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August 2005
Louisiana soldiers Iraq anxious as Katrina updates roll in
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Camp Striker, Iraq — It was supposed to be time of joy for the soldiers of the Louisiana Army National Guard’s 256th Brigade Combat Team. After a long year in Iraq, they were finally heading home. But now, home has become a national disaster.
At the dining hall and recreational facility here, stunned soldiers have been glued to TV sets, following the death and destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina. They have watched as the rising waters submerged their hometowns and neighborhoods. With no news from friends and family at home, excitement over going home has turned to anxiety.
“I’m just worried about what shape my house will be in,� said Pfc. Chris Ashbey, a veterinary assistant from Covington who has family there and in New Orleans. “Hopefully, we won’t be going back to a total wreck,� he said. “All the phone lines are down. I haven’t been able to talk to anyone in my family.�
Many of the 256th brigade’s soldiers have already left their trailers at Camp Liberty and are temporarily housed at Camp Striker, preparing for their journey home.
“We’re all very concerned,� said Staff Sgt. Robert Laha III of Shreveport. He said some of the soldiers also feel bad that they are not available to help their home state.
Hurricanes have traditionally been identified with the National Guard, which is called up in times of natural disasters to provide emergency relief services. Many of the Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team soldiers, also stationed at Camp Striker, were sent to Florida last year to help with hurricane cleanup. But since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, several Guard units have been sent to the combat zone in Iraq alongside active duty units.
“It’s part of our job as National Guard to help,� said Laha, who studies acting and helps build theatrical sets in Shreveport. “And we’re not there.�
Louisiana Guard troops left behind have been getting help from the neighboring states of Mississippi, Tennessee and Alabama. That’s the way it ought to be, said some Louisiana soldiers. Their service to the country, they said, took precedence over hurricane duty.
Spc. Dustin Roberts, a construction worker from New Orleans, said he had done his part to “help the country.� No matter what shape his apartment was in Kenner, he was glad to be going home.
“The hurricane is bad but it doesn’t seem that way compared to what we’ve been through,� he said.
For Guard, Monday is no holiday from labor
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Camp Striker, Iraq — “We’ve got a holiday coming up?” Pfc. Tony Curry asked about the upcoming Labor Day holiday.
It might be the most unnoticed holiday of all here in Iraq, where soldiers will observe Labor Day with just that � more labor.
Bita Honarvar/AJC
Spc. Dexter Spruille of southwest Atlanta is looking forward to some fun on Labor Day, as he will be on leave. See more photos
“It’s kind of hard to keep up with holidays here,” Curry said. “It’s the same here every day.”
That doesn’t mean soldiers of the Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team won’t be doing a little bit of wishful thinking come Monday.
“I usually start early in the morning,” Curry said, licking his lips over the thought of slow-cooked ribs on the grill. “That way when you get ready to eat them in the evening, they fall off the bone.”
Maybe the chow hall at Camp Striker could cook some up?
“That’s a good one,” laughed Spc. Eric Nesbitt, who works with Curry in the 148th Support Battalion’s ammunition holding area.
“Maybe they will,” said Curry. “But it doesn’t feel very special with the atmosphere around here.”
Spc. Richard Marker, who stands guard at Striker’s recreation facility, said he definitely won’t be celebrating the way he normally would at home in Jonesboro.
“I’d be getting into trouble by setting off large amounts of fireworks I shouldn’t be setting off,” Marker said. “We usually have some left over from July Fourth that we set off on Labor Day.”
This Monday, Marker will be back at his post, checking identification cards of soldiers entering the two tents that house a gym and a sitting area with a television, video games, reading material and a small area where soldiers watch movies.
“Every day is labor day here,” Marker said.
Sgt. Tracy Chisholm said that were she in metro Atlanta, she’d head to Perimeter Mall on Monday to check out the Labor Day sales.
“I’d buy makeup, clothes and a bunch of girly stuff,” said the manager of a Bank of America branch in Dunwoody. “The PX here doesn’t cut it for me.”
Spc. Dexter Spruille has figured out a way to partake in the barbecue and ice-cold beers that soldiers are dreaming of. He’s arranged to go on leave during the Labor Day holiday.
The 2003 Morris Brown graduate plans to attend a football game and possibly check out a few clubs in Buckhead. Spruille figured everyone would want Thanksgiving and Christmas off and his chances of going home to Atlanta then would be slim.
So he picked Labor Day.
“It’s great,” he said. “It’s the last holiday of the summer. I’m looking forward to having some good fun.”
Give up trying — you can’t escape the dust
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Camp Striker, Iraq — It’s everywhere.
It’s in your eyes. In your shoes. In your tent. In your sleeping bag. In your shower stall. It’s even in the coffee you just poured.
If the dust in Iraq could be spun into gold, every soldier in the Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team would be an instant millionaire.
Bita Honarvar/AJC
Dust covers a Bradley manual. Staff Sgt. Larry Webb (left) talks about eye irritation; Sgt. Peter Ziegeler says he is used to the grit.
At Camp Striker, more so than some other permanent bases such as Liberty or Taji, the dust is omnipresent.
“I’ve never seen so much dust in my life,” said Staff Sgt. Larry Webb, a corrections officer at Hancock State Prison in Sparta.
“I hate it,” he said. “It irritates your eyes. It gets you congested. It gets into everything.”
Even the clean clothes returned from the Camp Striker laundry service smell of dust. The air-conditioning units spew the fine powdery substance.
A manual for Bradley fighting vehicles at the maintenance bay was so dust laden that it looked like it had been sitting there since the dawn of Iraqi history. And that is a long, long time.
The haze of dust sits over Camp Striker some days like fog that rolled in overnight. Except, said Webb, “it never burns off.”
There’s not much you can do to avoid it so the soldiers just ignore it. Even when a big cloud of it settles on top of a cup of freshly brewed java.
“I’m used to it now,” said Sgt. Peter Ziegeler, A Staten Island soldier whose infantry unit is attached to the 256th Brigade Combat Team from Louisiana. “It doesn’t bother me.”
Easy for Ziegeler to say. His unit’s tour is over and he’s going home in 10 days.
Vicious unseen enemy in Iraq
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
IEDs (improvised explosive devices) have caused one third of all U.S. combat fatalities in Iraq. Every time the military finds way to curb their use, the insurgents find a new method or tactic.
New weight-loss craze: The Baghdad diet
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Camp Striker, Iraq — If you’re having a hard time losing weight, Pfc. Rudy Altman recommends a trip to Iraq.
Bita Honarvar/AJC
Pfc. Rudy Altman of Augusta, with the 48th Brigade Combat Team’s 148th Support Battalion, Alpha Company, has lost 62 pounds since his unit was mobilized earlier this year.
The Augusta State University student began shedding pounds at Fort Stewart but has really thinned out since arriving in Baghdad with the Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team.
To date, Altman has lost 63 pounds. And he’s still counting.
When he reported for duty with the 148th Support Battalion’s Alpha Company, Altman’s 5-foot-9 frame was carrying 255 pounds. He endured the usual name-calling and frustrations of being fat.
“It really does a number on your self-esteem,� said Altman, 27. “The perfect soldier is supposed to be slimmed down and muscular. When you are kind of large, you can see your belly poking out of the uniform. It’s depressing.�
During training at Fort Stewart, Altman started watching his diet but it wasn’t until he arrived in Kuwait that he got serious about things.
In Iraq, where the heat has a tendency to kill appetites anyway, Altman stopped eating fried foods and concentrated on salads, veggies and fish at the chow hall. He also goes to the Camp Striker gym every day for a 90-minute workout.
In addition, Altman spends all day moving brigade supplies and that has gotten him down to a svelte 192 pounds. His goal: 175 pounds.
It can be tough sometimes for Altman who hangs around soldiers who don’t have the best eating habits. He watches friends pile burgers and fries on their plates.
“Basically, I don’t enjoy life anymore,� he joked.
Altman occasionally craves his favorite spicy chicken sandwich from Wendy’s. Good thing Camp Striker only has a Burger King.
His fellow soldiers say Altman’s weight loss has been “amazing.� They no longer call him “tubby.�
There is one drawback, though.
Altman’s extra-large uniform is now falling off his body. He has to roll over the waistband on his pants and cinch it tight with a belt that is also too big.
“I guess I need to order me a whole new set of uniforms,� he said. “Or go to an alteration shop.�
His fiance, Virginia Hardin, knows about Altman’s transformation but has not seen any pictures yet. “She has no clue,� he said, excited about his two-week leave in October.
“I’m hoping no one will recognize me,� he said.
Now open wide and say ‘baaaa’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Abu Dijai, Iraq � A short Humvee ride out of Camp Striker, the barren landscape of the military base gives way to green fields and winding dirt roads lined with date palms and bamboo.
Bita Honarvar/AJC
Maj. Daniel Cardosa administers deworming medicine to sheep belonging to the Hamid family. MORE PHOTOS
The seemingly serene countryside near the Baghdad airport is filled with canals and tiny communities of people � mostly Sunni Muslims � who have struggled to eke out an existence for many years.
Just a few miles south of this rustic village of livestock farmers, eight Georgia soldiers were killed recently in two separate but similar incidents when their Humvees were destroyed by massive bombs planted in the road. This is the treacherous territory that soldiers of the Georgia Army National Guard’s 2nd Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment, patrol.
While infantry soldiers continue their combat missions to hunt down insurgents and foil attacks, the brigade’s doctors, engineers, educators and veterinarians have launched a battle of their own.
This week, Maj. Mark Cuttle, commander of the 490th Civil Affairs Battalion’s Charlie Company, led a team of veterinary experts to Abu Dijai to treat the animals that are the lifeblood of the rural community. Farmers were struggling to keep their sheep and cows free of disease and worms, which can reduce productivity and lower prices.
“This is one of those things that gets us in through the front door,” said Cuttle, a vice president at AmSouth Bank in Chattanooga in civilian life.
The key, he said, is to get the people here on America’s side. But that is not a particularly easy task.
After the death of their comrades, the 48th Brigade Combat Team launched raids to clean out insurgent activity in the area. In the weeks following, the area has been less hostile, brigade officials said.
But in the hamlets around here, it’s impossible to look into the smiling faces of men dressed in traditional white dishdashas and boys in counterfeit Adidas football shirts and separate friend from foe.
“When we first arrived in Iraq, there was very little U.S. assistance in this area,” said Sgt. 1st Class Allex Hutchins, a single father of four from Buford who is the civil affairs representative for the 2nd Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment.
“Instead of taking it by force, we are trying to take it with kindness.”
The soldiers who patrol this area know the farmers and their livestock need help.
Iraq has about 2.5 million cattle and 17 million sheep and goats, but years of neglect and war have endangered the country’s veterinary services.
In a report issued in late May, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization warned that any increase in livestock diseases might have a devastating effect on the supply of protein-rich food such as milk, cheese, meat and eggs.
Proper veterinary services might help Iraq produce many of its own animal products, so it could rely less on the current high level of imports of meat, eggs and dairy products, the report said.
“Farming has taken a big hit in Iraq,” said Maj. Daniel Cardosa, who owns a veterinary practice in civilian life in West Greenwich, R.I. “It’s plain to see, the animals have been suffering for a while.”
Cardosa stepped out of his Humvee with a pouch filled with a deworming agent called ivermectin strapped across his back. He wrestled with Hashim Hamid’s herd of 20 or so sheep, administering the milky white medicine orally through a nozzle.
Flies swarmed the sheep, which were also infested with worms.
Hamid said limited treatment was available for his animals from local vets, but he could not afford to pay them. He was grateful the Americans had stopped by, he said.
Free of disease, each sheep might be worth as much as $80 on the market to Hamid, who lives with his brothers and their families on a small plot of land in cinder-block structures. They fetch their water from a nearby canal and sleep outside among their animals when the heat gets unbearable.
Cardosa sprayed Hamid’s four cows with Cydectin, a deworming agent for cattle. The animals kicked and struggled as the camouflage-clad soldier approached with his sprayer. The entire family gathered around to watch. They had never seen a soldier treat their animals.
“This is very useful to us,” said Hamid’s brother Saddam, who offered to slaughter one of his turkeys for the soldiers. “We don’t have enough Iraqi doctors here who will do this for free.”
Cardosa said he would like to work with the new Iraqi government to broaden animal services.
“The Iraqis are quite capable,” he said. “They just need help with infrastructure.”
But working with Iraqis has not been easy in areas hostile to Americans.
“It seems that local vets are scared to work with us,” Cuttle said. “That has been our challenge. They are reluctant to be seen around us.”
Cardosa’s team visited three separate clusters of homes and treated small herds of animals at each. The tour drew two curious Iraqi journalists, dispatched to write about American goodwill.
They were disappointed that the project wasn’t on a larger scale.
“Just because you treat a few animals doesn’t mean you solve our problems,” Hussein al-Hameiry, a reporter for the Arabic-language newspaper Ad-Dostour, told Cuttle.
Cuttle replied that change would take place essentially one sheep at a time.
“We’re not going to solve all of Iraq’s problems, but we’re going to make a difference in this village today,” he said.
Al-Hameiry wasn’t convinced. It would be more useful for the Americans to help Iraqis learn the proper techniques, he said, than spray a few animals here and there.
“We built this civilization without Americans,” he said. “We don’t need them. We just need their respect.”
Hutchins, who kept close guard while the veterinary team tended to the livestock, also was skeptical that missions such as these would stop villagers from becoming informants for insurgents, or worse, plotting to kill his fellow infantrymen. Ending the violence in Iraq, he said, would take time.
