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February 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.”
Baby Noor’s foot surgery successful
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Baby Noor was outfitted with a bright pink cast shortly after 11 a.m. Friday following surgery to repair congenitally shortened tendons and overly tight ligaments in her left foot.
The surgery was performed at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta by Dr. Michael T. Busch, hospital officials said. She was returned to the host family’s home following the surgery.
The operation was needed because she suffers from spina bifida and has spinal cord abnormalities.
“The soft tissue release completely corrected the deformity in her left foot,” Busch, who was the first to sign Baby Noor’s cast following surgery, said in a prepared statement.
Noor al-Zahra was brought to the United States in December for treatment of her spina bifida after she was discovered by Gainesville-based soldiers of the Georgia National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team.
Baby Noor, as she is known, will wear a cast for three weeks before being fitted with a lightweight splint that she have to wear for several months to keep the foot in the proper position and prevent a recurrence of the problem, hospital officials said.
Although the spina bifida has left Noor paralyzed below the waist, the surgery will enable her to wear shoes and prevent injuries, according to the doctors.
Baby Noor having foot surgery
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A surgeon at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta plans to perform foot surgery today on Noor al-Zahra of Iraq, the 5-month-old girl brought to the United States for treatment of her spina bifida.
The doctor hopes to correct a problem that has caused the toes and heel of Noor’s left foot to curl downward, hospital officials said in a statement. The severe form of spina bifida from which Noor suffers has paralyzed her below the waist. But the surgery will let her wear shoes and lessen the risk of skin problems, hospital officials said.
The surgery is planned as an outpatient procedure, meaning Noor could soon return to a metro Atlanta host family, said Helen Shepard, a spokeswoman for Childspring International, a Christian nonprofit that brings children to the United States for medical care.
Georgia National Guard soldiers with a Gainesville-based unit of the 48th Brigade Combat Team encountered Noor while raiding a house near Baghdad three months ago. They appealed for and received help from friends and relatives in metro Atlanta, as well as Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), for Noor to leave Iraq with her father and grandmother for treatment in Atlanta.
Childspring helped arrange Noor’s care and matched her with a metro Atlanta host family. Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta donated its services, with doctors performing a successful surgery Jan. 9 and checking on Noor periodically.
After today’s surgery, Noor has appointments with members of her medical team — a neurologist, urologist and orthopedic surgeon, Shepard said. Noor is expected to wear a cast on her left leg for about three weeks and a brace for two or three months after that.
It is unclear when Noor and her father and grandmother will return to Iraq.
Childspring and the Spina Bifida Association of Georgia recently introduced Noor, her father and her grandmother to three people, ages 2, 7 and 25, who have spina bifida, an experience that helped convey what life may have in store for Noor.
In addition, Noor, her father and her grandmother have ventured out with American friends to visit places such as the World of Coca-Cola in downtown Atlanta, Shepard said.
“They’re doing great,” she said.
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Iraqi police fear danger in ranks
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Keith Hadley/AJC
Capt. Butch Beach, 31, of the Alabama National Guard unit attached to the 48th Brigade, visits an Iraqi police station.
Baghdad — Targeted for death by insurgents and grappling with widespread corruption and the infiltration of violent militias in their ranks, Iraqi police officers may have one of the most dangerous jobs in this war-ravaged country.
Since the fall of Saddam Hussein nearly three years ago, an average of 70 officers have been killed each month, U.S. military officials say.
The Zaphernia police station in east Baghdad, which opened in May 2004, has had 15 of its officers killed, most by roadside bombs. Two were shot and killed last month. Six died in a car bomb attack. One was burned alive by insurgents.
Training these police officers is almost as deadly for U.S. soldiers. In the past five months, five members of the California-based 49th Military Police Brigade, which includes two units from Georgia, have been killed by roadside bombs. A sixth recently died in the U.S. from injuries sustained in a bomb attack. A seventh was killed in a vehicle accident. Twenty have been sent home with serious injuries.
“This is probably the most dangerous mission in this country,” said Col. Rod Barham, of Columbus, commander of the 49th Brigade. “We are the targets. They are the targets.”
The Bush administration has called this “The year of the police.” The 49th’s goal is to train and equip 135,000 police officers by the end of this year. About 80,000 already have been trained.
Iraqi police are one of the prime targets for insurgents because they represent the face of their new government. Outgunned by the insurgents, the police still rely heavily on U.S. soldiers for security.
Ready recruits
Despite the dangers, Iraqis keep lining up to become policemen. Many are attracted by the pay and benefits. An entry-level police officer can earn $75 in base pay plus up to $253 in hazardous duty pay per month, a decent salary in a country with high unemployment rates.
Capt. Ahmed Jomaa, 33, joined the police two years ago to support his parents and siblings. The former Iraqi Army soldier said he is paid the equivalent of $500 a month.
Jomaa works at the Zaphernia station, a sand-colored fortress with blue trim surrounded by high walls and guard towers. Outside is a low-income neighborhood carpeted with garbage and dotted with huge pools of standing brown and green water. Inside, the portraits of 15 dead officers greet visitors.
The 49th includes two companies of Georgia soldiers as well as several National Guard and regular army units from other states. The Fort Benning-based 988th Military Police Company is scheduled to train police in the Babil Province in central Iraq. The 549th Military Police Company, based at Fort Stewart, is stationed in Mosul in northern Iraq.
The 12-man “Police Transition Teams” spreading out across the country consist of interpreters, U.S. military police and civilian contractors with law enforcement experience. At least two civilian instructors from Georgia have been killed by roadside bombs in Iraq this year.
The Georgians will teach the Iraqi police basic civilian law enforcement skills that include collecting evidence, taking fingerprints, patrolling, processing paperwork and properly handcuffing suspects. The Iraqis will be expected to know how to investigate murders as well as handle domestic disputes.
Much of the training will occur on the job as the police are simultaneously defending against insurgents and fighting organized drug, prostitution and pornography rings in the Baghdad area.
Iraq’s police agencies have come a long way since the U.S. invasion, said their military trainers. Police stations that were once burned and looted are now occupied and functioning again. And Iraqi police successfully secured polling stations for voters casting ballots in the October and December elections.
“It really is night and day. These guys that are there now want to be policemen. They view this as an opportunity, a future for their children,” said Capt. Steven Devitt of Columbus, commander of the 988th, who saw the police stations immediately after the invasion.
Danger and corruption
But substantial hurdles remain.
Hussein Jasim, another Zaphernia policeman, said he has moved his wife and three children twice because of threats.
“When I went to work, they threatened my wife. They said: ‘If he doesn’t quit his job he will be killed,’ ” said Jasim, whose brother, Alaa, and three other policemen were killed in a suicide car bomb attack last year.
Baghdad community leaders say the militiamen are tied to emerging political parties and posing as police to extort money, kidnap and kill.
“This political sharing has obliged a lot of ministries to get a lot of people from the outside. During the last two years, nobody checked their backgrounds,” said Abdulah Hussain Al-Ali, 56, chairman of the Security Committee for east Baghdad’s Karadah District Advisory Council.
