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November 2005
A patch of honor for combat
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Curtis Compton/AJC
Second Lt. Mark Pitts, 21, of St. Marys (right) presents Sgt. 1st Class Marion McGriff, 40, of Jesup with his combat patch. Cpl. Ronald Lewis, 33, of Guyton (lower left) proudly re-enlists for six years. Pfc. Brian Flowers, 20, of Savannah displays his combat patch during the Nov. 21 ceremony.
It is nothing more than a small piece of cloth with an Army unit’s insignia affixed to the right sleeve of a soldier’s uniform.
But for soldiers everywhere it signifies that those who wear it have spent at least 30 days in a combat zone.
In a recent ceremony at Al Asad Air Base in western Iraq, members of the Savannah-based 1st Battalion, 118th Field Artillery Regiment, received their combat patches.
The patches are from the 3rd Infantry Division, based at Fort Stewart, the unit under which the 48th Brigade Combat Team served during its first six months in Iraq.
AJC staffing update
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
After a two-month stint in Iraq, staff writer Jeremy Redmon has returned to the United States. Photographer Curtis Compton will continue to file photos and blogs from Iraq until staff writer Moni Basu arrives in mid-December.
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Trip back in time to Babylon
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeremy Redmon/AJC
Sarkis "Ben" Shlimon recently toured the ruins of Babylon as an interpreter for Georgia's 1st Battalion, 108th Armor Regiment.
Ruins of Babylon, Iraq — He was young and in love. It was 1969 and Sarkis “Ben” Shlimon was 14.
He was here with his family and his girlfriend, picnicking at the supposed site of the biblical Tower of Babel and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.
The memories came flooding back as he toured the ruins this month. He was here as an interpreter for Georgia’s 1st Battalion, 108th Armor Regiment. The Georgia National Guard soldiers stopped to see Babylon on their way to another mission nearby in the city of Hillah.
Shlimon said he never thought he would be able to return to this site after fleeing Iraq in 1974. He said his father wanted him to avoid Iraq’s military draft and encouraged him to leave their home and move to the United States. The rest of his family soon followed. As Christians, Schlimon said, they feared Hussein would persecute them.
Shlimon appeared lost in thought as he stepped around shards of broken pottery and stray cuneiform tablets.
He walked along a 6th century B.C. path called “Processional Way.” And then he posed for pictures next to a large basalt sculpture called “The Lion of Babylon.” He remembers climbing on top of the lion and posing for pictures when he was a teenager.
“It brings a lot of memories. Good times and bad times,” said Shlimon, 50, who was born in Baghdad but now lives in Chicago. “There were a lot of people here happy and celebrating. My brothers, my sisters, my friends - I imagine them screaming and running around. My parents - we were picnicking here.”
Things have changed significantly since Shlimon was here 36 years ago. Critics contend U.S.-led forces did substantial damage to the archaeological sites here when they used it as a base after the invasion in 2003.
Hussein has also came under criticism from archaeologists for rebuilding much of Babylon, including the colorful Ishtar Gate and some of the temples, and inscribing his name on many of the bricks. Some of them say, “This was built by Saddam Hussein, son of Nebuchadnezzar, to glorify Iraq.”
Shlimon read aloud from the Arabic on the bricks and then glanced at a huge palace Hussein had built on a bluff overlooking the ruins.
“I have no idea why he put it there,” Shlimon said with dismay. “He did it to make it look like he was in charge.”
In the last six months, Shlimon has grown close to the Georgia National Guard soldiers, who treat him with respect. Armed with a loaded AK-47 and pistol, Shlimon often goes on missions and fights alongside them.
He got married after he moved to the United States and now has two teenage daughters, one of whom is studying to become a doctor. The other wants to be an FBI agent.
Shlimon is separated from his wife now and often thinks back to the teenage girlfriend he picnicked with here. She is married and also lives in the United States.
He keeps her college graduation photo in his wallet. In faded blue ink on the back of her photo are the words: “Love You Always.”
New job scatters 48th across Iraq
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Logistical Support Area Adder, Iraq — Maj. Chris Kemper calls the map his “slide of insanity.”
It’s part of a PowerPoint computer slide show he uses to brief fellow soldiers about their new missions.
The complex map has green, red, orange and blue boxes that represent units of Georgia’s 48th Brigade Combat Team. It also has 21 black arrows that point to the far-flung new locations across Iraq where Georgia National Guard soldiers are now based.
Curtis Compton/AJC
Spc. Solomon West (left) of Atlanta and Spc. Shaun Robinson of Savannah, both of the 118th Field Artillery Regiment, work on their bikes at Al Asad Air Base.
Until Halloween, most of the brigade’s soldiers were relatively close to Baghdad,
fighting insurgents, hunting roadside bombs and enduring repeated rocket and mortar attacks.
Now, the 48th is scattered from Basra in the south to Baghdad in the middle of the country to the Jordanian border on the west for what is officially called a “Theater Security Mission.”
The new job involves protecting the U.S. military’s supply lines and guarding truck convoys throughout the country to ensure soldiers get what they need to fight the insurgents.
As the 48th’s plans officer, Kemper helped decide how the brigade’s more than 4,400 soldiers would be dispersed. He said his wife jokingly refers to him as the brigade’s “cruise director.”
“It’s pretty critical that we get things right the first time,” said Kemper, 34, a Home Depot assistant store manager from Lilburn. “Operations are so fluid. Things can change at the drop of a hat. With the skill sets we have and the people we have, I think we will be successful at it.”
48th inherited mission
The Theater Security Mission is not new. The Georgians inherited it from the Texas National Guard’s 56th Brigade Combat Team. Another brigade already has been selected to take over the mission from the 48th in the late spring or early summer of next year.
U.S. military leaders in Iraq ordered the Georgians to take over the mission, leaving officers like Kemper to decide where to position the brigade’s troops. It was a complex task, considering the number of different bases out of which the 48th has to operate.
Kemper said the brigade sought to keep its battalions intact and, for the most part, was successful.
The brigade headquarters, 148th Support Battalion and 648th Engineer Battalion, which were based at Camp Striker near Baghdad International Airport, were moved to Tallil Air Base in southern Iraq.
Soldiers of the 1st Battalion, 108th Armor Regiment had been scattered among three Sunni-dominated cities — Mahmudiyah, Yusufiyah and Lutafiyah — just south of Baghdad. Now, the battalion is back together in a much safer area at Convoy Support Center Scania in southern Iraq, a place the soldiers refer to as “Club Med.”
And the 1st Battalion, 118th Field Artillery Regiment, which had been at Camp Taji north of Baghdad, was moved virtually intact to Al Asad Air Base near the town of Hit, in the restive Al Anbar province of western Iraq. It has added National Guard soldiers from Maryland and Rhode Island to form a task force with the responsibility of guarding truck convoys on days-long runs between the base and the Jordanian border.
Not all of the efforts to keep battalions intact were successful.
Two companies of the 1st Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment were ordered to remain in the Baghdad area to work with regular Army units from the 101st Airborne Division and 10th Mountain Division.
Kemper said those soldiers will provide extra muscle for Iraq’s Dec. 15 national assembly election with their armored Bradley Fighting Vehicles.
Even though some of the 48th soldiers are working with other units, they still receive their orders from their own brigade. The 118th’s 1st Battalion troops report to the Marines about their missions and the routes they travel, but still officially are under control of the 48th leadership.
Communications strong
Despite the fragmentation of the Georgia brigade, 48th officials said their communications systems enable them to keep tabs on what everyone is doing.
Some 48th soldiers are thrilled to be away from direct combat in the Baghdad area. They are catching up on sleep and playing sports again. Others are growing antsy with the downtime and say they would rather be back in combat zones.
Second Lt. Jason Royal said he led a platoon from Camp Striker on missions in the Baghdad area, arresting suspected insurgents and seizing their weapons caches. He said he went on missions outside the base more than 100 times and survived repeated small arms fire and roadside bomb attacks.
Now, Royal is stationed in part of the vast Tallil Air Base, with many amenities in a much safer part of Iraq. He said he is glad he got to come here and rest before going home to his wife and three children in Villa Rica.
He recently gave a tour of his new home, showing off the video arcade and private booths where small groups of soldiers can watch movies.
“I have more time to actually take a breath and process what happened,” said Royal, 32, a Paulding County high school English teacher.
“It’s a lot less stressful here. I’m glad I didn’t go straight from Camp Striker to home because that would be a hard adjustment.”
Georgians train, praise Iraqi troops
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Yusufiyah, Iraq — U.S. soldiers have nicknamed the young Iraqi private “Jackrabbit’ because of the speed with which he runs down insurgents.
Kadhum Hamad Dakhil boasts that he helped capture two Syrian insurgents in October. A few words of Arabic are scrawled on his desert tan boot: “No to Terrorism.”
“They are criminals, and we are chasing them until they die,” Dakhil, 25, said.
U.S. military advisers say Dakhil is among the bravest soldiers they have trained in the 4th Brigade of Iraq’s 6th Army Division, a unit based in this violent area known as the Triangle of Death.
The Iraqis are gutsy, the advisers say, because they patrol every day in civilian pickup trucks that offer little protection from insurgents’ roadside bombs.
Some Iraqi soldier have no body armor or helmets. Some have no bullets for their pistols. And often the insurgents are better armed. Since June 1, scores of 4th Brigade soldiers have been killed or wounded.
“If I could have Bronze Stars for these guys, they would have a bunch,” said Maj. Ray Bossert, 38, of Douglasville, who helped train Dakhil and other Iraqi soldiers for Georgia’s 48th Brigade Combat Team. “Just give them the right stuff, and they will go kick [butt].”
Bossert and other National Guard soldiers from Georgia, Alabama, Illinois and Missouri were among the trainers for Dakhil’s unit until October, when soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division took over.
Many of the trainees are from southern Iraq. They have come here to make a living. Their pay is roughly the equivalent of $300 U.S. a month, which is high in this rural community. But another reason they cite for joining the budding army is the defense of their country from foreign terrorists they call “Ali Baba.”
“Like a child yearns for Santa Claus, they yearn for a confrontation with Ali Baba,” said Sgt. Chris Hancock, 43, a police officer from De Soto, Mo., who reported to Bossert.
The Iraqi soldiers are good allies, U.S. soldiers say, because they speak the language, know the terrain and can quickly identify foreigners, many of whom turn out to be insurgents from Syria, Saudi Arabia and Yemen.
“These guys know what to look for. They can tell just by talking to people where they are from,” said Lt. Col. Ben Sartain, 42, of Cleveland, Ga., who led the 48th Brigade’s training in this area south of Baghdad. “These guys get a piece of intelligence, and they are out of the gate.”
Dakhil was a self-employed street vendor and professional soccer player in the southern city of Basrah before joining the army. He hopes to get married and have children some day.
Even though he has not been paid in four months, he is still focused on fighting. Hundreds of other soldiers in his brigade have gone without pay just as long.
U.S. soldiers blame the problem on illegal recruiting practices. Con artists have been charging people to join the Army, leaving them with no paperwork certifying they are in the military.
“It’s taking advantage of the poor,” Sartain said. “Short of the Americans guaranteeing the system, there is nothing we can do about it.”
Even with the chronic payroll problems, Dakhil plans to remain in the army “all of my life.”
“This is my country and we are in charge of making people safe,” he said.