“I know what we’re trying to do here,” said Hutchins, who works at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport for the Transportation Security Administration. “But oppression is not something you come out of in a matter of days.”
A little R&R back home
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
We want to know how soldiers in the 48th and their families are spending time during their temporary leaves from Iraq. Mostly staying at home? Going to fun places? What kind of things are you catching up on, talking about?
When you have hot lemons, make lemonade
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Bita Honarvar/AJC
1st Sgt. Bryan Tyler enjoys one of his fresh-cut lemons.
Forward Operating Base Michael, Iraq— What to do for refreshment in the middle of a military base when you are up against blowing dust and blazing sun?
What to do when you are a first sergeant in a field artillery regiment of the 48th Brigade Combat Team when the Army’s big guns are standing silent?
Open a box of fresh lemons, of course.
Bita Honarvar/AJC
Comrades say lemons suit Tyler’s personality.
And bite down hard on the tart, juicy fruit. Save the rest for lemonade later.
First Sgt. Bryan Tyler, otherwise known as “Top,” went through several lemons out at the gun line where soldiers from Alpha Battery, 1st Battalion, 118th Field Artillery Regiment out of Springfield, wait to fire at the enemy.
“I love these,” said Tyler, a burly, teddy-bear of a man who gets teased sometimes for fitting the Army stereotype of a tough, stern first sergeant.
“It goes with his personality,” joked Capt. Jeff Schneider, Alpha Battery commander about his sergeant’s rather strange love of the sour stuff. “He’s a crusty old man.”
Chambliss assures soldiers of support
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Camp Liberty, Iraq â€â€? On a one-day visit to Iraq on Saturday, Georgia’s senior senator assured the state’s citizen soldiers that America was behind them all the way and that Congress would do “whatever it takes” to safeguard them here.
“We don’t know where we are going,” Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) said about the future of U.S. expenditures in Iraq, already at more than $200 billion in the last two fiscal years.
Bita Honarvar/AJC
Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), right, speaks with Col. Jim Brooks, left, commander of the 36th Engineer Group out of Fort Benning, and Brig. Gen. Stewart Rodeheaver, center, commander of the 48th Brigade Combat Team, during a visit to Camp Liberty on Saturday. More photos
“But the thing we do know is whatever it costs to save and protect American lives in this conflict, we’re going to spend.”
At Camp Liberty, near the Baghdad airport, Chambliss got a first-hand demonstration of the “Buffalo,” a massive armored vehicle with a claw arm used to detect hidden roadside bombs.
Chambliss said he supports every effort the military makes to combat a “very smart and very adaptive enemy” in Iraq.
“We’ve got to keep developing this,” said Chambliss, referring to the Buffalo and other new technology designed to seek out deadly improvised explosive devices that have become the leading killer of American soldiers in Iraq. “We’ve got to continue to outsmart them.”
The Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team has lost 16 soldiers since it arrived in Iraq in early June, 12 of them in bomb attacks.
“I know my 48th Brigade has been through some difficult times,” Chambliss said. “It’s a tough job. It’s a dangerous job. On behalf of all Americans I want to thank you.”
Chambliss stopped for dinner with a few soldiers from the 48th. Earlier in the day, he met with U.S. military officials and Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al Ja’afari for briefings.
Chambliss said he is convinced of the progress being made in Iraq, first with the transfer of authority, then elections and now the drafting of a constitution, which stalled again Saturday over the role of Islam and distribution of the nation’s oil wealth.
“Americans took 13 years to draft their constitution and here, we’re asking the Iraqis to do it in a short period of time,” Chambliss said.
Soldiers from the 48th Brigade said they were pleased their senator had taken the time to fly to Iraq, although many said they wished Chambliss had met them at their bases instead of shuttling in and out of Liberty, one of the more comfortable facilities here.
A majority of the 48th Brigade is stationed at Camp Striker, a large, dusty, tent city on the southwestern side of the airport. Chambliss, traveling with three other GOP lawmakers � Sen. Richard Burks of North Carolina, Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas and Rep. Tom Latham of Iowa � took a brief car tour of Striker but did not stop.
Brigade officials handpicked about 10 soldiers to meet Chambliss at the “Cafe de Fleury,” a dining facility at Liberty, which is decidedly more upscale than the chow hall at Striker.
A few 48th soldiers stationed at Liberty said they were disappointed they did not know about Chambliss’ visit.
“It’s understandable but disappointing my voice in Congress is here and I didn’t know about it,” said Sgt. Charles Simpson, who owns a small construction firm in Dahlonega and is with the 1st Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment.
Other soldiers said they wished the senator could have gone out on patrols with them or toured the more austere forward operating bases in treacherous areas south of Baghdad such as Mahmudiyah and Yusufiyah. They were concerned that lawmakers would leave thinking soldiers were leading the good life in Iraq.
“They don’t need to have him thinking all chow halls look like this,” said Sgt. Carlisle Davis, a supervisor at Tyson Foods in Oglethorpe who serves as a heavy equipment operator in the 648th Engineer Battalion.
But Davis, who voted for Chambliss, said he was thankful the senator made the effort.
“They don’t need to put the man in danger,” he said. “That’s not his job. That’s our job.
“The biggest thing with me is that I’m homesick,” Davis added. “And there ain’t nothing Saxby Chambliss can do about that unless he puts me in the plane with him.”
Lock and load your mops at Camp Taji
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
There’s something strange oozing from the ground at Camp Taji.
Some mornings, the gravel and dirt paths between the soldiers’ trailers turn to chocolate brown slime.
Bita Honarvar/AJC
A soldier’s boots is caked with the thick mud that periodically oozes up from the ground at Camp Taji.
“I had it all over my flip-flops,� said Staff Sgt. Gilbert Sheppard of Millen, who serves in the 1st Battalion, 118th Field Artillery Regiment. “It took four days for them to dry out.�
At the pods where soldiers of the Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team live, conspiracy theories run rampant.
Some said the muck came from morning dew. But even at 10 a.m. under a searing sun, the ground was wet.
Others said the grounds were purposely wetted down to keep the dust away. That sounded like a plausible theory, except that the mud can be rather greasy. Hmmmmm. Where did the oil come from then?
The massive sand storm that came through the area might be a culprit, surmised another soldier. It brought with it alien particles that settled in the ground.
But this is Taji, after all. Home once to Saddam Hussein’s army. Perhaps the Iraqis were testing chemicals here to build weapons of mass destruction. The stuff coming out of the ground could be anthrax or some other deadly substance that could kill us all.
Yikes.
My vote goes to a sergeant who told me this: Taji is a military base built on swampland surrounding the Tigris River. The ground, he said, can stay naturally wet and hold onto diesel and other fuels leaked onto the dirt.
The official explanation from Camp Taji geologists verified some of that information. Due to the area’s low water table — between two and six feet — the composition of the soil is mostly clay, the geologists said. They assured the soldiers that every last bit of it would wash out of their clothing.
Clay? That should be a familiar sight to Georgians. But, who knows?
One day, someone will get to the bottom of the mystery. Until then, it’s lock and load your mops.
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Watching a friend die cuts deep
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Forward Operating Base Michael, Iraq � Cpl. Jeffrey Vennemann was on a reconnaissance patrol near Yusufiyah this week when he heard the ear-shattering explosion.
As the only soldier with medical skills out that night with Echo Troop, 108th Cavalry, Vennemann hurried to tend to a severely wounded soldier.
He heard someone struggling to call his name: “Jeffrey.”
No one in the Army addressed him by his first name except Spc. Michael Stokely.
In the darkness, Vennemann turned the wounded man over. He looked in horror at the damaged face of his best friend.
“I hadn’t realized it was Stokely,” he said Friday.
Vennemann, an emergency medical technician in the DeKalb County Fire Department, desperately tried to stop the bleeding. He couldn’t. The next step was to put an airway tube into Stokely’s mouth. He couldn’t do that either because of the injuries.
Before the medical team arrived 25 minutes later, Vennemann helplessly watched his best friend take his last breath.
“He was going to be the best man at my wedding. He still is,” Vennemann said, tears welling in his weary eyes.
“I’m going to have a photo of him right there,” Vennemann said of the soldier he befriended over the last few years. “There is no other best man.”
Vennemann plans to marry his girlfriend, Christine Iski, on Aug. 19 next year. He was Stokely’s best man when he got married in May; Stokely was planning to return the favor.
But in the early hours of Tuesday morning, with one blast from an improvised explosive devise hidden in the bushes of a narrow road in central Iraq, all those plans were destroyed.
A kick in the gut
Vennemann knelt over Stokely’s body, unable to contain the pain of losing his sole confidant in the military. Yet the compassion he felt provided a sense of relief that his friend did not suffer long.
Friday afternoon, Vennemann and hundreds of soldiers from the Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade Team gathered here to honor Stokely, who was promoted to sergeant posthumously, and three members of the 1st Battalion, 108th Armor Regiment, who also died this week.
Sgt. Thomas Strickland, 27, of Douglasville; Spc. Joshua Dingler, 19, of Hiram; and Sgt. Paul Saylor, 21, of Bremen belonged to the regiment’s Headquarters and Headquarters Company, based in Calhoun. They died early Monday morning when their armored Humvee rolled off a road and into a canal.
It was the fifth memorial service the 48th Brigade had held since arriving in Iraq in early June. Sixteen soldiers from the unit have died in bomb attacks and vehicle accidents.
Friday’s ceremony was the first organized at FOB Michael in Mahmudiyah, a small town south of Baghdad.
The battalion is stationed at Michael and two other nearby FOBs, in Lutafiyah and Yusufiyah.
“This is a gut-wrenching experience for all my guys,” said Lt. Col. John King, Doraville’s police chief and commander of the armor battalion.
“The day after it happened, it was tough. But by the end of that day, I started seeing that look in my soldiers, that determination that we’re not going to quit.”
At Friday’s ceremony, a sea of black felt Stetsons and silver spurs — distinctive traditions of cavalry units — filled the vehicle maintenance bay at Michael. Raw emotions surfaced among the cavalrymen, known for their strong bonds and historical traditions.
The scout platoons of the 108th Armor are naturally closer to one another because of the kind of work they do, said Staff Sgt. Sean Sibert. Typically, Scouts run reconnaissance patrols to secure treacherous roads before military convoys head out.
“We go out in small groups to find the enemy,” said Sibert, a landscaper from Martinez, near Augusta. “That makes us a very tight group.”
Part of their closeness, said Echo Troop soldiers, comes from the harsh conditions under which they operate.
Soldiers of the 108 live in Spartan facilities at the three FOBs they occupy. They are not privy to the distractions and entertainment options available at other, more permanent facilities, such as Striker, Liberty or Taji.
“Being here is like going from Manhattan to the wild, wild West,” said Staff Sgt. Joe Wilson, a full-time Guard soldier from Canton assigned to the 108th Armor’s headquarters company.
The forward operatin bases are in an area of lawlessness and insurgent activity. At Michael, the 118th Field Artillery Regiment’s Alpha Battery, from Springfield, has four Paladin 155 mm howitzers ready to fire in any direction. Capt. Jeff Schneider, the battery commander, said the guns were fired almost every day to counter insurgent fire or thwart potential attacks.
Soldiers at the three bases are required to wear body armor and helmets at all times because of the frequent attacks.
Danger never lets up
King said his soldiers were under constant enemy watch. At other camps, he said, soldiers behave one way when they are “inside the wire,” in the relative safety of the base, and go into war mode when they exit the gates. At his FOBs, however, there is no “on-off switch.”
Communications, too, are sketchy for the 108th soldiers. At Yusufiyah, the Internet connection is far from reliable. Soldiers there live inside an old potato factory, share two wooden shower facilities, and have salvaged a Ping-Pong table for relaxation. They tend to rely more on each other when they cannot talk to loved ones at home.
“It’s a morale kicker,” said Spc. Joshua Oxford, an Echo Troop soldier who works as a code enforcement officer in the Griffin Police Department. “It’s hard being under these conditions. When a soldier dies, it’s not like a friend dying — it’s like losing a family member. All we have here is each other to depend on.”
A few days earlier, Oxford had heard from Spc. Rodney Davidson, a friend who is assigned to Alpha Company of the 2nd Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment, which lost eight men from the same platoon within six days in late July. Davidson witnessed both tragedies.
Oxford and Davidson often hunt deer and wild turkey together in Thomaston. Davidson talked about the deaths of his friends. Oxford said they “hit him hard.”
Now it was Oxford’s time to feel that kind of grief.
“Before, you’d think [about the danger] real quick on your way to the vehicle,” Oxford said. “Now you actually stop and take a minute to pray.”
After the deaths this week, Oxford said, Echo Troop soldiers became a little more cautious about what they said or did. They took the time to sit down and talk to one another. They went to eat meals as a group more than before.
“This makes it harder to keep going,” Oxford said. “But we know we still have missions we have to do here.”
After the tears Friday afternoon, Vennemann and Spc. Jason Buice traded stories about Stokely. They were known as a trio. Each had ignored Army regulations about hair, and the three launched a contest to see who could grow his hair the longest.
“There’s no barbershop where we are,” said Buice, who lives in Cumming.
They remembered their fallen friend as “one of a kind,” someone who always spoke his mind. They remembered, too, the prankster in him.
“Stokely put a mousetrap in my bunk once,” Buice said.
He laughed as he described how the trap got him in the behind when he was wearing just his Army-issue black shorts.
The soldiers said the Yusufiyah base is being renamed FOB Stokely to honor the citizen soldier. As disheveled and tired as he was, Vennemann found it in him to make one last joke about the only military man with whom he shared his fears and frustrations.
