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Wednesday, October 12, 2005
Target practice with a bang
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Louie Favorite/AJC
Members of the 48th fire mortars near Mahmudiyah. Spc. Mike Petrone, 19, loaded mortar rounds. Sgt. 1st Class Charles Astin is on right. | Hear a mortar being fired
Forward Operating Base Mahmudiyah, Iraq — “Hang it!”
Spc. Mike Petrone, of Columbus, is yelling for his two buddies to get ready. He’s holding a green and yellow bomb as big as his arm just above the mortar tube. Then he drops the 120mm round into the tube, screaming, “Fire!”
The explosion is deafening. It sends a shock wave through the bodies of Petrone and his fellow mortarmen: Spc. Jeremy Powell, of Acworth, and Sgt. 1st Class Charles Astin, of Atlanta. They are enveloped in smoke.
The bomb lands in an open field in a rural area thousands of meters away. A forward observer sees the explosion and calls back to base, advising them how to adjust their fire.
Astin gives Powell new coordinates. And Powell adjusts the mortar tube’s position. Then Petrone yells “Hang it!” again and drops another round in. “Fire!”
After several more attempts, they find the target and fire several rounds at it.
They weren’t trying to hit anything in particular Wednesday morning. There were no insurgents this time. They were “registering,” or making sure they could hit a specific area in the event they start taking enemy mortar and rocket fire.
The three men are part of the mortar platoon from Georgia’s 1st Battalion, 108th Armor Regiment.
The platoon’s motto sounds menacing: “High Angle Hell.” Their call sign used to be “Smoke.” But it wasn’t strong enough, so they changed it to “Punisher.”
But it goes both ways. Firing mortars takes its toll on soldiers, too. “I can’t hear a damn thing,” said Powell, 29, who works at a heating and air conditioning company back home. “It kills your ears.”
Powell and the others rarely get to fire their mortars, however. Lately, they have been escorting explosive ordnance disposal experts outside the wire. That’s when they sometimes get hit with roadside bombs.
Petrone, for example, has a scar near his mouth from an attack in August. Shrapnel from a roadside bomb drilled through his lip.
Despite the danger, Petrone, like Powell, enjoys what he does.
“It’s been a good experience,” said Petrone, 19, who has “God Speed” written on the side of his helmet. “I wouldn’t take it back. I’ve done more than most people have done in their whole lives.”
Voices from the 48th
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Camp Striker, Iraq — By the time Iraqis vote Saturday on a proposed constitution, many of the soldiers in the Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team will have completed five months of a yearlong deployment in the Middle East. Here is what five citizen-soldiers say about Iraq:
Staff Sgt. Ron DeLoach, 37, a civilian tank mechanic at Fort Stewart who lives in Glennville
He’d consider making Iraq three regions — Shiite, Sunni and Kurd — that would govern independently, police their borders and share in the nation’s oil wealth.
“Sunnis don’t mind policing Sunnis, but when you take one ethnic group policing another, it becomes war. Eighty percent of these insurgents are coming from outside. Let the Iraqis patrol their country. They know who’s foreign and who’s not better than we do. The neighboring countries have got to secure their borders.”
Spc. Charles Flowers, 36, a mechanic for Delta Air Lines who lives in McDonough:
“We’re walking on soil that people from the Bible walked on. The Garden of Eden is 400 kilometers up the road. The funniest thing is if [the insurgents] quit blowing us up, we’d leave. But they don’t realize that. But that has to do with outside influences. We try to push it with locals that they have to help us catch them.”
Sgt. Annmarie Bielefeld, 25, a biotechnology student at Kennesaw State University:
“Kids here are taught horrible things. It’s like growing up in a household where there is abuse. You grow up skittish. The kids see their neighbors being shot or get kidnapped. They have so much chaos from the time they are born to adulthood. Iraq as a nation is a disaster. From my standpoint you don’t have a nation that’s willing to push to make it better.”
Sgt. 1st Class Allex Hutchins, 40, who works for the Transportation Security Administration at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport:
“This place is no better off than when we first came in. Everybody needs necessities in life — water, food, electricity, a place to lay your head. Are we supplying that right now? No. Are we working on it? Yes. But we are not focusing on that. We are focusing on occupying their country. People are grateful that we come to deworm their sheep, but I think they would rather have electricity for three hours a day.”
Spc. Taura Montgomery, 29, a certified athletic trainer from Hinesville:
“I’m in awe of people who have to live with fear every day. They still go on and do whatever they have to do. I commend them for that. It takes a lot of courage.”