Like many other soldiers in his unit, Dakhil argues the U.S. military should remain in Iraq until it is stable. He predicts there will be more violence if the U.S. troops pull out too early.
“There will be blood. There will be killing and beheadings,” he said. “If the Americans go home, we will go home.”
Dakhil serves with two other men their Georgia advisers say are extremely courageous. They are Amjed Sa’ad Abais and his brother, Arshad. They are from the central Iraqi city of Hillah.
The brothers joined the same unit a year ago so they could be together. Both are first sergeants.
Amjed served in Saddam Hussein’s army for two years. When U.S. troops invaded Iraq in 2003, Amjed said, he handed his weapon to his commander and said of Saddam, “Let him go to hell.”
Amjed said he got in trouble for cursing Saddam once before in 2002.
He said Saddam’s regime threw him in jail for six months and whipped him 150 times. He shrugs off the punishment.
“Six months is like a holiday,” said Amjed, 24, who is married with a 7-month-old daughter.
“Others have spent 20 years or 25 years in jail. What about them?”
His 19-year-old brother, Arshad, said he missed him while he was in jail.
“I was worried. I didn’t know where he was,” Arshad said.
Arshad continues to worry about his older brother now that they are fighting insurgents. But Arshad said he doesn’t let his fears distract him from his duty.
Market buys security for GIs, Iraqis
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Convoy Support Center Scania, Iraq — Young Iraqi men sit Indian-style in their wooden booths here every day, hawking DVD movies and watches to passers-by.
They have learned U.S. military ranks and often use them to attract soldiers to their outdoor bazaar. “Hey, sergeant!” they shout excitedly. “Hey, private!”
They are even more aggressive with civilians, gesturing for them to come closer and reaching out to shake hands.
The vendors and the soldiers agree the market helps build goodwill between them and ensure the base is safe. U.S. military officials say there is a clear link between those jobs and the security here. But they worry what will happen after the troops pull out of Iraq.
“I keep telling them ‘What are you going to do when we leave?’ It’s not a matter of if, but when,” said Lt. Col. Randy Neal, 44, a Stone Mountain native who commands the Texas National Guard’s 3rd Battalion, 112th Armor Regiment.
Soldiers, civilian truck drivers and others spend up to an estimated $4,000 at the market every week, Neal said. Some Iraqis walk home with up to $20 a day, a big sum in this farming community 65 miles south of Baghdad.
Almost 300 other Iraqis work inside the base, filling sandbags, picking up trash and cleaning shower stalls and latrines. They are paid $6.25 a day, which is about average in this region, according to residents.
“Everyone in this area does very well off this base,” said Neal, 44, of Leander, Texas.
Neal’s unit is about to return home after nearly a yearlong stay here. Georgia’s 1st Battalion of the 108th Armor Regiment is taking over this base.
Scania is a major rest and refueling point for truck drivers heading north to Baghdad and points beyond. Soldiers say it’s the dividing line between the safer areas in southern Iraq and this country’s more dangerous regions. Scania got its name from a type of truck that bears its name.
On average, insurgents fire mortars at this base only once a year. Since January, U.S. soldiers have been attacked with six or seven roadside bombs in this area, Neal said, a small number compared with what the Georgia National Guard soldiers experienced during their previous missions north of here.
During a recent two-hour patrol outside the wire at Scania, the Georgians heard no gunfire and saw no bomb craters. One 108th soldier who had just moved here from Mahmudiyah in Iraq’s so-called Triangle of Death, dismissively called the patrol “boring.”
One of the reasons for the quiet is that the region is dominated by Shiite Muslims who generally support the U.S. military presence. But the Iraqis who work here say their jobs on base give them an extra incentive to shun insurgents. They said they don’t want anything to endanger their employment.
“Everyone who works here benefits from the market,” Hayder Sadq, 19, said as he sold DVDs from his booth. “We don’t do bad stuff.”
Sadq is working at the market to raise money for college tuition. He wants to become a math teacher and eventually buy a house for himself and his wife.
He and the other vendors can keep the market open and hold their jobs inside the gate, the U.S. soldiers warn, so long as they help keep the base safe from insurgents.
“That market buys us a lot of security, and the reason for it is they make so much money off of it,” said Neal, a software company sales manager.
But Neal and Lt. Col. John King commander of the Georgia battalion, don’t want the Iraqis to become too dependent on the U.S. military for jobs.
Neal has been pushing the Iraqis to start businesses together. So far, he said, he has seen no evidence of that.
Among the people Neal has been prodding is Ali Jeddan, who co-owns most of the land this base sits on. Jeddan and others collect about $150,000 a year for renting land to the U.S. military, Neal said. The United States has pumped more than $3 million into the local economy since January, he added.
Jeddan said entrepreneurs are afraid to start businesses because of this country’s violent insurgency and corrupt government.
“Have you thought about opening a date factory?” Neal asked Jeddan as they stood outside the bazaar.
Jeddan: “We’d like to do that, but …”
Neal: “But what?”
Jeddan: “We don’t have enough money.”
Neal encouraged Jeddan to join other investors and form a cooperative. But Jeddan said people are worried such a business would fail.
Instead, Jeddan is considering turning his land into a parking lot after the soldiers leave. He might add a restaurant. Or maybe a gas station. He brightened as he talked about the possibilities.
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Georgia gov. thanks troops in Mideast
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue thanked Georgia troops in person Thursday for their service in the Middle East and brought Thanksgiving dinner with him.
Perdue said in a telephone interview from Kuwait City that he visited with members of the 116th Air Control Wing at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. The wing is based at Robins Air Force Base in Warner Robins, near the governor’s hometown of Bonaire.
“I came to say thanks to these troops and they gave me a blessing I’ll never forget,” Perdue said.
“They’d just come in off a 12-hour mission. For them to tell me firsthand that they’re making a difference and saving American lives, it was a great thrill and a real blessing to see them,” he said.
Perdue said morale was terrific among the troops as they ate turkey and dressing, prime rib, shrimp, corn, green beans, yams and mashed potatoes. He spent time in Kuwait City and Qatar and will move on “to parts unknown” today, he said.
Perdue also ate Thanksgiving lunch with troops from Georgia’s 48th Brigade, according to a statement from his office.
He visited Kuwait as part of a delegation of four governors, including Haley Barbour of Mississippi, Jennifer Granholm of Michigan and Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas, who were invited by the Defense Department to travel to the Middle East.
The tour included briefings in Washington by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Peter Pace.
Troops find cause for thanksgiving after brush with death
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Ramadi, Iraq — The soldiers sat in stunned silence in the moments after a roadside bomb sent shock waves through their bodies and raked their Humvee with jagged shrapnel.
Staff Sgt. Joshua Winchester peered at his men through the cloud of brown smoke mushrooming in his vehicle. They appeared shaken but uninjured.
Curtis Compton/AJC
Staff Sgt. Joshua Winchester looks over a piece of shrapnel that was part of a roadside bomb that his Humvee on Thursday in Iraq.
“Drive forward!” Winchester commanded his driver.
He wanted to get his men out of the insurgents’ kill zone.
The Georgia National Guard soldiers were quiet Thursday morning as they sped away from the 3-foot-wide blast crater. Winchester turned to them again, grinning in a reassuring way.
“Well, fellas,” he shouted, “Happy Thanksgiving!”
Winchester, a 30-year-old Pepsi truck driver from Jesup, is one of thousands of American troops who had to go outside the relative safety of their bases in Iraq on Thanksgiving. Some manned lonely outposts in remote areas, skipping turkey and pumpkin pie. Others spent the holiday on patrol in areas plagued by insurgents.
Before the explosion rocked his vehicle, Winchester was heading back to Al Asad Air Base from a three-day mission to the Jordanian border guarding trucks loaded with fuel, food and water.
Bombs like the one that hit his vehicle are the No. 1 killer of U.S. troops in Iraq. Soldiers refer to them as IEDs, improvised explosive devices. They are often buried in dirt roads, planted in cement blocks or hidden in bushes.
The one that hit Winchester’s Humvee was in a concrete storm drain on the side of “Route Mobile,” a treacherous highway soldiers often travel from the border town of Trebil to Al Asad, west of Baghdad.
When Winchester and his men determined that there was no longer a threat, they returned to the blast site and found pieces of shrapnel the length of a man’s forearm. The bomb left gouges in the armored door of Winchester’s Humvee at the level of his head. It also shattered his side mirror, near where it says, “Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear.” The soldiers did not catch the bomb’s triggerman.
“I’m just glad we’re alive,” said Sgt. Curtis Wilmont, 45, of Pembroke, Winchester’s driver.
‘They know it’s a holiday’
The men had started their day at 2 a.m. at a small U.S. military base a few miles east of the Jordanian border. Winchester and dozens of other soldiers from the 48th Brigade Combat Team rolled out of their green cots, ready to escort the supply convoy under the cover of darkness.
Curtis Compton/AJC
After their convoy was attacked, Staff Sgt. Gilbert Sheppard of Millen and Staff Sgt. Joshua Winchester have Thanksgiving dinner with sparkling grape juice at Al Asad Air Base in Iraq.
Winchester brushed his teeth beside his Humvee in the bitter cold. He climbed inside his vehicle and wondered aloud whether the insurgents would attack him on Thanksgiving. Perhaps it was too cold, he thought, for the enemy to go outside.
“Maybe he is staying inside, cooking turkey,” Winchester told his buddies.
Wilmont was doubtful.
“They know it’s a holiday for us,” he said.
Their 20-year-old gunner, Spc. Steven Riley of Savannah, also had a troubled feeling. He told his buddies he had just had a nightmare. In his dream, he said, insurgents were planting roadside bombs in his hometown of Headland, Ala. He remembered teaching his sister in his dream to avoid the explosives by driving in the center of the road.
“They were placed in my church parking lot,” he said.
Hours later, the explosion snapped Riley’s head back, dizzying him and giving him an intense headache. He said he heard shrapnel ricochet around his metal gun turret, sounding like “Tink! Tink! Tink!”
“It’s not the explosions that drive soldiers crazy,” he said. “It’s the anticipation that drives people nuts.”
Winchester, who is almost unfailingly cheerful, brightened his buddies’ moods in the hours before the blast by playing country music in the Humvee. One of the songs he played, Tricia Yearwood’s “Georgia Rain,” made him think of his wife, Tracy. He said he mailed her a copy of one of Yearwood’s compact discs recently. He misses her and his three young children. He keeps a family photo strapped to the inside of his helmet.
Thoughts of home
If he were home, he said, he would be rubbing butter on a turkey, sprinkling it with salt and pepper and then popping it into the oven. He would ride bikes and play baseball with his children.
He said he also often thought of his dog, Leo, an 18-month-old black Labrador retriever. Winchester said his wife told him Leo had been moping around their home since he left for Iraq months ago. So he sent his dog a postcard reading: “Ruff, ruff. I miss you.”
As he rode outside the gate Thursday morning and toward the insurgent’s bomb, Winchester passed a military sign that warns against complacency and asks: “Is Today Your Day?”
“All right. Happy Turkey Day. At least we’re alive,” Winchester said to himself.
“I’ll miss this year,” he said of Thanksgiving. “I’ll see next year’s. There is plenty more of them to come.”
He paused for an instant and then added: “I hope.”
Building an oasis
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Convoy Support Center Scania, Iraq — Some people will go to great lengths to escape this place. Even if it means building a whole new environment around them.