“Yeah,” said Vennemann, “they’re going to name a crap-hole after a great guy.”
Deaths hit remote base hard
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Forward Operating Base Michael, Iraq — The deaths earlier this week of four soldiers from the 1st Battalion, 108th Armor Regiment, hit those stationed at this remote base especially hard.
The four were scouts and scouts are naturally closer to one another because of the type of work they do, said Staff Sgt. Sean Sibert. Typically, scouts run reconnaissance patrols to secure treacherous roads before military convoys head out.
Bita Honarvar/AJC
Capt. Michael Barnett of Loganville, with the 1st Battalion, 108th Armor Regiment, wears spurs, a cavalry tradition, during Friday’s memorial service.
“We go out in small groups to find the enemy,” said Sibert, a landscaper from Martinez, near Augusta. “That makes us a very tight group.”
But part of their closeness, said 108th soldiers posted here, also is a result of the harsh conditions under which they operate.
These soldiers have been enduring spartan facilities at the three FOBs they occupy; one here, one in nearby in Lutafiyah and another at Yusufiyah. The soldiers are not privvy to the distractions and entertainment options available at other more permanent facilities such as Striker, Liberty or Taji.
“Being here is like going from Manhattan to the wild, wild West,” said Staff Sgt, Joe Wilson, a fulltime Guard soldier from Canton, who is assigned to the battalion’s Headquarters Company.
The FOBs are located in an area of lawlessness and insurgent activity. At Michael, the 118th Field Artillery Regiment’s Alpha Battery from Springfield has four Paladin 155mm howitzers ready to fire in any direction. Capt. Jeff Schneider, the battery commander, said the guns are fired almost every day to counter insurgent fire or thwart potential attacks.
Soldiers at the three FOBs are required to wear body armor and helmets at all times because of the frequent attacks.
Lt. Col. John King, commander of armor battalion, said his soldiers are under constant enemy watch. At other camps, he said, soldiers behave one way when they are “inside the wire,” in the relative safety of the base and go into war mode when they exit the gates. At his FOBs, however, there is no “on-off switch.”
Bita Honarvar/AJC
Sgt. 1st Class Joseph Anzano of Columbus, Ga., attends memorial service.
Communications, too, are sketchy for 108th soldiers. At Yusufiyah, the Internet connection is far from reliable. Soldiers there live inside an old potato factory, share two wooden shower facilities and have salvaged a Ping Pong table for relaxation. They tend to rely more on each other when they cannot talk to loved ones at home.
“It’s a morale kicker,” said Spc. Joshua Lee Oxford, who works as a code enforcement officer in the Griffin Police Department. “It’s hard being under these conditions. When a soldier dies, it’s not like a friend dying - it’s like losing a family member. All we have here is each other to depend on.”
A few days earlier Oxford had heard from a friend, Spc. Rodney Davidson, a soldier in Alpha Company of the 2nd Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment, which lost eight men from the same platoon within six days in late July. Davidson had witnessed both tragedies.
Oxford and Davidson often hunt deer and wild turkey together in Thomaston. Davidson had talked about the deaths of his friends. Oxford said they had “hit him hard.”
Now, it was Oxford’s time to feel that kind of grief.
“Before, you’d think [about the danger] real quick on your way to the vehicle,” Oxford said. “Now you actually stop and take a minute to pray.”
Soldiers held a memorial service Friday to remember those who died; Sgt. Thomas Strickland, 27, of Douglasville; Spc. Joshua Dingler, 19, of Hiram; and Sgt. Paul Saylor, 21, of Bremen; and Sgt. Michael Stokely, 23, of Loganville.
After the tears that were shed during the service, two of Stokely’s friends, Cpl. Jeffrey Vennemann and Spc. Jason Buice, traded stories about their buddy. They were known as a trio. Each had ignored Army hair regulations and launched a contest to see who could grow their hair the longest.
Bita Honarvar/AJC
A 48th soldier holds the dog tags of Sgt. Paul Saylor.
“There’s no barber shop where we are,” said Buice, who lives in Cumming.
They remembered their fallen friend as a “being one of a kind” who always spoke his mind. They remembered, too, the prankster in him. “Stokely put a mousetrap in my bunk once,” Buice said.
He laughed as he described how the trap got him in the behind when he was wearing just his Army-issue black shorts.
The soldiers said the Yusufiyah base is being renamed FOB Stokely to honor their friend. As disheveled and tired as he was, Vennemann found it in him to make one last joke about the only military man with whom he shared his fears and frustrations.
“Yeah,” said Vennemann, “they’re going to name a craphole after a great guy.”
Silent tribute to war dead is today
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Flags will be lowered to half-staff and Georgians will be asked to pay silent tribute for two minutes Thursday at 1 p.m. to honor the memory of the state’s war dead.
Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue will lead an hour-long public prayer vigil at the state Capitol Thursday. The governor has also ordered all state flags be flown at half-staff in tribute to those Georgians who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan.
After a bugler blows “Taps,” several clergymen, including a U.S. Army chaplain, a rabbi, a priest and Protestant ministers will offer prayers.
Family members of some of the fallen service members are expected, as well as some military personnel stationed around the state.
Fallen soldier’s passion was to serve
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Robert Stokely told his son, Michael, to ask himself two questions before joining the Georgia Army National Guard.
“Are you prepared to kill?” the father recalled Wednesday. “And are you prepared to be killed?”
Michael Stokely, 23, was killed after stepping on an explosive device a few miles south of Baghdad.That was in 2000, when the Loganville High School student on the verge of 18 was considering the military.
Michael Stokely joined the guard and in May went to Kuwait on his way to Iraq. Tuesday morning, Stokely’s family learned the 23-year-old was killed after stepping on an explosive device a few miles south of Baghdad.
He was one of four Georgia soldiers in the guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team to die this week in Iraq.
Three others were killed Monday when their vehicle overturned into a canal during combat operations. Sgt. Thomas Strickland, 27, of Douglasville; Spc. Joshua Dingler, 19, of Hiram; and Sgt. Paul Saylor, 21, of Bremen were assigned to 1st Battalion, 108th Armor Regiment at the time of their deaths.
Stokely’s death brought to 16 the number of fatalities suffered by the 48th since it arrived in Iraq in early June; 15 of them since July 24.
Spc. Michael Stokely was awarded a posthumous promotion to sergeant, according to Ron Morton, an Army spokesman.
“He was just an awesome guy,” said his mother, Melissa Gardner, who lives in Oxford with Stokely’s stepfather, William Gardner.
Robert Stokely, the Coweta County solicitor, described his son as “soft-spoken and quiet but talkative — if that makes sense.
“I think popular would be an understatement,” he continued. “There are politicians who would pay good money to have his popularity.”
Michael Stokely played soccer in high school but his real interest was the military — “the structure, the camaraderie, the sense of purpose,” his father said.
“He wanted to serve,” Robert Stokely said.
During a 10-day leave in May, just a month after his final birthday, Stokely married his sweetheart since high school, the former Niki Yancey.
Melissa Gardner said her son had talked about joining the armed forces ever since middle school. His stepfather had been a Marine, and a grandfather and an uncle had served in the Air Force.
She last talked to her son Aug. 8 by phone.
“He wanted to know about friends, relatives and the weather.
“He would always say, ‘Mom, I’m fine. Everything’s fine,’ ” Gardner recalled.
Justin Oulton, Stokely’s best friend, laughed about how they met.
“Our first meeting started in a fight,” he said. The two were playing soccer and “he got frustrated and threw me down.”
But the anger didn’t last. “We just got it out of the way,” Oulton said.
Before Stokely’s marriage, he and Oulton shared a farmhouse in the Conyers area for about 18 months to save money. They worked at Hills Ace Hardware in Loganville and waited tables.
Oulton said Stokely was uncomplicated. He liked to play with his dogs, a pit bull and German shorthair pointer.
The two talked several times when Stokely was in Iraq. The young soldier described his duty as “hangin’ out in the desert.”
Oulton learned of his friend’s death Tuesday night. His parents made an excuse to come by and told him. His father had heard the news on the radio.
“I fell apart for a little while,” Oulton said.
Stokely had mentioned the possibility of dying while serving his country.
“He had said before, if he had to go, that was the way he would want to do it,” Oulton said. “He loved what he did. He thought he was doing a good thing over there.”
Armed with goodwill
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jorfa al-Melleb, Iraq � Sara Hussein looked at Capt. Alan Hicks with her left eye. The right is clouded by toffee-brown scar tissue the size of a marble.
Three years ago, Sara injured the cornea while playing ball with her brother. Now, because of the scar tissue that developed, when she looks through that right eye it is as if she is looking through a bowl of milk.
Bita Honarvar/AJC
Capt. Jason Belknap speaks in Arabic to Iraqi youths while on a civil affairs mission in Mallahama, Iraq. See more photos
Hicks, an Army reservist from Birmingham, had visited the 12-year-old girl before and promised medical treatment for the bad eye.
“I thought maybe you forgot,” said Saleema Majad, Sara’s mother.
“We would never forget you,” said Hicks, who works at the Alabama Organ Center at home. He told Majad to get her daughter’s medical records so that Sara could be taken about 20 miles south to Baghdad to see ophthalmologists.
Majad agreed. When Hicks turned to leave, she shouted: “Don’t forget us! I trust my God.”
The promise, said Hicks, is crucial. He is intent on making good on it.
In this central Iraqi farming village of dusty mud huts near the Tigris River, not all residents have complete trust in U.S. soldiers. The military knows it must earn the co-operation of the people if it is to snuff out insurgent activity in the area and advance sorely needed reconstruction projects.
In Vietnam, it was described as the battle for hearts and minds. Almost four decades later in Iraq, American soldiers are waging the same kind of war, and they hope this time it will pay off, and soon.
From Camp Taji, American soldiers from various units regularly travel narrow dirt roads that run alongside canals or the river to reach villages and small towns.
The Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team has roughly 600 soldiers from the 1st Battalion, 118th Field Artillery Regiment, stationed at Taji who patrol neighborhoods and provide security for these potentially dangerous missions into the surrounding farmlands.
Alpha Battery, based in Springfield, near Savannah, helps guard the main gate at Taji, through which hundreds of Iraqi workers pass daily. Three Paladin 155 mm howitzers sit facing the main highway. Four to six soldiers work in 12-hour shifts, ready to fire in the event of an insurgent attack.
Alpha soldiers, trained to move and shoot the Army’s biggest guns, are naturally disappointed they are not able to utilize their specially honed skills more often. But they knew from the start that Iraq would be an unconventional war.
When the battalion trained at Fort Stewart and in California’s Mojave Desert, they practiced precisely for the kind of humanitarian work they are doing at Jorfa al-Melleb.
“The more we get to do things like this, the more the people will warm up to us. They will be more willing to cooperate,” said Spc. Charles Thompson, a native of Ellabelle, near Fort Stewart, who serves in Alpha Company, 490th Civil Affairs Battalion. Last week, Thompson went out on his first patrol with Hicks.
Sanctions, war, looting and now grinding guerrilla activity have left Iraq’s infrastructure in ruins. Basics such as clean water and electricity are daily worries for Iraq’s citizenry.
In 2003, after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, it was estimated that it would cost $55 billion to repair or replace Iraq’s crumbling infrastructure. More than two years later, insecurity has thwarted many projects and the United States has diverted some of its pledged money to address insecurity.
Around Baghdad, the electricity is on for an average of just eight hours a day. Unless Iraqis have their own generators, they must suffer through sweltering summer temperatures. Surveys have found that only half the population has access to clean drinking water.
Poor quality of life can add to the frustration of Iraqis and lead to discontent with U.S. forces here.
“I really hope the Americans can help my village,” said Khalid, a resident of Al Muzorfa, a majority Sunni village where Hicks’ team is attempting to generate enough power to run four water pumps. He did not want to be fully identified because of possible reprisals against him or his family.
Khalid said he wanted the Americans to stay as long as they made life better for his family.
Capt. Jason Belknap of the 1st Armored Division’s 4th Battalion, 1st Field Artillery Regiment, said it has been difficult to lure contractors into dangerous areas to complete projects.
“This area has done a 180 turnaround lately,” Belknap said, crediting the U.S. security patrols and civil affairs missions. “But I still have contractors asking for huge amounts of money because of the risk.”
Reminders of that risk lurk everywhere.
Graffiti outside Camp Taji on the main highway refer to improvised explosive devices, one of the biggest killers of U.S. soldiers in Iraq. “IEDs-R-us,” it reads.
As Hicks’ convoy headed toward Jorfa al-Melleb, news crackled over the Humvee radio about another roadside bomb attack.
Hicks forged ahead with the task at hand. At every stop, Iraqi children swarmed the incoming Humvees. They surrounded the Georgia soldiers who stood guard, asking them for candy, toys or even the watches off their wrists and the pens in their pockets.
Thompson and his buddies handed out dolls and Beanie Babies. The wanting among children with dry, dirty faces and shoeless feet was incessant.
“The way I look at it, these kids are the ones who have to deal with my kids one day,” Thompson said.
Cpl. Armando Villegas, a homicide investigator for the Savannah-Chatham County Police Department, said the children weren’t always so receptive but that “giving out dolls and candy puts them more at ease.”
Villegas said he understood the hostility � some Iraqis view the troops as occupiers of their land. When children rush to him, though, he often thinks of his own three sons.
“My kids are lucky to be where they’re at,” Villegas said. “There’s a whole lot of work to be done here.”
