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October 2005
Heading to a new base
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Convoy Support Center Scania, Iraq — Rain is sprinkling on the windshields of the Humvees as the soldiers roll out of their old base in Mahmudiyah.
Jeremy Redmon/AJC
2nd Lt. Chris Kehl (left) and Sgt. Eric Knight get ready to explore their new home at Convoy Support Center Scania.
Raindrops are a rare sight for the Georgia National Guard soldiers, who have suffered nearly intolerable hot weather for almost six months just south of Baghdad.
The nights are growing chillier now that fall has arrived in Iraq. Along with the heat, the troops from the 1st Battalion, 108th Armor Regiment are leaving behind painful memories.
Insurgents repeatedly attacked them with roadside bombs, mortars and rockets in Mahmudiyah. Meanwhile, the soldiers bonded into a cohesive unit.
Sgt. Eric Knight has mixed feelings as he drives his five-ton truck out of the gate on Halloween, past a red sign at the entrance that reads: “Close With and Kill the Enemy.�
He and about 20 other 48th Brigade Combat Team soldiers were heading to a new base and new missions in southern Iraq Monday morning.
“Somebody told me the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t know,� says Knight, 30, a father of three from Guyton.
Second Lt. Chris Kehl sits in the gunner’s hatch next to Knight, manning a .50 caliber machine gun. And next to Kehl sits a third passenger, a talking Yoda doll from the “Star Wars� movies.
Kehl occasionally asks the battery-operated doll questions, squeezing its left hand to trigger responses. In the movies, Yoda is an almost all-knowing creature with a special power called “the force.� Kehl asks it if the new base will have rocky road-flavored ice cream.
“Yes, I feel this will be,� Yoda responds in a gravely voice.
Kehl chuckles about his “comic relief.�
Jeremy Redmon/AJC
2nd Lt. Chris Kehl (top) and Sgt. Eric Knight arrive at their new home, Convoy Support Center Scania.
“If you don’t have humor in war, it’s not really a war,� says Kehl, 32, a software consultant from Atlanta.
Around 9:30 a.m., the convoy arrives at a much larger base near the Baghdad International Airport called Camp Striker. The convoy picks up two soldiers and some tank parts there.
Meanwhile, the battalion commander, Lt. Col. John King, attends a ceremony in which the 2nd Brigade Combat Team of the 101st Airborne Division officially takes over control of the 48th’s area of operations.
The 48th is being moved to several bases across Iraq.
Knight and Kehl get going again in the afternoon. As they travel south, they pass young boys begging along side the roads. They see farmers mining salt from pools of standing water. Kehl occasionally fires warning shots from his machine gun as Iraqi motorists get too close to his vehicle.
Along the highway, they see street lights in Iraq for the first time and wonder if they work at night. They drive by an odd sight in this war-torn country: picnic tables and umbrellas lining the highway.
Finally, around 3:30 p.m. they arrive at their new base, 65 miles south of Baghdad. Knight waves at a fellow soldier from the 108th, who is manning the front gate. He and Kehl see other friends jogging in T-shirts and shorts. In Mahmudiyah, they were required to wear body armor and helmets because of the threats posed by insurgents.
They see soldiers playing volleyball and basketball. There was a Halloween costume party here a few days ago. And they have several flavors of ice cream in the cafeteria. Knight and Kehl are home.
‘We have lost a lot of people’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Yusufiyah, Iraq - The Iraqi soldier wears a green mask over his face to work. He reveals only his brown eyes as he mans his checkpoint.
Dozens of Iraqis see Mahmud Abdul Karim when they cross the bridge he guards each day. He dons the mask because he doesn’t want them to recognize him when he goes on leave to his home in Nasiriyah south of here.
Louie Favorite/AJC
An Iraqi soldier mans a checkpoint near Yusafiyah.
Insurgents have killed scores of other Iraqi soldiers for cooperating with the U.S. military. Karim said he knows of at least 70 fellow soldiers who have been killed while on leave.
“We have lost a lot of people,” said Karim, 24, who has served in the Iraqi Army for 15 months. “They stay in the street and wait for us.”
Part of the problem is Iraq’s banking system. It is in disarray, leaving Karim and other Iraqi soldiers with no reliable place to deposit their money.
The soldiers are paid roughly the equivalent of $300 U.S. a month, which is a lot of money in this farming community south of Baghdad. On average, people make $50 a month in this area, according to U.S. soldiers.
The Iraqi soldiers receive their pay in cash. And they carry it with them on leave, sometimes traveling many miles with it. That’s when they face the greatest danger.
To protect themselves, many Iraqi soldiers like Karim wear disguises. Some wear bandanas over their faces. Some wear ski masks with slits for their eyes and mouths.
And when they leave here to visit their families, they shed their uniforms and put on civilian clothes. In some parts of this country, it is still not safe to travel alone in an Iraq Army uniform.
Praying for a fight
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Lutayfiyah, Iraq — U.S. soldiers often hear Muslim prayers as they patrol outside the wire.
Local imams chant the prayers over loudspeakers from their mosques.
Hear the call to prayer in LutayfiyahTo new soldiers who don’t understand Arabic, the sometimes monotone prayers can sound eerie, even haunting.
They have good reason to be worried.
Most prayers are neutral. They encourage Muslims to be faithful.
But some imams announce anti-American rhetoric over their loudspeakers. They call the U.S. soldiers infidels and occupiers. And they urge fellow Muslims to fight them.
Insurgents have fired on U.S. soldiers from mosques. And Arabic interpreters working with the soldiers say insurgents use some mosques to meet, recruit members and store weapons.
Listen to what soldiers from Georgia’s 1st Battalion, 108th Armor Regiment heard as they patrolled through downtown Lutayfiyah with Iraqi Army soldiers one recent evening.
The prayers were announced over a loudspeaker from a local mosque the soldiers deem friendly. An Arabic interpreter who is working for the soldiers and who listened to this recording said the imam was asking Muslims to “Trust in God. Believe in God.”
In the background, you can hear the soldiers’ boots crunching in the gravel near the mosque. Some children are playing nearby.
Home, sweet home
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
FOB Lutayfiyah, Iraq — Soldiers from Georgia’s 108th Armor Regiment live here in what is believed to be an old telephone exchange building.
Louie Favorite/AJC
First SGT. Tony Winters, a residential painter from Dallas, GA, works out in an area called “The Alamo.” • MORE PHOTOS OF FOB LUTAYFIYAH.
They call their base “The Dust Bowl” because of the piles of powdery sand that collect around the buildings
New buddy sorely missed
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Camp Striker, Iraq — Fellow soldiers remember him as the new guy who didn’t act new.
The other Georgia National Guard troops had been here about four months and had already bonded when Staff Sgt. Dennis Paul Merck arrived Sept. 11.
But Merck made friends with them quickly by sharing what he knew from his diesel mechanic work back home. He bragged about his wife and showed photos of his three children. He spent hours hanging out with his new buddies in their tent, sitting with them in white plastic lawn chairs and watching satellite television.
Louie Favorite/AJC
Sgt. Gary Warner of Cochran (right) and Spc. John Price of Metter salute Staff Sgt. Dennis Paul Merck at Wednesday’s service.
“He fell into place like one of the family,” said Staff Sgt. Joseph Williams, 43, of Forest Park, who was Merck’s squad leader.
Williams was one of dozens of 48th Brigade Combat Team soldiers who attended Merck’s memorial service Wednesday night. Merck died Oct. 20 from what the military was calling a “non-hostile gunshot wound.”
Military officials have offered no details about the shooting, saying they are still investigating. But Williams and other soldiers who were in Merck’s tent the evening he died suspect he accidentally shot himself while cleaning his rifle.
“In my heart, I think it was an accident,” said Spc. Estrell Young, 51, of Covington, one of Merck’s tent mates.
Merck’s death was the brigade’s 21st since it arrived in the Middle East in mid-May.
Merck, of Evans, graduated from Stone Mountain High School. He spent 12 years in the regular Army before joining the Georgia Army National Guard’s 878th Engineer Battalion earlier this year. When he got to Iraq last month, Merck linked up with the Statesboro-based 648th Engineer Battalion as a Humvee mechanic.
During Wednesday’s ceremony, seven riflemen fired a three-volley salute to Merck. A recording of taps was played and then, in pairs, Merck’s buddies saluted his boots and rifle, with some reaching out and gently touching his dog tags.
Merck’s friends say that they heard the gunshot around 8 p.m. Oct. 20. At first it didn’t seem real to them. But then a fellow soldier saw Merck bleeding and called for help. Merck’s rifle cleaning kit was spread out next to him on his cot, soldiers said.
Young said he rushed to Merck’s side and applied pressure to the wound in his chest with a towel. Williams said he saw Merck clutching his chest and saying, “Oh God.” A medic arrived within a few minutes, soldiers said. Merck was taken to their aid station, where he was pronounced dead.
A small bullet hole remains in the tent ceiling above where Merck slept. First Lt. Jon Fisher, the 648th chaplain, counseled Merck’s buddies and recommended they move to a new tent. But the men refused to budge.
“We all agreed we will stay here regardless of what happened,” Williams said.
Merck slept in a corner of the tent near the entrance. His buddies could see him every time they walked in and out. Other soldiers came and packed up his belongings the day after he died, leaving his corner dim and empty.
Goodbye, Lucy. He’ll miss you.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Forward Operating Base Mahmudiyah, Iraq - Lucille’s war wounds are hard to miss. Her metal hide is dotted with ugly scrapes, dents and gaping holes.
The desert-tan Humvee sustained these wounds over the past five months, surviving 10 roadside bombings from insurgents, said Sgt. Joe Picon.
Picon, of Calhoun, credits Lucille’s thick armor with saving him and other Georgia National Guard soldiers from serious injuries, even death. He named her Lucille after a close friend who died in a car wreck.
Louie Favorite/AJC
Sgt. Joe Picon is sad to bid his Humvee farewell.
Lucille was brand new when Georgia’s 1st Battalion, 108th Armor Regiment picked her up in Kuwait. Now with 5,529 miles on her, Picon is turning her in.
The Fort Campbell, Ky.-based 101st Airborne Division is taking over this base, Lucille and many of other vehicles and weapons. Picon and the rest of his unit are moving soon to a much quieter military complex called Scania, 65 miles south of Baghdad. They will get other vehicles and equipment there.
Picon hung by Lucille’s side this week, staring admiringly at her as 101st soldiers looked her over and verified she had all her parts.
“She is my baby,” said Picon, 40, a Gordon County detective who handles personal security for his battalion commander in Iraq. “Dang. I’m giving her up. Seriously, I really want to take her with me.”
Picon pointed to her various scars and recalled in detail how she got them. He said one of the roadside bombs that hit her this summer knocked everyone out in the vehicle except him.
“I felt like I got beat with a baseball bat,” he said of the headaches that followed the blast. “And then the next day, goodness gracious.”
Many soldiers have good luck charms in their vehicles. Picon’s is a small scrap of paper that reads: “Trust in God.” A friend gave it to him. He stuck it to Lucille’s windshield, where it points toward the road.
Picon’s counterpart from the 101st showed up as he was talking. Picon turned to Staff Sgt. Grant Wilson, and asked him what name he will give the Humvee.
“I have a name for her - Sally. Like Mustang Sally. I’m a Mustang freak,” said Wilson, 39, of Annandale, Va., who has a green 1965 Ford Mustang back home.
Picon smiled: “I like that.” And then he repeated himself, as if he was still getting used to her new name: “I like that.”
As a sign of approval, Picon reached up and bumped his fist against Wilson’s.
Now Picon could move on.
Top 10 ways to remember Iraq
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Forward Operating Base Yusufiyah, Iraq — Soldiers stationed at this makeshift base are dreaming of major remodeling plans for their houses back in Georgia.
Louie Favorite/AJC
Sgt. Nicholas Greer of Jacksonville, Fla., (kneeling) and Sgt. Michael Flanagan of Detroit do their laundry at the former potato factory where some Georgia National Guard troops have been living. • More photos of life in the potato factory.