The Iraqi Interior Ministry recently announced it is investigating claims of death squads among police, The Associated Press reported this month. Sunni and Shiites have repeatedly complained thugs dressed as policemen are carrying out sectarian killings.
“Why go to the Iraqi police? The power is with the militias,” said Sheik Nabil Al Arajee, 45, who sits on Karadah District Advisory Council.
Some police say their jobs were easier under Saddam’s dictatorship, with no insurgency and little crime.
“I do not enjoy it now. I enjoyed it when Saddam was in power,” said Ali Katah, 30, a veteran of the police force now stationed in Al Alawaya, a high-income neighborhood in east Baghdad.
One of the major challenges, say the U.S. military police, is changing the public perception of Iraq’s police now that Saddam is gone.
“The only time you saw police [under Saddam] was when they were going to arrest you. The police were not your friend,” Barham said.
But because of threats from powerful insurgent groups, Iraqi police have virtually hunkered down in their fortress-like police stations.
“The U.S. Army has tanks and Humvees. The Iraqi army doesn’t have all this stuff,” said Maj. Nabel Salah Hamaead, 43, who also works in Al-Alawaya. “If the Americans leave us now, who will keep the roads safe?”
Soldiers from the 49th say fraud, waste and abuse are pervasive in the police ranks.
“There is corruption everywhere, especially if you use our standards,” said Col. Don Currier, of Sacramento, Calif., deputy commander of the 49th.
A group of highway patrolmen was arrested this month for setting up an illegal checkpoint in Baghdad and extorting money from motorists, Currier said.
And police officers routinely skip work for months and sell their uniforms, guns and ammunition, Barham said. “It happens all the time.”
Thousands of Iraqi policemen have passed through one of 14 training academies in Iraq and Jordan. But some police already out on the streets still need to learn the basics, Barham said. The colonel said he recently spotted an officer directing traffic with his pistol at a Baghdad intersection. The officer, Barham said, had his finger in the trigger well.
“It’s the basics. Just the basics,” Barham said.
Short on supplies One of the top challenges for Iraq’s growing police forces — and its military — is supplies. At one station, police said 23 of their 64 vehicles are broken down, leaving them with too few for their patrols. The station has 452 policemen but only 200 sets of body armor.
Other stations are shorthanded. Yet, Iraq has no shortage of police agencies. Many overlap, compete and refuse to communicate with each other, said 49th Brigade officers. There are station police, patrol officers, traffic police, checkpoint guards, river patrolmen, public order troops and elite emergency response forces.
“As well as a number of other organizations I don’t even know about,” Currier said. “There is a constant battle over who gets jurisdiction over what. None of them trust each other because of the corruption.”
A group of 49th military police recently witnessed firsthand some of the challenges they will face in the coming months.
Several policemen arrived at one station with three suspected insurgents they had blindfolded and bound together with plastic cuffs. The three detainees were cowering. One was trembling uncontrollably.
Iraqi police said they caught them preparing to set up a bomb in an orange traffic cone just outside a U.S. military base.
Sgt. 1st Class Joel Perez of the 49th Brigade said the cuffs were too tight on one of the suspects, causing his hands to swell and turn blue. Perez cut off the cuffs.
“They need to be beaten up. The Americans won’t let us,” said one of the policemen, who asked that he not be identified for fear of insurgents. “I want to have two cars and tie each hand to a different car and break them in half.”
As the soldiers looked over the detainees, another police officer approached and asked for bullets, displaying a clip that was about half empty. The officer said his department refuses to issue ammunition, so he buys it himself.
Some police go without weapons for as long as a year, complaining the Interior Ministry is charging up to $500 per pistol when the handguns should be issued for free, Perez said.
“I expect more cooperation from them, and it is just an abuse of power,” Perez, 46, of Biggs, Calif., said of the Interior Ministry. “We are working so hard, and it seems there is resistance at the top. And it makes me bitter.”
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Salvadoran troops know the drill
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Keith Hadley/AJC
A Salvadoran officer salutes his country's honor guard during a ceremony in Kut, Iraq.
AUDIO
• Salvadoran troops shout “Cuscatlan!” the region for which their battalion is named
• The Salvadorans sing their National Anthem
Camp Delta, Iraq — They were young lieutenants in El Salvador’s bloody, 12-year civil war. Now colonels and generals, the battle-hardened soldiers are drawing on those experiences here in southern Iraq.
“Our internal conflict helped us. That gave us the experience to come to this country and make the public realize the Army is on their side,” said Lt. Col. Carlos Alvaro Rivera Mora, 44, who served in El Salvador’s military for the last 10 years of the war there.
“Although the causes have been different for the conflicts,” he continued, “the results have been the same, such as poverty. We have been dealing with the results of the conflicts the same way.”
El Salvador, like Iraq, has struggled with a violent insurgency. From 1980-1992, an estimated 75,000 people died as a result of the war in the Central American nation. In what is considered one of the last episodes of the Cold War, U.S. military advisers trained government forces in El Salvador, while the guerrillas received help from Cuba and the Soviet Union. The war ended in 1992 when the government and leftist rebels signed a treaty.
Mora is a member of El Salvador’s 5th Contingent, a group of about 380 infantry soldiers, special forces and engineers. The regular Army unit is wrapping up a six-month tour in southern Iraq’s Babil and Wasit provinces.
The Salvadorans said they completed 31 public infrastructure projects worth more than $4 million during their stay. They also rebuilt roads and bridges, built water treatment plants and restored electricity for more than a million people.
They did these projects, Mora said, under the umbrella of the Iraqi government so local residents would perceive their elected leaders have the power to help them.
Much of the work was done in the Hillah area, a densely populated region where textiles and date processing are the biggest industries. Hillah Mayor Imad Lafta Al-Bayty said his city’s unemployment rate hovers at 75 percent.
For some of their projects, the Salvadorans teamed up with the 1st Battalion, 108th Armor Regiment, a Georgia National Guard unit also stationed in southern Iraq.
“It is a great honor to work side by side with the coalition forces,” said Col. Ruben O. Rubio, 46, commander of the 5th Contingent, who was among those officers who fought in his country’s civil war. “For us, it was a great opportunity to make friends. That is the most important thing here — to make friends.”
Rubio befriended Lt. Col. John King, commander of the 108th. King had a big advantage: He was born in Mexico City and speaks fluent Spanish.
“Nobody sells Democracy better than the Salvadoran soldiers,” said King, 42, Doraville’s police chief.
The Salvadorans helped secure polling places in the Babil Province so voters could cast ballots in the historic October and December elections.
“There were many changes in order to have democracy and freedom and sustained development [in El Salvador]. That experience helped us here,” said Gen. Eduardo Mendoza, 47, another veteran of El Salvador’s civil war. He is now deputy commander of coalition forces in parts of central and southern Iraq.
Rubio’s unit focused primarily on civil affairs work in Iraq, but King said the Salvadorans are known in Iraq for being fierce fighters. Iraqis, King said, jokingly warn him never to make the Salvadorans angry.