Jeremy Redmon/AJC
Malcolm Lyde, a plumbing supervisor for KBR, built a fountain here in the shape of a guitar. “It’s a place to kind of get away and forget you are in a prison,” said Lyde, 55, a Vietnam veteran from Pitkin, La.
Off in a corner of this base, away from the Humvees and machine guns and beside a small group of date palms, water is trickling over rocks.
There is a fountain there in the shape of a guitar. Doves fly underneath the green camouflage netting suspended overhead and drink from the fountain’s edge.
Malcolm Lyde built this oasis. He is a plumbing supervisor for KBR, a U.S. military contractor that works at this major truck refueling and rest stop in central Iraq.
“It’s a place to kind of get away and forget you are in a prison,” said Lyde, 55, a Vietnam veteran from Pitkin, La.
Lyde said KBR told him he could build the fountain as long as he did it on his own time and didn’t use anything from the base that was considered valuable.
Lyde worked at night and in the early morning, hunting rocks with a flashlight. He found a long piece of metal in a scrap heap that he now uses as his spout. An old Humvee window props up the spout. And his wife mailed him a water pump and plastic lining to seal the fountain.
Lifelike alligator and turtle toys float in the water. Perched on top of the rocks are wooden signs with the names of KBR workers who have spent more than a year working at Scania.
It took Lyde two months to finish “Club Malcolm.” And now, he says, fellow KBR employees, truck drivers, soldiers and helicopter pilots wander over to his side of the base to investigate. Lyde said they are all welcome.
“It was something I knew I could do to give everyone a little peace and take their minds off where they were,” said Lyde, who retired as a plumbing shop supervisor at Fort Polk, La. “It gave me something to do.”
Lyde has been here for two years. He said he wants to be a “grandpa farmer.” The tax-free pay, he said, will help him build a pond and a barn and buy some farm animals for his 34 acres back home. He wants to entertain his four grandchildren there.
He thinks he’ll work here another two years. In the meantime, he is planning a bigger, more elaborate fountain for another spot on this base. Concrete bunkers will become waterfalls in this one, he said.
And there will be at least five times as much water.
“I want to get as much splash as possible,” Lyde said.
He has already started a new rock pile.
Back briefly on hallowed ground
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
[Latest installment of “One Town’s War,” a series documenting the deployment of Guard soldiers from Dublin]
Dublin, Ga. — On leave from Iraq, Ricky Stanley celebrates his family and his faith — and embraces whatever the future might hold. • STORY, PHOTOS.
Medics earn gratitude by assisting Iraqi burn victims
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Convoy Support Center Scania, Iraq — Burn victims line up outside the gate to this U.S. military base every day.
Relatives help them limp in. Or they carry them in.
The skin of the victims often is black from burns or yellowing from infection. Their bandages are old and poorly fitted.
As the weather grows colder, the number of burn victims is increasing.
Some come here after receiving poor treatment at local hospitals. They sit on a wooden bench outside a metal shipping container the American medics have converted into a clinic.
Jeremy Redmon/AJC
Spc. Joseph McGough (left) and Staff Sgt. Tim Turner care for Hussian Kadim Abd, who had tried to light an oven without realizing there was a gas leak in his home. “George Bush and the United States did good things for us and the next generation,” he said.
“If we help them, they will look out for us. It gives them a good impression of Americans,” said Spc. Joseph McGough, 21, a medic with the 36th Area Support Medical Co., based at Fort Bragg, N.C.
McGough’s unit is preparing to return home after several months here, so he and his buddies helped medics from Georgia’s 1st Battalion, 108th Armor Regiment take over the job of treating civilians.
Good treatment
Hady Abd Allah brought his 15-year-old son, Dhayah, one morning recently. The boy’s left arm and left leg were burned while he was refueling a generator.
“My son ran away. We were chasing him, and we put blankets on him,” his father said through an interpreter working with the U.S. soldiers.
McGough and Staff Sgt. Tim Turner of Decatur began bandaging the boy’s burns. When the medics were finished, the boy’s 18-year-old brother, Raayhd, helped him limp out the door.
“There is good treatment here, and it is a safe place,” said their father.
Next came Hussian Kadim Abd, a 55-year-old veteran of the Iraq-Iran war. He had burns from his head to his legs. His skin was yellow from infection, and he was suffering from a cold and high fever. His breathing was labored.
A nephew helped him into the clinic, saying his uncle was burned when he went to light his oven and didn’t realize there was a gas leak in his home.
“This is better than what we get at the local hospital,” said the nephew, Salam Mohammad, a 32-year-old farmer. “Basically, they did nothing for him.”
Local hospitals fall short
The medics started peeling away Hussian’s dead skin so it would not become infected. They wet the rest of the burned area with sterile water so it would come off more easily the next day. Then they wrapped the wounds in bandages slick with a medicinal ointment.
As they worked, the medics found bandage strings and burn cream under Hussian’s skin. A local hospital failed to remove them, the medics said.
“Some of the hospitals are still trying to catch up to our standards,” said Turner, 38, a Georgia National Guard soldier who works at a Home Depot. “This is my first time dealing with this many burns and to this extent.”
When the medics were through, Hussian talked about how Saddam Hussein’s regime captured and tortured him for dropping out of the Iraqi military.
“George Bush and the United States did good things for us and the next generation,” he said. Then, he turned to Turner and bowed slightly.
“Thanks. I’m very grateful,” he said.
As the man left, Turner said: “It’s always good to hear that.”
Help for a child
Moments later, a father and mother walked in with their 15-month-old son. The boy’s left hand was bluish and swollen from a burn he suffered after putting his arm into a pot of hot chicken soup. It was his fourth day in a row at the U.S. clinic. His family decided to skip the local hospital.
“We know the result, so why even try?” said his father, Mohammad Abd, who watched his son with deep concern.
He told the medics, “I’ll never forget this all my life.”
Mohammad’s wife held the boy as Turner removed dead skin from his hand. But she soon fainted, and her husband picked her up and took her outside.
When Mohammad returned, Turner tried to reassure him. “It happens to the best of us,” he said.
After the family left, a young man appeared outside the clinic and asked if the medics could see a relative suffering from leukemia. They told him they didn’t have the facilities to help.
About two weeks ago, an ambulance arrived with a man suffering from burns over 80 percent of his body. He was gasping for air and too far gone to be helped, the medics said.
“You wanted to do something but you couldn’t,” said Turner, who has spent 18 years as a medic in the military and is on his third tour in the Middle East.
Turner is learning Arabic from interpreters so he can speak to his patients. He keeps a list of Arabic words and phrases he has learned from them, such as smile, kiss and lollipop.
Before the day was over, a man brought in his 3-year-old daughter. She had knocked over a teakettle and burned her left arm. Kalil Jawad said he quit his job as a storekeeper so he could care for her.
The child was upset, so, before treating her, Turner and McGough blew up latex gloves into balloons to entertain her and her 5-year-old brother.
She was their last patient of the day. No one was left sitting on the wooden bench outside. Turner and McGough closed the clinic and rode in their ambulance back through the gate.
Read Thanksgiving greetings to the troops
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Do you have a friend or loved one serving in Iraq or Afghanistan? Or just want to send a long of message of support? Send a salute to that special soldier or tell us what your family has planned for Thanksgiving.
(This blog item is now closed. Thanks for sending in your greetings)
48th troops comfort their replacements
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Forward Operating Base Mahmudiyah, Iraq — They thought they were through with this deadly place. And then it drew them back.
Soldiers from the Georgia National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team spent months here in sustained combat, surviving repeated insurgent mortar and rocket attacks as well as roadside bombs. On Halloween, they packed up and headed south to a new base and new missions.
But they decided to come back recently to grieve with the regular Army soldiers who replaced them.
Jeremy Redmon/AJC
Cpl. Rodney Bettis, of McDonough, hugs Staff Sgt. Grant Wilson, of Annandale, Va. Wilson lost three soldiers from his unit with the 101st Airborne
Division during a Nov. 2 bomb attack.
Since Georgia’s 1st Battalion, 108th Armor Regiment, left last month, eight soldiers from the Fort Campbell, Ky.-based 101st Airborne Division have been killed in the area known as the Triangle of Death. Seven were killed by roadside bombs. The military says it is investigating the eighth as a possible “friendly fire incident.”
During the nearly six months the Georgians were stationed in this area south of Baghdad, they lost six soldiers, three in a vehicle accident.
“Mahmudiyah can humble the best of people,” said Lt. Col. John King, 41, commander of the 108th’s 1st Battalion.
King cited a number of possible reasons for the increase in violence: The insurgents might be reacting to the change in U.S. soldiers, they might be responding to aggressive attacks by the 101st, or they might be trying to disrupt the Dec. 15 election of a permanent national assembly.
“This is an enemy that is very tenacious, very smart and very unforgiving. The enemy is always adjusting to our tactics,” said King, Doraville’s police chief. “I refuse to think this is anything the 101st did wrong. This is combat.”
After a recent memorial service for three of the 101st soldiers, King and his interpreter met with some of their former intelligence sources from the surrounding area. Then he offered some advice to his counterpart with the 101st, Lt. Col. Tom Kunk.
“I told him to stick to what he is doing. It is a battle of wills, and he is not alone,” King said.
During the memorial service, Kunk sat in the front row, quietly observing the proceedings, his head bowed. The three men who were killed were members of Kunk’s personal security detachment: Spc. Joshua Munger, 22, of Maysville, Mo.; Spc. Benjamin Smith, 21, of Hudson, Wis.; and Pfc. Tyler Mackenzie, 20, of Evans, Colo.
“They were three incredible American soldiers,” Kunk said. “Where that happened — we have been on the ground and we have kept pushing forward. No one in this battalion is backing down.”
The Georgians grew close to the 101st soldiers last month as they showed them around the Mahmudiyah area before their move south. Sgt. Joe Picon, who helps guard King, immediately sought out his counterpart when he arrived.
“I want to see my brothers in arms. I know they’ve got to be hurting,” Picon said as he sought out Staff Sgt. Grant Wilson.
When Picon finally spotted Wilson, he gave him a big hug. Picon later told him: “We are brothers. We love you guys. I mean that.”
“It’s probably the first time I’ve smiled since Wednesday,” Wilson, of Annandale, Va., told Picon that evening over dinner.
As they ate, Wilson talked about the previous week and predicted, “This is going to be a hard, hard 12 months.”
Then he quietly told Picon he was turning 40 on Nov. 14: “If I live that long, I’ll be happy.”
“This place makes you older,” Picon said.
Just outside the mess hall, Sgt. Michael Wells was catching up with his friend from the 101st, Spc. Devin Dishner. Wells handed him his lucky knife, the one he had with him when he survived a roadside bomb in September near where Dishner’s buddies were killed. Wells, 35, of Jasper said Dishner reminded him of his younger brother.
As the two talked, Spc. Nicholas Jordan of the 101st stood in the darkness nearby, asking the Georgians to sign his American flag. He had it spread out on the hood of a Humvee. Jordan said he was in the convoy with the three men who were killed. He still remembers the bomb’s shock wave.
“My earplugs blew out of my ears and all of a sudden it was black in front of me,” said Jordan, 20, of Warren, Ohio.