They want to make changes so they won’t feel too out of place moving back to their more traditional homes next year.
After all, for the past five months, they have been living in a cavernous industrial building that once housed a potato factory.
You have to have a good sense of humor to live in this Spartan place. The soldiers sleep in large, open bays where the potatoes were once stored. Their base is surrounded by concrete barriers and guard towers.
Insurgents occasionally fire mortars and rockets at the base. Civilian contract workers, according to the soldiers, are too afraid to come here.
In the coming days, Georgia National Guard soldiers will pull out of here and assume new missions at more substantial bases farther south. Their redeployment home is still scheduled for late May or early June 2006.
But they have already started dreaming about renovation plans for their own homes. So here is the top 10 list of “to-do” things provided by several soldiers for when they get back to Georgia. They are in no particular order.
(Don’t worry, spouses, they are only joking. I think.)
Level my house. And, in its place, build a sheet metal building with a single small air conditioning unit on top.
Rebuild my driveway into a serpentine-shaped entrance for security precautions.
Hire a bunch of Iraqi Army soldiers to guard my home because they will shoot at anything.
Have someone throw a stick of dynamite in my yard occasionally to help me sleep.
Disconnect the air conditioning system in my truck and drive around my neighborhood with the windows rolled up.
Add a garbage burn pit to my yard.
Throw out my mattress and sleep on lumpy piles of junk.
Surround my house with coils of barbed wire that has trash hanging on it.
Place one portable toilet in my yard and let all my neighbors and friends use it any time they want. Empty it only once a week.
Place 10 New York City sewer rats in my walls. And let them roam free.
Georgia soldier fights war on waste
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Camp Taji, Iraq — He might well be the only Georgia soldier in Iraq who’s armed with a spoon. Plastic at that.
Bita Honarvar/AJC
Capt. Lane carries his plastic Georgia Bulldogs cup, which he uses to cut down on waste.
In Capt. Andrew Lane’s right calf pocket are least four spoons — two white ones from the Camp Taji dining hall and two standard issue brown spoons that come with the Army’s Meals Ready to Eat. He carries them everywhere along with his flak jacket, helmet and M-16 rifle.
Lane, 32, assigned to the 118th Field Artillery Regiment’s 1st Battalion, arrived in Iraq in early June. Since then, he has been waging a personal war to conserve energy, limit waste and promote personal well-being at this camp north of Baghdad.
When he sees outside lights on during daylight hours, he rushes to switch them off. He turns off dripping faucets in the latrines.
Besides the spoons, which he reuses for his meals, Lane carries a 16-ounce Georgia Bulldogs plastic cup because the waxed paper cups at the dining halls are small and wasteful. He takes the salt and pepper packets from other soldiers’ MRE packets and adds them to what’s already on the tables.
The amount of food, plastic utensils and aluminum soda cans that ends up in the massive green trash bins are cause for sleepless nights for Lane. There’s no recycling at the military bases in Iraq.
“Just think,” he said. “By the end of my career, I will have saved the Army thousands of dollars in plasticware.”
“Most people in the military don’t think about these things,” he continued. “They should. And how great would it be to get the Iraqi people to start thinking about recycling.”
Efficiency is his business
Back home in Athens, Lane, a former police officer at the University of Georgia, works for a program jointly run by Southface Energy Institute and Jackson Electric Membership Corporation. His job is to inspect new homes for energy efficiency.
He childproofed the electrical outlets in his home even before son Christopher was born two years ago because the holes in the sockets allow cold air to seep in during the winter.
Bita Honarvar/AJC
Lane speaks with Maj. David Weis, 3rd Infantry Division Aviation Brigade public affairs officer, at a Camp Taji dining hall.
In Athens, Lane rarely drives his car; he bikes to most places and is chagrined to admit that his wife, Franchesca, drives a sport utility vehicle. He likes to listen to his dual-powered radio, which runs on a solar panel by day and a hand-cranked windup battery at night.
It’s easy to spot Lane in public places on the base. While other soldiers are in their gray Army T-shirts and black shorts, Lane is wearing 40 pounds of full body armor and his Kevlar helmet no matter how hot it gets.
Soldiers are not required to wear body armor or helmets inside the gates of large camps such as Taji, Liberty and Striker.
But the pragmatist in Lane dictates that safety comes first at all times, even when he’s taking his early morning walk.
“We’re in a war zone,” he said. “People are trying to kill us. I wear all this for the same reason you wear safety belts in a car.”
It’s also why Lane often eats lunch and dinner at odd hours, when the cafeteria is nearly empty.
“Why blow up 20 people when you can get 500?” he said.
A family man
Soldiers are perplexed by Lane. Some dismiss him as a “strange dude.” But most have come to embrace his self-professed oddities.
“He wears more body armor in [the dining facility] than we do when we’re out on patrol,” said 1st Lt. David Disi of a Rhode Island infantry company that is attached to the 118th.
The burly, blond Lane stands to win a $20 bet if he can go through the entire yearlong deployment in full armor. As one soldier pointed out, Lane has made it through the sweltering summer months in Iraq. The rest of the time should be a relative breeze.
Lane is first and foremost a family man — his son Christopher is the main reason he stayed in the Georgia Army National Guard. He wanted “to put food on the table” for his family.
But he also believes strongly in the war on terrorism.
“I stayed in so I could help make the bad people go away,” Lane said. “Iraq seems to be a magnet for bad people.”
But saving the planet for generations to come is Lane’s second passion.
He began small — collecting aluminum cans on campus and recycling them, earning about $150 a month. Later, at Fort Benning, he took extra food that would have been thrown away to a local battered women’s shelter. He collected recyclables and took the long way back to the barracks to dump them at the PX recycling center.
“To throw away packaged food when people are hungry, it’s crazy,” Lane said.
Lane admits his military career sometimes puts him at odds with environmentalists.
“Sometimes I have to tell them, ‘Hey, I’m on your side,’ ” Lane said. “Just because I’m in this uniform, doesn’t mean I’m some sort of Nazi.”
Sgt. Dennis Merck: Loved country, military
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
When Staff Sgt. Dennis Paul Merck moved into a new home with his family this summer, there was one improvement that couldn’t wait.
Family photo
Staff Sgt. Dennis Paul Merck, a graduate of Stone Mountain High School, sits with his children (from left) Nicholas, 17; Jacob, 10; and Mackenzi, 15.
“The first thing he said was, ‘I want a huge flagpole for the front yard,’ ” said his wife, Tanya Merck. So she bought him a 20-foot pole and he put it up right away.
Merck, an Evans resident and graduate of Stone Mountain High School, died in Iraq on Thursday. His wife remembers him as a patriotic man who loved his country and the military.
Merck, 38, joined the Georgia National Guard around the start of the year though he knew he might get sent to war.
He ended a 12-year career in the regular Army in March 2002 because his wife and children were tired of moving so much, but he ended up missing his life in the military. Tanya Merck said she had to support his decision.
“He loved the regiment, he loved the structure, the whole stability of what the military offered. He didn’t feel like he was a complete person without that in his life,” she said in a telephone interview Sunday. After he signed up for the Guard, she said, she could tell that he once again felt like he had a real purpose.
Merck, a diesel mechanic in civilian life, was called up to join the 48th Brigade Combat Team and arrived in Iraq a little more than a month ago. He died due to a “nonhostile” gunshot wound, Army officials said. His death is being investigated, and officials said Sunday they had no additional details.
Merck’s death was the 22nd among members of the 48th Brigade since the Georgia-based unit was mobilized in January. He was assigned to the 648th Engineer Battalion.
Tanya Merck, 35, said Army officials told her that her husband died at his base, Camp Striker, and suffered a gunshot wound to the chest. She has heard rumors that he might have been cleaning his gun.
The Mercks met as teenagers at Stone Mountain High School. She was 14 going on 15 and he had just turned 17. He asked her out but her father said she couldn’t date until her 15th birthday. So Dennis Merck went to meet her parents, and they were persuaded. “My dad said you could tell he had a good upbringing… . He was very respectful,” she said.
Dec. 5 would have been their 18th wedding anniversary. The couple had three children: Nicholas, 17; Mackenzi, 15; and Jacob, 10.
Merck’s deployment to Iraq was his first time in combat. Tanya Merck said he wouldn’t tell her much about his missions because he didn’t want to worry her. (Members of the 648th often are assigned the dangerous job of removing roadside bombs.)
He would tell her about how sand would get into everything and how the heat made him feel like somebody always was holding a blow drier over his head.
She got an e-mail from him about six hours before he died. He sent her the lyrics to a song, “It Takes Two” by country singer Chris Cagle. She said he asked her to always think about him when she heard it. And he mentioned that he’d sent her two letters.
At the time, she said, it seemed odd that he took the time to write a letter on paper when he was also e-mailing her. Now, she’s waiting for them to arrive.
“I guess God knew I needed something in writing, something I could read over and over, something I could have physically.”
Dennis Merck also is survived by his mother, Retha Merck of Snellville; and brothers, Darren of Loganville and Bryan of Las Vegas. Funeral arrangements are pending.
Flying Red Dog Air with the 101st
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Lutayfiyah, Iraq - The cords insurgents often use to detonate their bombs are bright red. Be on the lookout for them along roadsides.
Be respectful when you interview Iraqi women. Most are honest and will give you tips about insurgents.
And watch for pigeons taking flight as you enter towns. Insurgents use them to signal you are coming.
Louie Favorite/AJC
Soldiers of the 48th and 101st searched this car and its occupants because the car fit the description of one known to have been used by insurgents. More photos
Sfc. Chris Cleary, 37, of Calhoun, was giving a new soldier some advice this morning. Sitting next to Cleary in his Humvee was Spc. Jaime Lara, 20, of El Paso, Texas. Lara is a medic with the Fort Campbell, Ky.-based 101st Airborne Division. Soldiers from the 101st have been arriving here in large numbers to replace Cleary and fellow Georgia National Guardsmen with the 48th Brigade Combat Team.
After spending five months just south of Baghdad, the Georgians will be assuming new missions at other bases across Iraq. Many have already moved.
Meanwhile, Cleary and other soldiers in his unit are pumping vital information into their replacements. Soldiers from both units have been pairing up and patrolling through Lutayfiyah on foot at night and during the day.
As the two sat in their Humvee this morning, Cleary pulled a flat, silver-colored knife out of a strap on his body armor and held it up to Lara.
“You need a flat knife,” said Cleary, who leads his unit’s “Red Dog” platoon. “I have opened many a door with this. It does a pretty good job. Six dollars. You can’t beat it.”
As the two talked, a roadside bomb exploded outside their base. They could see a smoke cloud rising in the distance. Cleary told Lara that it won’t take him long to receive a combat metal in this town. Insurgents frequently attack U.S. soldiers here with roadside bombs and mortars.
“There is always something going on,” said Cleary, an engineer for the city of Calhoun.
Lara learned that the hard way on only his second day at Cleary’s base. On Thursday, insurgents hit the base and an adjoining Iraqi Army compound with eight mortar rounds, injuring two Iraqi soldiers. Lara helped treat the more seriously wounded of the two.
On that day, Lara survived his first mortar attack and treated his first trauma patient. Today was his first patrol outside the wire.
“We have a lot to learn from them,” Lara said of Cleary and the other battle-hardened Georgians. Many of Lara’s fellow paratroopers, however, have already served in Iraq. They took part in the 2003 invasion. Despite their extensive experience, the 101st veterans have been quietly observing the Georgians, listening intently to their advice about this new terrain.
With Cleary by his side, Lara and several other soldiers patrolled around Lutayfiyah today, searching suspicious cars and hunting roadside bombs. Cleary pointed out craters from roadside bombs and places where U.S. helicopters could land and pick up wounded soldiers.
As they entered downtown Lutayfiyah, the two spotted a spray of gray and white pigeons flying from a rooftop. The sight infuriated Cleary. He parked his Humvee and marched into the building with Lara guarding his back.
Cleary climbed a few flights of stairs and found a man on the roof with some pigeon cages. Through his Arabic interpreter, Cleary warned the man never to “slap” his pigeons again when his men roll into town.