Since the invasion in 2003, two Salvadoran privates have been killed in Iraq. One died in a vehicle accident and the other was killed by hostile fire. Mora’s unit has not had any fatalities, but one of his soldiers was shot and seriously wounded during an ambush in September.
Last week, the 5th Contingent held a small ceremony at this base in Kut, near the Iranian border. The Salvadorans were marking the end of their deployment and the beginning of the 6th Contingent’s tour here. The troops stood in formation in a gravel parking lot under a sunless sky.
Each time their leaders called them to attention, the troops shouted “Cuscatlan!” a region of El Salvador for which their battalion is named.
To symbolize the exchange of authority, Rubio handed his unit’s gold flag to Maj. Gen. Edward Gruszka, the Polish commander of coalition forces in central and southern Iraq.
Gruszka kissed the flag and then presented it to Rubio’s replacement, Col. Julio Armando Garcia Oliva. Rubio’s men are now headed home.
Family mourns a final indignity
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Patti Saylor, whose son, Paul, was killed in Iraq, has started a Web site with other family members urging better preservation of fallen soldiers.
When Patti Saylor learned last August that her son had died in a vehicle rollover accident in Iraq, she took some comfort in the fact that he hadn’t been blown up by a roadside bomb.
At least she would be able to see him one last time to say goodbye, she thought.
The kindergarten teacher was shocked when the body of Sgt. Paul Saylor of the 48th Brigade Combat Team was returned to Bremen too decomposed even for a private viewing. The local funeral director, Paul’s high school wrestling coach, was able to assure her that the body was her son because his nose was recognizable.
Saylor wants to know how her son’s remains could have been in such poor condition just three days after he died. After months of asking questions and meeting with military officials, the Saylor family has launched an effort to get a mortuary facility set up in the Middle East so that fallen soldiers can be embalmed before they return to the United States.
Last month, they launched a Web site — www.soldiersplea.com — that has logged more than 3,700 signatures supporting their cause.
“We’re just fighting so it doesn’t happen to another family,” said Patti Saylor.
“This is not a political statement. This is about taking care of young men and women who are doing their duty.”
Many unviewable
U.S. Rep. Phil Gingrey, a Republican from Marietta, has been looking into the Saylors’ concerns. Last week, he visited Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, where the bodies of the dead are returned from the war zone. Autopsies and embalming are performed at Dover before bodies are sent on to their families for burial.
Gingrey said Dover officials told him that about 2 percent of dead soldiers and contractors returning from Iraq and Afghanistan — about 39 overall — have arrived there too decomposed to be viewed by family members.
The current practice is to pack the remains of dead soldiers in ice while in the war zone to preserve them on their journey back to the United States. “I think, as I’ve studied this case, we can do a better job on that,” said Gingrey, who met with the Saylor family Tuesday. “I truly believe that we can do a better job and hopefully that percentage can be reduced close to zero.”
Gingrey said he would study the issue further. He said he was undecided about whether he would support embalming of fallen soldiers overseas, in part because he’s unsure whether it would hamper efforts to perform thorough autopsies at Dover.
Lt. Col. Kevin Arata, spokesman for the Army’s Human Resources Command, which oversees the Casualty Memorial Affairs Operations Center, said the soldiers who collect and prepare the bodies of their fallen comrades in Iraq do their best.
“There is never an intent to treat them with less than the honor and dignity they deserve,” Arata said.
Open casket services
Saylor, a 21-year-old Georgia National Guard soldier, died on Aug. 15 when his Humvee rolled into a canal. Sgt. Thomas J. Strickland, 27, of Douglasville and Spc. Joshua P. Dingler, 19, of Hiram also were killed in the accident. All three were members of the 48th Brigade. The funeral directors who handled local arrangements for Strickland and Dingler said they were able to have open casket services.
Army documents provided by the Saylor family show that when his body arrived at a medical facility in Iraq around 7 a.m. on Aug. 15, the temperature outside was 86 degrees. A little more than an hour later, the temperature had climbed to 101 degrees. Another Army report shows that Saylor’s body arrived at Dover on Aug. 18 in “advanced stages of decomposition.”
In a letter dated Jan. 4, Army officials state that an investigation found that Saylor’s body was packed in ice for transport to Dover. However, the letter states that the decomposition process was accelerated because Saylor’s body was submerged in water for several hours and temperatures in Iraq were extreme at the time.
Bill Hightower, funeral director at Hightower Funeral Home in Bremen, said ice doesn’t cool bodies enough to preserve them well in extremely high temperatures. Hightower, who handled the Saylor funeral, said packing bodies in ice “is Third World country to me in the handling of our fallen soldiers.”
Hightower said he discussed the Saylor case with his father, who planned funerals for fallen soldiers from World War II, and his father was “disheartened” by the details.
Embalming machines cost $1,000 to $2,000, Hightower said. He added that as long as blood samples are taken, bodies can be embalmed without interfering with the ability to perform an autopsy and do DNA testing later.
Patti Saylor wants the military to set up a mortuary facility in Iraq or Kuwait. She knows that soldiers in other wars have been buried in foreign soil or sent home in the cargo holds of ships. But times change and the U.S. government can afford to do better, she said.
Her sister, Linda Kirkland, said the family had an especially hard time accepting Paul’s death because he had just been home on leave. He returned to Iraq less than a week before he died.
Not getting to view his body made it even harder to believe he was gone.
“That wasn’t him,” Kirkland said. “That’s just a box. We hugged the box.”
Saddam Hussein’s fake palace
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeremy Redmon/AJC
One of Saddam Hussein's many presidential complexes, the Al-Faw Palace now serves as the headquarters of Multi-National Corps Iraq. Much of it consists of cheap materials; the chandelier in this atrium is part plastic.
Camp Victory, Baghdad, Iraq — It may look ritzy and sophisticated, but much of this palace is fake.
Once one of Saddam Hussein’s many presidential complexes, the Al-Faw Palace is now the nerve center for all U.S. land forces in Iraq. Dozens of U.S. military personnel work inside the cavernous building.
As with other such palaces built to honor Hussein, Al-Faw consists of cheap materials and questionable construction.
A gaudy throne sits in the rotunda, given to Saddam by Yasser Arafat. The inlay on it, according to military historians, reads: “Victory from God and success is near.”
Suspended high above is a huge chandelier that appears to be solid glass. But military experts say much of the fixture is plastic. Many of the banisters resemble carved marble but are really gypsum. Elaborate reliefs made to look like marble are really concrete. The Arabic script in parts of the palace appears to be gold but is actually gilded brass. Even the lake just outside the palace is artificial.
“It’s like the bizarre love child between Tony Soprano and Elvis,” said Maj. Todd Breasseale, 38, of Venice, Calif., who handles media relations for Multi-National Corps Iraq.
The complex was built to commemorate the battle for the Al-Faw peninsula in the Iran-Iraq war, according to a U.S. military report. Thousands died in that campaign. But only Saddam’s initials are carved into various parts of the building.