Spc. Darryl Wilson, 37, of Jonesboro signed Jordan’s flag. He encouraged Jordan to drive his Humvee aggressively to scare away insurgents in Mahmudiyah.
“You are like a blocking fullback. You have to block them out of the way,” Wilson told him. “Drive this vehicle like you stole it. My training video game was ‘Grand Theft Auto.’ You can be a madman, but be a thinking man.”
As they talked, Wilson and the other soldiers noticed the clear evening sky. They pointed out various constellations, noting Orion’s Belt, the Big Dipper and the North Star.
And for just a while, they stopped talking about the violence that is all around them.
Not your mother’s war
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Baghdad, Iraq — It was past the midnight curfew imposed around the Iraqi capital. The roads were dark and empty, except for U.S. military convoys taking advantage of rolling in the vacuum.
Courtesy Capt. Josie Hobbs
Capt. Josie Hobbs, commander of the 248th Military Intelligence Company, 48th Brigade Combat Team, wades through a murky canal near Yusufiyah, Iraq. Hobbs is the only female company commander in the 48th.
From the gunner’s turret in the trail vehicle, Spc. Gitanja Williams could see the approach into Forward Operating Base Mahmudiyah. Behind her, she could see a suspicious car, out in violation of the curfew. It was heading toward her convoy of supply trucks.
Her heart pounded. Adrenaline pumped.
This ain’t no joke anymore, she thought.
She spoke into her radio: “I see a vehicle approaching.”
Her commanding officers spoke back: “Don’t hesitate. Do what you need to do.”
Williams steadied her hands on the .50-caliber machine gun and fired a series of thundering shots into the night air.
The car heeded the warning, turned around and drove away.
“Whoa, Williams,” her fellow soldiers told her. “You go, girl.”
Since early June, when the Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team entered Iraq, Williams has found herself occasionally in the gunner’s seat. On this night, she came face to face with a potential enemy. Yet the Pentagon doesn’t acknowledge that she — and the roughly 400 women serving in the brigade — are in combat roles.
The Army prohibits women from serving in infantry, field artillery and Special Forces units that directly engage the enemy on the ground. The rules limiting women to support roles stemmed from more traditional wars in which there were clear front lines. But in Iraq, the front lines have blurred.
Some 48th Brigade soldiers say the random nature of the insurgency here has rendered the Army policy obsolete. An insurgent’s bomb can fall anywhere. A suicide bomber can crash into a supply convoy or military base checkpoint.
“Yes, I can’t put female soldiers in a tank crew or in an infantry unit,” said Lt. Col. John King, commander of the 1st Battalion, 108th Armor Regiment. “But where is the magic line here in Iraq where enemies are on the other side? It’s impossible to say, ‘Let’s put females in the rear.’ “
Iraq is different, say the soldiers, because women, no matter what their jobs, are having to shoot back.
Women make up roughly 10 percent of the troops in Iraq, the highest percentage of women in any U.S. war. Most of the women in the 48th Brigade were trained to serve in “non-combat” roles and belong to one of three units: brigade headquarters, the 148th Support Battalion or the 648th Engineer Battalion.
Williams is a tank mechanic with Bravo Company, 148th Support Battalion. But during the many months of training at Fort Stewart, her supervisor submitted her name to qualify on a .50-caliber machine gun.
Bita Honarvar/AJC
Staff Sgt. Wanda Allen, a member of Alpha Company of the 48th Brigade Combat Team’s 148th Support Battalion, secures a load of ammunition in preparation for a supply run at Camp Striker, Iraq. Allen, 52, who’s a state prison employee, was the first woman to join her unit 28 years ago. She’s stayed in over the years because of the money: She has three children.
The young woman, originally from Coon Rapids, Minn., didn’t think much about it then. In Kuwait, however, she learned she would be the gunner on a 5-ton truck when the brigade convoyed into Iraq.
The trip lasted three grueling days. The only female gunner in the convoy, she was up in the turret, half her body exposed and shielded only by a few pieces of protective metal; her face covered to block the suffocating dust.
“I had so many emotions running through my head,” recalled Williams, who was working at a Speedway convenience store in Savannah before her deployment. “I thought, ‘OK, I’m going into Iraq for the first time and I’m going in as a gunner.’ “
The war in Iraq is expected to provoke a review of women’s roles in the military.
“Before, all we could do is speculate how women would perform in combat situations,” said Lory Manning, a retired Navy captain who runs the Women in the Military project of the Women’s Research and Education Institute in Washington, D.C. “We now know. At least in defensive type of operations, women can hold their own. And women can protect men.”
For Williams, the Pentagon policy is a bunch of mumbo jumbo for lawmakers in Washington to wrangle over. There would be no debate, she said, if those lawmakers could ride in a convoy with her.
“I don’t look at myself as a woman in combat. I am a soldier on duty.”
• • •
“Alpha 261!”
Staff Sgt. Alfred Lewis yelled out the roll call of vehicles preparing to make a supply run to Mahmudiyah.
“Hooah!” shouted back Staff Sgt. Wanda Allen in the Army lingo for affirmation. Her soft, high-pitched voice punctured the tone set by gruffer male soldiers.
On this night, 11 vehicles would make the trip southward from Camp Striker through the hostile Sunni area south of Baghdad known as the Triangle of Death.
“I’m in the second vehicle tonight,” said Allen, a state prison employee. “They always wait to get the third or fourth vehicle.” Soldiers are well versed in the tactics that insurgents use to attack a fast-moving convoy.
The deadliest day for women in Iraq came last June, when three Marines were killed by a suicide bomber. Officially, those women, like Allen, had support jobs.
Allen, 52, routinely ventures out onto the highways of Iraq carrying supplies from one military base to another. She was the first woman to join the 148th Support Battalion’s Alpha Company 28 years ago. She could have retired by now, but every time she was ready to do it, she thought of the financial needs of her three daughters.
Younger soldiers look up to Allen as a surrogate mom. She provides solace in a place where nurturing words can be hard to come by. But when it’s time to report for duty, she leaves that part of herself behind.
Like the most disciplined combat soldiers, she avoids thinking about anything serious except the mission at hand. “You gotta keep a clear mind,” she said. “Otherwise, you sit here and think about all the what-ifs and what could be — and who’s going to take care of your children?”
She made that mistake once before a three-hour run up to Camp Anaconda, north of Baghdad. She talked to a soldier who had been attacked on that road, and in the dining hall, she ran into a soldier from an infantry regiment that lost eight soldiers in July. She returned to her tent thinking about the possibility of her three girls being left motherless.
On the mission that night, Allen’s truck took shrapnel from an improvised explosive device. She also came under small-arms fire. She has a bullet hole in the driver’s side windshield to prove it.
Sometimes, Allen carries lumber, equipment or light sets on her truck. Other times, she delivers a “Class V” load — ammunition.
“We have to try and camouflage it best we can,” she said. “The ammo definitely puts us more at risk.”
• • •
Though not always in uniform, women have served in all of America’s wars, often facing hostile conditions.
During World War II, 400,000 women served in the armed forces; 120,000 served in Korea. About 7,000 women went to Vietnam, mostly as nurses, and 41,000 did their duty in the Persian Gulf War.
In the early 1990s, Congress rescinded combat exemption laws for women in the armed forces. But the Army and Marine Corps retained their policies of barring women from combat roles.
That’s why Sgt. Mike Laury was stunned when he learned at Fort Stewart in January that Spc. Trena Caldwell would be joining his infantry unit.
“My reaction was ‘Wow!’ ” Laury said. “Then I found out she was coming to my section. I said, ‘Oh my God.’ “
The Army’s policy of excluding women from combat units is sometimes bent to fit its needs. Maj. Buck Bennett, an officer in the 121st Infantry Regiment’s 2nd Battalion, said his unit was short of staffing in clerical posts. Caldwell was assigned to a desk job.
She joined a battalion of 690 men who fit every stereotype of the hardened infantryman — and were damn proud of it. Their language was vulgar, their behavior crude. They had never worried about having women in their presence.
“My guys are good guys, but sometimes their testosterone flows,” Laury said.
Those first few days with the infantry regiment seem like a joke now to Caldwell, 29, a single mother and day care teacher in Atlanta. Back then, no one was laughing.
“They’d say, ‘She’s a female. She can’t do this or do that,’ ” she said. “That bothered me.
“I may not be pulling the trigger, but I have to make sure all our soldiers get their ammo, food supply and whatever else they need,” she said, neatly adjusting her gold-rimmed glasses.
When her 4-year-old son Nastasen studies history one day, she wants him to know: His mother helped fight the war in Iraq.
• • •
Sgt. Amy Knight’s 3-year-old son Isaac uses a calendar to mark the number of days until Mommy comes home on leave.
Knight, 23, is a single mother from Carbondale, Ill., who struggled with her deployment notice. She didn’t want to go to Iraq. She might have found a reprieve with 1st Sgt. Sara Nimmo of Alpha Company, 133rd Signal Battalion, the only woman in that powerful position in the 48th Brigade.
Nimmo, 36, has a son of her own, 7-year-old Garrett.
“As a female first sergeant, as a mom, your emotions play with you,” said Nimmo. She tried hard not to add Knight to her company when it was mobilized. But she needed an expert cable runner.
“I called her a week before we left and said, ‘I have to take you with me,’ ” Nimmo said. “It was the hardest call I had to make. I hurt for her, but I have to separate my job from the woman in me.”
Nimmo and Knight spent days in communications trucks parked outside a burned-out chicken factory at Forward Operating Base Mahmudiyah, where they were required to wear full body armor at all times. The base is located in an area that has proved particularly hostile for U.S. troops.
“We all made a choice to come into the military,” Nimmo said. “If a woman wants to make a choice to go out on patrols, that’s her choice. They are as capable of breaking down doors — mentally and physically — as the guys.”
The abilities of women to fulfill infantry jobs is an issue that divides those who think that all Army jobs should be open to female soldiers and those who don’t. Sgt. Laury, of the 121st Infantry Regiment, admitted he would get in trouble for saying so, but he thinks the image of a woman screaming when she sees a mouse is often true.
“A guy would just want to kill it. That’s what we need in the infantry.”
• • •
The women of the 48th Brigade are themselves divided on the matter.
Staff Sgt. Sofia Davis, 43, has made a career in the Army. She was in the regular Army for 11 years before signing up with the Guard a decade ago. She trained to deploy to Iraq as a medic in a support battalion, not an uncommon job for military women.
But when the brigade arrived, Davis was dispatched to the all-male 1st Battalion, 118th Field Artillery Regiment, which needed combat medics.
“At first I was dreading it. It’s an uncomfortable feeling to be the only woman among so many men. They looked at you as though you weren’t wearing any clothes.”
Although Davis regularly goes out on missions, she doesn’t necessarily believe that she should be doing so.
“I’m being realistic,” she said. “I am not strong. I cannot carry heavy weaponry and run. We should be allowed in the military, but our roles should be limited.”
Opponents of women in combat also argue that the presence of women in combat units can lead to fraternization, sexual harassment and assault and could undermine morale.
Others believe that women should be protected and not be separated from their children, and that combat roles could potentially mean women would be called up if the draft is reinstated.
Spc. Salimary Mojica, 31, a medic in Charlie Company, 148th Support Battalion, explained why she thinks women function well in more traditional roles: “My job calls for a little more compassion. And being a female, we tend to wear our feelings on our sleeves.”