In Jorfa al-Melleb, the only source of water for many families is a nearby canal where cows, goats, sheep and chickens drink from the same stagnant, algae-laden pool, the color of antifreeze. To get the water from the canal to the houses, families dig a hole and insert a plastic pipe for use as a siphon. When the water level in the canal drops, farmers like Abdullah Ahmad have no water in their homes.
Of the several villages that Hicks’ team visited on this day, Jorfa al-Melleb was the worst.
For Thompson, a student at Georgia Southern University, the poor living conditions of ordinary Iraqis has been eye-opening.
“People here look to us for help,” he said. “There are a lot of things we can do for them.”
As the four-Humvee convoy left the village of al-Muzorfa, a little boy ran in front of Hicks’ vehicle. The captain with the piercing blue eyes stepped out in full body armor to see what the problem was. The boy handed him three roses.
“I know we can’t help everybody,” Hicks said, reflecting later on the day’s work, especially on the plight of Sara Hussein.
But, he said, attitudes are changing.
Hicks used to leave Sara’s family with a handshake. Now, he said, “I get the close hug.”
Soldiers in different kind of fight
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Camp Taji, Iraq — “Are y’all ready, Camp Taji?â€? Staff Sgt. Vernon Williams yelled into a hand-held microphone. The crowd yelled back a resounding, “Yeah!â€?
Bita Honarvar/AJC
Dominique “Outlawz” Hernandez (left) of East Los Angeles, Calif., and Spc. Carmen “Scrappy” Montes of Oxnard, Calif., both with the 603rd Aviation Support Battalion from Hunter Army Airfield, fight during Fight Night at Camp Taji Sunday. MORE PHOTOS
Hundreds of soldiers gathered recently at the plaza outside the Taji PX for the most popular event in these parts of central Iraq: fight night.
Sometimes, as many as 3,000 of Taji’s 9,000 soldiers have swarmed the plaza to watch. Even the maintenance and food crews from faraway lands find themselves captive to a sport that is foreign to many of them.
“I think I like boxing now,� said Shankar Joga, of Vishakhapatnam, India, who came out with three of his friends, none of whom had seen a boxing match before Taji.
Even at 7 p.m. the temperature here was still above 100 degrees. But no one seemed to care. Soldiers from various units, including members of the Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team, sat on wooden benches and on tops of parked Humvees to watch.
“I think even the enemy comes to watch,� said Sgt. David Michael Joseph, one of the organizers of Taji’s fight nights.
Bout No. 1: Women’s featherweight competition. In one corner, Carmen “Scrappyâ€? Montes — 126 pounds of lean, mean fightin’ machine and a reigning champion in her weight class. In the other corner, the challenger: Dominique Hernandez, a.k.a. “Outlawz.â€?
Staff Sgt. Tavares Spikes turned up the music. The crowd hooted and hollered. It was time to throw some punches.
Taji’s boxing events pair soldiers by gender and weight classes for eight fights. Each bout lasts three two-minute rounds.
Williams organized similar fight nights from 1994 to 1997 when he was stationed in Haiti. He and Joseph, both of the 603rd Aviation Support Brigade based at Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah, started the fights at Taji in May.
“I’m a combat soldier,� Williams said. “I understand the stress of a soldier. Boxing is a great way to relieve that stress.�
The fights rarely get beyond a bruise or a bloody nose. The boxing gloves are oversized and have extra padding. Williams said serious injuries are unacceptable because they would interfere with the soldiers’ combat duties.
Joseph, a professional boxer, trains soldiers every day in grueling 90-minute sessions.
“It’s not just for the boxing,� he said. “It’s a great way for soldiers to keep in shape.�
Being in shape is one thing. Boxing outside in Iraq’s summer heat is another.
“It becomes what I call a gladiator fight,� Williams said. “If you can win this, you can do anything.�
With the sound of the opening bell, Montes was off to a good start, pumelling Hernandez with a wicked left hook to the jaw.
Montes, of Oxnard, Calif., said her love of boxing started at a young age when she was forced to watch it on television with her dad.
“I wasn’t allowed to change the channel, so I had to watch,� she said.
Later she wanted to take up the sport, but her parents were dead set against their daughter getting pummeled in public.
“When I got over here, I started to train [with Joseph],� she said.
After a strong round one, Montes was ready to claim yet another victory.
Then came the bad news.
Williams climbed up into the ring. “Sorry, folks,� he said, explaining that the fight would have to be stopped due to a “weather warning.�
What, an unexpected snowstorm? The skies were still clear though the winds had kicked up a bit.
Williams later explained that if too much dust gets in the air, the soldiers can’t have the necessary combat air support. And a boxing match with that many people in the audience could make a prime target for insurgents. That’s why Williams and Joseph make it a point to pick different nights of the week for the fights. Predictability can be deadly in Iraq.
Sgt. Ronnie Perrryman, of the 1st Battalion, 118th Field Artillery Regiment’s Alpha Battery, had the day off when the most recent fights were scheduled. The land surveyor from Millen had planned to hibernate in his trailer after a grueling 37 days in Mahmudiyah south of Baghdad. But the love of boxing was strong enough to lure even the most war-weary of soldiers.
Would Montes get the K.O. this time?
At bell time, however, the ring stood empty again. No explanation on why the fights were cancelled this time. This is war, after all.
Local hearts ache for 4 killed in Iraq
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Karen Dingler sat on the edge of her son’s bed and hugged his dress green uniform to her chest. She buried her nose in it, breathing in hard.
“I’m so glad it smells like him,” she said Tuesday.
She had kept the uniform tucked away in his closet at their Paulding County home since he left for Iraq. She pulled it out this week and gently placed it on his bed. She figured the military would need it to bury her son, Spc. Joshua Dingler.
Thomas Strickland (left) of Douglas County and Joshua Dingler of Hiram and were among the victims.A military chaplain and a captain had visited her home Monday. They told her Joshua and two other soldiers with the 1st Battalion, 108th Armor Regiment died in an accident early that day. A military press release said their vehicle overturned into a canal during a night mission.
Joshua Dingler, 19, of Hiram was fresh out of East Paulding High School. He died on the second anniversary of his enlistment. Two of his friends died beside him: Sgt. Thomas J. Strickland, 27, of Fairplay in Douglas County and Spc. Paul Saylor, 21, of Bremen, near the Alabama state line.
A fourth Georgia soldier was reported killed in a separate incident. Spc. Michael Stokely, 23, of Loganville was killed Monday night when he stepped on an explosive device, WAGA-TV reported. Stokely is the son of Coweta County Solicitor Robert Stokely and had been in Iraq for two months, according to WSB-TV. He was a 2001 graduate of Loganville High School, the station said. No other information was available Tuesday night.
All four were part of the Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team, which has lost 16 soldiers since arriving in Iraq in early June.
Strickland was a project manager at Son Electrical Contractors in Winston. He had been in the Guard for six years. He graduated from Alexander High School, where he was president of the drafting club, and later earned a bachelor’s degree in English from University of West Georgia.
Greg Stanford, a minister at Dorsett Shoals Baptist Church, remembered Strickland as a well-rounded, likable man who loved to meet people and enjoyed mission work � including trips to Bosnia and the Philippines.
“He just loved to work with people who were just a little less fortunate than most of us are,” Stanford said. “I could have very easily seen Thomas in the ministry somewhere.”
Strickland’s parents, Patti and Ronnie, didn’t want to give interviews Tuesday. They released a statement saying their son saw his deployment to Iraq as an opportunity to fight terrorism. They asked people to pray for the troops in Iraq and their families.
The Saylors also didn’t want to speak publicly Tuesday. They released a statement through a family friend, Louanne Hutcheson, thanking people for “the hundreds of expressions of sympathy” they had received.
Sgt. Joseph Brown, a member of Saylor’s platoon, said he was like their official photographer. “He must have a thousand pictures of us on his laptop,” said Brown, who is at home in Paulding County recovering from an injury he received in Iraq. “He would create these little slide shows and put music to them.”
Saylor also had a little velveteen bag with a collection of items that he kept secret, Brown said. “Before we’d go out [on a mission] he made us all rub that little bag, for luck.”
Karen Dingler, who was just starting as the unit’s family support group leader, was on the phone seeking advice on how to help families who lose loved ones in Iraq when the chaplain and casualty notification officer showed up.
“It turned out to be mine,” she said. “I just opened the door and swallowed hard.”
Dingler knew why the soldiers were there. She remembers repeating to herself, “I can do this,” as she let them into her home. They asked her where her husband, Tommy, was. He was at the gas station, so they waited to tell her why they were there, making small talk until he returned.
“I could feel the pain in those poor guys’ faces,” she said. “I was trying to be nice. I knew what they wanted.”
The military told her she could keep her son’s uniform. They would bury him in a new one.
Karen and her husband talked proudly about their son Tuesday as they sat in his tidy bedroom.
Several eagle figurines sat atop his chest of drawers. A poster of Osama bin Laden with a red target on his chest hung on his wall.
Joshua’s 16-year-old brother, Samuel, lay on his bed, sobbing.
On the door to Joshua’s closet is a picture of him and his high school sweetheart, Katelyn Wood, taken when they attended a military ball. She wore a black gown; he was in his ROTC dress uniform. It was their first date.
Before leaving for Iraq, he had asked her father for his blessing to marry her. He planned to go to Kennesaw State University, study history and then teach it in high school.
Katelyn held a “just in case” letter he had written her on notebook paper. She couldn’t force herself to open it. But she peeked at the closing sentence: “Yours to the very end.”
— Photo editor Celine Bufkin and news researcher Sharon Gaus contributed to this report. Jeremy Redmon reported from Hiram, Anna Varela from Atlanta.
Three soldiers from 48th die in accident
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Three soldiers from the 48th Brigade Combat Team died in Iraq Monday when the vehicle in which they were riding drove into a canal, military officials said Tuesday.
The three, all from a Douglasville-based detachment of the 1st Battalion, 108th Armor Regiment, were part of a convoy conducting a night mission at the time of the accident, which occurred at 3:45 a.m. Monday.
Sgt. Thomas Strickland
The soldiers were identified as Sgt. Thomas Strickland, 27, of Fairplay, and Spc. Joshua Dingler, 19, of Hiram and Spc. Paul Saylor of Bremen.
Their deaths bring to 15 the number of 48th Brigade soldiers who have died since the unit arrived in Iraq in early June, 11 in combat incidents and four in vehicle accidents. Another 48th soldier died in a vehicle accident in Kuwait in May.
Strickland is the first Douglas County resident to die in combat since Vietnam, said county spokesman Wes Tallon.
“We had a huge send-off for our Army National Guard unit in January,” Tallon said. “The whole community is very tight-knit and you know this is something we hoped would never happen.”
Sgt. Joe Brown of Dallas, who is at home recuperating from wounds suffered in Iraq, said Dingler was a driver in his platoon.
“He was like a son to me. In fact, he called me ‘dad,’” Brown said.
Of the three soldiers, Brown said: “They were great soldiers and some of the best men that I’ve had the privilege of knowing. I am a better person because of having known them.”
Dingler’s mother was about to take over as president of the unit’s family readiness group, said Aurora English, the group’s former president.
“His family is like gold to us,” English said of Dingler. “He wanted to be a soldier since he was young. He was in ROTC. That’s all he ever wanted to do.”
English’s husband, Sgt. Ken English, is with the unit in Iraq. She talked to him by telephone this morning.
“He wanted to make sure we didn’t forget they were heroes,” she said.
Families wrote the names of their soldiers on yellow ribbons and hung them in the National Guard armory in Douglasville. The soldiers are supposed to take the ribbons down when they return from Iraq.
Aurora English and another spouse talked Tuesday about placing a black stripe on the ribbons for the three deceased soldiers.
“We’re all kind of in shock,” she said.
Aurora English and a several 108th rear detachment soldiers hovered around a computer screen in the armory Tuesday morning, peering at digital photos of their friends in Iraq.
First Lt. Jeff Morgan stayed home from Iraq because of a family emergency. As he glanced at the photos, he talked about wanting to join his buddies, particularly now that they have lost three of their own.
“I want to be back with my men. I trained with these guys for years,” said Morgan, the rear detachment commander for the 108th’s headquarters company. “I have a big hole in my heart because I can’t be with them.”
Staff writers Saeed Ahmed and Anna Varela and photo editor Celine Bufkin contributed to this article.
Douglas soldier killed in Iraq
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A Douglas County soldier has been reported killed in Iraq.
Corporal Thomas Strickland, 27, of Fairplay, was a member of the Army’s 48th Infantry Brigade (Mechanized), according to Wes Tallon, county communications director.
Strickland’s family was notified Monday, Tallon said.
Tallon said it was the first combat death in Douglas County since Vietnam.
“We had a huge send-off for our Army National Guard unit in January. They went to training, and they were actually in Iraq starting in June. The whole community is very tight-knit and you know this is something we hoped would never happen,” Tallon said.
The Douglasville unit, with members from across Georgia, is Detachment I, HHC 1/108th Armor. It has 81 members. The unit is made up of scouts and mortar teams that support tanks and other armor.
Life is better at Camp Taji
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Camp Taji, Iraq — The Black Hawk chopper skimmed over Baghdad, firing off flares to deter heat-seeking missiles. Below, groves of date palms along the Tigris River offered a welcome sight for eyes sore from the desert drab and dust of Camp Striker, located at the southern end of the Baghdad airport.
Bita Honarvar/AJC
Sgt. 1st Class Bruce Pitts (left) and Sgt. Scott Payton, both of Richmond Hill, stand outside their trailer at Camp Taji as they wait for their floor to dry after sweeping and mopping Friday.