In 1998, Iraq came under additional scrutiny by the United States when it declared the palace off limits to United Nations arms inspectors. During the invasion five years later, the U.S. military destroyed a utility bridge to the complex with two 2,000-pound bombs. A 5,000-pound bomb pounded the back of the palace, where it was believed Saddam had an office.
After the invasion, U.S. soldiers discovered what appeared to be gold bars in the basement of the complex. They tested them, according to military historians. And, of course, they turned out to be made of lead.
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Lotion soothes body, mind
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeremy Redmon/AJC
Don't tease Spc. James Braun about his "Moonlight Path" body cream. He isn't listening. He is thinking about his wife back home in Columbus.
Camp Rustamiyah, Baghdad — Sometimes a guy could use a little “Moonlight Path” body lotion in Iraq.
Its “romantic” and “heady scents of a garden at midnight” can take a soldier’s mind off the war. And the cream’s “naturally pampering” ingredients can soothe hands worn and cracked by heavy machine guns.
Spc. James Braun, 20, of Columbus, said he isn’t bothered by the teasing he gets from other soldiers about his little purple bottle of lotion.
“I think they are jealous. I really don’t pay attention to them,” said Braun, of the Ft. Benning-based 988th Military Police Company, which is training Iraqi police.
He said his wife, Jessica, gave it to him as a parting gift as they rode to the airport on his way to Iraq.
“She said, ‘Don’t let anyone harass you about this.
This is what I use all the time,’” he recalled.
Braun wears gloves that make his skin raw while he grips a .50-caliber machine gun on a Humvee. He keeps the bottle of lotion rolled up in his cap by his feet.
“It reminds me of the way she smells. Every time I look at the bottle, it reminds me of my wife,” he said.
The couple has been married for two years. They have a 13-month-old daughter named Avril.
Braun’s unit has been in Iraq for about a month. A quarter of his magic cream is already gone.
Soldier who aided storm victims dies
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A Georgia National Guard soldier who helped collect money in Iraq for Hurricane Katrina victims last summer has died, the Pentagon announced Monday.
Sgt. 1st Class Amos C. Edwards Jr., 41, of Savannah died Friday near Rutbah, Iraq, from what military officials said was a noncombat related cause.
First Lt. Selena Owens, a spokeswoman for the 48th Brigade Combat Team, said Edwards died of an apparent heart attack. The death is under investigation.
Edwards was part of the 48th’s 1st Battalion, 118th Field Artillery Regiment. His death brings to 26 the number of 48th soldiers who have died since the unit was sent to the Middle East last May.
Of those casualties, 16 have been as a result of combat, and the other 10 died in vehicle accidents or other nonhostile incidents.
Owens said Edwards died at Camp Korea Village in a remote stretch of Iraq’s western desert close to the Syrian and Jordanian borders. Edwards’ unit has been providing security for supply convoys making the run from Jordan to bases in western Iraq since November.
Edwards had been among three 118th soldiers who felt compelled to assist victims of Hurricane Katrina and helped spearhead a drive to raise money while stationed at Camp Taji, just north of Baghdad.
The 48th Brigade has more than 2,500 Georgians and nearly 2,000 soldiers from other states including Maryland, Rhode Island, Illinois and Alabama serving in Iraq.
Staff writer Jeremy Redmon in Iraq contributed to this article.
GI mud facials
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Camp Delta, Iraq — It all started as a discussion about who is the biggest Red Bull junky of them all. And then it got real dirty from there. • SEE PHOTOS
Spc. Darryl Wilson and several other Georgia National Guard soldiers were escorting their commander to this military base recently when the conversation started to veer.
Wilson’s buddies started teasing him about his daily intake of Red Bull, a high-energy drink loaded with sugar and caffeine. Many soldiers admit they are addicted to it because it keeps them awake on long guard duties, patrols and convoys.
“He’s a lunatic,” Sgt. Joe Picon, 40, of Calhoun, said of Wilson.
Wilson, 37, shot back: “Picon is a Red Bull junky. If I have one, I will share it. Picon will hide one.”
Picon: “It’s a morning pick-me-up.”
Wilson: “Isn’t that some crack-head stuff or what?”
Wilson has learned to respect the power of Red Bull. He said he tried it for the first time one evening and couldn’t fall asleep until the afternoon the following day.
He said he tried everything to wear himself down. He played video games, lifted weights and participated in three volleyball games. Nothing worked.
“That Red Bull is no joke,” said Wilson, 37, of Jonesboro, a member of the Georgia 1st Battalion, 108th Armor Regiment.
Wilson and the others eventually arrived at this base and observed a military ceremony for some Salvadoran soldiers. The Georgians had lunch and then hung out beside their Humvees until it was time to go.
While he was waiting, Wilson spied a big patch of mud in front of his Humvee and pretended as if he was going to jump in. One of his buddies helped him along.
And timberrrrr! Wilson belly-flopped in the slippery mess.
He climbed back on his feet and started chasing the other troops, hugging each one he caught and smearing them with mud. A truck full of Salvadoran soldiers burst into cheers as they watched Wilson.
“Any questions?” Wilson asked rhetorically as he cleaned his pants with bottled water.
All eyes locked on the commander as he strolled back from lunch. Lt. Col. John King, 42, Doraville’s police chief, saw the looks on his soldiers’s faces and knew what was about to happen. He bolted in the opposite direction.
But his men caught up with him, carried him back and threw him in. Wilson helped King to his feet and then saluted him.
“Boy are we going to get smoked when we get back,” Wilson joked.
King got in on the action moments later, distracting Picon long enough for the others to pick him up and throw him in the mud.
“Welcome to the 108th!” Sgt. Timothy Hass, 34, of Kennesaw, told Picon.
As the muddy troops rode back to their base at Convoy Support Center Scania, Wilson sheepishly admitted something: “It was that Red Bull. It was a bad influence.”
Baby Noor won’t need bladder surgery
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Doctors at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta said Friday that Noor al-Zahra, the Iraqi baby rescued by soldiers of a Gainesville-based infantry unit, will not require bladder surgery and remains in good condition.
Noor, however, will need catherization from time to time, although that can be done by family members at home, a hospital statement said.
Urologist Dr. Andrew Kirsch said the baby will need annual monitoring but Kirsch gave her an excellent prognosis as far as her kidneys were concerned.
No timetable has been released yet for the return of the baby, her grandmother Soad and father, Haider, to Iraq.
Soldiers of the Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team discovered the baby in December during a raid of the family’s home in impoverished Abu Ghraib, just west of Baghdad. They sent her to Atlanta for surgery after doctors determined Noor was suffering from a severe form of spina bifida.
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Heart to heart and eye to eye
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeremy Redmon/AJC
Holding Nura, who was abandoned by her family in early 2003, is Capt. Peter Keough, a chaplain with the 49th Military Police Brigade. Nura has no arms or legs.• MORE PHOTOS
Far from home and missing their own children, the burly soldiers with the Fairfield, Calif.,-based 49th Military Police Brigade couldn’t resist when they saw the kids.
