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Monday, February 27, 2006
All quiet at Radio Relay Point 5
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Radio Relay Point 5, Iraq — Little brown birds bounced around in the gray gravel, pecking between the stones for bits of food.
The only sound was their chirping. No machine gun fire. No mortar rounds exploding.
The birds were at the bottom of a guard tower where some Georgia National Guard soldiers were on watch at this remote outpost in southern Iraq.
Several similar radio relay points are spread across the desert between Tallil Air Base and Convoy Support Center Scania, where Georgia’s 1st Battalion, 108th Armor Regiment is based. The Georgians stationed at these outposts patrol certain areas, monitor radio traffic and assist passing U.S. military convoys that need help.
The troops have everything they need here. The Internet. TV. A fully stocked kitchen. A gym.
Nothing much happens here at Radio Relay Point 5. No insurgents. No roadside bombs. Only the occasional visit from an Iraqi man, who barters with the soldiers.
Some 108th soldiers prefer it here in southern Iraq, far away from their last post in Yusufiyah, where insurgents repeatedly attacked with rockets and mortars.
“I’m glad we went to Yusufiyah first instead of here. It’s definitely a good thing we went to the worst place first,” said Spc. Joshua Watkins, 26, of Canton.
Other soldiers like being away from their battalion headquarters in Scania.
“Up there, you have to deal with all the battalion politics. Here you are just dealing with platoon-level stuff,” said Sgt. Kenneth Brooks, 41, of Acworth, a medic based just up the road at Radio Relay Point 6.
Nothing much happens at Brooks’ station, too. But the birds are more aggressive there. He said one attacked him last week while he was manning a guard tower. He thinks it was going after a string attached to his pants, perhaps thinking it as a mouse’s tail.
“It hit and went out and was coming back around for another strike,” Brooks said.
Spc. Michael Hardy said he had a similar experience in a guard tower at the same station. An owl attacked him, he said.
“All of a sudden all I heard was screeching,” said Hardy, 40, of Athens, Ala. “I thought, ‘Oh, my God. What the dickens is this thing?”
“My hair was standing on end. I didn’t know what the hell was going on. I don’t think my heart could stand all that excitement again.”
Brooks joked: “We were attacked by the Iraqi Air Force.”