Taji, about 20 miles northwest of central Baghdad, used to be an Iraqi base that housed Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard. The new Iraqi Army use a portion of the renovated base while American and other coalition forces use the rest.
The Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team has roughly 600 soldiers of the 1st Battalion, 118th Field Artillery Regiment based here.
At the moment, the battalion is attached to the 3rd Brigade, 1st Armored Division out of Fort Riley, Kan.
“It’s much better here than at Striker or Liberty,” said Master Sgt. Wesley Dover, who works at the federal prison in Jesup. “Everything is more consolidated here.”
The street names at Taji are named after college football teams. One of the main drags is called Gamecock Avenue. The Georgia soldiers insisted there is a Bulldog Avenue somewhere on base.
The soldiers here live in air-conditioned, two-person trailers instead of the dusty communal tents that dot Camp Striker. They have access to flushable toilets, several gyms and recreational facilities that offer movies — there’s even movie-theater popcorn — board games, television and reading materials.
The two dining facilities are enormous and have a dizzying array of food — from hot dogs and burgers to chicken curry and flan.
The Taji PX rivals a small Wal-Mart and sells everything from mattresses and toiletries to espresso makers. A sign posted Friday at the entrance proudly announced the newest items for sale: bread, microwavable snacks, frozen burritos and, yes, meat. USDA certified beef.
At the plaza outside the PX, popular chains such as Taco Bell, Popeye’s and Burger King make a fast buck from soldiers craving their favorite fast food.
In their new green digititized uniforms, the Georgia soldiers stand out here as a minority — Taji houses several brigades and other smaller units, whose soldiers still wear the older tan camouflage Desert Combat Uniforms.
The Georgians say their life is comparatively comfortable here at Taji. That doesn’t mean their missions are any less dangerous.
The 118th soldiers regularly travel outside the camp on patrols and reconstruction missions to nearby Iraqi towns and villages. Some that hug the curves of the winding Tigris are predominantly Sunni areas that have seen hostile activity in recent months.
At the end of long, exhausting days, Georgia soldiers, who occupy a block of trailers on one side of the camp, try to relax on the front steps of their temporary homes and make the best of the situation.
Sgt. 1st Class Scott Payton and Sgt. 1st Class Bruce Pitts, both fulltime Guard members and friends from Richmond Hill share a trailer that they insist on keeping immaculately clean.
“I wouldn’t room with anyone else,” Pitts said.
Friday evening, the two whipped out a bottle of Simple Green to mop their floor and talk about going home.
“We’re going to buy a fishing boat,” Pitts said. “He’s gonna be Forrest Gump and I’m going to be Bubba.”
Warren honored on return to Duluth
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
They stood waiting for him under clouds heavy with pending raindrops.
In eager hands they clutched small American flags, waiting for the moment that he would go by so they could raise them in final salute. They huddled in clots, scores and scores of them, all along that stretch of Ga. 120 in Duluth that leads east to the funeral home.
He was my neighbor, some said.
He used to usher at our church, said another.
Jackson Warren, the 22-month-old son of Sgt. 1st Class Charles Warren, waits for his father’s body to arrive by police escort at a funeral home in Duluth.I served, too, said a few.
However they knew him or didn’t, they were united in their desire â€â€? and sense of duty, some said â€â€? to honor this 36-year-old husband and father of two. When Sgt. 1st Class Charles Warren left his family in Duluth nearly eight months ago to fight in Iraq, he also left behind a community that prides itself on its patriotism. In Duluth, if a hometown boy dies in a war, he gets a white cross with his name on it. On Veterans Day and Memorial Day, those crosses line either side of Buford Highway, a main drag into town.
Yet on Wednesday, one cross stood alone next to a flag lowered to half-staff just outside City Hall. It was Warren’s. For years to come, that cross will be a reminder of the Georgia National Guard member’s death by a car bomb at a checkpoint in Iraq last week.
Warren wasn’t born in Duluth, but he called it home. Because of that, the leaders of the city put out the call as soon as they heard the news: His body would return to town in just a few hours.
Mayor Shirley Lasseter sent out e-mails just before noon and had the city clerk Teresa Lynn hit the phone tree with this message: Everybody who can, line the road leading to Bill Head Funeral Home no later than 5:15 p.m. They were going to welcome Warren “back home as only Duluthians can do!”
Word went to the town merchants’ association, the Rotary Club, the Kiwanis Club, the Fall Festival Committee and nearly every church and Sunday school in town.
“We just wish we could have gotten to the schools, to have the kids out there,” Lynn lamented in the moments leading up to the arrival of the hearse.
Duluth Police said they would escort Warren’s body from the airport to the funeral home.
By 5:30 p.m., the edge of the parking lot at Proctor’s Square strip mall was lined with people. Down the road, the same scene unfolded at Duluth First United Methodist Church. In the parking lot at Bill Head Funeral Home, Warren’s nearly 2-year-old son, Jackson, ran in the grass near his grandmother, uncles and aunts, who were surrounded by mourners.
They waited. And waited. Drops fell intermittently from the sky. A helicopter hovered overhead.
At 6:20 p.m., bleats from sirens approached. Those at the funeral home hustled to the front of the driveway. Then came the flashing gold lights of the police escort.
Warren’s was the third vehicle to enter. Through the glass of the hearse, people could see his coffin.
It was draped with a flag. Larger, but the same as the ones his neighbors held in their hands, which covered their hearts.
Soldiers rely on heavy metal
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Bita Honarvar/AJC
48th soldiers (from left) Spc. Joseph Popp of Statesboro, Spc. Ignatio Mendez of Puerto Rico, and Sgt. Yolanda McDaniel of Hinesville replace the turret ring of a beefed-up Humvee at Camp Striker.
Camp Striker, Iraq â€â€? First Sgt. Bobby Barnes pointed to two heaps of mangled, metal contraptions sitting on the far side of a sand berm, behind a maintenance depot affectionately known as “the Alamo.”
Melted magnesium and aluminum. Crushed steel. Burned out seats and radio equipment.
Bita Honarvar/AJC
First Sgt. Bobby Barnes
The wreckage used to be Humvees that soldiers of the Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team drove outside Camp Striker for missions in the Baghdad area. The vehicles were torn apart by 155mm artillery shells buried in the ground and detonated as the soldiers passed over them, Barnes said.
He said the factory-manufactured armored Humvees came with the highest class of armor, known as Level I, which includes bulletproof glass in all the windows and heavy steel protection on the top, bottom and sides.
“None of the guys in these two vehicles died,” said Barnes, of Glennville, who runs the vehicle maintenance and repair shop at Camp Striker. “The armor [installed at the factory] is helping save lives.”
But even the top-of-the-line, factory-installed armor can be defeated, as insurgents proved in recent weeks. In separate attacks six days apart, two massive bombs killed eight 48th Brigade soldiers � all from Alpha Company of the 2nd Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment � while they were patrolling in factory-armored Humvees. Officials believe the bombs each had 500 to 600 pounds of explosives. Three other 48th Brigade soldiers died in a car bomb attack days later.
Makeshift bombs � what the military calls improvised explosive devices, or IEDs � planted under or alongside roads have become the number one killer of U.S. troops in Iraq.
Of the 1,310 American combat fatalities reported by the Pentagon since President Bush declared the end of major combat operations on May 1, 2003, 450 deaths, or about 35 percent, have been caused by IEDs.
This year alone, IEDs have caused just over 53 percent of American combat deaths � 204 of 382.
In addition to the eight 48th Brigade soldiers who died within a week, 14 Marines were killed when an IED exploded under their lightly armored amphibious assault vehicle last week.
The Army promised adequate protection for its soldiers when roadside bombs began killing Americans in Iraq shortly after the fall of Baghdad more than two years ago. Humvee manufacturers began working at what military officials described as “lightning speed” to deliver factory-armored vehicles.
Armor stirs controversy
But from the beginning, the insurgency in Iraq has been about one-upmanship. Every time the Army slapped on more armor, the insurgents raised the ante. Bombs became larger and more deadly. Insurgents are now building bombs that are powerful enough to pierce the steel plating on even heavily armored vehicles, sometimes shredding them into small pieces.
Maj. John Conway, who oversees the armoring of personnel carriers just outside Camp Striker, said throughout history combatants have devised ways to outsmart each other.
“Somebody started with a spear and the next guy came up with a shield,” he said. “You can’t build something that will protect against everything.”
Last year, reports surfaced of soldiers refusing to go on convoys because they felt unprotected on Iraq’s menacing roads. The issue became even more controversial after soldiers complained of having to slap on “hillbilly” armor â€â€? salvaged pieces of scrap metal and bulletproof glass.
When a Georgia soldier questioned Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on the armor issue last December in Kuwait, Rumsfeld responded: “As you know, you go to war with the army you have. They’re not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.”
Yet when Rumsfeld visited Iraq last year, he did not ride in a Humvee. Instead, military officials put him what is known as a Rhino Runner, a bus-like box of steel. Other civilian officials in Iraq ride around in vehicles with V-shaped hulls that deflect IED blasts away from the vehicle.
The general in Kuwait who oversees supplies and logistics in Iraq said the military had already stepped up production of armored vehicles and add-on armor kits before the question of sufficient armor was raised to Rumsfeld.
“Sometimes, I think people back home say that we’re not doing enough,” said Brig. Gen. Kevin Leonard of the Coalition Forces Land Component Command. “We have done all we know to do to keep soldiers alive.”
Leonard said that of the 40,000 vehicles in use in Iraq, more than 85 percent are armored in some fashion.
Gary Jones, a spokesman for 3rd Army in Atlanta, which oversees equipping and supplying units in Kuwait before they head to Iraq, said the number of armored vehicles in Iraq continues to increase.
Jones said there are about 7,700 Level I Humvees in the country plus 18,000 Level II and 7,500 Level III Humvees and trucks.
“We have enough vehicles with Level I or Level II armor to do the job in Iraq,” Leonard said. Ultimately, the goal is to replace the entire fleet with the factory-produced armored Humvees. But that has not happened yet.
The production rate for factory-armored Humvees is 550 a month, according to a House Armed Services Committee fact sheet on military force protection issues. Level I Humvees cost about $250,000 each, about double the price of an unarmored model.
Chief Warrant Officer Robert Tadlock, the 48th Brigade’s maintenance manager, said only factory-armored Humvees leave the gates of Camp Striker, where a majority of the brigade is based.
‘Like a duck shoot’
Still, not all of Georgia’s citizen soldiers feel they have adequate protection to navigate the streets around the Iraqi capital. The sense of vulnerability was heightened after the brigade’s heavy casualties.
“I tell these guys, it’s like a duck shoot at a carnival,” said Staff Sgt. William Taylor, a police officer from Valdosta who serves in Alpha Company. “You have no control.”
The soldiers say the factory-armored vehicles provide excellent protection against small-arms fire, but can’t withstand the kinds of bombs they are encountering. The IEDs have become larger and some are being designed to better focus the force of the blast at the more vulnerable undersides of the vehicles. Soldiers of the 48th say they average six to 10 roadside bomb attacks a week.
The military says about 40 percent of the roadside bombs in Iraq are intercepted before they detonate, either because of more frequent patrols or the use of jamming devices. Bomb-detecting vehicles called “Buffaloes,” which have V-shaped hulls and a robotic arm with a camera that can see into hard-to-reach places, also are being used, but to a limited degree.
Sgt. Peter Satele, the gunner on Barnes’ Humvee and who routinely goes out on vehicle recovery missions, said the Level I, factory-armored vehicles are very much a necessity but they are by no means totally safe.
“It all depends on the ammunition they use,” said Satele, who works full-time at the vehicle maintenance facility at Fort Stewart. “I just don’t think the military was ready for what we’re dealing with.”
Since the brigade’s arrival in Iraq in early June, five Humvees have been declared a total loss, including the two that were carrying the Alpha Company soldiers who were killed, said Tadlock, the maintenance manager.
The brigade is starting to use the 88 armored personnel carriers it has for routine patrols. But many of Iraq’s roads are narrow with canals or ditches on both sides. The personnel carriers and the tougher Bradley fighting vehicles are too large to negotiate those roads.
Conway said there are limits on how much armor can be added to Humvees or the slightly larger armored personnel carriers because too much weight affects mobility and maneuverability and shortens the life span of the vehicle.
“If you build a 200,000-pound box, you can’t move in it,” Conway said. “There is an evil enemy out there determined to kill people. You build something, they’ll build something to defeat it.”
Military officials have said the heavy armor protection on Level I and Level II Humvees may have been responsible for fatalities from some rollover accidents and vehicles being driven into ditches.
Satele said some soldiers find the factory-armored vehicles restricting and unfamiliar, especially since the 48th Brigade did most of its training in Humvees without armor.
“It can be hard to get in it,” Satele said. “It can be even harder to get out.”
Doors on the factory-armored Humvees can weigh up to 500 pounds, he said, making it difficult to get out from a ditch or on an incline.
Barnes, however, said he’d take that chance any day. He looked at the “Cadillac” of Humvees and shook his head. “Boy, I’d hate to know I was out there in anything but one of these.”
Staff writer Ron Martz, news researcher Sharon Gaus and news services contributed to this article.
Trust fund set up for soldier’s children
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A trust fund has been established for the children of Charles Warren, the Georgia National Guard soldier killed last week in Iraq.
Two of Warren’s nine siblings made the announcement on Tuesday during a press conference at the Gwinnett Justice and Administration Center in Lawrenceville.
“We’re just sort of overwhelmed with the outpouring of support,” said Rachel Elliott, Warren’s older sister.