They set their rifles aside, pulled off their body armor and held the children tight, speaking softly, close to their ears.
They were visiting the Missionaries of Charity Teresa Dar Al Mahabha orphanage, which has been operating in Baghdad for 17 years.
The Catholic orphanage serves handicapped children, ages 2 to 12. Some are blind. Others have birth defects. Many were abandoned by their families.
The brigade, which includes soldiers from Fort Benning, Ga., recently delivered about a dozen boxes of diapers, baby formula and other items to the orphanage.
Base surrounded by sea of sewage, trash, bodies
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeremy Redmon/AJC
A massive garbage dump lies just outside Camp Rustamiyah in eastern Baghdad. If that wasn't enough, the base is plagued with pesky flies in warm weather and it sits next to a sewage treatment plant.
Camp Rustamiyah, Iraq — This is possibly the most miserable place for soldiers to serve in Iraq. Maybe even the world.
Consider how this U.S. military base has an awful-smelling landfill just outside its gate. A sewage treatment plant stinks up the area on another side.
Throw in thousands of pesky insects. Add scores of dead bodies floating down nearby canals. And you get Rustamiyah.
“It’s got it all,” joked Col. Rod Barham, of Columbus, commander of the Fairfield, Calif.-based 49th Military Police Brigade.
Often, the base smells like rotten eggs, probably from the sewage plant. Since July, 290 bodies have floated into the plant. Many of the victims were found bound, semi-nude, tortured, mutilated and shot in the head.
Soldiers speculate people are dumping the bodies in a canal north of their location in the slum of Sadr City.
On top of that, the warm weather brings out waves of ferocious, biting sand flies and mosquitoes.
Consequently, the camp has earned the nickname “Rustaflyah.”
“You get back in your Humvee and the whole thing is black with flies,” Barham said.
Just outside the camp walls sits a vast dump, filled with mounds of trash. Some Iraqis live in small huts dotting the landfill. Shepherds let their flocks chew through the scum.Packs of stray dogs often lope through the maze of smelly debris.
“It smells like [excrement] and dead animals combined as one,” said Spc. Joseph McGraw, 21, of the Fort Benning-based 988th Military Police Company.
McGraw, who has drawn guard tower duty with a view of the dump, said he once observed children eating out of the garbage there.
But McGraw prefers to look on the bright side about Rustamiyah. It could be worse, he said.
Really?
Love in war
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeremy Redmon
For Matthew and Megan Narez, being married and serving in the same Army unit in Iraq can be a blessing and a curse at the same time.
Camp Rustamiyah, Baghdad — Six painful hours.
Spc. Matthew Narez said he worried through each of them.
He sat on a concrete barrier last month, he said, waiting to see his wife’s face again. She was outside the wire on a mission in Baghdad. He positioned himself so he could spot her coming down the road in her Humvee.
There had been a “communication blackout,” a time when the military shuts down telephone and Internet access.
Blackouts usually occur when a soldier has been seriously injured or killed. The military doesn’t want anyone breaking the news to a soldier’s family before the official notification.
Narez started thinking the worst. What if his wife, Megan, had been seriously injured? He said he smoked an entire pack of cigarettes as the hours wore on.
Finally, she returned to base, uninjured.
The couple said they never discovered the cause of the blackout. But it made them realize how difficult it is to serve in the same unit in a war zone. They serve with the Fort Benning-based 988th Military Police Company, which is training Iraqi police, one of the most dangerous missions here.
“It has its pluses and minuses,” said Matthew, 22, of Columbus. “I think we both worry more.”
Megan, a 22-year-old sergeant, said she has a “double whammy” to deal with.
“I worry all the time. It’s hard because I have my team to worry about,” she said of the other soldiers she looks after.
It would also be difficult, they said, to be apart. At this small camp in eastern Baghdad, they spend one or two hours together each day, often sharing meals.
But being together in a war zone is not the same. The military, they said, prohibits them from publicly showing affection.
After Megan returned from a recent visit to police stations in Baghdad, Matthew walked up and stood beside her. He couldn’t hug or kiss her as he would like. But he smiled brightly.
“We will be walking together and I will go up to him and… ‘Oh, I can’t do that,”” she said, puckering up her lips. “It’s natural.”
Matthew said he sometimes catches himself reaching to hold her hand.
Yet, privately, he calls her baby. She calls him “sweet cheese.” The two met during their first deployment in Iraq in 2003. They wed in July last year.
Matthew is not sure how long he will stay in the Army. But Megan plans to leave the military next year and go to college, perhaps to study massage therapy. The two plan to have children. Megan doesn’t want the Army deployments to hurt her family.
“I don’t see how married people do it in the military,” she said.
Mission rolls on for those who lost 8 comrades
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Tallil Air Base, Iraq — The soldiers of Alpha Company were going out in armored Humvees this day. Like they did back then.
They poured bottled water over the ballistic glass windows to rinse off the dust. One installed a new bracket on his machine gun.
There was a last-minute run back to the living trailers to stock up on Red Bull. As they waited, some compared the knives strapped on their belts. The gunners, who stand in turrets exposed to the elements, and more, put on camouflaged cold- weather gear.
Some soldiers in Iraq kiss talismans around their necks before leaving base; others pray collectively with a chaplain.
But such rituals are not part of the pre-mission routine for Alpha Company’s 2nd Platoon.
Not after last July.
On this January day, they settled instead on a brief discussion of the mission at hand: escorting a shipment of 160,000 gallons of jet fuel from southern Iraq to Camp Anaconda, just north of Baghdad.
Sgt. 1st Class Don Whitmire, 48, the patrol leader, read from the latest intelligence report on what to expect on the treacherous road.
Speed limit is 55. Wear your seat belts. In the event of a rollover, grab the gunner from the turret. Gentlemen, you all know what IED holes look like.
Then came the reminder.
“Come by and pick up your bracelets,” Whitmire said.
The bracelets — elegant stainless steel bands bearing a U.S. flag and the lightning bolt insignia of the Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team. Each etched with four names of the fallen. Whitmire recently ordered a set for each of his soldiers.
The bracelets are his way of honoring the loss his company suffered last summer. In two incidents separated by six painfully short July days, eight soldiers of the 2nd Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment’s Alpha Company, died when their Humvees rolled over massive bombs hidden in the roads of rural southwest Baghdad.
Eight men gone from one platoon, their lives ended with brutal swiftness.
The shock, followed by intense grief and anger, reverberated through the tents that the Valdosta-based infantrymen occupied last summer at Camp Striker, adjacent to the Baghdad airport.
The Alpha Company soldiers were the first in the 48th Brigade to die in blasts generated by improvised explosive devices, bombs planted beneath or beside roads. They are the weapon of choice of insurgents in Iraq.
Alpha Company soldiers coped the best way they knew how; undeterred in their resolve to soldier on, traversing the same roads and hunting an elusive enemy.