She is a single mother who lives with her two young daughters in Savannah. She believes she is suited for her job and has no aspirations to join an infantry unit. But she would not hesitate if called to action.
“If I have to go on a tank, then I would do so, because I was the one who signed the dotted line.”
• • •
Capt. Josie Hobbs waded past papyrus reeds, deep into the murky water of a canal running parallel to a road where soldiers had spotted a bomb. The water, chest high, gushed into her cargo pockets, loaded with candy for Iraqi children and personal items including tampons and sanitary pads.
She knew her commanding officers would not understand her reluctance to get soaking wet during “that time of the month,” in the same way infantry guys don’t see the need for bathroom breaks because they can just urinate into an empty bottle.
For Hobbs, there was no other way to get to nearby houses in Yusufiyah to question residents about the bomb. She held her M-16 rifle high over her head as she navigated the water in her body armor and helmet.
It could have been a scene out of Vietnam, where soldiers trudged through jungles and rivers in search of the enemy. Except in Vietnam, there were no women on the front lines.
Hobbs, a full-time Guard officer from Rex, knew she and her comrades could come under fire at any time. “We were all locked and loaded,” she recalled. It didn’t matter whether you were man or woman.
“We were all in harm’s way. … In this country, there are no separations. None.”
After that trip, Hobbs, 40, the first woman company commander in the 48th Brigade, found solace in the comfort of her pink-adorned tent. On her satin fuchsia quilt sits a collection of teddy bears; her favorite is a blue one that her husband, Maj. Robert Hobbs — who returned from a tour in Iraq last fall — bought her at Fort Stewart.
Sometimes, she said, it can be tough here for a woman.
“I knew the pressure was on me to perform,” Hobbs said. “And that people were looking at me to fail.
“When I was first given command, I had people ask me, ‘How did you get that job?’ I say to them, ‘That’s a good question. Why don’t you ask the general why he didn’t pick you?’ “
For Hobbs, a career in the military has not been unlike one she might have pursued in the corporate world.
“You always have to be a couple of steps ahead of the game. You want to be seen as one of the boys without losing your identity in the process. I think a lot of women feel that way — whether it’s Martha Stewart, Oprah Winfrey or me.”
“Her guys,” as she refers to the 70 soldiers in her company, are the heart and soul of intelligence for the 48th Brigade. They keep watch atop surrounding hills and listen in on cellphone conversations that might be suspicious.
At the brigade’s detainee interrogation center, they sit behind closed doors in small rooms and question people suspected of detonating improvised explosive devices, carrying illegal weapons or even beheading hostages.
Hobbs, who had surgery earlier this year to have a fibroid removed, missed months of crucial training and could easily have asked not to be deployed to Iraq. She chose to go.
“I wanted to be here for my guys,” she said, clutching her blue bear. “This is where the rubber meets the road.”
Veterans still serving their country
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Convoy Support Center Scania, Iraq — Fellow soldiers jokingly call him “Old Man” and “Pa Pa.”
Jeremy Redmon/AJC
Sgt. Terry Spencer, 56, is a veteran of Vietnam, serving his country again in Iraq.
The names don’t bother Sgt. Terry Spencer. After all, he is 56 years old. And this is his second war.
But Spencer says this one will be his last. He plans retire after he returns home to Aragon some time next year.
Spencer is one of many veterans now serving in Iraq.
Like Spencer, some fought in Vietnam. Others served in Bosnia. And still others were in Desert Storm. These soldiers spent Veterans Day 2005 back in harm’s way in a foreign land.
Spencer has served about 21 years in the military. He was drafted in 1968 and flew in a reconnaissance plane, spotting targets for the U.S. Army in Vietnam.
The enemy, he said, frequently shot at his plane with rockets and mortars.
“We were always getting shot at, more so than we do here,” said Spencer, who is married with two grown children and six grandchildren.
Spencer said he was preparing to retire when he learned the 1st Battalion, 108th Armor Regiment was getting ready to go to Iraq. He prayed about what he should do. And the answer became clear to him.
“This isn’t where I want to be, but it’s what I felt I needed to do,” he said as he sat on his cot with his rifle tucked in the crook of his arm.
“I believe in my country and our freedom. I believe this is something we have to stand up against,” he said of the violent insurgency here. “If we don’t do it here, we will be doing it somewhere else.”
When his unit was stationed in Mahmudiyah, Spencer helped guard detainees who were suspected of being insurgents. He was picked for the job, he said, partly because of his 22 years experience working in the federal prison system. He said about 400 prisoners passed through his care during the nearly six months his unit was in Mahmudiyah.
“We had some pretty good catches,” he said.
Spencer now works in the 108th’s motor pool at this rest and refueling stop, where he keeps track of vehicles and their parts.
“It’s a good little job for an old man like me,” he said.
Spencer predicts retiring won’t be easy. He said he will miss his buddies. They made him want to stay in the military this long.
Photographer got an eyeful of Iraq
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
During two months in Iraq with Georgia’s 48th Brigade Combat Team, I knew I would get plenty of photographs of soldiers.
What I did not know was how often I would have an opportunity to photograph Iraqi civilians. Wherever I went, I knew it was a distinct possibility that never again would I pass that intersection, that house, that market, that street or that person.
AJC staffer Louie Favorite spent two months with 48th. • SEE PHOTOS
So, whenever I went — from Camp Striker in Baghdad to Camp Taji to isolated forward operating bases named Mahmudiyah, Yusufiyah and Lutafiyah — I snapped away at the average Iraqis caught up in the middle of the war.
I could travel all over the world for months on end and not see anything like I saw in Iraq.
And when I took those photos, I tried to show my subjects their images in my digital camera. The children, who were more than willing to pose, always loved that.
During the voting on the national constitution in mid-October, I took a photo of a rather dour-looking older man after he had voted. When he saw his image in the camera, he nearly broke into a dance. But a woman who saw her image reacted almost the opposite way, shaking her head and walking away with what I could interpret only as a look of disdain.
What I brought back with me in addition to these pictures are lasting memories of the wonderful cooperation of the Georgia soldiers of the 48th, the talcum-like sand that stuck to everything and the abject poverty that is so much a part of everyday life in war-torn Iraq.
Scania a quieter station
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
For troops that served in the violent city of Mahmudiyah, Convoy Support Center Scania is a welcome break. Soldiers from Georgia’s 48th Brigade Combat Team routinely heard machine gun fire and exploding bombs in Mahmudiyah. It’s much quieter at Scania.
Jeremy Redmon/AJC
Brass spurs sit in the chapel at Convoy Support Center Scania, ready to be fixed to the boots of scouts from the 1st Battalion, 108th Armor Regiment. • MORE PHOTOS OF SCANIA.
Some soldiers here jokingly call it Club Med or the Land of Milk and Honey. The food is better than what they have been used to.
Risking it all for family
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Camp Taji, Iraq — Agent Q said he trades in his car almost every month. He paints his license plates white, so they are harder to see from a distance. And he has learned to drive fast to and from this base. Real fast.
Q is an interpreter for U.S. soldiers here. And he knows being seen near this base could mean trouble. Insurgents killed a fellow interpreter, he said, for cooperating with the U.S. military.
“I don’t stop. I don’t want to be stopped,” said Q, who asked that his real name not be used for his safety.
Q is paid $900 a month to risk his life. When the soldiers give him candy, he brings it home to his four children. But he never throws the wrappers away in his neighborhood. He wears a scarf over his head sometimes to disguise himself on the way to work.
Q said he took the dangerous job because he was unemployed following the U.S. invasion of Iraq. And he needed the money to support his wife and children. His daughter has cancer and needs a bone marrow transplant, he said.
His dream is to move his family to the United States, where he said his daughter could get the transplant. He is now looking for an American to sponsor him and help him get U.S. citizenship. “I want to take my family away from this country until it is good,” he said.
Perhaps one day, when Iraq is peaceful, he said, he would move his family back.
Workers from poor countries serve the 48th
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Baghdad, Iraq — For tens of thousands of workers from poor countries in Asia, the war in Iraq has been a magnet for money. Lured by the chance to make a fast buck, men, mostly in their 20s and 30s, have left the familiarity of their homelands to tough it out in the sands of Iraq.
They form a silent army of low-wage workers without which U.S. military bases in Iraq would come to a standstill. But life is vastly different for the Asian workers, known in military parlance as Third Country Nationals, than it is for the soldiers or American contractors they serve.
The Asians toil long hours for low wages and endure living conditions that have prompted some of their respective nations to address what they call human rights violations.
Louie Favorite/AJC
Sanjay Sharma of Nepal works in the dining hall at Camp Striker. Conditions and pay for foreign workers have been criticized by some of their countries.
At Camp Striker, which housed a majority of the Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team, teams of Asian men clean the latrines and showers, fix electrical problems, cook the food in the chow hall and run the laundry, recreation facility and the local PX.
Importing workers
Most are employed by military contractor Kellogg Brown & Root, a Houston-based subsidiary of Halliburton Corp., and its various subcontractors.
Even though thousands of Iraqis are jobless, the U.S. military frowns on employing them on bases for fear of insurgent infiltration. Instead, companies with military contracts ship in Asian men, mostly from the Indian subcontinent, Thailand and the Philippines, to work on the bases at a fraction of the wages U.S. employees would ask.
In an area of Camp Striker called Mayberry, the scent of sandalwood wafted from a series of congested trailers. Outside one of the trailers, racks of well-worn shoes and grimy sandals lined the doorway. Inside, a dozen men fell to their knees in prayer in front of a shrine to Ganesh, the Hindu elephant-headed god of success.
It was success that Ganesh Sharkar — named after the very god to whom he was praying — was seeking when he decided to join 3 million other Indians already working in the Middle East.
The son of a poor farmer from the eastern Indian district of Nadia, Sharkar made his way to the Middle East through a labor recruiting agency in Mumbai. He had no idea he would end up in a war zone.
He was taken first to Oman, then to Dubai, where, he said, he was finally told that the job that awaited him was really in Iraq. By then, he had signed a contract and had no choice but to accept — he had given his life savings to the agents who sent him overseas.
“They didn’t tell me the job was here. But what are beggars to do?” said Sharkar, 30, speaking in his native Bengali. “All of us have the same dream. Money.”
‘What can I do?’
The workers said they make between $550 and $1,000 a month, depending on the job. Sharkar draws $650 a month after eight months in Iraq. He spends 12 hours a day fixing electrical problems in tents and trailers. Though that’s an attractive salary for rural India, Sharkar has barely made enough to pay off what he owed the recruiting agency — more than $2,000 — and make sure his extended family at home is sufficiently supported. In August, he said his employer, KBR subcontractor Prime Projects International, was several months behind on a paycheck.
Sharkar, like other workers at Striker, said he is allowed to take only one day off a month. When he does, it is without pay.
He shares a cramped trailer with a dozen other men in Mayberry, an enclave reserved for KBR and PPI employees. Some have had their passports confiscated, though Sharkar managed to hold on to his. He cannot eat at the same dining facility as the soldiers — his food is shipped in from Camp Victory and is often cold and tasteless.
Sharkar is not allowed to use the Internet trailer, the phone center or the recreation facility. He has little contact with home.
Louie Favorite/AJC
Amit Kumar of Nepal serves lunch to Sgt. Charles Cloud of Lithia Springs in the dining hall at Camp Striker.