“Why are you letting everyone know that I’m here?” Cleary asked the man.
The man smiled and pleaded ignorance, saying he wasn’t signaling anyone.
Cleary and Lara searched the man’s home and then proceeded through town. As they neared their base, Cleary warned Lara: “Don’t ever let your guard down. Always have that (medical) bag ready to rock.”
Their patrol was over. It was a successful day. No one got hurt. Cleary turned to Lara again: “Thanks for flying Red Dog Air. Hope you got something out of it.”
Lara: “Heck, yeah.”
Dublin football rides on heroes’ cheers
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
In a small town like Dublin, football can excite hearts and hopes.
In a faraway place like Baghdad, it can connect a soldier to home.
Ben Gray/AJC
Dublin High cheerleaders Tameko Demnson (left) and Michelle Rardin attach a banner Thursday in the football team’s locker room. The team has a perfect shutout season in its sights. Tonight, in the sold-out Shamrock Bowl at Dublin High School, the dreams of Dubliners in both places will stand another test. The Fighting Irish will go into tonight’s game undefeated — and without having given up a single point this season.
On the streets of this town of 16,000, and in a war zone more than 6,000 miles away, there is talk of breaking state records, going to playoffs, even getting to the state finals.
The excitement flows through the phone lines from one side of the world to another.
Loren Rhyne is a cheerleader who also plays clarinet in Dublin’s marching band. Her parents are Dublin grads, and high school football has been a family event since she was little. Now, when her father calls from Iraq, the team is Topic A.
Most of the time, of course, is spent talking about how 14-year-old Loren is doing in school. But “the first thing he asks,” says Loren, “is ‘Has anyone scored on us and are we still undefeated?’
“I always say some smart comment like ‘We’re just that good.’ “
Loren’s father, Sgt. Anthony King, is a forklift operator for the local Best Buy distribution center who shipped out with the Georgia National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team. There are 62 citizen-soldiers from Laurens County serving in Iraq, plus local residents in the regular military. Even the school police officer from Dublin High School is over there, fulfilling his duty with the Guard.
King is with Dublin’s Alpha Co. of the 148th Support Battalion. He attended two of the high school’s winning games while home on leave recently.
“I’m just waiting on a T-shirt that says ‘State Champions,’ ” says King, 40, who played wide receiver when he was a student at Dublin.
Thomas Barnes, a junior fullback and linebacker on the team, has similar conversations with his sister, Tabitha Bryant, when she calls from Iraq. The regular Army soldier wants all the details, like how many tackles he has made. (Ten in the last game.)
For Peggy Smith, whose husband and son are both in Iraq with the National Guard, attending the games is bittersweet. Her youngest daughter, Paige, is a student at the school, so she still feels a direct connection to Dublin High. And there’s the excitement of the crowd and the camaraderie of longtime friends. But when she sees some of her son’s friends, now college students, come home to cheer the team, she’s reminded of who’s not in the stands.
Still, Smith is rooting for the Fighting Irish and hopes they get into the playoffs. Her son, Greg, should be home on a two-week leave around then, and she’d like for him to see them play.
If they can keep Bleckley County High School from scoring tonight, and do the same to their opponent next week, the Dublin team will become the fourth in Georgia High School Association history to go an entire 10-game season without giving up a point. The last team to achieve that feat was West Rome in 1985.
No team has gotten within 20 yards of Dublin’s end zone since West Laurens missed a field goal attempt on Sept. 24.
The team’s offense has run over opponents, averaging more than 50 points per game. The average margin of victory — 53.6 points — is on pace to set a new GHSA record.
Dublin faced its toughest game on Oct. 1 against No. 2-ranked Vidalia. Spurred by a pregame comment by Vidalia coach Jason McBride — he praised Dublin’s team, then said that no opponent had “hit them in the mouth” like his team would — Dublin won 58-0.
In his fourth season at Dublin, coach Roger Holmes has led the Class AA team to the state semifinals twice, including a trip to the state championship game in 2002, his first year at the helm.
The dream of getting there again is a powerful force — one that has captured even graduates of rival schools.
Sgt. 1st Class J.M. Wilcox, a technician who lives in East Dublin, graduated from West Laurens High School. But with the perspective that comes from being in Iraq, he says “that’s close enough.”
“It’s incredible, unbelievable,” Wilcox, 50, says of the Dublin heroes. “I’m hoping they make history.”
— Staff writer Craig Custance contributed to this article.
Hunting for insurgents
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Lutayfiyah, Iraq — The mortar round was barely detectable as it sailed over the soldiers’ heads this afternoon. It whistled slightly and made a low humming noise — “Vip!â€?
Louie Favorite/AJC
A soldier from the 48th interrogates a young man living in a farm house outside Lutayfiyah. Mortar rounds fired from the area had just hit FOB Lutayfiyah a few miles away.
It landed about 25 meters from some Georgia National Guardsmen. The blast shredded a plastic water reservoir for their showers and punched holes in two hot water heaters.
“Mortars!� Get in the truck!� Sgt. Jess Weatherholt, 28, of Douglasville, yelled to his buddies. The men scrambled into the Humvees they had just driven from another base in the neighboring city of Mahmudiyah.
Seven more 82 mm mortar rounds hit their base and the adjoining Iraqi Army camp. One U.S. soldier was slightly wounded. Two Iraqi Army soldiers were also hurt, one seriously.
Soldiers at Forward Operating Base Lutayfiyah are used to such attacks. Since the end of August, insurgents have mortared them four times. The attacks were more frequent before then. They lessened after soldiers from Georgia’s 1st Battalion of the 108th Armor Regiment started ambushing the insurgents.
After the last mortar round exploded this afternoon, Weatherholt rolled out in a Humvee to hunt the insurgents with other soldiers in his “Red Dogs� platoon as well as some troops from the Fort Campbell, Ky.-based 101st Airborne Division.
A U.S. military radar identified the location where the insurgents fire the mortars. Within minutes, Weatherholt and his buddies reached that location. It was on a dirt road beside a deep canal in the countryside. The area is called the “Triangle of Death,� because it includes three cities south of Baghdad where a robust insurgency persists.
An unmanned reconnaissance plane spotted some people running into a house near the mortar site. Weatherholt and the others hustled into the house and found two women and five children cowering in a bedroom.
Louie Favorite/AJC
Sgt. Daniel Carroll, a 24-year-old college student from Dalton, questions a woman outside Lutayfiyah. Mortar rounds fired from this area had hit FOB Lutayfiyah a few miles away.
Sgt. Daniel Carroll, 24, of Dalton, turned to his Arabic interpreter and asked him, “Did they see any vehicles?�
“La. La. La,� one of the women responded in Arabic, signifying no. Carroll asked her several more questions. He was polite but direct. The woman claimed her family did not witness anything.
Staff Sgt. John Conley eventually stepped in and took over the questioning. He typically plays bad cop, while Carroll plays good cop.
Conley set his sites on the oldest boy in the family. The boy said his family didn’t see anything.
Conley grew frustrated. He knows that some Iraqis refuse to cooperate with U.S. soldiers for fear insurgents will kill them.
Conley warned the boy to be on the lookout for insurgents and to turn them in if he sees them. Otherwise, he said, U.S. artillery could accidentally hit his house while responding to the mortars.
“I don’t want to see anyone’s house get blown up, but they have to do something for themselves. Nobody ever sees anything. It’s always a ‘safe area,’� said Conley, 40, an intense, shotgun-wielding soldier who lives in the Atlanta area and works for the Department of Homeland Security.
As the troops pulled away from the boy’s house, Conley spotted where the insurgents dug a hole in the dirt road for their mortar tube. A nearly identical hole from a previous attack was next to it. Moments later, a report came over Conley’s radio about a roadside bomb.
Fellow U.S. soldiers found the improvised explosive device on another route to where the mortar was fired.
They suspected the insurgents set the bomb there, expecting to hit soldiers hunting them. U.S. bomb experts safely destroyed it.
The Red Dogs were starting to head home after four hours of hunting their attackers, when Conley growled, “I hate this place.�
Bombs can make tank fly
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Lutiyfiyah, Iraq — The roadside bomb was so powerful it rocked the 70-ton tank.
A mushroom cloud of smoke and sand enveloped the crew of Georgia National Guard soldiers inside.
Louie Favorite/AJC
An M-1A1 Abrams tank on a site in Lutiyfiyah that was at one time headquarters for the Medina Republican Guard.
No one was injured in the blast south of Baghdad Wednesday afternoon. And the tank suffered nothing more than some chipped paint.
But the attack underscored how insurgents are targeting tanks with roadside bombs. They haven’t killed any Georgians riding in them, but their massive bombs have disabled some of the heavily armored hulks.
On Sept. 11, a roadside bomb badly damaged one of the M-1A1 Abrams tanks of the 48th Brigade Combat Team. The explosion blew the tank at least four feet into the air and flung a 900-pound piece of its metal skirt 85 meters away. No one was seriously injured.
“I was able to get a good four-syllable curse word out before we hit the ground,” said the tank’s gunner, Sgt. Andrew Field, 33, a former Marine from Marietta.
Louie Favorite/AJC
Tanks shoot rounds at tall structures to prevent insurgents from using them to trigger IEDs.
Field and other soldiers with Georgia’s 1st Battalion, 108th Armor Regiment patrol areas south of Baghdad in Abrams tanks. They credit the vehicles with saving their lives and deterring attacks. Some soldiers lovingly call their tanks “pigs.” One is nicknamed “Bada Bing!” Another one goes by “Allah’s Little Helper.”
Field’s tank was about 800 meters behind the one that got hit Wednesday. His driver, Spc. Jason Fritzler, 34, of Oklahoma, reacted quickly, identifying the bomb as an improvised explosive device.
“IED!” Fritzler announced over the tank’s radio system. “It hit the commander’s tank on the left side!”
Field turned his tank’s main gun to the right, searching for the triggerman. He suspected the bomb was detonated by someone hiding off the side of the road.
“He has to be here somewhere,” Field said. “He couldn’t be too far off the highway. There is no way.”
A man in an orange Mercedes truck pulled onto the shoulder beside their convoy before the explosion. So 2nd Lt. John Pinion, 23, of LaFayette, hopped out of his hatch and searched the vehicle. He found only sand in the back. The driver was briefly detained and then released.
Louie Favorite/AJC
Lt. Col. John King, who is Doraville’s police chief, helps load a HEAT (High Explosive Anti Tank) round into his tank.
Up the road, the tank that was hit put out suppressive fire with its M240 coaxial machine gun. Then the tank fired its main gun at something suspicious behind a sand berm. But no one was there.
Lt. Col. John King, the battalion commander, hopped out of the tank with his men and scrambled through some muddy canals, searching for the triggerman.
King, 42, Doraville’s police chief, suspected the bomb was a single artillery shell buried on the side of the road. He and his men searched five houses and found nothing. But they discovered something suspicious at least 500 meters from the road — a pair of black plastic sandals and some footprints in the sand.
The prints led away from the blast crater.
Shared language, bond of brothers
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Forward Operating Base Yusufiyah, Iraq — At nightfall, the Iraqi army officers shed their uniforms, slip into athletic sweat suits and sandals and crowd into a small office in what once was a cavernous potato factory.
As they smoke cigarettes and drink hot tea in their makeshift base, they watch “The Simpsons” on TV and tease each other, laughing uproariously.
Among their group is an American visitor, Maj. Ray Bossert of the Georgia Army National Guard. He nods knowingly and laughs along with them as they joke in Arabic. Bossert has a tremendous advantage in his job as their U.S. military adviser: He grew up in Lebanon and speaks Arabic.
“You are on the inside” as an Arabic speaker, said Bossert, 38, a Douglasville resident and veteran of Panama, Bosnia, Operation Desert Storm and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. “The bond is a lot closer.”
Louie Favorite/AJC
Maj. Ray Bossert (right) of Douglasville jokes with Lt. Col. Kadhim, commander of the Iraqi battalion at Yusufiyah.