“You can’t bottom out when you have 10 months to go,” said Sgt. William Rousseau, 24, a Richmond County sheriff’s deputy who survived both the ill-fated patrols in July. “We moved on.
“Do I think about it? Every day. Every time we go down the road I think about it.”
Whitmire, a real estate developer from Bainbridge, couldn’t bear to hear the names called out at a Veterans Day event he attended while home on leave in November.
“Hearing all the names — my eight guys — was really hard,” he said.
Whitmire had made up the roster for the patrols. He lives with his decision every day.
“It could have been anybody in the platoon,” he said. “I’m the one who said who was going on those trucks. They’re all my sons.”
Whenever a 2nd Platoon vehicle was attacked, on subsequent patrols, Whitmire positioned his own Humvee in the slot of the one that got hit.
“If the No. 2 truck got hit, I moved my truck to No. 2,” he said. “I could see the looks in the guys’ eyes. Nobody wanted to be in that spot.”
It was difficult, too, to ask his men to keep going back out there.
“Not that we had anyone who didn’t want to do it,” Whitmire said. “But there was that sense of hesitation. I still feel my platoon was targeted because of the good things we were doing.”
During training at Fort Stewart last spring, Whitmire talked to his soldiers about what they were about to face in Iraq.
“It’s a cliché — some of us may not be coming back,” Whitmire said. “Then when it happens in the fashion that it did happen … “
Whitmire paused, unsure how to finish.
“It will be extremely hard,” he said, “to get on a plane and leave this country without them.”
Trust in locals shattered
The names are painted on concrete barriers at Camp Striker, occupied now by the 101st Airborne Division. They are scratched on the trunk of a tree near a safe house that Alpha Company soldiers used last summer. They appear under their photos at brigade headquarters at Tallil.
Killed July 24, 2005:
Sgt. John Thomas
Spc. Jacques Brunson
Staff Sgt. Carl Fuller
Sgt. James Kinlow
Killed July 30, 2005:
Spc. Jonathon Haggin
Staff Sgt. David Jones
Sgt. 1st Class Victor Anderson
Sgt. Ronnie Shelley
A truck driver, a warehouse supervisor, a meat cutter, a construction worker, a bakery supervisor, a sheriff’s deputy, a jailer and a security guard. Sons, husbands and fathers.
After the remains of the eight were flown home last summer, several Alpha Company soldiers moved up their two-week leaves. They feared the worst — that next time out, it might be them. They didn’t want to miss seeing their families one last time.
Spc. Jeffrey Anderson, 36, a construction worker from Gainesville, went home using the time that had been allotted to one of the fallen, Ronnie Shelley. Shelley had been Anderson’s battle buddy, the gunner on his Humvee.
Anderson took his wife and two daughters to see his friend’s widow, Heidi.
“I haven’t figured it all out yet,” he said afterward. “Somehow you dig deep down inside and keep going.”
Staff Sgt. Gerald Coleman, 43, a night manager at a hotel in Columbus, also visited Shelley’s family.
“The worst part is that people back home don’t know everything. They ask questions you can’t answer,” he said. “The pain is still there.”
The three men who witnessed both days of carnage — Rousseau, Spc. Vito Pellitteri and Spc. Rodney Davidson — were inconsolable last summer.
After the first memorial service at Camp Striker, Rousseau and Pellitteri sat on the steps of the stage with Victor Anderson to remember their brothers.
Days later, on patrol with Anderson, Rousseau and Pellitteri again heard a thundering explosion and looked back in horror: the third vehicle on the patrol was no longer in sight. Anderson and three others were gone.
Rousseau and Pellitteri went home on leave in September. Along with Sgt. Scott Davis, they attended a tree dedication at Fort Stewart for the fallen. The eight Alpha Company names were added to Warrior’s Walk, a memorial to those killed in action.
Rousseau worried for Pellitteri, a student at Valdosta State and only 19. So young to have experienced such losses.
Rousseau worried, too, that the deaths hardened the hearts of Alpha Company soldiers and changed the way they would interact with Iraqis.
“I lost a lot of the wanting to be able to trust,” Rousseau said. “The outreach stuff ended. It was all business for us. We didn’t want to take that extra step anymore.”
But they gathered their strength and continued patrolling towns and villages in southwest Baghdad, handing out toys and candy to the children and speaking with the adults to find information on suspected insurgents. They would look into Iraqi eyes and wonder — did they know the person who was responsible?
The mission rolls along
Time. Alpha Company soldiers wanted time to march on, knowing that every new day would help soothe their loss.
Place. Alpha Company knew its patrols in “that area” would end in the fall. The 48th Brigade was scheduled to move to southern Iraq for a new mission. They longed for the day they would no longer have to drive on Route Aeros and Route Red Sox and catch glimpses of Kevlar, a Gerber multipurpose tool or pieces of a Humvee seat still strewn in the dust.
After the deaths, the 2nd Battalion was transformed into an “air mobile unit.” Some missions were conducted using helicopters that dropped off and picked up soldiers so they wouldn’t have to drive the deadly roads.
“I personally like this because I can’t remember the last time a helicopter ran over an IED,” Spc. Jason Smith, an Alpha Company medic, wrote to friends in an e-mail. “I know that’s a little bit of an obscure way of looking at it, but I’m more worried about IEDs than I am being shot out of the sky.”
In late October, those missions ended when the battalion moved to Tallil Air Base, near Nasiriyah in southern Iraq. A month later, Alpha soldiers started new jobs as escorts for trucks that carry supplies from Kuwait to U.S. military bases in central and northern Iraq.
It wasn’t what the soldiers had envisioned.
“Now, we are covering three or four times the ground in Humvees through some of the worst areas of Iraq,” Whitmire said.
Before they pick up the fuel trucks, Alpha Company soldiers drive out of Tallil just as they did at Striker: Humvees in single file on a dirt road that leads out to the highway.
The imagery is chilling. Too much like those two days — Pellitteri in the driver’s seat with Rousseau by his side.
But after eight months in Iraq, Rousseau said he “feels more at ease.”
“I can’t do anything about what’s buried in the road,” he said.
The convoys are long, tiring and often risky. The soldiers of 2nd platoon have been driving to Camp Liberty, Camp Anaconda and forward operating bases at Taqaddum with 20 giant trucks carrying thousands of gallons of jet fuel. One spark, one blast, could mean a fiery end.
Spc. Sean Martin, dressed in full “battle rattle,” sat quietly in the driver’s seat with a pocket-size New Testament in his right hand. It was a moment of introspection.
“If it’s my time to go, I want to be in a position to go to heaven.” Martin said holding up the Bible. “It’s kind of like soul food. This gives me encouragement.”
Memories in the dark
In the Baghdad area, the roads are far from quiet. Often, soldiers spend long hours waiting for a freshly discovered bomb to be removed. Or they wait because a highway was shut down after an attack on U.S. soldiers.
They count the overpasses on the main north-south highway.
“Ten more to go and we’re home,” Whitmire said on a recent run to Anaconda.
He ordered his gunners to shoot bags left on the roadsides. Or fire flares at suspicious vehicles.