Warren, a sergeant first class with the Guard’s 48th Brigade, was killed when a car bomb exploded at a checkpoint. He was 36. Before he was sent to Iraq, he, his wife, Carol, and their son, Jackson, lived in Duluth. Jackson is 22 months old. Warren’s 6-week old daughter, Madeline, was born while he was in Iraq. She was christened on Saturday.
Money contributed to the new trust fund will help pay for the children’s college education, Elliott said.
Standing in front of the imposing stone tablets that form the justice center’s Fallen Heroes’ Memorial, Elliott and her brother, Alexander Warren, talked about Charles. They said he had been proud to be a Georgian, and even more proud to be a soldier.
Speaking for his brother, Alexander Warren said he was certain his brother would want to encourage the troops still serving in Iraq.
“He supports you now in his death as does our entire family,” Alexander Warren said. “He wants you to come home safe and sound.”
Charles Warren became a member of the Georgia National Guard immediately after moving to Gwinnett about six years ago. He had been working as a pediatric nurse at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta before his deployment.
Elliot said Charles Warren’s name had already been added to one of the war memorial crosses in Duluth. His name will be etched into one of the tablets at the Fallen Heroes’ Memorial, county officials said, though a date has not been set for its addition.
“He would be thrilled that they’re going to add his name,” said Elliott.
A private funeral service will be held on Saturday, the same day that would have been his sixth wedding anniversary, Alexander Warren said.
HOW YOU CAN HELP
The Carol Warren Children’s Fund
c/o Bank of North Georgia
8025 Westside Parkway
Alpharetta, GA 30004
War-torn unit finds relief in talent show
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Camp Striker, Iraq â€â€? Three times over the past two weeks, soldiers of the Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team gathered at the stage here to grieve for their fallen comrades.
But the tears turned to laughter on a recent night as a brigade talent show drew soldiers primarily from the two units that suffered the casualties � the 2nd Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment and the 648th Engineer Battalion.
Spc. Robert Davenport of Lithonia dances in the audience during the entertainment.• MORE PHOTOS
After a moment of silence to remember the 11 soldiers who have died in bomb attacks since July 24, the show got under way just as a C-130 transport plane roared overhead in its takeoff from Baghdad International Airport. From devotional songs to rap, from poetry to dance, about a dozen performers took the stage to demonstrate their talents.
Organized by Spc. Clayton Jones and Spc. Patrick Afeku of the 648th Engineers, the show provided some much-needed diversion for some deployment-weary soldiers.
“It’s getting their minds off some of this bad stuff that’s happened,” said Jones, who builds school buses in Montezuma in civilian life.
Jones said he was worried about the event taking place where the memorial services have been held, but then he decided to go ahead with the show.
The sound of music drowned out the constant buzz of nearby electrical generators and planes and choppers overhead. No one seemed to mind the hot wind blowing dust in their faces.
Jones, who runs a music studio, was looking for serious talent to sign when he goes home.
The star of this show by a large margin was “T. Jones,” otherwise known as Spc. Tarinzo Jones, who sings with a band called Simple Pleasures at home in Dillon, S.C. For an encore performance, he sang “Lovers and Friends” by Usher, Ludacris and Lil’ Jon.
Turnout wasn’t the best â€â€? some of the bleachers were empty. Many of the 648th soldiers couldn’t attend because they were on a mission in southwest Baghdad.
But it was all worth it for organizer Jones. In these difficult moments of a long deployment, he had put smiles on the faces of his fellow soldiers.
A familiar sadness
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Camp Striker, Iraq � At a memorial ceremony just five days ago, Lt. Col. Mark Davis stood with other 48th Brigade Combat Team officers and listened to the battalion commander of an infantry regiment offer eulogies for four fallen soldiers.
Even then, Davis knew it soon would be his turn. He had just learned of the deaths of three of his own.
Davis, a banker from Statesboro, had pondered the heavy price of war, the life-changing scars cruelly etched forever in the hearts and minds of Georgia’s citizen soldiers. It fell to him Monday evening to soothe their sadness.
In the gloaming, as sand swirled through the Iraqi capital in the midst of a violent storm, Davis stood solemnly by himself. He saluted and hugged trios of soldiers as they stepped off the Camp Striker stage, where they fell to their knees in front of the upended rifles, helmets, boots and dog tags symbolizing the lost soldiers. It was their last goodbye to their comrades-in-arms, their friends, their brothers.
The names of the dead pierced the air, ringing out over the microphone and in the first sergeant’s roll call they could not answer.
Sgt. 1st Class Charles Warren of Duluth, Spc. Jerry Ganey of Folkston and Spc. Mathew Gibbs of Ambrose, all of Charlie Company, 648th Engineer Battalion, were killed after a suicide car bomber attacked a traffic control point on nearby Route Aeros Aug. 3. Davis said his soldiers made “valuable contributions” to the 648th and had died valiantly doing their duty.
“We struggle with feelings of shock, anger and sadness,” he said. “We are all heartbroken.”
Enduring a blinding sandstorm
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Camp Striker, Iraq — As though searing temperatures, lack of electricity and a violent insurgency were not enough to make the lives of Baghdadis miserable.
Khalid Mohammed/AP
Iraqi police frisk a man as they secure checkpoints during a massive sandstorm Monday.
A blinding sandstorm moved through the Iraqi capital at full force overnight and by Monday morning, an eerie, burnt umber haze had choked the city.
Some described it as a sandstorm of biblical proportions that emptied the city’s busy streets and sent hundreds of gasping Iraqis to local hospitals to seek relief.
The dust also forced the cancellation of a crucial meeting intended to break a deadlock in negotiations over Iraq’s draft constitution.
Meteorologists said a rare air pressure system that settled over Iraq’s western desert was the culprit that dumped sand and talcum-powder fine dust over the entire city.
At Camp Striker, where a majority of the Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team is based, soldiers found it difficult to see more than 50 feet.
Some had to rethink planned missions because of poor visibility.
Most people covered their eyes and noses and tightly shut entrances to tents, though the efforts in many instances proved futile. Layers of sand and dust forced in by the winds put a coating of the powdery stuff over everything. Brooms and mops were a much-sought commodity Monday. One soldier was spotted beating clouds of dust from a floor rug.
Inches-thick fine sand blanketed the concrete barriers all around the camp.
Dust flared up from the basketball courts every time the ball hit the ground as a few soldiers decided to brave the unkind weather conditions and shoot a few hoops.
The saving grace: Temperatures plummeted into the 80s, a virtual cold wave for Baghdad in August.
It was quieter, too, at Camp Striker, which sits near one end of the Baghdad International Airport. The constant noise of planes and choppers was silenced as the storm stopped flights in and out of the area.
By evening, the winds had died down and the air cleared enough for the brigade to go ahead with its third memorial service for fallen soldiers in the past two weeks.
Monday’s sandstorm was one of the worst in memory. A similar sandstorm slowed the American military advance into southern Iraq during the 2003 invasion.
Soldiers manage to soak up some relief
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Bita Honarvar/AJC
From left, Corp. Michael Lanham of Chicago, Spc. Tricia Frankewich of Macon and Spc. Steven Listwan of Addison, Ill., lounge in a kiddie pool as Pfc. Tracy Jacobson snaps a photo as a keepsake. “We get in the pool to relax after pulling long, hot, sweaty, 12-hour shifts,” Listwan said.
Camp Striker, Iraq - Like every other soldier here, Spc. Steve Listwan, a high school history teacher from Addison, Ill., asked his family to send him creature comforts from home.
“I told [my dad] we’re desperate; that we needed some recreation,” Listwan said.
His father went to a garage sale to pick up a few things and when Listwan opened his package from home a few days ago, out came a $2 swimming pool.
Yes, an inflatable swimming pool that comfortably holds four. Listwan said his wife threw in a few smoothie mixes to complete the party.
Listwan - a member of the 133rd Signal Battalion from Chicago, which is attached to the 48th Brigade Combat Team - tried filling up his new pool with 5-gallon jugs but that took almost two hours.
“It was more work than it was worth,” he said.
So Listwan and his friend, Cpl. Michael Lanham, a paramedic from Chicago, talked the driver of a water tanker into coming by to fill up their new pool.
And, voila. Pool party on a balmy Baghdad afternoon. Temperatures holding at 125 degrees.
“It’s like bath water,” said Spc. Tricia Frankewich, a homemaker from Macon who works in the brigade’s Headquarters and Headquarters Company.
“We’re working our butts off here,” Frankewich said. “We deserve a little relaxation.”
There is a swimming pool available for soldiers who are staying at the bases around the Baghdad International Airport, but it’s at Camp Liberty, which can sometimes take up to 90 minutes to reach by shuttle bus.
Listwan said he understood the concept of a 24-hour soldier. “I’d be up in a minute and in uniform if they needed me,” he said. But for now, he was ready to soak up a few rays.
Sunbathing in Baghdad? This is a place where not even SPF 70 can save you.
“I can take care of that,” Lanham piped in. “I’m a medic.”
To which Listwan, his skin rivaling the his red hair, responded: “Next, we’ll need a lifeguard.”
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.
THE FIFTH MAN
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Bombs have killed pals just behind him – twice
By MARK DAVIS mrdavis@ajc.com The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Humvees were ready, and so were they.
They took their places in the last of the three vehicles setting out in a convoy. They sat with the ease that comes from training and bunking together. Since leaving the United States more than two months ago, the five had become a squad, five pals on one machine.
They knew their roles, knew their purpose: another patrol keeping Route Aeros, an east-west highway in the southwest sector of Baghdad, open for traffic. It was an unfriendly road, and it was theirs.
They awaited orders to pull out of Camp Striker, their temporary home as members of the Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team. They were assigned to Alpha Company, 2nd Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment. The five-man squad hailed from Covington, Thomson, Valdosta, Sylvester, Butler.
Word came that the second Humvee lacked a gunner. Was anybody in the third vehicle available?
The five buddies took a moment to think: Which of them would go?
Staff Sgt. Carl Fuller was the old guy in the bunch. At 44, this was his second tour in Iraq. Before shipping out, the Covington resident worked as a warehouse supervisor.
Sgt. James Kinlow, 35, was a quiet guy from Thomson, near the Georgia-South Carolina line. A church deacon and truck driver in civilian life, he planned to celebrate the end of his deployment by buying a new truck.
Sgt. John Thomas was 33, so tough he was the only guy in the squad who went for a run after long patrols in Iraq. At home in Valdosta, the former Marine dressed up his pit bull and took it riding in his motorcycle sidecar.
Spc. Jacques “Gus” Brunson was 30. An avid outdoorsman, he hunted in the woods near his home in Sylvester, in southwest Georgia’s peanut country.
Spc. Rodney Davidson loved the outdoors as much as Brunson. He was a good shot, too; the walls of his home near Butler in Taylor County were covered with the heads of bucks he’d bagged in central Georgia.
After a moment, Davidson, 39, nodded. Sure, he’d ride shotgun on that middle Humvee. The three vehicles moved off into the dust, and the heat, and toward a waiting bomb.
It was just beyond a traffic control point. The first and second Humvees rolled over it without incident. The blast practically obliterated the last vehicle. Metal rained in all directions, some striking Davidson in the second Humvee.
He stared at the destruction. These were the guys with whom he’d shared tent space, jokes and private thoughts, men who had joined him in a harsh fraternity. He looked at the blasted spot where his friends had been, and knew: He was alone, the only guy from his squad left standing.
The fifth man.
‘Almost expecting’ death
Davidson may be excused if he thinks that death is one car behind him.
In less than a week’s time, he was on two patrols that ended in the deaths of his fellow fighters â€â€? the July 24 blast that killed the rest of his squad, and the similar attack Saturday that ended the lives of four more soldiers from the 48th.
In both blasts, he was in the middle Humvee, the last vehicle to safely pass the device that demolished the rear machine.
“I’ve gone from accepting death as a part of the job to almost expecting it,” he told his wife in a telephone call Wednesday, a day before the 48th honored the four killed in Saturday’s attack. Davidson’s pals, the first Georgia National Guard soldiers to die in combat since World War II, were honored a week ago.
Davidson’s wife, Valerie, is keenly aware of how narrowly her husband missed becoming one of those memorialized.
This past Sunday afternoon, she heard her cellphone trill. She flipped it open and was surprised to see a text message from her husband, an old-fashioned guy more comfortable calling than writing a text message.
“We got attacked again last night,” he wrote. “Four people dead. I am OK. I cannot talk right now. Rodney.”
Valerie Davidson, 33, stared at the message, then reread it. Then she started dialing.
She reached Brenda Redd, her mother-in-law. “I started crying,” she said.
So did Redd. “I’m proud of him,” Redd said, “but I’m scared to death, too.”
They are friends, mother- and daughter-in-law, linked by marriage, by fear, by prayer.
When Davidson called his wife Wednesday, she was sitting in her mother-in-law’s home near downtown Thomaston. It’s a neat little structure, a refurbished mill house where Rodney and his kid sister, Danielle, opened Christmas presents, celebrated birthdays and picked on each other. On a mantle are Rodney’s bronzed baby shoes; the walls are decorated with the antlered heads of whitetails he shot in the forests of Upson County.
When she looks at her house, Redd is reminded of happier days, when doors slammed and rooms echoed with boyish whoops.
This is her son’s second time in the service. In 1985, a few months out of high school, he joined the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, serving three years before returning to Thomaston.
He took a job as a piano tuner for Yamaha Corp. of America, which has a manufacturing plant in Thomaston. After nearly a decade, he quit for a better-paying job in construction. Then, about a year ago, Yamaha asked him to come back.