Bossert is one of hundreds of American soldiers building and training the Iraqi army, including dozens from Georgia’s 48th Brigade Combat Team. Military officials are reluctant to disclose exact numbers for security reasons, but that training is seen by the Bush administration as a major step toward stabilizing the war-torn country and allowing the U.S. military to pull out.
In Yusufiyah, Bossert’s 17-man team is responsible for the 4th Battalion of the 4th Brigade of Iraqi’s 6th Infantry Division, a unit with 550 soldiers.
U.S. soldiers occupy one side of the potato factory and the Iraqis occupy the other. But they mingle throughout the day and share guard duty.
Solid relationships
Bossert has spent a great deal of time over the last three years training Iraqi soldiers and police. In 2003 and 2004, he worked with Iraqi security forces in the insurgent hotbeds of Ramadi and Fallujah while attached to the 82nd Airborne Division.
Those experiences have enabled Bossert to cultivate relationships with the Iraqis away from the battlefield. It is through informal gatherings like the one with the Iraqi officers where he says he can get business done. Between tall tales and jokes, they plan missions to hunt insurgents.
“We work together like brothers, like family,” said the Iraqi battalion commander, Lt. Col. Kadhim, who asked that his full name not be used for fear of insurgent retaliation.
Bossert has gained such respect from the Iraqis that fellow U.S. soldiers have nicknamed him Master Yoda, the “Star Wars” movie character who has unusual powers. They gave him that name after witnessing him persuade obstinate Iraqis to agree to missions by simply waving his hand, almost as if he is using some unseen brainwashing power.
“I like doing stuff that has an impact,” said Bossert, a compact man with green eyes and a shaved head. “The little steps we take make you feel good at the end of the day.”
Setting an example
Bossert’s men have followed his example in bonding with their Iraqi counterparts. Many have become friends by spending hours together in guard towers or on patrol outside their base. They greet each other with warm handshakes and brotherly hugs. The Iraqis cook them meals of rice, boiled chicken and fried fish.
Occasionally, they play soccer on a concrete surface beside piles burning garbage. The Iraqis mark the goal posts with their sandals, and some play barefoot. There seems to be no out-of-bounds. The play is somewhat rough. The Iraqis never lose.
The men look out for each other, too. Last week, U.S. medics treated three Iraqi soldiers wounded by a roadside bomb. Before that incident, Iraqi soldiers evacuated three of Bossert’s men from the field after they were injured in a similar bombing.
“All of the Iraqi people will remember what the American people did for Iraq because they brought down Saddam Hussein,” said Kadhim, 48, who said he was jailed and tortured by Hussein’s regime for being a Shiite.
Bossert meets with Kadhim almost daily. One night last week, the major showed up at Kadhim’s spare office to talk. The Iraqi rose from his desk and asked in Arabic if he wanted tea. Bossert said yes in Arabic.
A young Iraqi soldier appeared at the door, holding a silver tray with Styrofoam cups full of dark tea. He stomped his right foot on the floor as a salute to Kadhim.
As the two sipped the hot tea, Kadhim teased Bossert about his bald head. Then, the conversation turned to Bossert’s plans to leave soon. Bossert will be taking on a new mission in the southern Iraqi city of Basra as the 48th Brigade Combat Team’s liaison to British forces. The brigade is changing missions and spreading out across Iraq.
‘We will miss them’
Kadhim joked that he will get Bossert an Iraqi wife to keep him in Yusufiyah, a town of about 20,000 Sunnis and Shiites where a violent insurgency persists.
“We will miss them,” Kadhim said of Bossert and his men. And then he shyly admitted, “I am an emotional guy.”
Kadhim said Bossert has helped him immensely, teaching him to be patient and assess battle situations before acting.
“That’s interesting because I thought I learned patience from him,” Bossert replied.
Kadhim complained to Bossert how U.S. soldiers recently didn’t recognize him at the front gate to the base. He said they kept him waiting nearly an hour until they could confirm his identity. Bossert promised it would not happen again.
Later that same evening, Kadhim stopped by Bossert’s office. Kadhim was in uniform but was wearing some blue Fila flip-flops. Bossert was ready for bed, wearing a T-shirt and underwear. He sipped from a green bottle of non-alcoholic St. Pauli Girl beer. One of Bossert’s men quickly fetched Kadhim a cola.
They sat across from each other near a wooden wall dotted with gaping shrapnel holes from an insurgent’s mortar round.
Kadhim had some news for Bossert. A one-star Iraqi general was coming for a visit the next day. He wanted to check security at some Iraqi polling places for the Oct. 15 vote on the national constitution.
As the two worked out their plans, Kadhim picked up a Halloween toy Bossert’s wife sent him. Kadhim pushed a button on the spring-loaded toy and a Count Dracula head popped up, announcing, “You can Count on me.” Kadhim chuckled. He teased Bossert for working too hard and not coming over to the Iraqi side for meals as often as he should.
The two chatted like that for many moments, switching back and forth between English and Arabic and laughing as the night wore on.
Life at an old potato factory
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Yusufiyah, Iraq — U.S. and Iraqi soldiers occupy a former potato factory in this town of roughly 20,000 Sunni and Shiite residents. In between missions are laundry, dining and relaxation.
Louie Favorite/AJC
At FOB Yusufiyah, Staff Sgt. James Wasson (right) and Sgt. Thomas Mann laugh about future home repair projects. • MORE PHOTOS OF CAMP YUSUFIYAH.
The U.S. soldiers live on one side of the base, while the Iraqis occupy the other.
Keeping a somber tally
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
If there’s sad news on U.S. or coalition losses to report, Michael White updates his Web site — icasualties.org — before leaving for his paying job as a software engineer in Alpharetta. • STORY.
Faith carries him through deployment
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
[Latest installment of “One Town’s War,” a series documenting the deployment of Guard soldiers from Dublin]
Baghdad, Iraq — A deacon at Mount Tilla Missionary Baptist Church near Dublin, Ricky Stanley relies on his faith more than anything else to carry him through his yearlong deployment. In the beginning, not even that seemed enough. • STORY, PHOTOS.
Soldiers note Iraqi voter turnout higher than back home
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Yusufiyah, Iraq - The woman in the black abaya and bright blue dress zigzagged through a maze of concertina wire, around rifle-wielding Iraqi soldiers and into an elementary school to cast her ballot this morning.
One poll worker checked Sadia Ali Mutar’s identity. The next volunteer handed her a red, white and blue ballot. And a third man led her behind a cardboard screen. She checked “Yes” on her ballot, signifying she supports the proposed national constitution.
Louie Favorite/AJC
Sadia Ali Mutar shows off her ink-stained hand after voting Saturday.
Mutar proudly disclosed she had studied the document before arriving at her polling place. She hopes it will boost security in her mostly rural farming community, located about 10 miles south of Baghdad. This area is nicknamed “The Triangle of Death” for its violent insurgency.
“I know it very well. It’s a very good constitution,” she said through an Arabic interpreter who was working with Georgia National Guard soldiers at the voting sites. “I accept it 100 percent.”
Mutar, a homemaker and mother of nine, added she was glad she could vote in the referendum. “Women are very important in society,” she declared.
She dropped her folded ballot in a clear plastic container. And then an election official led her to a small table with an orange bottle of indelible ink. She dipped her right index finger in it. The blue stain lasts for 72 hours and protects against people voting more than once.
Mutar smiled as the poll workers encouraged her to show off her ink-stained finger. While she prepared to leave, a visitor asked her if she thought the constitution would pass. “Inshalah,” she responded in Arabic for “If God wills it.”
Louie Favorite/AJC
Volunteer poll workers frisk a voter as he enters the Omer Bin Kadab primary school in Yusufiyah.
A few hours later, insurgents mortared a separate polling place several hundred yards away. They fired a mortar at a third polling place Thursday, slightly injuring a small girl. They also fired a rocket-propelled grenade at the U.S. base here and fired mortars and detonated roadside bombs near surrounding U.S. and Iraqi checkpoints Friday. No one was injured in the attacks.
Poll workers paused for about 10 minutes when the mortar rounds exploded near them in an open field today. And then they resumed work.
“It’s like I heard music. We hear that everyday,” said Abtisam Abbas, 38, a pharmacist from Baghdad who was frisking female voters at the entrance to the site.
Like Mutar, Abbas voted for the constitution.
“We have to show the Arabic countries that we have democracy in Iraq,” said Abbas, who wore a cream-colored headscarf and blue floral-print dress.
Of the three polling sites in this town, Abbas was at the busiest. About 1,700 voters showed up there by 2:45 p.m. Turnout was light in the two other locations this morning. Less than 10 appeared at one site in the first hour.
Dozens of poll workers — who are each being paid the equivalent of $200 — stood around at one site with little to do, complaining that they wanted to eat. They predicted, however, that turnout would increase as the day wore on. The polls were set to close at 5 p.m.
Amad Hussein Asey is one of 265 volunteer poll workers who arrived here from Baghdad on cattle trucks Friday afternoon. He said he dreamed of his three young children as he slept Friday night at Sadir Al Yusufiyah, a girls secondary school.
Louie Favorite/AJC
Security was everywhere during Saturday’s vote.
“First of all, it is for my country,” said Asey, 37, a national treasury employee. “The situation in Iraq is bad. People need security and to stabilize their country.”
About 20,000 people were expected to vote here by the end of the day. The only requirements to vote: you must be an Iraqi citizen, at least 18 years old and have photo identification. Prisoners were allowed to vote earlier this week.
Ali Hatim Hussein, 22, a specialist in the Iraq army, took a break from manning a checkpoint today to vote. He said he hopes a new constitution will increase his county’s stability and make it unnecessary for U.S. forces to be here.
“We appreciate the coalition for what they did for us and we will never forget it. But it is important for the Iraqi citizens to see an Iraqi army protecting them,” he said.
Sgt. Casey Roberts stood guard outside the school where Hussein voted, observing people streaming in and out.
“It’s a better turnout then what you get back home,” said Roberts, 31, a police detective from Statesboro. “These folks are facing bodily harm to come here, but they are coming out. It’s kind of neat, something I can look back on and tell my kids about.”
Roberts is a medic, so he was popular this morning. An elderly man who showed up to vote approached him, complaining of involuntary shaking. Roberts said he appeared to have Parkinson’s disease. He promised to help him get medical care in Baghdad.
Earlier in the morning, one of the top Iraqi election official politely asked for Roberts and the other U.S. soldiers to stay outside the polling places. Maj. Ray Bossert agreed, instructing his men to keep a low profile. They were stationed at the voting sites, he said, only in case of emergencies. The Iraqi army was in charge of security.
“That’s the way it should be,” Bossert, 38, a retiree from Douglasville, said as he walked through the town’s garbage strewn streets. “There should be an Iraqi face on the whole thing. We should be in the background.”
Tahir K. Kadhim was one of the first voters to show up at his polling place this morning. The 63-year-old repairman wore his blue Ministry of Electricity jumpsuit to vote. It was open at the collar, revealing dark reddish skin weathered by Iraq’s scorching sun. He showed a poll worker his orange and blue government employee identification card.
“Just sign yes or no. You don’t need to write down your name,” a volunteer told Kadhim as he handed him a ballot.
Kadhim checked “yes” on the ballot, which reveals seashell designs when held up to the light. Kadhim said he cannot read but he heard about the constitution on TV and has faith it will make things better in Iraq.
“In Saddam Hussein’s time, there was security. But now we can’t feel secure in our city,” said Kadhim, who boasts about his two wives and 18 children. “We need security. And the people will get jobs. There are a lot of people who have no work. God bless everybody.”
Before leaving, Kadhim dipped his finger in the indelible ink. He said he wouldn’t try to conceal the stain or scrub it off, despite threats from insurgents. He said he wasn’t scared. God, he said, could take his life at any time.
Georgia unit loses soldier
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
An Illinois soldier attached to Georgia’s 48th Brigade Combat Team in Iraq died this week from a noncombat related injury, military officials said.
Spc. James T. Grijalva, 26, of Burbank, Ill., is the 21st soldier with the Georgia Army National Guard unit to die since it was mobilized in January.
Grijalva served in the Urbana-based 2nd Battalion, 130th Infantry Regiment.