“This is our old home,” Whitmire said as the convoy approached southwest Baghdad.
Moving out of that area gave some of the guys a “fresh start,” Rousseau said. It lifted their spirits.
“To me it didn’t matter where we stayed,” he said.
But some 2nd Platoon soldiers wish they were still there.
“Maybe it’s the guys we left behind,” Coleman said.
Or maybe, he said, it’s because the soldiers felt they were winning their war — there were tangible signs of progress in the villages around Striker. In turn, that would lead to fewer casualties.
Davidson said he wanted to stay behind. It wasn’t vengeance that ate at his soul — it was a matter of justice for his eight fallen friends.
“I lost my whole squad there. The people responsible for killing them are in that area,” said Davidson, 39, an employee at Yamaha in Thomaston.
Scattered among the big trucks, the 48th Brigade soldiers drive mostly at night, when the air is cold and the roads sometimes pitch black.
That’s when reality sets in.
“I don’t want to forget but I want to pull up the memories when I want to,” Davidson said.
After so many months, he has found peace in the ability to do just that. To think about the eight out of choice — not because the nightmares are never-ending.
‘I love you, man’
Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy” blasted out of Spc. Jason Smith’s iPod mini. The paramedic from Philadelphia is a big fan of music from the 1980s. Smith, 28, occupied a rear passenger seat in the Humvee and strained to read Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” with the help of a small flashlight. On this night, the wait at the gates of Anaconda was long and uncomfortable.
A helicopter had gone down the day before and there were reports of an IED on the main highway ahead. No convoys could exit the base until the area had been cleared.
“Resilience is a good word to describe the company,” Smith said, reflecting on a deployment approaching an end this spring.
Smith often thinks about the words tattooed on his left leg: “I will never leave a fallen comrade.”
Last summer, he could not live up to that promise.
“There was absolutely nothing I could have done had I been there,” Smith wrote home to friends in an e-mail. “I can tell you that I had mentally prepared myself for the absolute worst, but even the worst didn’t compare to what I had to face.”
In October, he wrote to friends about his numbness or why he wouldn’t share any of his soldierly life in letters or phone calls anymore. Not after what happened.
“My feelings of this place and its people had changed and I had pretty much forgotten all about one of the very reasons that I had chose to deploy in the first place, which was to make a better life for these people,” Smith said. “Well today I caught sight of that vision once again and it came in the form of a little girl.”
Everyone has a story of healing.
A child with ribbons around her pigtails held Smith’s hand and softened the anger within.
“Later in the day I begin to reflect on the events of earlier and I feel positive about this place … something I haven’t felt in a long time,” Smith wrote.
Of the eight who perished, Smith knew Haggin the best. They slept next to each other on cots in a tent covered by a dusty blue tarp.
“He and I were neighbors and shared many things,” Smith said in one of his e-mails. “He kept quiet about his family and his past, but I knew that he had … a 3-year-old little girl whom he loved more than life itself.”
Haggin had spent three weeks in Germany recuperating after three ribs were broken in an IED attack earlier in the summer. He could have stayed on medical disability longer, but he was eager to rejoin his platoon.
July 30 was his first mission after he returned.
Smith walked up to his friend. “I love you, man,” he told Haggin.
Hours later, Haggin was dead.
When Smith recalls that blistering July day, he thinks about a lot of things. About how the eight laughed and made others laugh. Their love for their families. The bond they felt so far from home.
He also wonders why he chose that particular moment to utter three little words he doesn’t often use.
Getting out of the HEAT
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeremy Redmon
Soldiers use the HEAT trainer to learn how to escape quickly from a Humvee after a rollover.
Camp Arifjan, Kuwait — Roll over!
It’s a Humvee on a spit, a wild carnival ride and a training tool all rolled into one. The U.S. military is also hoping it will be a lifesaver.
The odd-looking ride is meant to teach soldiers how to quickly and safely exit a Humvee that has rolled over.
Since the invasion of Iraq, 90 U.S. service members have been killed in vehicle rollovers, according to a military report. Fourteen drowned in armored Humvees.
In building the ride, workers repaired a Humvee damaged by an improvised explosive device in Iraq, mounted it on a tank engine repair stand and hooked it to a motor. The motor can turn the Humvee compartment up to 180 degrees to simulate a rollover.
The device is based on the “Dilbert Dunker,” which teaches pilots how to escape a submerged plane. The military loves technical language and acronyms, so the ride got the name HEAT, for Humvee Egress Assistance Trainer.
Soldiers are taught that a Humvee can roll over if it hits a 25-degree angle, depending on other factors such as speed and the abruptness of turns.
During their ride, the soldiers learn to shout “Roll over!” when they feel the vehicle tipping. That warns everyone in the truck to brace themselves.
Once they are upside down, the soldiers must balance on their helmets while unfastening their seatbelts.
Then, they must push open one of the armored doors, which weigh 240 pounds each, help one another out and be ready to fight the enemy.
When Sgt. 1st Class Sylvannus Jones, of St. Leonard, Md., went on the ride this week, he had the added complication of sitting in the gunner’s hatch.
He learned to resist the temptation of bracing himself on the hatch, where a limb can be severed in a rollover. He instead crawled quickly down into the vehicle.
“Your natural reaction is to put your hands up. Metal and flesh don’t mix,” said Jones, a Maryland National Guard soldier with the Baltimore-based 243rd Engineer Company. “It’s realistic training. Hopefully, my guys will never have to use it.”
CROWS nest: Safe, armed
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Tallil Air Base, Iraq — This was when hours of practice on an Xbox might have come in handy.
Sgt. Ernest Lawson sat behind the driver in a Humvee, eyes fixed on a computer screen mounted in front of him, his right hand on a joystick.
He looked as though he were playing a video game. But amusement this most certainly was not.
Lawson used to stand between the two back seats of the Humvee, his upper body extending out of the gunner’s turret, exposed to a possible sniper’s bullet or bombs planted in the roads.
But thanks to new military technology, Lawson, who serves with the Georgia National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team, now sits protected inside the armored Humvee operating a .50 caliber machine gun with the help of a computer.
“I like that I am not standing up there,” said Lawson, his eyes glued to the screen for the whole eight-hour ride from southern Iraq to Baghdad.
The U.S. military calls it the CROWS, Common Remotely Operated Weapon Station. It’s mounted on top of a Humvee and controlled from a computerized command center within the truck. The system can handle the heavy .50 caliber, the 7.622mm medium machine gun, a 40 mm automatic grenade launcher and the smaller squad automatic weapon.
According to the Army, CROWS was originally developed for military police, but other soldiers in Iraq are now using the system for additional protection.
Those who have used the system say it also helps them hit targets with more accuracy and gives them the ability to scan an area from great distances.
If the system fails, gunners can manually open the turret and take charge of the mounted weapon.
Lawson, who serves in the 2nd Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment’s Alpha Company from Valdosta, is one of a few Georgia gunners to have used of the new system. Most gunners still stand in the turret. But the Army hopes to have several hundred CROW stations in place by the middle of this year.