But the guy who returned to tuning work wasn’t the fellow who had left: The terrorist attacks of 9/11 had convinced Davidson that old warriors were needed to show the youngsters how to fight.
Last year, Davidson joined the Guard. He reveled in the weekend training, where he established that he could do more than tune a piano. He came back from one weekend trip saying, “I outshot ‘em all.”
At 39, he’s older than most of them, too; some younger guys call him “Pappy.” Recent photos show a man in the full of life, wearing four decades of muscle. His smile is the sort that comes with knowing that life can be short, and end suddenly: It is genuine, meant for the folks back home.
‘God’s not through’
Back home on Wednesday, the telephone call from Iraq was too brief, as all of them are.
“Remember,” Redd told her son as he prepared to say goodbye, “God’s not through with you.”
Nor are wife and mother. They are anticipating Thanksgiving, the time Davidson chose for a two-week leave. That date isn’t guaranteed, but they’re confident he’ll be home for a holiday of thanks. Why else would he have survived two attacks?
“When he comes home,” said Valerie Davidson, “he wants one day when he goes nowhere. He’s tired of all the driving he has to do.”
His mother, who makes sure his name remains on the prayer list at First Baptist Church of Thomaston, occasionally feels her strength slip. “You can’t help it,” she said. “He’s my baby. I changed his diapers.”
In Dalton, sister Danielle Jones regularly asks the Lord to bring her big brother home from a hot and hostile place.
“The last time he called, he told me he just wanted to come home and cut the grass,” she said. “We complain about cutting the grass in all this heat, and that’s all he wants to do.”
As he prepared to end his phone call Wednesday, Davidson said officers removed him from the patrol schedule for a few days to make sure he was emotionally ready to return to Iraq’s roadways. The gunner was confident they would give him the OK; good shots, he said, are needed these days.
“They’re hitting us pretty good.”
Hitting hard, and often. Davidson knows that as well as anyone on the dusty roads where enemies plant bombs and wait. He’s the fifth man.
3 more from 48th killed in Iraq
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
By MONI BASU The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Camp Striker, Iraq � Three more soldiers from the 48th Brigade Combat Team were killed and one was seriously wounded in a car bomb attack Wednesday, military officials said.
It was the third time in 10 days that the Georgia Army National Guard outfit has suffered multiple fatalities from Iraqi attacks. The brigade has lost 12 soldiers since arriving in Iraq in early June for a year-long tour.
Details were sketchy early today, but 2nd Lt. Selena Owens, spokeswoman for the 48th, said the attack “was along one of those same routes we’ve been having problems with.”
Identities of the dead soldiers were not released.
Brigade officials locked the Internet cafes here and confiscated cell phones and satellite phones Wednesday night to keep soldiers from calling home and possibly inadvertently alerting the families of the dead troops before they could be notified by Army officials.
The news began circulating among 48th soldiers as many were preparing a memorial service tonight for four of their comrades who died in a massive bomb attack Saturday. On July 24, during a patrol outside Camp Striker, a bomb exploded under an armored Humvee, killing four other soldiers.
The brigade has about 2,500 soldiers from Georgia but is augmented for its tour in Iraq by about 1,900 National Guard troops from Alabama, Illinois, Missouri, Maryland, Rhode Island and Puerto Rico.
Climate of violence puts another new face on Iraq
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
We had expected the worst after reading previous accounts of harrowing flights into Baghdad � of planes dodging mortar fire and squeamish passengers unable to hold their stomachs through corkscrew landings.
But the Vietnam-era C-130 touched down smoothly. Only one of the 30 Baghdad-bound passengers, most of them contractors, got sick.
The Air Force flight crew told us the C-130 can fly low and make landings in the dirt “in case we need to.”
“I’ve seen pretty much all of Iraq, but from the air,” said 1st Lt. Beau Holcombe, who has been flying planes into Baghdad from Kuwait’s Ali Al-Salem Air Base for the past year.
“I don’t know how those Army guys do it,” he said, looking out the small round window from which he kept watch as the plane descended. “They really give it their all down there,” he said about the insurgency raging below us.
At 11:40 in the morning, we touched Iraqi soil. Safely.
This is my third visit to the Iraqi capital in as many years. Each time, Iraq has been a radically different nation, marred by political tyranny, corruption and bloodshed. So much bloodshed.
In December 2002, I had landed on this same tarmac; then it was Saddam International Airport. The Royal Jordanian flight brought me to a nation shrouded in secrecy.
I was nervous then not because I could get shot dead in the street at any moment, but because of the iron-fisted rule of Saddam Hussein. Every move I made was watched. Every person who spoke to me was at risk of paying a heavy price for uttering the truth.
Most foreign journalists then took residence at the famed al-Rashid Hotel. We were forced to walk over a mosaic image of the first President Bush on the floor of the entryway. Veteran journalists talked about the microphones and video cameras placed not so strategically in some of the rooms. Men who looked as if they belonged in a “Sopranos” episode sat in the vast lobby â€â€? 24 hours a day, it seemed â€â€? watching and whispering.
A government minder followed me wherever I went. I did my best to write about shortages of basic goods and services and the United Nations’ attempts at inspections for weapons of mass destruction.
Despite the gloomy atmosphere, Baghdad in 2002 was a relatively clean city. I imagined life here before the first Persian Gulf War, before the sanctions and Baath Party corruption devastated the economy. At a local coffeehouse, I ate lablaby (chickpeas) with a well-known Baghdad artist who recounted an age when Iraq was culturally vibrant.
“Life was good then,” said Widad al-Orfali. She especially enjoyed seeing Hollywood movies and going to the opera house.
War and changes
Everyone knew then that war was coming. Aid agencies had already begun stockpiling food and medical supplies. Margaret Hassan, Iraq’s director of CARE International, who was kidnapped and presumed slain last November, sipped tea with me and shook her head in despair.
“Iraq is already in crisis,” she said, referring to shortages of food, medicine and basic services. “I don’t know how we will withstand another war.”
But war came the following March. And after Saddam’s statue was toppled in Firdos Square, I went back a second time to see for myself what good might come out of the rubble that was Baghdad.
The Baghdad I had seen only months earlier was now dotted with bombed buildings, looted offices, homes and stores and garbage everywhere. Electricity and clean drinking water had become scarce. Hospitals filled up quickly with the injured and sick.
Still, there was hope in the once-mute voices of Iraq. My minder, a Kurdish man who spoke so carefully about “the situation” before, gushed about Iraq’s new freedom. Saddam was gone and people were ready to start their lives anew.
Newspapers sprang up. Satellite dishes became the hottest commodity in Baghdad’s markets. Then came the Internet and cellphones and a whole new window to the world of which Iraqis had been deprived for so long.
I returned home optimistic that perhaps the war had been worth it.
Perhaps people I knew in Iraq, like my friend Hala, could now look forward to a better quality of life. I saw in her smile a future for her children; that they would be able to have a life free of repression that their mother had not known in her homeland.
Another different Iraq
More than two years later, I have journeyed back to this ancient land. It was once again an unfamiliar place, one in which people � both Iraqis and Americans � are dying randomly every day.
This is a nation where the steady drone of Black Hawk helicopters overhead and the rattle of machine gun fire have become as normal as the music that blared from the new DVD shops that opened in 2003.
The translator who worked with me and photographer Bita Honarvar in 2003 said he had to do something to give his children a better life. He moved his family to Kuwait several months ago.
As the C-130 made its descent to the airport, I thought of Hala. What must she think now of her beloved Baghdad, awash in blood from the daily bombings that snuff out innocent lives in the blink of an eye?
This time I am here to write about Georgia soldiers, whose mission is to make Iraq a better place.
I arrived at Camp Striker, where a majority of the Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team is located, on a heart-wrenching day. Four infantry soldiers lost their lives July 24 when their Humvee was destroyed by a roadside bomb during a routine patrol a few miles from Camp Striker.
It was a jarring re-entry into Iraq and confirmed what I had feared: that through the soldiers’ eyes, I am destined to see, yet again, an entirely different Iraq.
David Randall Jones: A handshake, and always a joke
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sgt. David Randall Jones greeted people with a booming voice and camaraderie that came straight at you.
David Randall Jones“When you saw him coming down the hall, you knew you had a handshake coming â€â€? there was no way around it,” said Capt. William Johnson, assistant jailer at the Richmond County Sheriff’s Department, where Jones worked as a jailer for eight years before his Georgia Army National Guard unit was activated in January.
Jones, 45, who died Saturday in Iraq in a bomb with three other members of the 48th Brigade Combat Team, was a student of history and planned to return to college, earn a master’s degree, and one day become a college history professor, said Sgt. Brent Walker, who worked the B Shift â€â€? 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. â€â€? with Jones at the Richmond County Jail. “He kept up with history and all current events. If something happened and you didn’t know about it, all you had to do was ask him.”
Lt. Sheila Burkes last talked to Jones on July 16 when he called the jail and asked for a care package. “What he really wanted was Crystal Light to flavor the water with,” she said. “And snacks. We were getting together a big package, taking up a collection, but we hadn’t sent it yet.”
What the B shift remembers most about Jones, said Burkes, is that he ended every morning roll call at the jail with the joke of the day. Nobody can remember any of the jokes, just that he told them, and, if nobody else laughed, it didn’t matter, Burkes said. “He did.”
Text of e-mail from Victor Anderson
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
‘YES THEY WERE MY GUYS’
Sgt. 1st Class Victor Anderson sent this e-mail (reprinted here unedited) to family and friends in Georgia a few days after four of his fellow soldiers were killed July 24 by a bomb. Anderson died six days later in a similar incident.
Subject: I AM OK
HELLO EVERYBODY
WELL I GUESS EVERYONE HAS HEARD THE NEWS YES THEY WERE MY GUYS. THEY FELT NO PAIN I WAS IN THE HUMVEE ABOUT 30 FEET IN FRONT OF THEM ALL GREAT GUYS. I DO NOT LIKE MOST OF THESE IRAQIS THEY ARE ALL LIARS. MAYBE SADAMM HAD THE RIGHT IDEA ON HOW TO CONTROL THEM. THERE NOT ALL BAD OUR INTERPITERS ARE GOOD GUYS. I DO NOT SERVE TO HELP OTHERS I SERVE BECAUSE OF THOSE GUYS TO MY LEFT AND RIGHT THEY ARE MEN OF THERE WORDS, THEY TOOK AN OATH TO DEFEND OUR COUNTRY THEY ARE WHY I CAME HERE NOT SOME IDEOLOGY. THEY STEPD UP AND DID NOT RUN AND HIDE WHEN OUR COUNTRY CALLED. WHETHER YOU BELIEVE IN THIS WAR OR NOT BELIEVE IN THEM BLESS YOU ALL. DONT MEAN TO BRING ANY ONE OF YOU DOWN JUST SAYING WHATS ON MY MIND BE GOOD
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Victor Anderson: Saw buddies die, then bomb ended his life
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Americus — Victor Anderson had a very close call 10 days ago.
Victor AndersonRead text of Sgt. Anderson’s e-mail
The 39-year-old platoon sergeant was riding in a patrol convoy July 24 when a bomb planted in the road destroyed the Humvee just behind his, killing four National Guardsmen from Georgia.
“Well I guess everyone has heard the news,” he e-mailed family and friends here last week. “They were my guys. They felt no pain.”
Anderson helped prepare the bodies for shipment home, he told his younger brother later in a phone conversation.
“He volunteered to help because he didn’t want his men to have to see what he saw,” said Joseph Poole. “He said it was just awful.”
On Tuesday, Poole stood outside his mother’s home with a somber host of relatives. Like other families across Georgia, they were waiting for a body: his brother’s. Sgt. Victor Anderson died Saturday in a second attack on a convoy outside Baghdad, only six days after his narrow escape.
The July 24 bombing produced the first combat fatalities since the Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team was deployed to Iraq in May. The second, almost identical attack Saturday killed another four soldiers from the same platoon. At least two of them, including Anderson, were in the first patrol and had witnessed that terrible scene.
Barely two months into the brigade’s yearlong mission, Georgia towns are coping with multiple casualties among their recently civilian soldiers. Two of the eight guardsmen killed in the bombings were from Valdosta. Two others worked in Americus and lived near this southwest Georgia town.
Anderson was a deputy in the Sumter County Sheriff’s Department. Spc. Jacques “Gus” Brunson, who died in the first attack, had worked next door at the Sumter County Correctional Institute.
“It’s hard to live this way, knowing that someone can knock on your door at any time with this kind of news,” said Elisia Ingle of Americus, who received a visit from an Army casualty notification team last week. She is Brunson’s ex-wife and mother of his two children. Her husband, Ronald, is also serving with the 48th Brigade in Iraq, and she works with Ellen Anderson, Victor Anderson’s widow, at Sumter Regional Hospital.
Operating room nurses had chosen Anderson in their adopt-a-soldier program, showering him with letters, goodies and comforts from home. He sent them thank-you cards addressed “To the OR Girls.” Now the department bulletin board has a picture of him in his dress uniform posted next to a fresh black ribbon.
Hospital employees who know the couple well remembered Anderson on Tuesday as a playful man who liked to horse around with his children, 9-year-old Tyler and 14-year-old Jessica.
“Victor was the class clown, always silly,” said Lisa English, a financial counselor at the hospital. She was in Anderson’s 1983 graduating class at Tri-Counties High School up the road in Buena Vista. Her eyes welled up as she spoke of her friend, who had recently asked her to send him some “cool music.”
Her colleague Sundie Avery recalled that Anderson helped underwrite a recreation league baseball team and usually showed up for games wearing his Guard fatigues. He was so proud of his military service that he often sported his desert camouflage around town.