He has no medical insurance and often begs workers with contacts in Baghdad to buy him medicine he needs. He has no body armor or helmet, even though military bases regularly come under attack.
“I don’t like it here, but what can I do?” Sharkar said.
Indian newspapers have written repeatedly of alleged abuse of their workers in Iraq with such headlines as “U.S. slave camps.”
CorpWatch, a globalization watchdog group based in San Francisco, claims on its Web site that TCNs in Iraq are mistreated and make extremely low wages compared to American employees of Halliburton and KBR, who often top $100,000 a year.
Recommended wage scale
KBR supervisors at Striker would not comment on the Asians. They referred questions to Nikki Wheeler, a company spokeswoman in Iraq, who said via e-mail that the company employs 40,000 people from 30 nations to support U.S. and coalition forces. She said KBR could would not discuss salaries or working conditions.
“It would be inappropriate to discuss the ‘average salary paid’ because as with any company, an employee’s rate of pay is commensurate with their experience and the value they bring to the position,” Wheeler wrote in her e-mail.
“Our compensation packages and the compensation packages provided by our subcontractors are based on a wage scale that was recommended by the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, and are competitive. Additionally, KBR’s subcontractors are required to comply with all local labor laws and provisions and must be competitive in order to recruit and retain qualified personnel.”
Wheeler added that KBR does employ Iraqis at a number of project sites and “strives to maximize local participation whenever possible. It merits mentioning,” she said, “that in some cases the military restricts our ability to bring Iraqis on to some sites.”
In May, Filipino employees went on strike against PPI and KBR at Camp Taji to protest poor working conditions and low wages. The Manila Times reported that the dispute was eventually settled with the intervention of Filipino diplomats.
The Philippines, India and Nepal have officially barred their citizens from seeking jobs in Iraq because of the danger.
Still, poor people keep coming to Iraq with a dream of striking it rich.
Money a big lure
Roderick Osbual, 23, left the rice paddies of Lusan, Philippines, behind so he would not have to be a farmer like his father. He quit college, where he was getting a degree in education to become a schoolteacher, and instead sought out a labor recruiting agent who sent him to Iraq.
He has been at Camp Striker since June 2004. After a variety of jobs, Osbual landed behind the counter at the laundry, where he always greets soldiers with a smile. PPI pays him $700 a month. When he takes a day off, he forfeits pay.
“That’s OK with me,” he said. “I need my rest.”
Osbual said he doesn’t like the way Asian workers are treated by contractors or the soldiers.
“I don’t like the term TCN. It’s degrading,” he said. “The Americans, they look at us differently.”
In the evenings, Hindi music blares from the Indian trailer while the Filipinos watch soap operas from home. The workers live among their own countrymen since language can be a barrier.
Osbual said he will likely stay in Iraq for another year. Half his salary goes into a Filipino bank account. The rest goes to his parents and a twin brother who is struggling to pay for college.
The work is boring, but Osbual is making twice what he would in his homeland.
“It’s simply a matter of money. That’s all,” he said.
Young chaplain struggles with own grief
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Camp Striker, Iraq —- The young chaplain reached out and straightened the fallen soldier’s dog tag so other troops could see it dangling clearly in front of the upended rifle. Next, 1st Lt. Jonathan Fisher adjusted the soldier’s empty boots. He rearranged some chairs in the loose, gray gravel so they were just right for the audience. And he moved his podium to a better position on the wooden stage.
Then, Fisher paused and stood to one side of the stage in a moment of quiet reflection about the tragic five months he has spent in Iraq.
For the sixth time since his arrival here, Fisher was meticulously preparing for a memorial service for a soldier from the 48th Brigade Combat Team. This one was for Staff Sgt. Dennis Paul Merck, who died Oct. 20 from an apparent accidental gunshot.
“I hope this is the last one I do. Period,” Fisher said as he watched other soldiers preparing for Merck’s ceremony. “I don’t want to do any more of these.”
Military leaders consider chaplains such as Fisher a “force multiplier” in that they help boost soldiers’ spirits so they can better focus on their missions. Besides leading prayers, chaplains also counsel soldiers about their fears, their marriages, even their careers. They accompany soldiers on and off the battlefield. And, of course, one of their key duties is responding to deaths in their unit.
At times, Fisher has worried about his ability to do this solemn duty. He is only 26 and joined the National Guard just a year ago.
He remembers a soldier waking him the night of Oct. 20 to inform him of what had happened to Merck, a father of three from Evans. Merck’s tent mates suspect he accidentally shot himself while cleaning his weapon.
As the soldier roused him from sleep, Fisher remembers thinking, “Lord, I can’t do another one of these. I can’t do another death.” But God, the chaplain said, gave him “supernatural peace” to comfort Merck’s buddies that evening and organize his memorial ceremony.
A schoolteacher from Fayetteville on his first overseas deployment, Fisher has led services for 13 soldiers and one Arabic interpreter serving with the 48th. He had counseled some of the soldiers and grown close to them before they were killed. Some were still grieving for their buddies when they died.
Fisher, an evangelical Christian, said God helped brace him for these soldiers’ deaths long before he became an officer. He suffered several tragedies in the years before his deployment that he said made him stronger. His mother died of a cancerous brain tumor in 2000. It was left to him to conduct her funeral services. Less than two months later, one of his brother’s twin daughters died at birth. And in 2003, his sister broke her back in a car wreck, paralyzing her from the waist down.
Fisher has been preaching since he was 16. His parents founded a Baptist church in Chase, Mich., where Fisher sometimes led Sunday services. But the troubles that rocked his family made him question his faith. He started questioning why God would cause these things to happen. He stopped going to church.
“It was like every six months something really bad happened to our family,” he said. “That really broke the back of my faith.”
Fisher regained his faith after deciding that God was not responsible for what happened to his family.
“We live in a broken world where bad things happen. It’s not God’s fault,” he said. “It’s the response that really matters.”
The first soldier in Fisher’s unit to die was Sgt. Chad Mercer. The 25-year-old soldier was killed June 30 when the Bradley Fighting Vehicle he commanded rolled over during a night patrol.
A soldier woke Fisher that night by shining a flashlight in his face. Fisher worried if he had the strength to put his hands on Mercer’s body and pray for his soul.
“I was talking to God the whole time. I was asking him, ‘How am I going to do this?’” Fisher said.
God, Fisher said, gave him the peace to pray over Mercer’s body.
The following month, four Georgia National Guard soldiers died when a bomb planted in the road hit their Humvee. Less than a week later, as Fisher was still helping other soldiers cope with the loss of their buddies, four more from the same unit were killed by a similar bomb.
Fisher volunteered to help recover the soldiers’ remains.
“I felt compelled to do it. I wanted the soldiers to see I could do it and wasn’t above it. Some of the soldiers didn’t want to do it,” Fisher said.
Fisher remembers finding a pair of pants that belonged to one of the soldiers. He spotted another victim’s dog tag. He found an identification badge for a third.
Just four days later, three more soldiers from Fisher’s brigade were killed by a car bomb attack at a traffic checkpoint.
Some soldiers were afraid of going outside the wire after the killings. Fisher said they found the will to do it after he prayed with them. He said witnessing God acting in their lives has strengthened his own faith.
“I believe it is nothing but the peace of God that gives them the strength to do that,” Fisher said.
Military memorial ceremonies often follow the same pattern. First, a few comrades share memories about their fallen friend. Then, the chaplain leads a prayer. Taps are played. And there is a gun salute.
Fisher carefully prepares days in advance for these events. He interviews friends of the fallen soldier, writes detailed scripts, selects the music, and leads rehearsals up until minutes before the ceremonies begin. He said he works hard on them, partly because they are filmed for the soldiers’ families back home.
“We are all casualties of this place,” Fisher said during his Oct. 26 eulogy for Merck. “We all bear in us the scars from the brokenness of the life we have led here. Each of us is indelibly marked by the people we have met, the actions we have taken and the moments lived.”
At the end of Merck’s memorial ceremony, his buddies lined up to salute his empty boots. Some reached out and held his dog tag. The chaplain was the first to hug them as they walked off the stage.
Then, it was his turn.
As a recording of the hymn “Be Still, My Soul” played in the amphitheater, Fisher saluted Merck’s boots and helmet. He reached out, held Merck’s dog tag in his hand and prayed.
“Father, be with his family this night,” Fisher said. “Comfort them, hold them, love them, give them strength to face tomorrow.”
Part of a yearlong series that will follow the lives of the citizen soldiers of Georgia’s National Guard and their families back home.
Struggles to train Iraqis stymie 48th
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Yusufiyah, Iraq — Six months after American soldiers began training Iraq’s budding army, Georgia National Guard trainers say the new force still lacks the equipment, leadership and discipline necessary to effectively combat a raging insurgency.
The Bush administration has repeatedly pledged to begin drawing down American troops as Iraqi security forces become self-sufficient. But there is little indication that will occur anytime soon in this Sunni-dominated region known as the Triangle of Death.
American advisers say the Iraqis are still outgunned by the insurgents, have problems getting even basic equipment from their defense ministry and frequently go months without being paid.
The Iraqis complain about the same things. Some lack the trust of their American trainers, who refuse to brief them about upcoming missions for fear they will tip off insurgents.
Louie Favorite/AJC
Iraqi soldiers ride in “Mad Max,” a civilian truck that has armor added to protect them, in Yusufiyah.
“It has been the most frustrating thing I have ever done, but when something successful happens you bounce off the walls,” said Lt. Col. Ben Sartain, 42, of Cleveland, Ga., who led the training by the 48th Brigade Combat Team in this area south of Baghdad. “If we could get them self-supporting, they would be able to take over their own battle space, which is the key to getting us out of here.”
Readiness a long way off
American military officials believe the unit they have been training, the 4th Brigade of Iraq’s 6th Army Division, needs at least another year of work before it will be able to operate on its own.
The 48th was responsible for that training until last month, when a brigade from the 101st Airborne Division replaced it. Among the biggest problems:
• Many Iraqi soldiers have no body armor or helmets, and those who have the protective gear often refuse to wear it. Others insist on patrolling in civilian clothes. Many wear masks for fear of being identified by insurgents.
• The Iraqis patrol in civilian pickup trucks that offer little protection against roadside bombs. Their U.S. trainers ride alongside them in armored Humvees.
• Some Iraqi soldiers have new pistols with no bullets. Others have night-vision goggles but no batteries.
• Some U.S. training teams didn’t have enough Arabic interpreters.
“When I came in, we had high expectations, and then we went back and started taking baby steps,” said Maj. Chris Voso, 38, of Marietta, who helped train the Iraqi 1st Battalion.
The trainers note the Iraqi brigade was formed only earlier this year and has demonstrated some progress. Iraqi soldiers guarding polling places Oct. 15 enabled more than 50,000 voters in this area to safely cast ballots on the proposed national constitution.
The 48th trained the Iraqis to shoot, patrol, search buildings and vehicles and set up traffic checkpoints.
They took the Iraqi brigade from a readiness level of “minimum” to “intermediary” in nearly six months. But the lack of decent supplies and communications systems is holding the unit back from the third and final step of “fully operational,” U.S. trainers said.
“Our military equipment is not sufficient compared to what the terrorists have, which is a big problem,” said Brig. Gen. Mahdi Chark Zier Kadim, commander of the Iraqi 4th Brigade. “Our soldiers are brave and courageous, but they need the equipment. With the weapons I have now, I cannot fight the terrorists.”