Military officials did not release any additional information about Grijalva’s death but said it is under investigation.
“Our hearts go out to the family and friends of this brave Illinois Guard soldier, as well as the members of the 130th Infantry,” Maj. Gen. Randal Thomas, commander of the Illinois National Guard, said in a statement.
Grijalva, graduated from Chicago’s Curie Metropolitan High School in 1998 and enlisted in the Army a year later. He joined the Guard in May, 2004.
Illinois National Guard spokesman Col. Tim Franklin said he had no further details on Grijalva’s death. He said that family members declined comment.
No funeral arrangements have been announced.
Since the 48th Brigade arrived in Iraq in early June, 19 soldiers have died, including five in noncombat related incidents. The brigade lost two other soldiers in accidents, one in Kuwait and another during training at Fort Stewart. Grijalva is the 13th casualty for the Illinois Guard since the start of the war in March 2003.
Soldiers guard against election disruptions
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Forward Operating Base Yusufiyah, Iraq - You can see seashell watermarks when you hold the red, white and blue ballots up to the light.
The ballots are simple in their design, asking only one question: “Do you accept the constitution?” There are empty white boxes for voters to press their ink-stained thumbprints for “No” or “Yes.”
Volunteer poll workers arrived here on cattle trucks and began unloading the ballots Friday afternoon. There were 265 men crammed together and sweating under a blazing sun.
Louie Favorite/AJC
A young Iraqi soldier waves his flag after escorting election workers. .
“It was very hot and most of them were fasting for Ramadan,” said Ibrahem Hameed Sa’eed, 48, of Baghdad, a former Iraqi army captain who supervised yesterday’s trip.
Because of tight security, it took them roughly seven hours to drive 10 miles on open roads from Baghdad. Iraqi security forces have banned all other civilian traffic until after the election. They hope to prevent suicide car-bombings.
Georgia Army National Guard soldiers escorted the poll workers in Humvees. Apache helicopters hovered overhead. U.S. tanks lined the way. Iraqi soldiers wielding AK-47s joined the convoy, waving their country’s black, red, green and white flag.
The soldiers don’t want anything to disrupt Saturday’s referendum on Iraq’s proposed national constitution.
Too many volunteers showed up for the job Friday. They were expecting five polling places, but only three were made available. So more than 80 people will work at each location Saturday, organizing lines, confirming voters’ identities and helping them cast ballots.
Sa’eed said each volunteer will receive $200 U.S. for working the polls.
“Our goal is not the money. Our goal is to serve the Iraqi people and make them know about democracy,” Sa’eed said. “This is very important.”
Many volunteers prepared to sleep at their posts overnight. They brought bags of clothing and blankets. Some walked downtown and bought watermelons and soft drinks.
Sa’eed watched as some of the workers filed into a high school for girls. It will serve as one of this town’s three polling places. Insurgents fired a mortar round at the school Thursday, slightly wounding one girl.
This town of roughly 25,000 Sunni and Shiite residents is part of a restive area south of Baghdad called the Triangle of Death. Hussein’s elite Republican Guard had a barracks here before the U.S. invasion. Looters left it in ruins following the war.
This base is the former site of the town’s main industry, a potato factory. It once employed thousands of workers, including some who managed surrounding farms. Georgia National Guard soldiers occupy it now.
Insurgents attacked the base Friday evening with a rocket-propelled grenade. Iraqi troops responded by lighting up the sky with illumination rounds and a barrage of machine gun fire.
Also Friday, insurgents detonated roadside bombs and fired mortars at surrounding U.S. and Iraqi outposts. No one was injured in the attacks.
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Mad Max and the Potatodome
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Forward Operating Base Yusufiyah, Iraq — It’s big and ugly. But the Iraqi soldiers like it.
U.S. troops here have nicknamed it “Mad Max.” It is parked next to the former potato factory that soldiers converted into their base.
Iraqi troops typically ride around in civilian pickup trucks that can’t stand up to insurgents’ roadside bombs. U.S. soldiers here have been pushing for more heavily armored vehicles for them. So Georgia’s 148th Support Battalion delivered last month.
Louie Favorite/AJC
Mad Max ready for patrol.
Welders from the battalion attached sheets of metal to the sides and front of the truck, strong enough to stop small arms fire and some roadside bombs. They even added a ladder to the back, so the Iraqis can climb in and out. It can hold as many as 20 in the back.
Sgt. 1st Class Thomas Mann, 41, of Foley, Ala., tapped its armored hide and proudly declared: “That is a piece of art.”
The inspiration came from the truck’s brother. It got hit with a roadside bomb in July. Six Iraqi soldiers were killed. The truck’s rusting carcass sits off to the side of this base.
“That was a heartbreaking day,” said Mann, who helps train Iraqi soldiers here.
The Iraqis say the truck is an improvement over what they have had. They laughingly call it “Stealth” because it is so heavy and slow. A twin nicknamed “Road Warrior” arrived Wednesday night.
Tied for first in bombs and bullets
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Forward Operating Base Yusufiyah, Iraq — Soldiers jokingly call it the “Leader Board.”
The dry erase board hanging on an office wall here ranks which soldiers have survived the most small arms fire and bomb attacks in Iraq.
Among the 23 Americans who have trained Iraqi soldiers at this base, Spc. Keith Weathers and Maj. Ray Bossert are tied with seven apiece.
Weathers’ closest call was July 17. A roadside bomb hit his Humvee. He felt the shockwave vibrate through his body. Weathers passed out after he stepped outside the vehicle. The gunner and an interpreter in the back seat were wounded by shrapnel.
“You feel the pressure and then you hear the bang and your ears start ringing,” said Weathers, 24, a father of two from Lawrenceville. “It was pretty rough. It banged me up.”
Weathers glanced at the white board Thursday afternoon and noticed he and Bossert survived five of the same attacks.
“I think he’s bad luck,” Weathers said of his longtime friend.
Bossert, 38, of Douglasville, responded: “Do you see me in a hospital yet? No. So, I have good luck.”
The soldiers don’t count mortar attacks on the board because there have been too many. Since June 1, insurgents have mortared this base 73 times.
One 120mm round hit the concrete just outside, spraying Bossert’s office with shrapnel. His wooden walls look like Swiss cheese.
Even the Leader Board didn’t escape harm. The blast knocked it off the wall and bent its frame. With a red marker, a soldier circled a shrapnel hole in it and dated it Aug. 20.
One for the board!
The ‘killed in action’ key
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Forward Operating Base Yusufiyah, Iraq — The KIA truck key is bent at a nearly 90-degree angle.
Spc. Thomas Barron, who grew up in Columbus, calls it his “killed in action” key. He keeps it in his backpack beside his bunk. It reminds him of a certain night last month.
Louie Favorite/AJC
Barron is not sure if he hit the driver or if the driver triggered the bomb too soon.
Barron was perched on a rooftop near a bridge spanning the Euphrates River. The sun was setting. Several other soldiers were sleeping or relaxing on a floor below him. Some were in a neighboring building.
Barron saw a blue KIA truck barreling toward their outpost. He knew something was wrong. It was traveling too fast. He could see a young man in the driver seat.
There was no time to fire warning shots. Barron started yelling “VBIED” to his buddies below, short for vehicle borne improvised explosive device. He blasted the windshield with his M-16.
“I was pulling as fast as I could on the trigger. I had an unbelievable amount of adrenaline at the time,” said Barron, 29, a medic with the 1st Battalion, 108th Armor Regiment.
Just as the truck entered a gap in the surrounding concertina wire, it exploded. It left a 6-foot wide crater. The engine block landed about 30 meters away. When it exploded, the truck was within 40 meters of the building. One soldier was wounded by shrapnel.
Barron is not sure if he hit the driver or if the driver triggered the bomb too soon.
“His attention to his duty and his professionalism saved us all,” said Barron’s platoon sergeant, Sgt. 1st Class Brian Green, 40, of Aragon, Ga.
A fellow soldier found the KIA key lying near the blast crater and gave it to Barron, whose unit has recommended him for a commendation.
“Anything less than a Bronze Star,” Green said, “would be laughable.”
48th provides protection for the election
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Baghdad, Iraq — The old man with the penetrating green eyes watched approvingly as a convoy of Georgia National Guard soldiers pulled into his neighborhood.
Louie Favorite/AJC
Sgt. David Bell (left), a corrections officer from Camilla, and Lt. Michael Zellous, a schoolteacher from McDonough, who was in charge of the mission, watch security barricades being put in place for upcoming elections.
From the side of the road, Hassan Abd-Alah could see the soldiers unloading concrete barriers at the neighborhood elementary school.
The 48th Brigade Combat Team is fortifying the school and other polling places nearby in advance of the historic Oct. 15 referendum. Iraqis are set to cast ballots that day on a proposed national constitution.
Abd-Alah, a farmer with deeply weathered skin and a bushy gray mustache, said he will vote for the constitution despite the threat of violence from insurgents. Disaffected Sunnis are mounting a campaign to reject the document.
“We need a constitution for safety and for living in peace -anything good for the future,� said Abd-Alah, a Sunni, who spoke through an Arabic interpreter working for the U.S. soldiers.
Abd-Alah’s wife, Shukria Fathel, stood behind him, nodding in agreement. She plans to vote, too. Neither has read the constitution. But they have faith it will help their largely Sunni neighborhood.
Piles of trash and rubble litter the ground all around them. For many days, residents here have not received government rations they have come to rely on.
Insurgents broke into their homes after the U.S. invasion, they said, busting holes in the walls and stealing the metal piping. Some neighbors have no potable water and only a few hours of electricity each day.
Louie Favorite/AJC
Teams from the 48th Brigade set up security barricades for upcoming elections in Iraq.
While Abd-Alah observed the soldiers, a man stepped outside a crumbling house to see what was going on. A Shiite, the man said he will vote for the constitution along with his Sunni neighbors. He identified himself as a bricklayer but asked that his name not be published for fear of insurgents.
“I am afraid to work outside because maybe they will kill me,� the man said as his frightened two-year-old daughter clung to his leg. “The insurgents kill anybody without care for the kids. The soldiers give us the peace and the safety.�
As the man talked about the election, 1st Lt. Michael Zellous and his men set up a dozen concrete Jersey barriers along the road. They are meant to protect voters from small arms fire and suicide car bombers.
The American soldiers plan to keep a low profile on Saturday and stay away from the polling places. They don’t want anyone to think they are influencing the voting. However, they say they will be ready to reinforce Iraqi soldiers in case of insurgent attacks.
“All right, gentlemen, are we ready to do this one more time?� Zellous asked his fellow soldiers from the Dublin-based Alpha Company of the 148th Support Battalion. “Let’s get out and do the work.�
At 6-foot-4, the 40-year-old ex-Marine cuts an imposing figure. He rides around in Humvee that has survived some close calls, including an explosion from a roadside bomb, in this dangerous region where Americans are not always welcome, He points out the different parts that have been replaced in recent days: a headlight, a side mirror, the windshield. Part of the hood is missing over the right tire, leaving a jagged edge where his men bumped a speeding car away from their convoy.
Hanging in front of Zellous’ passenger seat is a green-hooded toy dwarf from “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.� Zellous can’t remember which dwarf he is, but he is sure it isn’t Sleepy.
“You see the smile on his face? When he turns around, we know there is some trouble coming,� said Zellous, who taught math at Riverdale High School before he came to Iraq.
Zellous said he has been outside the wire on missions more than 50 times since arriving in Iraq this summer and has grown desensitized to the sound of explosions. As he walked through the neighborhood, he didn’t flinch when a suspected mortar round exploded on the horizon.
Several young Iraqi boys stood nearby, curiously watching Zellous’ men. They have grown accustomed to receiving handouts from the soldiers. But nine-year-old Majdy Sa’ady complained the soldiers no longer let them come near for security reasons.
“They are good, but for a long time the soldiers have not let us talk to them as much,� Majdy said.
Moments later, Zellous motioned for the children to come near his Humvee. He opened his trunk and started to hand out bottles of lemon-lime Gatorade. Some children grabbed as many as two or three.
