it, toward the airport Monday.
They were traveling the road where U.S. forces opened fire on a car carrying an Italian journalist and where American aid worker Marla Ruzicka was killed by a car bomb back in April. This was the road that prompted travelers to say a prayer before they began driving.
It’s only a six-mile ride from the Baghdad International Airport, known here as BIAP, to the heart of Baghdad traveled daily by scores of soldiers, diplomats, aid workers, journalists and, of course, Iraqi citizens.
Many of the foreigners head to what’s known as the “Green Zone,� the heavily fortified area in the Iraqi capital that is home to U.S. military headquarters and other nations’ embassies.
BIAP road got so dangerous that a helicopter service was started to shuttle foreigners in and out of the Green Zone. It depends on who you are, but the waits for a seat can be long.
It’s easier to drive the short distance on the BIAP road, but not safer.
Spc. Jermaine Pickett, a recent graduate of DeVry University, said he makes the drive every week as part of the 48th Brigade’s security detail into the Green Zone. He said “Route Irish,� as the military calls it, has been calmer since Georgia’s citizen soldiers arrived in Iraq in early June.
After months of rampant bomb attacks and snipers, the military swept through Route Irish. Now, along with U.S. soldiers, Iraqi Army and Iraqi police stand guard along the way, especially along overpasses and off ramps, looking for suspicious behavior.
U.S. military vehicles use sirens at intersections and have the right of way. Other traffic must stop to let the Humvees pass.
“We haven’t encountered any problems so far,� said Spc. Shawn O’Kelley, a volunteer firefighter from Watkinsville who works for a glass company. “But think about where you are. You’re never really safe here.�
Georgia soldiers mourn more comrades
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Camp Striker, Iraq � Exactly one week ago Thursday, Sgt. 1st Class Victor Anderson paid his last respects to four fallen friends and recalled the horrific bomb attack that killed them.
See photos from memorial servicesAnderson had been out on a routine patrol with them when they died and he witnessed the devastation. At their memorial service, the Americus soldier remarked that it was “nice to see everyone come out” for his buddies.
“I’m taking a 24-hour break and then I’ll be back out,” he said at the time, determined to carry on with the task at hand.
But Anderson never came back from patrolling southwest Baghdad last Saturday night.
Thursday, it was Anderson and three of his comrades whom hundreds of their fellow soldiers gathered to remember.
“Exactly seven days ago, my platoon leader stood where I am standing today,” said Sgt. 1st Class Don Whitmire. “This is not supposed to happen. Four more of my boys have left Iraq on a C-130, heroes in flag-draped transports. Four more on their way home to their final resting place where their wives, children, mothers and fathers wait.”
Anderson, 39; Sgt. David Jones, 45, of Augusta; Spc. Ronnie “Rod” Shelley, 34, of Valdosta and Spc. Jonathon Haggin, 26, of Kingsland died after their Humvee ran over a massive bomb planted on Route Red Sox, just a few miles from Camp Striker.
In the span of a week, Alpha Company of the 2nd Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment lost eight soldiers from one platoon. In the span of a week, Georgia’s citizen soldiers attended a second memorial service.
Now, a third service is planned Sunday evening for three more soldiers of the Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team. They died Wednesday in a car bomb attack at a traffic checkpoint. Three others were wounded in the incident, one seriously, said 2nd Lt. Selena Owens, a 48th Brigade spokeswoman.
The three have been identified as Staff Sgt. Charles Houghton Warren, 36, of Suwanee; Sgt. Jerry Lewis Ganey, 29, of Folkston; and Spc. Mathew Gibbs of Ambrose.
In Georgia, Gov. Sonny Perdue wept at a news conference as he announced he would hold a prayer vigil at the state Capitol on Aug. 18 to honor the fallen soldiers. He also said he would ask the entire state to participate in a moment of silence.
“They’re our neighbors, they’re part of our community. We go to church with them,” Perdue said, his face wet with tears and his voice breaking. “We see them at the grocery store. Our children play with theirs. They’re our neighbors, our fathers, our brothers, our sisters, our sons, and so their loss strikes deep in the heart.”
At Thursday’s service in Iraq, soldiers sat on wooden bleachers under a setting Baghdad sun for a rifle salute and the playing of taps. Some wept openly; others reflected on the tragedies of the last few days that have visibly shaken many of Georgia’s citizen soldiers.
Whitmire remembered his soldiers one by one. Jones was a former Navy man who liked to dip tobacco so much he sometimes fell asleep with it in his mouth. Shelley was excited about going home in a few days and made a deal with Whitmire, who asked him to drink a beer for him. “Dog, I’ll drink more than one for you,” Shelley replied.
When Haggin was sent to Germany to recuperate after three broken ribs suffered while out on patrol, Whitmire tried to phone him several times. One day he turned up at Camp Striker. Tired of resting in Germany, he found his way back to Iraq.
“Haggin’s first mission back turned out to be his last,” Whitmire said.
Then there was Anderson, who was deemed medically unfit for deployment because of diabetes. Determined to go to Iraq, he lost weight, stuck to his diet and hired an attorney to fight the Army’s medical board in time to make it to training in California.
“Sergeant First Class Anderson was a soldier I’ve known my whole career â€â€? 22 years,” said Lt. Col. Steve McCorkle, the battalion commander, fighting tears. “He was more than a soldier. He was a friend.”
McCorkle said the unit would press on despite the losses.
“Our future actions will not bring them back but will honor their memory,” he said. “Their sacrifice will not be in vain.”
Staff writer Jim Galloway in Atlanta contributed to this article.