Louie Favorite/AJC
An Iraqi soldier guards an election voting site last month. Some troops lack body armor, bullets and helmets.
Some U.S. and Iraqi soldiers blame the supply problems on a corrupt Iraqi Defense Ministry, which was reorganized by American authorities following the 2003 invasion. Last month, Iraqi government officials issued an arrest warrant for former Defense Minister Hazim Shaalan and 27 other officials in the alleged disappearance of more than $1 billion from the ministry that was intended for weapons to modernize the army, The Associated Press reported.
Over the past six months, the ministry frequently rejected the brigade’s requests for supplies, Sartain said, so his troops ended up equipping the Iraqis.
“Working with the Iraqi Defense Ministry drives me nuts. You beat your head against the wall,” said Maj. Ray Bossert, 38, of Douglasville. “It’s frustrating. Calls are never returned. It truly takes U.S. generals to call and get involved, and it shouldn’t be that way.”
Supply woes to linger
Typical of the supply problems is that suffered by Mahmud Abdul Karim, 24, of Nasiriyah, one of the Iraqi soldiers trained by Bossert’s men. He is proud to carry his unit’s most powerful weapon: a grenade launcher captured from insurgents. But he has only one grenade for it.
Meanwhile, the Iraqis are not expected to receive armored vehicles until at least next year, possibly later, Sartain said. Yet, there are vast graveyards of captured Iraqi tanks and other armored vehicles at U.S. bases throughout the country.
“That was a big mistake. Now we are having to spend millions on equipment they could have just fixed up,” Bossert said.
But it is unclear whether the Iraqi soldiers would have the parts or the expertise to maintain the aging vehicles.
Partly because they lack armored vehicles, the Iraqis have a high casualty rate. In the 4th Battalion alone, 17 have been killed and 143 wounded since June 1, Bossert said, more than 25 percent of the unit.
Meanwhile, 424 soldiers in the brigade have not been paid for four months.
Pvt. Yunis Azaldeen Salih has not been paid for more than three months. A veteran of Operation Desert Storm, he rejoined the military to help support his pregnant wife and two children back in Kirkuk. Iraqi soldiers are paid roughly the equivalent of $300 a month, which is high for this farming community.
Salih, 41, suspects he is not getting paid because of corruption in the Iraqi Defense Ministry. He continues to serve because, he said, “I have nothing to do if I go back.”
Salih is among a small number of troops U.S. trainers consider dependable. At least once a week, an Iraqi soldier accidentally shoots himself, usually in the foot, the trainers said.
Many Iraqi soldiers are trigger-happy. After the polls closed Oct. 15, the Iraqis rode back into the base they share with U.S. troops with AK-47s blazing. The American soldiers scrambled for their gear, thinking it was an attack. Their commanders stepped in when they realized the Iraqis were only celebrating.
Lack of discipline noted
Some Iraqis become distracted while on patrol. During a night patrol in Lutayfiyah last month, U.S. soldiers repeatedly told their Iraqi counterparts to stop standing around chatting.
The lack of discipline frequently extends to the Iraqis wearing civilian clothes on patrol, which allows them to quickly flee if insurgents attack.
One day last month, Bossert spotted an Iraqi soldier at a checkpoint wearing a simple black T-shirt and shorts. “This is the civilian-clothing-is-optional checkpoint,” he joked.
Several U.S. trainers suspect Iraqi soldiers are cooperating with insurgents. So the Americans don’t fully brief their counterparts until just moments before they leave the base, if they brief them at all.
“There are informers,” Sartain said. “You have to keep them in the dark.”
The Iraqis told Bossert that U.S. authorities made a big mistake firing many officers from the former Iraqi military who were suspected of being Saddam Hussein loyalists. The 4th Battalion has a severe shortage of experienced officers. The unemployed officers are now suspected of cooperating with cash-rich insurgents.
Now, the Iraqi government is asking some junior officers who served in Saddam’s army to return in an effort to weaken the insurgency and bolster the ranks of the new military, several American newspapers reported this week, citing Defense Ministry officials.
When asked what would happen if the U.S. troops were to pull out of the country, the Iraqi officers laughed and joked they would flee to America.
But in a separate interview, their general offered a sobering response to the same question.
“The whole country will fall apart,” Kadim predicted. “And the terrorists will take advantage of that. These people are very well-armed. We don’t have the capability or the weapons to fight these guys.”
Interpreters risk their lives to aid GIs
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Baghdad, Iraq — They venture into hostile areas on raids to capture insurgents. They travel in Humvees knowing that at any time they could drive over a bomb hidden in the road. They know they are moving targets at all times.
They are Iraqi interpreters, a vital link between local residents and soldiers of the Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team and other U.S. troops trying to rein in the insurgency.
With nicknames such as Tony, David and Sara, the interpreters — Sunni Arabs, Shiites and Kurds — sleep in the same tents as soldiers and are privy to the most private of conversations.
Louie Favorite/AJC
“Imad” doesn’t use his real name, and he doesn’t make his face public. In the eyes of insurgents, he and his colleagues deserve to die for helping Americans bridge the language gap, even though their missions are often for humanitarian aid.
Some say they have the most dangerous civilian jobs in the world. Videos of beheadings of interpreters have been posted on the Internet; some have been gunned down in their cars.
Several weeks ago, an interpreter known as Nelson was killed by a bomb during a raid conducted by the 48th Brigade’s 2nd Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment. Soldiers said he had volunteered for the mission.
Some interpreters from the Baghdad area try to go home a few days a month. Others — Iraqi exiles from the United States, Britain and Arab nations — live with the soldiers around the clock. Each has his or her own reasons for serving.
Imad
Imad, a former spare parts dealer for high-end cars, left the relative luxury of life in Beirut, Lebanon, five months ago to return to Iraq to settle a family property dispute. While waiting, he sought work as an interpreter.
“I thought I shouldn’t just be sitting at home wasting time,” he said, stunned at how the Baghdad of his childhood had deteriorated into chaos. The son of a Lebanese mother and Iraqi father, Imad, 49, spent his formative years in Baghdad from 1958 to 1975. His father had been a bank manager and raised Imad in a middle-class Catholic household.
He initially felt Iraq was headed in the right direction. But after months in Baghdad, he has become restless. Though Iraqis lived under tyranny when Saddam Hussein was in power, Imad said, most people had jobs and access to basic needs such as electricity and water.
“Now everything is bad,” he said.
Compassion was in every Iraqi heart before, he said, but now people are devoid of trust, devoid of humanity. He asks himself how a nation could have been robbed of its soul.
A few weeks ago, U.S. soldiers came across a homeless woman with six children.
“She needed money. She was out on the street,” Imad said. “I asked all the translators here for money. Can you believe that nobody gave any?”
Sammy
Sammy conceals his face with a mask and dark glasses to hide his identity. But through the dark lenses he can see the resentment in people’s eyes when he asks them tough questions for the Americans.
“They hate us for what we are doing,” said Sammy, 51, who interprets for soldiers in the 121st Infantry Regiment’s 2nd Battalion.
But Sammy is undeterred. One day soon, he is convinced, Iraq will be at peace. “Mr. Bush saved 25 million people in my country,” he said. “I put a picture of him up in my home.”
When he was 22, Sammy found work on an Iraqi merchant ship that took him to ports throughout the Middle East and around the Indian Peninsula. The adventures stopped, however, after the world imposed strict economic sanctions on Saddam’s Iraq in 1991 and the nation became increasingly isolated.
“I worked hard for 25 years,” he said. “And look at me. I have nothing. No house. No car.”
After Saddam’s statue was toppled in Firdos Square in April 2003, Sammy went looking for work with the Americans, and he has been with them since.
“Now, I have a car,” Sammy said. “Maybe in 10 years, I will have a house.”
When Sammy gets a chance to go home to see his wife and four children, he makes the long drive alone and unarmed because he does not have a weapons permit. He is always alert, checking the rearview mirror constantly to see if he is being followed. Insurgents assassinated several of his friends who worked with U.S. troops.
Sammy blames Saddam’s supporters for the violence ripping Iraq apart.
“Saddam was working only for his tribe,” he said. “He didn’t care about anyone else. Now, all these problems are caused by the Sunni. They lost everything when Saddam went down. They think they will be left out.”
Tyler
Tyler grew up with six brothers and sisters in the sprawling Shiite slum known as Saddam City.
After the 2003 invasion, the name was changed to Sadr City, after Imam Mohammed Sadr, a Shiite religious leader killed by Saddam Hussein.
But living conditions didn’t get much better. Tyler, 31, still dreamed, as he did as a little boy, of escaping Iraq.
He thought the Americans might provide a ticket out, but Tyler knew little English. On Baghdad’s al-Mutanabi Street, where every Friday second-hand book vendors sell everything from literature to technical guides, Tyler purchased language books and a series of cassettes produced by the BBC.
“I made myself a prisoner in my room for 14 weeks and learned English,” he said. “I studied 16 hours a day.”
On May 22, 2004, Tyler approached the U.S. Army for a job and became an interpreter. He now interprets for a civil affairs unit attached to the 48th.
Bita Honarvar/AJC
U.S. Capt Alan Hicks (right) speaks through an unidentified Iraqi interpreter to a mother (yellow dress) about getting medical care for one of her children.
“I don’t know about the future of Iraq, but I am hopeful about my own future,” said Tyler, who dreams of being a U.S. citizen and joining the American military. “Yes, I have to be selfish. I want a better life for myself. Iraq makes me very, very sad.”
Tyler said he doesn’t understand Iraq’s lawlessness — why one Iraqi would plot to kill another, why the price of life has become cheaper than a pound of potatoes.
“If we continue to use each other like this,” he said, “we cannot achieve a free Iraq.”
Jena
Two years ago, all that was precious in Jena’s life disappeared.
She took her 1-year-old daughter, Hadeel, to a Baghdad hospital for vaccinations. The baby developed a fever and died a few days later. Jena blamed expired medications.
“I blame Saddam and the sanctions for that,” Jena said. “Doctors here didn’t have the experience to save her.”
Consumed by loss, Jena’s sad existence grew bleaker after Hadeel died. Her husband was abusing drugs, abusing her. Her parents and siblings showed Jena little support.
“My husband hurt me. He hurt my baby,” said Jena, 35, now seeking a divorce.
Desperate to find a way out, the former schoolteacher found a job with a CBS News crew in Baghdad. All those years teaching English to sixth-graders paid off. Three months ago, Jena signed up as an interpreter for the U.S. Army. As a teacher, she earned $250 a month. Now she makes about $800, eight times the average Iraqi salary.
With the 48th Brigade, she is assigned to the all-male 2nd Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment. She is vital when the soldiers need to speak with local women. In conservative Muslim homes, women speak only to other women; it would be disrespectful for male soldiers to enter their living quarters.
“When [Iraqi women] see me, they become more comfortable,” Jena said, knowing she is seen as a traitor by some.
“I don’t care,” she said. “I am confident in what I am doing. The Americans respect human rights. We have never had that in Iraq.”
But Jena has no illusions about why she spends her life at Camp Striker these days, severed from her culture and her family.
“Patriotism has been killed in Iraq,” Jena said. “Saddam killed my love for this country. I would be lying if I told you I were doing this job because I love my country. I am here because this is a job I like doing.”