The children kept calling “Mister! Mister!� but their words sounded like “Ista! Ista!�
Zellous ran out of drinks. So, he closed the trunk and hopped in the Humvee. It was time to go. He could still hear the children pleading for more as he pulled away.
Families gather for festival
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Saturday was about face painting, hay rides and heroes.
More than 100 people with loved ones serving with the Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team came to Canton for a Homefront Heroes Fall Festival.
As families arrived at the farm of Ann and Tom Earley, some gathered around to share news and to give hand squeezes and hugs. Families from Canton, Calhoun, Dalton, Rome and Douglasville were invited to the grass-roots event. Most of the soldiers are scheduled to come home in May.
Michelle Wardell, of Euharlee, is the family readiness group leader for the Canton Guard unit. She is a sympathetic ear and sounding board for many people in the area.
“We can share our stories and uplift each other,” Wardell said. “We call one another and share the joys and trauma.”
And that’s vital to the families’ morale. These wives also worry because their men from the 108th Armor Battalion are on forward operating bases outside Camp Striker in Baghdad.
“Every time I know he’s gone out on patrol I get sick. He’s training the Iraqi soldiers,” said Alecia O’Keefe, mother of five children ages 5 to 13. Her husband, Sgt. John O’Keefe, is a heating and air-conditioning repairman back home.
Saturday’s event was “a very much needed social outlet. Nobody but these people know how we feel,” she added.
Patricia Stipe of Snellville said she stays busy running her two sons, 9 and 12, to activities.
“I stay too busy, and with a full-time job,” she said as she watched her younger son ride a horse. Her husband, Sgt. Samuel Stipe, has been in Iraq since May. When he’s not soldiering, he works at a packaging company in Villa Rica. Patricia was glad she heard about the festival through an e-mail from Wardell.
Ben Waldrop, a Guard recruiter in Canton, said he, too, appreciated the event.
“To have somebody who genuinely cares — it does wonders for them,” Waldrop said. “The soldiers see someone’s helping out at home, and they can focus on the task at hand. The guys overseas get to see what the community did for them.”
Waldrop said it was hard to stay here while the Canton group went to Iraq.
“Forty percent of the Canton unit is kids I recruited,” he said.
At Saturday’s event, families were given a variety of gift certificates donated by area merchants. Ann Earley estimated about 150 people attended along with 50 volunteers.
Lindsay Kidson, 17, is a member of Sequoyah High School’s Air Force Junior ROTC. Kidson and members of the ROTC volunteered at the festival.
“It’s good to get in touch with people and find out what it’s like,” said Kidson, who plans to attend Clemson University and join the Air Force after graduation.
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.”
A FATHER’S QUEST: Joe Johnson went to Iraq to avenge son’s death, but something in his heart changed
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Rifle ready, Cpl. Joe Johnson nimbly stepped around mounds of trash and pools of raw sewage, handing out strawberry Twizzlers to scabby, barefoot children.
It saddens Johnson to think this desperate poverty and filth were the last things his son saw before he was killed last year.
Louie Favorite/AJCCpl. Joseph Johnson on patrol near Husseiniya, Iraq.
Audio reports from Joe Johnson:
On why he came to Iraq
On meeting Iraqi children
On retracing his son’s footsteps in Iraq
For more than a year, Johnson fought to follow in his son’s footsteps to Iraq. There was a sense of soldierly duty, but what most drew him here was his desire for vengeance.
“I can shoot an insurgent and not lose a bit of sleep over it,” said Johnson, a home builder from Lyerly, Ga. “I think any father would feel a sense of revenge. To me, it would be like someone down the street killed my son and I sat by and didn’t do anything about it.”
But since his arrival less than a month ago, this former Church of God missionary has discovered the children of Iraq. And on occasion they have rekindled the Christian spirit in his heart that was once his guiding light.
This date is inscribed on a silver bracelet on Johnson’s right wrist: April 10, 2004. Spc. Justin Johnson, 22, was killed that day by a roadside bomb. Joe says he won’t take the bracelet off until he returns home sometime next year.
When he talks about his son, Joe grows quiet. He looks off into the distance almost as if he is searching for something. He is not a complex man and at times struggles to express the conflicting emotions he keeps hidden deep inside.
Justin Johnson was killed by a roadside bomb on April 10, 2004.
At 48, Joe has a youthful face. He carries a photo of his son in uniform. The two look nearly identical. They were close. Almost too close. Justin worked in his father’s home construction business. They occasionally fought like relatives who spend too much time together.
“We would get into it and he would quit,” Joe said. “He would go out and party with his friends and come into work late and I would fire him.”
Joe was supposed to be in Iraq last year, looking after his son. He wanted to be here the same time as Justin. With seven years of service in the Army and Navy combined, he had the experience. He thought it would make it easier on his wife. She would know he would do his best to look out for their son.
Joe contacted several military units, asking when they were deploying to Iraq. He had no luck until he found a National Guard brigade in Washington heading out. He joined — but then he injured his knee in training and was unable to deploy with the unit.
“It was a big letdown,” he said.
Justin went on to Iraq with the 1st Cavalry Division. He patrolled a Baghdad slum called Sadr City, manning a machine gun on a Humvee.
Joe talked to his son once by telephone before his death. “I thought I would be seeing him in a few months when my knee got better,” Joe said. “What are the odds? I really wasn’t worried about him.”
Billy Smith II/AJCJoe and Jan Johnson mourn their son in April 2004 at Myrtle Hill Cemetery in Rome.
On Easter Sunday, while he was recovering from his injury at Fort Lewis, Joe got a call from his wife. He had trouble understanding her because she was crying so much. She told him Justin was gone.
Jan Johnson said a change came over her husband almost immediately after he learned of Justin’s death.
“He got mad at God for a while,” she said, sitting in the photo-lined living room of the family home on the outskirts of Lyerly.
“He never stopped loving God,” Jan continued, “but he blamed God for what happened to Justin. I think he just wanted to blame somebody because he somehow felt responsible.”
When Joe stopped blaming God, he started blaming all Muslims for his son’s death. For more than a year the couple talked about his feelings and his desire for revenge.
Finally, Jan said, she told him: “I don’t care if you go over there and kill every one of them. It won’t bring Justin back.”
On the first anniversary of his son’s death, Joe made up his mind. He picked the Savannah-based 1st Battalion of the 118th Field Artillery Regiment because it was headed to Iraq. He said his wife “wasn’t too happy with me.”
But Jan said she knew there was little she could do to stop him.
“I don’t think he’d ever have closure until he went over there,” she said.
Curtis Compton/AJCJan Johnson says grief altered her husband. “He got mad at God for awhile…”
“I told my wife, ‘If I don’t come, who will?’ ” he said. “I keep trying to drill in her head that when my time is up, my time is up. The Bible says your days are numbered. God will decide when to bring me home.”
But that does little to comfort his wife.
“My nerves are shot worrying about Joe and Joshua,” she said.
Joshua, 26, is their oldest son and a Special Forces sergeant. The couple also have a daughter, Joleen Gladney, who is Joshua’s twin, and three grandchildren.
Jan stays busy working around the couple’s 13-plus acres, bordered by the Chattooga River. She also is involved with the Georgia chapter of the Blue Star Mothers of America, an organization for those with sons and daughters serving in the military.
She wears a blue star pin for Joshua, a gold star pin for Justin and a silver bracelet with Joe’s name on it. She also wears a set of Joe’s dog tags around her neck. Justin’s dog tags hang from the rearview mirror of her PT Cruiser.
In recent weeks Jan has become something of an anti-Cindy Sheehan, the California woman who became an outspoken anti-war activist after her son, Spc. Casey Sheehan, was killed in Iraq last year. Jan has appeared on CNN and done other interviews as a mother who supports the war despite losing a son.
“I don’t want Joe over there,” she said, “but it’s not because I don’t support what’s going on. I’ve already lost one. I don’t want to lose another. But my son died trying to give somebody else freedom.”
Louie Favorite/AJC
Iraqi children have helped Joe Johnson regain much of his former self, his wife says.
Ironically, Justin and Casey were friends, Jan said, and were killed just six days apart.
“The day Casey died, Justin called and told me he had just lost a good friend. Justin cried on the phone,” she said.
Joe talked about Justin recently at Camp Taji, a sprawling base northwest of Baghdad. He chain-smoked Marlboro Lights, tipping his ashes into a strawberry red Fanta soda can. His language had grown saltier. He was back in the military again, back to old habits.
Joe’s side of the two-man trailer was Spartan. He had arrived just 17 days before and hadn’t unpacked all his gear or hung up any family photos. He wore the standard desert camouflage uniform. He was so fresh his unit hadn’t given him one of the newer, mint-green uniforms that 48th Brigade soldiers wear.
Joe guards civil affairs missions outside the wire, when soldiers hand out school supplies and help rebuild the country’s infrastructure. He carries a rifle and occasionally mans a machine gun on a Humvee, just as his son did. His unit operates in an area just a short drive from where Justin died.
Friends and relatives tell him he shouldn’t be here, that he should be home with his family.
“They think I’m over here strictly for revenge,” Joe said. “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t.”
But as he walks the trash-strewn streets of Husseiniya and other nearby villages, Joe finds it somewhat unsettling.
“It feels kind of weird to see the things that [Justin] may have seen and experience the same, minus the combat, you know, that he experienced,” he said.
Joe sometimes wonders what he would have done had he been here when his son was killed.
“I might have just run outside the wire and started shooting. I don’t know,” he said.
Revenge is a powerful motivation for Joe, but not the only one. He is learning Arabic on his own so he can communicate with Iraqis. A thick stack of homemade Arabic flash cards sits by his bed. Among the phrases he has learned: “We are here to help you.”
Jan believes the Iraqi children have helped Joe regain much of his former self. On their mission trips to Ecuador he was always partial to the children.
“I think this has become more of a mission trip for him,” she said. “It kind of replaced Ecuador.”
Joe said most Iraqis he had met expressed their thanks for the Americans’ being there.
“The kids are very appreciative of everything we give them, the candy, the school supplies. And that is another reason why I’m here, for the kids.”
Joe concedes his decision may not have been the best one for his family. But now that he’s here, he feels he’s doing something worthwhile.
“As Christians, we need to stay and help [the Iraqis],” he said. “I hope I can help them while I’m here.”
Meanwhile, a painful process is starting over again. Joshua is preparing to deploy to Afghanistan. Joe said he offered Joshua a deal: He would give up on Iraq if his son would not go to Afghanistan.
“He wouldn’t deal with me,” Joe said regretfully.
“You can’t spend too much time with your kids,” he added emphatically. “It’s just not possible.”
Joe has one other regret. He doesn’t recall ever telling Justin how proud he was of him. When Joshua was promoted to sergeant in August, Joe got on the phone.
“He called to congratulate him,” Jan said. “And he told him how proud he was of him.”
Staff writer Jeremy Redmon’s e-mail address jredmon@ajc.com; Ron Martz’s address is rmartz@ajc.com.
The dogs of war
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Baghdad — Dogs are everywhere in Iraq.
Single strays. Large packs of wild mutts.
Some appear emaciated and sad. Others, while thin and matted, are spunky.
Louie Favorite/AJC
Hear the howling of the dogs
They bark at convoys of U.S. soldiers, weaving in and out of traffic. Soldiers throw rocks at them to keep them out of the way of their Humvees.
Some dogs rely on handouts from soldiers. They chew through the garbage and dig out what is left of the military’s prepackaged Meals Ready-to-Eat.
Though it is against U.S. military rules, some soldiers adopt them as pets. They are good for watch duty since they bark at strangers.
At night, the soldiers can hear packs of dogs howling. They sound lonely, almost mournful. Sometimes they are shrill and insistent. Sometimes haunting.
Listen to what a platoon of Puerto Rican National Guard soldiers heard recently on night patrol just south of the Baghdad International Airport.
The soldiers from the 48th Brigade Combat Team were patrolling on narrow dirt roads along deep canals, hunting insurgents. Through their night vision goggles, the soldiers could see the dogs under a striking canopy of stars.