Anderson looked like a soldier with his shaved head, ramrod posture and short, stocky build. He grew up in Ellaville, a small town north of Americus, and enlisted in the Army after high school. He left active service and joined the Guard, taking a job as a police officer in Ellaville.
He re-enlisted in the Army after the Gulf War, meeting his wife of 11 years when he was posted in Germany. He left the Army again, rejoined the Guard and settled into a life of family and police work.
Anderson had been overseas with the Guard, as a peacekeeper in Bosnia, and he badly wanted to go to Iraq. But it almost didn’t happen.
In January, when the brigade was mobilized, he was told that he couldn’t join the other soldiers because of his diabetes. When hundreds of people turned out to see the unit off in a motorcade through the middle of Americus, Anderson had to settle for leading the way in a police cruiser.
“He had tears streaming down his face,” said Maj. Jimmy Jordan of the Sheriff’s Department, a retired guardsman who befriended Anderson. “It really hurt him not to be with his men.”
Anderson exercised, dieted, lost weight. Not long before the brigade deployed in May, he was cleared to go.
“He was as happy as a boy on Christmas morning,” said Jordan, who recalled his last encounter with Anderson. They hugged in the halls of the Sheriff’s Department, and he told the younger man to be careful.
On Tuesday, family and friends gathered at the home of Anderson’s mother and stepfather at the end of a long dirt road in the countryside north of Ellaville. Anderson lived next door with his wife and children in a rustic house with gray wooden timbers. In the yard sat a silver Chrysler Sebring with a yellow magnetic ribbon on the bumper that said, “Pray for SSG Anderson.”
“I talked to him just Friday morning,” said his mother, Belinda Poole, as she straightened the photos on a tabletop shrine in her living room. “He called and said they were getting ready to go out on some more missions. He was calm. If that bombing upset him, he didn’t show it.”
Outside, in the afternoon swelter, her husband and several other kinfolk were digging a hole in the front yard. They were erecting a flagpole, like so many Marines hoisting the Stars and Stripes on Iwo Jima. They wanted to raise a flag so they could lower it to half-staff.
Jonathon Haggin: Death won’t end love story
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Kingsland � The pains started Saturday morning. Anna Haggin said they felt like contractions. Her stomach tightened. She began to bleed. She worried she was losing her baby.
Jonathon HagginAnna rushed to the hospital. She kept telling her mom, “Nothing can happen to this baby.”
Things were just starting to get better. She had been reconciling with her ex-husband, Spc. Jonathon Haggin, and she had become pregnant. The Georgia National Guard soldier was now thousands of miles away in Iraq, but they were already talking about getting back together and becoming a family again.
The emergency room doctors tested Anna’s blood and listened to the baby’s heartbeat. Everything was OK. They had no explanation for her pains.
The next morning, however, a pair of U.S. Army officers in dress uniform showed up at her apartment. They told her the baby’s father had been killed by a massive bomb in southwest Baghdad the night before.
Anna believes the pains were no coincidence.
She won’t learn the sex of the baby until later this month, but she already has a feeling it’s a boy.
“I’m praying to God it’s a boy. If it’s a girl, she will have to be named Jonathon,” Anna, 21, said Tuesday as she sat in the comfort of her mother’s home, where she has been grieving for the past few days.
Jonathon learned Anna was pregnant with their second child while he was recovering in a hospital in Germany this summer. He had been wounded by an insurgent’s bomb in Iraq. It broke three of his ribs.
The former Marine got bored resting in the hospital. He wanted to get back to his unit with the 48th Brigade Combat Team.
“He begged and pleaded to be sent back to Iraq with his squad,” Anna said.
Somehow, Jonathon persuaded the doctors to send him back before he was fully healed. But his buddies kept hiding his gear to keep him from going out on patrol. On July 24, while Jonathon was still recovering, four soldiers from his unit were killed in a bomb attack. He was angry that he wasn’t there. He wanted to find the people who killed his friends.
“It was just eating him alive,” Sgt. David Grimes, a fellow Georgia National Guard soldier and longtime friend, said in a telephone interview from Camp Striker, Iraq. “It bothered him badly.”
Finally, on Saturday, less than two weeks after returning to the field, Jonathon went outside the wire again. Grimes remembers their last conversation.
“I told him, ‘Jonathon, if you see the shot, take it.’ He said, ‘You know it.’ “
Jonathon was 26 when he died.
Grimes’ wife, Michelle, hung by Anna’s side Tuesday. They joined Anna’s mother, Edna Martinez, and a friend at a cozy Italian restaurant in St. Marys on the southeast Georgia coast.
The four laughed as they reminisced about Anna’s and Jonathan’s early dates. At first, the two disliked each other. But his cynical sense of humor attracted her.
On their first date, she placed her hand on top of his as they rode in his “busted” 1997 Ford Probe, which was three shades of blue. He jerked his hand away and told her to stop. After a few more tries, he wrapped his thumb around the back of her hand. “He likes me,” she thought.
On another early date, his car broke down on I-95 and they had to push it off the road. “The engine blew up,” Anna said. “We were sweating and I was mad.” Later in their relationship, she totaled the 1990 Thunderbird Super Coupe she had persuaded him to buy.
“We never doubted our love,” she said. “We had a lot of tests and a lot of trials through our dating.”
The couple married young. She was 17. He was 22. They divorced in December and were living apart when he left for Iraq.
When she started to dwell on Jonathon on Tuesday, Anna nervously rubbed her hand up and down a red plastic cup of ice water glazed with condensation.
She wonders how she will tell their 2-year-old daughter, Leaundra, what happened. Leaundra was Jonathon’s world, she said. A trained sniper who avoided emotions, Jonathon frequently bought his daughter white seashell necklaces and lovingly called her “Angelbutt.” She has his brown eyes. She started saying “daddy” before “mommy.”
Tuesday afternoon, little Leaundra danced on the dark- blue-carpeted floor of her grandmother’s living room and played with a small hamster figurine dressed in a Marine uniform. She wore one of her father’s seashell necklaces and sported a red U.S. Marine Corps baseball cap. Turning to a visitor, she proudly declared, “My daddy is in Iraq.”
Ronnie ‘Rod’ Shelley: ‘Needed to do his part’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sgt. Ronnie “Rod” Shelley wanted to escort the body of his best friend back to their hometown of Valdosta.
Ronnie “Rod” ShelleyShelley was riding in a three-vehicle convoy in Iraq on July 24 when a bomb in the road tore apart the Humvee carrying his buddy, Sgt. John Frank Thomas, killing him and three others from his platoon.
Shelley was devastated, but determined to keep doing his job in Iraq, and to serve as a pallbearer at his friend’s funeral.
But Saturday night, Shelley and three other Georgia Army National Guard soldiers met the same fate, killed by another large bomb detonated by insurgents on a road outside Baghdad. Tuesday, as the Thomas family continued to wait for John’s body to return for burial, Shelley’s wife, Heidi, began her wait, too.
Her husband could have gotten a medical exemption from serving in Iraq because he had severe problems with his teeth, she said. A doctor offered to sign a letter that would let him stay home.
“Rod said ‘No. Pull them all so I can go,’ ” Heidi Shelley said. “He needed to go. He needed to do his part.”
Shelley, 34, served in the Marines for eight years and saw combat in the first Gulf War, his wife said. He signed up for the Guard about three years ago, mostly for the retirement pay. He and his wife dreamed of someday selling their house, buying a motor home and sending postcards from the road to their three children, who are now 4, 8 and 13 years old.
Shelley was a graduate of Lowndes County High School. In civilian life, he was the overnight maintenance supervisor at a bakery. He enjoyed bass fishing, camping, four-wheeling, and spending time with his family.
“He thought we were supposed to have a barbecue every Sunday,” said Heidi Shelley, 25. “He was the grill master.”
8 gone from one platoon
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Bita Honarvar/AJC
Comrades reflect on the loss. From left are Sgt. Bill Jones of Anderson, S.C., Spc. Derek Mack of Valdosta, Spc. William “Shane” Parham of Social Circle and Spc. James Cribb of Nashville, Ga.
Camp Striker, Iraq � All week long, the soldiers of Alpha Company had gone out on patrols with great trepidation.
A July 24 bomb attack on a Baghdad road killed four of their buddies. One moment they were in their Humvee. The next, they were gone.
Emotions were still raw. They had just bidden their fallen friends goodbye in a Thursday service.
Then, on Saturday, it happened again.
Four more soldiers who belonged to the same unit died after their Humvee, minutes from returning safely to Camp Striker, drove over a bomb big enough to cripple a tank.
They were on a road the military calls Route Red Sox. It could have been a country road in Georgia � fields on each side, irrigation canals, power lines and a small food stall.
“I’ve lost eight buddies in a week,” said Spc. William “Shane” Parham, a Walton County sheriff’s deputy from Social Circle. “Nobody trained us to get blown up like this.
“We all thought we’d come here to cheat death,” he continued, “but we never thought we’d be eyeball deep like this.”
In the two months that the Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team has been in Iraq, Valdosta-based Alpha Company has lost nine of about 120 soldiers. The eight who died in the two bomb blasts were all in the same platoon, according to the soldiers in the unit. The platoon of 35 to 40 soldiers has been reduced by 20 percent in less than a week.
A ninth Alpha Company soldier, Sgt. Chad Mercer of Waycross, was killed in early July after his Bradley Fighting Vehicle rolled over into a canal.
Monday, Guard officials confirmed the latest deaths, but the military has not yet identified the dead.
One was identified by family and friends as Spc. Ronnie Shelley of Valdosta. And in Americus, officials at Sumter Regional Hospital confirmed that Sgt. 1st Class Victor Anderson was among the soldiers killed. Anderson’s wife, Ellen, works at the hospital.
“This is hard stuff. It’s heartbreaking,” said Brig. Gen. Stewart Rodeheaver, commander of the 48th. “I wish I could look at what we’re doing and say this is what we’re doing wrong. But I can’t. The problem is this is not a standard war.”
He said the casualties all coming from one unit was “absolutely unusual” and a case of “bad luck.”
“This unit hasn’t been tasked more than anyone else,” Rodeheaver said in an interview. “And nobody is intentionally putting them at risk.”
The general said the soldiers of Alpha Company are frustrated and angry because their enemy is elusive. He said the brigade would not necessarily change strategy based on these two attacks but that the soldiers routinely alter their maneuvers because “the enemy changes tactics every day.”
The improvised explosive devices, for instance, once hidden along guardrails and in dirt along the side of the road, now pack more punch and are stuffed in pipes and canals that run under the middle of the road.
Rodeheaver said Alpha Company soldiers are being given down time and combat stress counseling. Those who go out on patrol, he said, need to stay calm and “maintain their American values.”
“They want to get out there and find the people who did this,” he said. “And we’re going to find them, but we’re not going to go out and shoot innocent people.”
Rodeheaver said the brigade flew in 22 replacement soldiers Sunday night and that with the new troops and possible reshuffling of existing units, Alpha Company would be brought back up to full strength.
Rodeheaver said he goes out routinely with his combat troops � the 2nd Battalion 121st Infantry Regiment and the 1st Battalion, 108th Armor Regiment � and his Humvee had been hit three times by improvised explosive devices, two mortar shells and four rifle shots in the ballistic window.
“I know what’s going on out there,” he said. “Everyone here is in jeopardy. Everybody here is in a combat zone 24 hours a day.”
But it was in the tents of Alpha Company that eight cots were emptied within six days.
The mood on Alpha’s side of the camp was decidedly somber as hardened infantry soldiers hugged one other and cried openly. On a moonless Sunday night, Rodeheaver sat outside the tents with Alpha Company soldiers, hearing their fears, frustrations and anger.
Less than 24 hours later, on Monday afternoon, four caskets bearing the remains of Alpha Company’s fallen troops left Iraq for the journey home.
“Our friends who died are true heroes in every sense of the word,” Rodeheaver said. “It is absolutely tough on the families. We know it tears their hearts out just like it does ours. It’s tougher on them because they don’t know what’s going on here.”
A memorial service is planned for Thursday evening at 7:30, exactly one week after the 48th said its goodbyes to the soldiers killed July 24.
On that day, another large bomb buried on nearby Route Aeros killed the first Georgia National Guard soldiers to die in combat since World War II â€â€? 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.
“After the first one, it got real quiet in the tents,” said Spc. Derek Mack, 31, a security guard from Valdosta who knew several of the soldiers killed in both attacks.
Saturday night, Mack was watching “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider” on his DVD player when the platoon leader came in and took away the soldiers’ cellphones, he said.
“I knew something bad had happened,” said Mack, a former Marine who gave up a desk job in the Guard to join the infantry unit. “I’m going back out tomorrow night to drive around, waiting to get blown up. I’m scared to death.”
But the soldiers all said they were ready to go back out onto the menacing streets of Baghdad. They are infantrymen who watch their brothers’ backs.
“Infantry people are a different breed,” Mack said. “They’re like police officers, firefighters or EMS people. When everyone else is running away from something bad, they are running to it.”
Spc. James Cribb, 25, who works at the Tift County Sheriff’s Department, said he didn’t understand the senseless killings by insurgents in Iraq.
“If you ain’t scared, there’s something wrong with you,” said Cribb, who lives in Nashville, Ga. “You just ride around and thank God you didn’t get blown up. You just want to make it so you can go home.”
With those words, Cribb was off to the shower to get ready for another night of patrolling. He would be in another three-Humvee convoy, riding around in the darkness looking for an enemy he couldn’t see.
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