The soldiers love it for the obvious safety reasons, but sometimes the system can be a hindrance.
Sgt. Scott Davis said Alpha Company soldiers often need to fire warning shots at suspect Iraqis or vehicles that approach too closely when they are on the highways escorting supply trucks from southern Iraq into the Baghdad area.
Without a gunner up in the turret, warning shots are impossible.
“It’s not good for what we’re doing,” said Sgt. Scott Davis, a firefighter from Savannah. “We can’t fire any warning shots. There’s no gunner up there with an M-16.”
New baby eases returning GI’s pain
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeremy Redmon/AJC
Spc. Eric Smith holds a photo of his newborn baby girl, Skylar. He said his thoughts are with her as he travels back to Iraq to rejoin the 648th Engineer Battalion in Iraq.
Loud noises. War movies. Even food brings the painful memories flooding back to Spc. Eric Smith.
It was Aug. 3. Smith said he was sitting in a Humvee at a security checkpoint near Baghdad that day. He was heating up a military ration when he heard a massive explosion. A mushroom cloud appeared about two miles away, he said, where three of his buddies were manning another traffic checkpoint.
Smith rushed to the site of the blast and witnessed a grisly scene. A suicide car bomber killed three soldiers from his unit, Charlie Company of the Statesboro-based 648th Engineer Battalion.
Smith said he sought help from a military combat stress expert, but he still has flashbacks and nightmares about that day. He spoke about his experience over the weekend as he ate dinner at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. He had a fragile, even pained, look in his eyes.
“It replays itself every night - just about,” said Smith, 35, of Waycross, a truck driver and volunteer firefighter. “Something like that just stays with you. You just learn to live with it and move on.”
Smith was waiting for a flight back to Iraq. He had just spent about a month with his family at home on leave. Soldiers normally get about a two-week break from overseas deployments. Smith said he needed to spend several more days at home because his wife, Amanda, had medical problems exacerbated by their baby’s delivery.
On Jan. 6, she gave birth to a baby girl, Skyla, Eric’s first child. Skylar came in at 8 pounds, 3 ounces.
“She’s really healthy,” Smith said of his daughter. “She has a head full of hair.”
As his departure neared, Smith said he wasn’t focusing on Iraq and the death and destruction there.
He said he was thinking about being with his family. Playing with his two young step-daughters. Listening to his new baby girl cry.
Soldiers chafe at extra weight of body armor
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The extra body armor the Pentagon is issuing soldiers and Marines in Iraq will not be a welcome addition for everyone.
While some say they won’t go into battle without the protective side plates, others say they don’t want to add any more weight to their gear, which can easily top 70 pounds.
Staff Sgt. Joshua Winchester, a 30-year-old Pepsi truck driver from Jesup, predicts the extra weight would become a hassle for him in his already cramped Humvee. The Georgia National Guard soldier doesn’t plan to wear the plates, citing the intense heat soldiers face in Iraq.
“You think about how much of a pain in the neck your maneuvering will be. You will feel like a robot. You will feel like R2D2 in a turret. Forget that junk,” said Winchester, a member of the Savannah-based 118th Field Artillery Regiment Task Force stationed at Al Asad Air Base.
Winchester is guarding U.S. supply convoys in the violent Al Anbar Province of western Iraq. He wears the military-issue neck and groin protectors attached to his body armor, but many other soldiers have shed them, saying they hinder mobility.
The Army is sending the new side plates to every soldier in Iraq and Afghanistan starting this month in an effort to shield body parts vulnerable to sniper fire and roadside bombs.
The Marines already have issued about 9,200 sets of side plates to troops in Iraq. They hope to have 28,800 sets there and in Afghanistan by April. Marine officials say the plates can withstand bullets fired from an AK-47 assault rifle, the weapon of choice among many insurgents in Iraq.
Cpl. Henry Patterson, 25, a Marine from Stone Mountain, said he definitely will wear the plates if he gets them. Patterson is headed back to Iraq this month with a Marietta-based reserve unit responsible for retrieving the bodies and body parts of dead Marines. He said he got used to the weight of his body armor when he served at Al Asad in 2004 and 2005.
“I would wear it so I don’t get shot. A lot of Marines have died from getting shot in the side,” said Patterson, a MARTA inspector in civilian life.
Army officials concede the standard body armor with neck, groin and shoulder protection is already too heavy at 24.1 pounds. A pair of the ceramic side plates — costing $900 – will add seven more pounds. On top of that, soldiers typically carry up to 50 additional pounds of gear into combat.
Because of the extra weight and heat in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Marines, like the Army, are leaving it up to field commanders to determine whether their troops must wear the plates.
Patterson’s commander, Maj. Eric Young, said he will require them for his troops. Young said he wouldn’t want a Marine’s death weighing on his conscience.
“It’s on the commander and they should make their Marines wear this gear,” said Young, 33, of Pittsburgh, who commanded a military police company in western Iraq in 2003 and 2004.
Young has good reason to be cautious. Last year, an Armed Forces Institute of Pathology study of a random sample of 93 Marine deaths in Iraq found that 80 percent could have been prevented with more protection “on the chest, back, sides and shoulder areas.” Of the deaths, 60 percent were caused by gunshots.
The study also concluded: “As many as 42 percent of the Marine casualties who died from isolated torso injuries could have been prevented with improved protection in the areas surrounding the plated areas of the vest.
Nearly 23 percent might have benefited from protection along the mid-axillary line of the lateral chest. Another 15 percent died from impacts through the unprotected shoulder and upper arm.” The Marines started developing the side plates in June to protect the vulnerable areas identified in the study.
“They were just getting smarter,” Capt. Jeff Landis, a Marine spokesman, said about the insurgents turned sharpshooters.
Army officials said the Marine study had nothing to do with their plan to issue the side plates. Instead, they said they are responding to pleas from commanders in the field who want more protection for military truck drivers and others in the line of fire. Meanwhile, they are on the hunt for lighter, stronger body armor.
“We will test anything that anybody has, but so far we haven’t found anything better than what the Army has,” said Col. Thomas Spoehr, who is in charge of fielding Army equipment. “The scientists just don’t see anything coming around the corner and we keep pushing them.”
Body armor has improved dramatically since World War I, when Medieval armor-like breast plates and helmets were tested. The National Infantry Museum at Fort Benning has a set of this heavy, awkward-looking armor on display. The mannequin wearing the armor is complete with metal “splinter goggles” and shin guards.
In a back storage room, tucked away in special dust-free closets, the museum stores U.S. body armor vests from World War II to Vietnam. Frank Hanner, the museum’s director, recently took them out of a gray box, placed them on the floor and sized them up.
“They were constantly trying to come up with something better,” Hanner, 56, said as he eyed the green vests.
Just outside the storage room are numerous weapons, from knives to tanks. Troops can keep piling on body armor to protect against those weapons, Hanner said, but, “there is only so much a human being can carry. And mobility can be the difference between life and death.”
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