Ugly, but at least free
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Camp Striker, Iraq — Soldiers jokingly call them BCGs. Short for birth control glasses.
They are the standard, brown, thick-frame military issue eyewear. The type your old uncle Ed would wear along with long white socks and black sandals.
Louie Favorite/AJC
Staff Sgt. Jon Stach, a 36-year-old manager at a Circuit City store in Peoria, Ill., shows off his Army-issue glasses in his tent at Camp Striker.
The glasses are so ugly, soldiers say, that no woman in her right mind would date a man wearing them. Thus, birth control.
Some soldiers with impaired vision will avoid the BCGs at all costs and wear contact lenses in Iraq. That’s a big no-no because of the threat of infections from sand getting between the contact lenses and the eyes. But anything for looks.
Staff Sgt. Jon Stach doesn’t care too much about what people think. Now that he is 36 and married with five children, he’s way past that stage.
That doesn’t stop other soldiers from teasing him about his BCGs. They say he looks like Drew Carey, a stand-up comedian known for his thick, dark-rimmed glasses.
“That’s OK. I give as good as I take it, so I don’t mind,” said Stach, 36, who lives in Peoria, Ill., but is attached to Georgia’s 48th Brigade Combat Team as a truck driver. “You have to have a thick skin over here.”
Stach, who is nearsighted, said the military didn’t give him a choice of frames when he got his glasses. He started wearing them after his more classy civilian pair broke.
At least the military glasses are sturdy, he said, and free.
Strenuous rehab can’t discourage wounded soldier
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Washington — In a windowless storeroom deep inside Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Spc. Richard Ingram rummages through a pile of FedEx boxes.
“I know my arm’s in here somewhere,” he says. “I’ve just got to find it.”
With the anticipation of a kid on Christmas morning, the 22-year-old Army scout from LaGrange, whose left arm was severed by a roadside bomb in Iraq, hunts for the package containing his first custom-made prosthetic.
Rick McKay /AJC
Spc. Richard Ingram, 22, who lost his arm in Iraq, plans to take medical retirement and return to college.
The high-tech, computerized limb will allow Ingram to resume mountain biking, fly fishing and kayaking. The new arm also promises to end his self-imposed exile here.
Ingram refuses to return to Georgia until he has mastered the electronic arm.
“I’m not going home until I’ve got my arm and can use it well,” says Ingram, a quiet but driven outdoorsman. “Without it, going home would be a waste of time.”
Ingram, a member of the Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team, is among more than 4,400 wounded American service members who have been treated at Walter Reed since the start of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Only the most serious cases come to this 113-acre facility — which specializes in amputees and patients with head injuries — to begin their long physical and emotional recovery.
After double-checking every box in the hospital storeroom, Ingram comes up empty.
“I can’t believe my arm’s not here yet,” he said. “I hope FedEx hasn’t lost it.”
Ingram is a member of the Griffin-based 108th Cavalry Regiment. He was the gunner in a Humvee with two other soldiers when they were hit with a roadside bomb on a rural road south of Baghdad on July 20.
Rick McKay /AJC
Ingram uses his prosthetic arm to move pegs across a board during a therapy session.
The explosion hurled the 12,000-pound, heavily armored vehicle 10 feet in the air. Ingram was thrown out of the Humvee as it rolled over, smashing his left arm.
He said he never lost consciousness.
“I didn’t think there was any way I was going to live through it when the truck started rolling,” he said. “But when I got thrown out, I was just overjoyed. It was clear that I hadn’t fulfilled my purpose in this life. Even though I was hurt, I knew I’d get to keep doing the things I love so much. I was being given another chance at life.”
Sgt. Joe Brown of Dallas, Ga., also was in the Humvee. He suffered a broken jaw, broken ribs and deep bruises and lacerations. Both men were flown to a military hospital in Baghdad. The driver was unhurt.
Within days, both injured men returned to the U.S. for medical treatment. Brown, 39, a father of two teenage daughters, has largely recovered from his wounds and is preparing to return to Iraq. He talks to Ingram almost daily by phone and credits the young soldier’s “innate stubbornness” for his recovery.
“Some people want to crawl into a bottle and sedate themselves from reality,” Brown says. “But Richard’s got a new sense of purpose. He figures he’s not dead yet, so he may as well enjoy what he’s got.”
‘Not the way I’m made’
Ingram, a former high school soccer player, keeps a grueling pace in daily physical and occupational training sessions. He supplements them with weightlifting, target shooting and exhausting cross-country runs.
In a typical session, Ingram and 2nd Lt. Amy Weill, an Army therapist, engage in a contest that looks like an unfair arm wrestling match. Weill pushes down with two hands on the stump that remains of Ingram’s left arm while he pushes back.
Walt Young/Special
A jubilant Ingram enjoys fly-fishing at Spruce Creek in Pennsylvania. Handling the net is guide Tom Caufman.
The muscles in the amputated arm have atrophied, and he needs to regain strength to operate the electronic arm. The fleshy stump below his elbow has to be firm and toned for the prosthetic to work properly.
“He’s a strong guy, and that’s important,” Weill says. “Weightlifting is his favorite part, but it’s also the hardest and most demanding. The thing that gets him through it, though, is he sees he’s making measurable progress.”
When Ingram finishes lifting weights, he cajoles two other soldiers into joining him for more physical contests.
Sgt. Robert Blikley, 26, of Spartanburg, S.C., who also lost his left arm in a roadside bomb attack, agrees to a target-shooting competition. And Jose Ramos, 25, of El Paso says he will accompany Ingram on a 90-minute run that evening through the wooded grounds of the complex that offers stunning views of the Washington skyline.
Ingram’s favorite activity, however, is fishing, and he regularly organizes weekend outings to trout streams in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia. So far, he’s netted and released a 24-inch rainbow trout and a 27-inch brown.
He has developed a one-handed fly casting technique and insists on tying his own knots – even when it’s faster for someone with two hands to do it for him.
“The truth is I almost never miss having a second arm or hand,” he said, “until someone tries to help me.”
Ingram invites other amputees on weekend outings, but many decline — and those are the soldiers he feels sorry for.
“They spend their time sitting around trying to figure out what pills go best with beer,” he said. “I don’t go for that. There’s so much to do here, there’s no way I could just sit around. That’s not the way I’m made.”
‘I’d like to go back’
Ingram and Blikley shoot M-16 rifles for more than two hours at a video range with sensors that measure the mechanics of how they hold, aim and fire the weapons.
Both shoot well enough to remain front-line soldiers. And both are eligible to return to active duty if they meet the physical requirements and want to go back.
Ingram says he plans to medically retire from the military and resume engineering studies at North Georgia College & State University in Dahlonega, where he was a junior before the 48th Brigade was mobilized for duty.
He holds out the possibility of returning to the Army after he graduates — if he can do it on his terms.
He wanted to become a Ranger before he was injured. No one with a missing limb has ever graduated from the punishing course, but Ingram hasn’t given up on the idea.
“I don’t want to work in administration,” he says. “And I don’t want to work in a [tactical operations center]. But if I could do the same kinds of things I was doing before, and do them as well as I was doing them, then I’d like to go back.”
Amputees used to be automatically deemed unfit for military service, but that policy has changed.
“If they can meet the physical standards for military duty, they can stay in,” said Col. William Howard, chief of occupational therapy at Walter Reed. “We want to help them achieve their goals and accomplish the things that are important to them. If they want to stay in the military, we’ll do everything we can to help.”
Ingram’s sister, Meridith, 24, an Emory University grad and pharmaceutical sales representative in Atlanta, tells him he’s given enough.
“I’d hate to see him go back,” she says. “I know he’d be good at it. I know he’d meet the physical challenges. But as his big sister, I’d worry about him. I’m afraid of what could happen.”
Ingram downplays the sacrifices he’s already made.
“I wasn’t in Iraq very long,” he says. “I hardly had time to do anything.”
‘Beginning to accept it’
On his next trip to the hospital storeroom, Ingram discovers the package he’s been waiting for. With the help of a hospital technician, he opens the box and removes the custom-made arm. The hand is flesh colored, the forearm clear plastic with blue and red wires visible inside.
“Look at those fingernails!” he says.
Ingram slides on the arm with the help of a hospital technician who asks whether he is able to open and close the fingers. Ingram reaches out with the mechanical hand and playfully tries to squeeze the male technician’s chest.
Next, he tries to pick up a can of Copenhagen smokeless tobacco from a nearby table.
Tasks that would have been second nature to an able-bodied person take tremendous strain and concentration. Ingram says small frustrations sometimes bring unanticipated flashes of anger.
“I expect to be able to do the same things I’ve always done, even though I know I’ll never be the same again,” he says. “But I’m beginning to accept it. I see other people missing legs, arms and eyes, and I know I got off light.”
Paddy Rossbach, chief executive of the Amputee Coalition of America, says injured soldiers go through stages of loss that include denial, bargaining, anger, grief and acceptance.
“It helps that they have people around them who are dealing with the same things,” says Rossbach, whose organization provides volunteers, usually Vietnam veteran amputees, who talk with the wounded soldiers.
“Their peers help them connect to their inner strength and drive,” says Rossbach, who lost a leg at age 6. “They show they can still contribute and lead fulfilling lives that may, in some ways, be more satisfying than the lives they were living before.”
Despite grievous wounds, soldier patients at Walter Reed show each other no overt sympathy. They tease one other in ways that seem heartless.
When one falls down a flight of stairs at a local bar, the others laugh hysterically and no one goes to the fallen soldier’s aid. Another looks at his armless and legless comrades, shakes his head and calls them “gimps.” A one-armed soldier with a metal mechanism for a hand wears a black T-shirt proclaiming he’s “got a mean right hook.” Parlor games like Foosball, Ping-Pong and checkers take on slapstick dimensions.
Ingram says the soldiers revel in their rough humor.
“Our jokes may seem cruel to most people,” he said. “But some of the things that go on here are just funny.”
Ingram sometimes feels excruciating “phantom pain” in his missing arm from frayed nerves, or flinches when it appears something will hit the spot his left arm used to be.
Other times, he completely forgets the arm is gone.
“I’ll be reading a book or thinking about something else and I’ll realize, ‘Hey, that arm really isn’t there anymore.’”
‘I’ll get on my bike …’
In Ingram’s room, clothes are heaped on chairs, beds and the floor, and ESPN blares constantly.
“This mess has nothing to do with my injury,” he tells a visitor. “I didn’t fold clothes before I got hurt.”
Ingram’s mother, Janice, says her son’s injury hasn’t altered his independence. She and her husband, Richard L. Ingram, a physician, must resist the urge to do things for him during their visits to Washington.
“There are times when you’ve got to force yourself to stand back, cross your arms and let him do things his way,” she said. “He makes it very clear that if he wants your help, he’ll ask for it. And he doesn’t ask very often.”
A hospital technician who is also an amputee tells Ingram the high-tech arm will require frequent adjustments during the first few weeks. The technician reshapes the part that fits over Ingram’s stump and promises the final version will be lighter and more responsive. He even volunteers to paint it to match Ingram’s fair skin, freckles and all.
But Ingram says he’s not concerned about appearances. He’s looking forward to the freedom the new arm will provide.
Most amputees stay here for about a year. But Ingram has already decided to return to college in January.
“I just can’t wait to get back to North Georgia,” he said. “I’ll get on my bike with some fishing gear and just disappear into the woods for days at a time.”
A wreck, and then a fortunate discovery
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Camp Striker, Iraq - Serendipity can be a soldier’s best friend in war.
Just ask the Puerto Rican soldiers attached to Georgia’s 48th Brigade Combat Team.
Sgt. Manaser Molina and two buddies were riding along in a Humvee outside the wire on Sept. 9, when Molina’s driver hit a ditch in the road and lost control of the vehicle. The Humvee’s ball joint broke and the vehicle rolled over. No one was seriously injured.
Louie Favorite/AJC
Sgt. Manaser Molina said the IED could have harmed someone.
Other soldiers rushed to the vehicle, pulled the three men out and called for a helicopter to evacuate them.