U.S. officer is sheiks’ kind of guy
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mahmudiyah, Iraq — When the local sheiks meet U.S. soldiers here, they travel in large groups. They figure that’s the safest way given the threats they face from insurgents.
Other Iraqi leaders have been killed for cooperating with the military. The sheiks, who essentially are unelected community leaders who wield tremendous influence within their tribes, are no exception.
“The way we deal with this is having them all work with us because they can’t kill all the sheiks,” said Lt. Col. John King, commander of Georgia’s 1st Battalion, 108th Armor Regiment.
King has been meeting the sheiks at least once every two weeks since the battalion arrived in June to gain their cooperation in quelling the insurgency in this Sunni-dominated area known as the Triangle of Death.
The meetings are highly political and often run long. But that is nothing new for King, 41, who learned the art of multicultural politics and diplomacy primarily as Doraville’s police chief, but also through his military training.
Louie Favorite/AJC
Lt. Col. John King, police chief in Doraville, thanks sheiks for their help during his time as commander of U.S. forces in Mahmudiyah.
A police officer in Atlanta and Doraville for about 20 years, King said working with city council members and state legislators helped him learn to deal with tough political issues, a skill that comes in handy in Iraq.
“A policeman’s job is good training for working with people,” said King, a divorced father of two teenage children.
While he is gone on the year-long deployment, King keeps in touch with what’s going on at the Doraville Police Dept. through e-mails every few days and satellite telephone conversations at least once a week.
There are about 35 sheiks in the greater Mahmudiyah area where the battalion was based until recently. When the unit first arrived, the sheiks wouldn’t meet with King. But King started getting their attention by arresting them on charges of cooperating with insurgents.
He gained the respect of the others by treating them well while they were detained and publicly clearing their names when he couldn’t prove they were guilty.
On a recent Sunday, seven Shiite and Sunni sheiks in multicolored keffiyahs and robes filed into an office to meet with King. He began by thanking them for encouraging their tribes to vote in the recent referendum on the national constitution.
He told them he was pleased they were getting involved in Iraq’s budding democracy.
More than 50,000 in the Mahmudiyah area cast ballots on Iraq’s proposed constitution despite the threat of violence from insurgents, King said.
“You have deeply touched me. And you have not only taught me to be a better soldier, but a better man,” he continued. “Mahmudiyah will be a part of me and my soldiers for the rest of our days.”
The meeting with the sheiks was King’s last as the commander of U.S. forces in their area. His battalion is assuming new missions and moving to another base 65 miles south of Baghdad.
“We like your personality and image — very smart and always smiling. You always have jokes. We are very sorry to hear you are leaving,” Sheik Kalid Al-Gouriri told King through an interpreter. “We would like to come and visit you some day.”
Hammering for help
Once the niceties were finished, it didn’t take the sheiks long to start hammering on King for help in getting 23 officers assigned to the local Iraqi Army brigade.
The sheiks endorsed the officers, while complaining many of the soldiers in the brigade are outsiders from southern Iraq. Those outsiders don’t know the local traditions, the sheiks said, and have been raiding homes unnecessarily, mistreating residents and humiliating men in front of their wives.
“Sometimes they commit things without regret because nobody knows them,” said Sheik Sadoon Al-Saidi. “We ask you please to reconsider this request very firmly as a friend.”
King told the sheiks they will likely be successful in their efforts. But he asked them to be patient and let the Iraqi army decide about the appointments.
“I do not want the Iraqi army to be told everything to do by the American officers,” he said. “All good things take time to grow.”
Al-Saidi then complained King’s artillery is knocking out power and killing livestock in the town of Yusufiyah.
Al-Saidi and the other sheiks said later that at least eight Iraqis and 200 cows and sheep have been killed by Iraqi and American soldiers since the U.S. invasion in 2003. They died from either small arms fire or artillery shellings, the sheiks said.
“We would kindly ask you if you would stop the artillery,” Al-Saidi told King. “These shellings are scaring people out of their houses. And it is opening doors for insurgents to move in and take their places. By doing that, you are helping the insurgents.”
‘Catch the insurgents’
King eventually had an opportunity to voice his complaints, encouraging Al-Saidi, to turn in the insurgents who are firing mortars at U.S. soldiers from his tribal lands.
Soldiers said they have also found roadside bombs in Al-Saidi’s tribal area.
“The quickest way to shut down artillery is to help us catch the insurgents who are shooting artillery from your land,” King told Al-Saidi. “We only fire artillery at the places where insurgents are firing. We have to defend ourselves.”
After the meeting, King disputed the numbers of dead. He said he is aware of only one civilian and 10 cows killed by his men.
The civilian, he said, was killed after ignoring six warning shots and rushing toward a U.S. soldier who was preparing to destroy a roadside bomb.
Soldiers said they found what they believe was a destroyed mortar tube in the area where the cows were killed.
“There is a level of exaggeration always with my friend,” King said of Al-Saidi. “They use Mahmudiyah math. One becomes twenty.”
He added: “If I don’t fire back, I will have mortars rain constantly on me.”
As he prepared to leave the meeting, King gave each of the sheiks a coin with the battalion’s insignia on it.
“This is a small token of our appreciation for giving me your friendship and your help,” King told them. “I know it is something that is not very valuable, but it is something close to our hearts.”
King shook the hand of each of the sheiks and then turned to go. His battalion was heading south to its new base.
His howitzers had already fired their last shots.
Stress constant companion for combat medics
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Forward Operating Base Mahmudiyah, Iraq — The bloodstain on Spc. Jonathan Bentjen’s boot looks like nothing more than a dark smudge.
But it is special to Bentjen. It came from a fellow Georgia National Guard soldier, Sgt. Jim Kirchner. He has left it on his boot for good luck and to remember Kirchner.
“He is with me all the time,” said Bentjen, one of several hundred Army medics serving in Iraq.
Some medics stay behind at base aid stations where they treat everything from headaches to heart troubles to shrapnel wounds.
Others go out into the field and engage in firefights. Most soldiers try to keep their medics safely behind them. A wounded or dead medic can hinder a mission and hurt morale.
Louie Favorite/AJC
Staff Sgt. John Healton (left) of Douglasville and Spc. Jonathan Bentjen of Atlanta compare tattoos at FOB Mahmudiyah.
Medics are often first on the scene to help wounded soldiers. Under combat conditions, they must quickly make decisions on whether to insert a breathing tube, apply a tourniquet or amputate a limb that can mean the difference between life or death.
It was the morning of June 12 when Kirchner spilled his blood on Bentjen. Insurgents were firing mortars at their base about 15 miles south of Baghdad. One landed just outside Kirchner’s tent, blasting him out of his cot and spraying his back, shoulders and right arm with shrapnel.
Kirchner started screaming: “I’m hit! I’m hit! Medic! Medic!”
Bentjen was across the base when he heard the explosion. He rushed toward the commotion around Kirchner’s tent.
Inside, Bentjen saw dust floating in the sunlight streaming through holes in the tent.
“It looked like a starry sky at night,” Bentjen recalled. “All of this blood was all over the floor. It was surreal, like you were watching it on TV or a movie or something.”
Kirchner was bleeding heavily. His left lung was collapsed, and his breathing was labored. His liver, a kidney and pancreas were damaged. He had at least 28 pieces of shrapnel in his body.
Bentjen bandaged Kirchner’s arm. He closed the wounds in Kirchner’s back with sticky gauze, improving his breathing and buying him precious time. Then he helped carry Kirchner to an ambulance.
Bentjen didn’t recognize Kirchner until he rolled him onto his back. The two had shared the same tent in Kuwait.
“That surreal feeling came again,” Bentjen said. “I had never treated anybody that I had actually known. It freaked me out.”
Louie Favorite/AJC
Staff Sgt. John Healton is among those with a Mohawk-like haircut.
Kirchner, recovering back home in Paulding County, credits Bentjen and other medics from the 1st Battalion, 108th Armor Regiment with saving his life.
The medics at this base are a tight-knit group. Most of the 32 medics in the battalion have survived roadside bombings, some more than once. Two were severely injured in bombings and sent home
Several shaved their heads in solidarity, leaving only narrow Mohawk-like strips of hair. A few got tattoos of menacing looking skulls on their arms that boast “Combat Medic.” Occasionally, they get together in a wooden shack and sing silly songs about the war.
All agree that treating fellow soldiers, whom they consider family, is emotionally draining.
Back home, Bentjen, 33, is a charge nurse at Atlanta Medical Center. He lives with his wife and two young children in Douglasville. He has a photo of his son, Sam, and daughter, Emma, stuck to his rifle stock. He enlisted because he thought he would look good in a uniform. Now, he wonders about the decision he made.
“If I was given a chance, I would be home in a second,” he said. “I miss my family and my work more than anything. I’m not much of a soldier.”
Still, fellow medics say Bentjen, with his civilian experience in emergency rooms, fills a vital role at their base. Because of his depth of knowledge, higher-ranking soldiers call him “specialist in charge.”
Bentjen said his work in Iraq had been rewarding, despite his second thoughts about joining the military. It has reinforced his desire to continue working in a hospital.
A fellow medic, Spc. Colby Smith, has had a far different experience. He joined the military so it would pay for his college tuition. He wanted to become a cardiologist. But he is now soured on the idea. Treating fellow soldiers has been too traumatic of an experience.
It all started on July 20. Smith was with a convoy of soldiers hunting insurgents near the town of Yusufiyah when he heard an explosion. He turned and saw the Humvee behind him rolling over. It had been hit by an insurgent’s bomb.
Spc. Richard Ingram of LaGrange was thrown from the vehicle, and it rolled over his left arm, nearly severing it. Smith rushed to his side.
“There were five million things going through my head. I was coughing up blood,” Ingram recalled. “I even asked the medic, ‘Am I going to die?’ “
Smith playfully hit Ingram on the shoulder.
“I hit him because I didn’t know how to answer him,” Smith said.
Smith reassured Ingram that everything was going to be OK. Another soldier had improperly tied a tourniquet on Ingram’s arm. Smith removed it and placed it in the correct position. He thought about amputating but decided against it, instead placing Ingram’s arm in a splint.
Another passenger in the vehicle, Sgt. Joe Brown of Dallas, Ga., was also injured in the rollover. He had a broken jaw, broken ribs and was bleeding from his right ear. Smith treated him, clearing his airway so he could breathe.
After the wounded soldiers had been safely evacuated, Smith’s adrenaline started to wear off. His hands were shaking. A fellow soldier helped wash the blood off them.
“I really felt nauseated. The adrenaline was so high that I was getting tunnel vision,” said Smith, 23, who lives in Athens and works at a video store.
Just a few days earlier, Smith and Ingram had been tossing a football around. They shared the same barracks at Fort Stewart. And Smith said Brown often gave him marital advice.
He talked about them one recent evening as he sat in a wooden shack where the medics hang out between shifts.
“I came into this shack and bawled my eyes out,” Smith said. “After you work on someone who is that close to you, medicine is sour. The beauty of it is gone.”
Ingram credits Smith with helping save his life. He recently received a prosthetic arm and is fly-fishing back in the United States. Brown has recovered from his wounds and is back in Iraq.
Smith said he wants to pursue something else when he returns home. He’s thinking of starting a computer business. Or he might run for political office some day.
But no more medicine. He said he is through with that.
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