Staff Sgt. Luis Navedo was guarding the evacuation when he decided to investigate the ditch that apparently caused the accident. He recognized it immediately as a place where a bomb detonated beside a military convoy on July 4. Insurgents often plant bombs in old blast holes.
As Navedo shined his flashlight at the hole, he noticed something fishy. He saw a large piece of broken asphalt lying there. He peered underneath it and spotted several U.S. military water bottles full of gasoline sitting on top of two 155 mm artillery shells.
Navedo warned his men to keep away. U.S. bomb experts later came and safely disposed of the device.
“The trigger man maybe was sleeping,� said Navedo, 40, who lives in Juncos, Puerto Rico, and works for a state housing agency.
Molina, 55, a police officer who also lives in Juncos, thanks God for the discovery.
“If it wasn’t for that” wreck, Molina said, “we would have hit the improvised explosive device.”
Music for hurtin’ times
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Forward Operating Base Michael, Iraq — It’s not unusual to find soldiers sitting around campfires or in their huts across Iraq, playing instruments and singing. It helps relieve stress.
Louie Favorite/AJC
SSgt. John Healton (left) and Spc. Colby Smith sing their duet. • Hear a clip from the song
Spc. Colby Smith, 23, of Athens, and Sgt. John Healton, 31, of Douglasville, often get together in a wooden shack here and perform.
Smith plays the acoustic guitar and sings along with Healton. Listen to these two medics sing part of a song they co-wrote. It’s about soldiers leaving their homes in the United States for Iraq. The song is entitled: “It Hurts so Hard.�
Is it going to hurt?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Forward Operating Base Michael, Iraq — The big, burly soldiers wielding rifles appeared frightened as they lined up at the door to the medical aid station.
They didn’t want what was waiting for them inside.
Needles.
Louie Favorite/AJC
Spc. Jennifer Rhodes, a pre-nursing student from Macon, gives a flu shot to SSGT John Lovett Dykes Jr., a 59-year-old retired schoolteacher from Waynesboro, in the aid station at FOB St. Michael.
It was time for their flu shots.
But would it hurt? Would they bleed? What allergies must they have to be excused from this shot?
“The bigger they are, the worse it is,� Spc. Jennifer Rhodes, 21, a nursing college student from Macon, said as she administered dozens of the shots.
Most soldiers dealt with the needles just fine. But a few resisted slightly.
“Let him go first,� Spc. Walter Marion said, jerking his thumb at his friend.
When it was his time for the shot, Marion scooted away from Rhodes. She pulled him back by his arm.
“Are you going to swell my arm up?� Marion asked. “I don’t like no shots.�
Marion closed his eyes tight and winced as she pricked him.
“Is that blood running down my arm? Oh, Jesus,� said Marion, 29, a police officer from Dublin.
Rhodes and her colleague, Spc. Courtney Burgwald, 22, of Hiram, decided to have a little fun. They attached a two-inch long needle to a syringe full of lemon-lime Gatorade. They set aside the much smaller flu needles.
“They would be like, ‘No, no. The small one. What happened to the small one?’â€? Rhodes said.
Burgwald smiled and said: “You have to have fun somehow.�
Good eats in a dangerous place
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Forward Operating Base Joe, Iraq — Georgia Army National Guard soldiers live in a windowless, run-down former potato factory.
Louie Favorite/AJC
Spc. Dale Dean works on macaroni and cheese for the soldiers at FOB Joe.
This base in Yusufiyah has been rocketed and mortared.
And they have limited communication with the outside world.
But at least the food is good here. So good, in fact, that this spartan outpost has become a popular destination for soldiers from much bigger and better-equipped bases.
Credit goes to the cooking staff: Spc. Dale Dean of Marietta, Spc. Keith Williams of Columbus and Sgt. Vincent Grant of Atlanta.
Dean, the self-taught dinner cook, is particularly popular because of his macaroni, beef stew and lasagna dishes.
He has a simple philosophy. “I fix what I like to eat,� said Dean, 38, who builds and installs shutters in civilian life.
Dean takes what the military gives him and improves on it. For example, he adds fresh mozzarella to the military’s standard macaroni ingredients.
“They eat the hell out of it,� he said.
His task is particularly difficult given his isolated and dangerous location. Civilian truck drivers are too afraid to transport food to the base, Dean said. So he and other soldiers occasionally make the perilous trip to another base in Mahmudiyah for supplies. Dean said he has become adept at “acquiring� things.
“These will be just right,� he said as he squeezed a ripening pineapple on his wooden supply shelf.
Dean works in a makeshift kitchen with industrial-size burners that are powered by a Humvee parked outside.
Sitting beside the Humvee is a constant reminder of the war around him. His cold storage container has a gaping hole in it from a rocket-propelled grenade.
Puerto Rican ‘Caribbean Pirates’ part of family
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Baghdad, Iraq — “Vamonos!”
Sgt. 1st Class Hector Perez is calling for his men to move out. The sun is setting, casting an orange glow around Camp Striker. It’s time to go.
Not all of Perez’s men are fluent in English, so he switches between languages throughout the evening.
“Vamonos! Rock ‘n’ roll! Let’s do it!” the former English teacher shouts into the swirling sand.
Louie Favorite/AJC
Spc. Luis Mercado of Fajardo, Puerto Rico, rests after completing a 12-hour overnight patrol mission. • MORE PHOTOSAUDIO
• Spc. Cedeno Ricardo of Bayamon prays in Spanish for the “Caribbean Pirates” platoon as the troops prepare to patrol near Baghdad International Airport.
• Spc. Cedeno Ricardo repeats the prayer in English.
• Sgt. 1st Class Hector Perez, “The Beast,” of Aibonito, Puerto Rico, commands his platoon in English and Spanish
These soldiers of Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 295th Infantry Regiment, based in Juncos, Puerto Rico, have 12 hours of tense night patrol ahead. While fighting off sleep, they will hunt for insurgents firing mortars at their base and be on the lookout for terrorists trying to launch rocket-propelled grenades at planes landing at Baghdad International Airport.
Perez and his soldiers are attached to the Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team. Most in the brigade are from Georgia, but in addition to the Puerto Ricans, the unit has added soldiers from Alabama, Illinois, Missouri, Maryland and Rhode Island for its yearslong tour in Iraq.
Perez, a police drug investigator in Aibonito, Puerto Rico, when he isn’t serving with the Guard, says insurgents have put a $50,000 bounty on his unit’s Humvees because it has been so effective. Since arriving here in June, the Caribbean Pirates, as they are known, have captured several terrorists and seized some large caches of weapons.
Before Perez’s platoon pulls out of Camp Striker, he asks Spc. Cedeno Ricardo to say a prayer. Many of the Puerto Rican National Guardsmen are devout Christians.
The platoon circles around Ricardo. Bathed in the glow of a Humvee’s headlights, he prays first in Spanish, then English.
“Give them the strength to continue on,” says the 21-year-old massage therapist from Bayamon, Puerto Rico, “so that we can all go back home to the United States of America, every single one of us, back to our families.”
The soldiers head into the night, driving on narrow dirt roads along deep canals. They are just south of the airport. A chorus of dogs howls under a moonless sky. The soldiers peer into the greenish glow of their night vision goggles. Machine gun fire echoes in the distance.
When not out on missions, some of the soldiers cook traditional Puerto Rican dishes, such as arroz con gandules — rice and pigeon peas — in a large steel pot, using ingredients mailed to them from home.
They say they’re like brothers with the Georgia soldiers. Photographs of several Georgians killed in Iraq hang in their headquarters, beside U.S. and Puerto Rican flags. The Puerto Ricans pay tribute to those who have died by test-firing their machine guns every time they pass the spot where a massive roadside bomb killed four 48th Brigade soldiers.
“We are all the same army,” Perez says. “There is no way to make it back home alone.”
Perez has earned the nickname “la Bestia” — “the Beast” — because he is tough and seems emotionless. A black knife sticks out of his left boot. A tattoo of an eagle with a U.S. flag stretches across his right bicep. At age 42, he has spent more than half his life in the Puerto Rican National Guard.
A Roman Catholic, Perez believes there is good and evil in the world. And the insurgents, he says, are doing evil by indiscriminately killing women and children.
“They do it in the name of Allah. That’s bull. They just want to assume power. Definitely, we are the good guys. Definitely, they are the bad guys.”
Perez says his faith in God grew after he survived a roadside bomb this year. His hearing was damaged, so he now sometimes speaks louder than necessary. He has had trouble sleeping since the blast.
Several other men in his unit have survived similar attacks and firefights. Two have been nominated for Purple Hearts.
Despite his rough exterior, Perez laughs easily, especially at his men’s jokes. He misses making lasagna and rabbit stew at home. He speaks lovingly of his wife, Fatima, and their three children.
“I never thought I could miss my children and my wife so much,” he says. “She is an amazing woman.”
As the sun starts to rise, Perez and his men park their Humvees at an intersection and start searching vehicles that pass through. They pay special attention to pickup trucks, because insurgents often fire mortars from them or pack them with explosives and drive into groups of soldiers.
Several vehicles pass through. Finally, their shift is over. The night was quiet — too quiet for Perez. He senses that something is going to happen.
When they return to camp, they learn that the Humvee carrying the Puerto Rican soldiers who replaced them on patrol was hit by a roadside bomb. It happened just 15 minutes after Perez’ unit left, on a route it had patrolled. None of the five passengers was seriously injured, but the Humvee was totaled.
48th will redeploy in Iraq by Thanksgiving
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Camp Striker, Iraq — Georgia’s 48th Brigade Combat Team is set to move to new bases across Iraq and assume less threatening duties by Thanksgiving.
Brig. Gen. Stewart Rodeheaver, commander of the 48th, disclosed that timeline in a brief interview Tuesday morning. He said the move is still in the planning stages so he was unable to identify where specific units from the brigade are moving.
But Rodeheaver acknowledged it will be more challenging for him with the brigade spread out across Iraq. The 48th’s new duties will include securing convoys and bases in several different locations, he said.
“This is a much tougher mission for me than the one we have now, but it is better on my soldiers,� he said. “The threat level on a day-to -day basis for most of the troops will be reduced.�
The Georgians now operate in about a 115-square-mile area southwest of Baghdad. Most of the roughly 4,500 soldiers from the 48th are based here at Camp Striker.
Elements of the 101st Airborne Division, based at Fort Campbell, Ky., have started arriving to take over for the 48th in this area.
Finding a few good soldiers
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
While the Army National Guard has struggled to meet its overall recruiting goals, resourceful recruiters discover than when duty calls, Georgia answers. STORY HERE.
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‘Serving’ in Iraq
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Camp Taji, Iraq — People will go to great lengths to keep habits going, even in a war zone.
LOUIE FAVORITE/AJC
Spc. Steve Croft practices his forehand at Camp Taji.
Spc. Steve Croft’s habit is tennis. He has been playing since he was 12. He now coaches the sport at the Frederica Academy on St. Simons Island.
There are no tennis courts here, but Croft has found a way to get his tennis fix.
There is a concrete bunker in the parking lot next to one of the mess halls. It’s a perfect surface.
He leans his rifle up against the bunker where he can see it in the morning sunlight. And then he effortlessly switches from forehand to backhand, bouncing the ball against the bunker.
“It allows me to work out. Unlike a partner, the wall never misses,” said Croft, 38, who teaches English at the academy.
A few problems. Croft has to dodge the trucks pulling in and out of the lot. The ball occasionally sails over the bunker. And then there is the loose gravel all around him.
But Croft doesn’t let any of that deter him. Tennis is his game. He is determined to keep playing.
God help us
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Camp Taji, Iraq — Chaplains often say prayers for soldiers going out on white-knuckle convoys through Iraq. But sometimes the chaplains aren’t available.
So the soldiers ask for God’s protection. Spc. Caleb Bennett, 24, of Dallas, Texas, has been saying the same prayer for the past four months. He does it each time before rolling outside the wire.
He sometimes accompanies Georgia National Guard soldiers from the 1st Battalion, 118th Field Artillery Regiment. Listen to the Humvee gunner’s prayer from Thursday morning. His convoy returned safely to base later.
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