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Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Charlie Company accustomed to being in the thick of things
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Curtis Compton/AJC
Lt. Col. Kevin Brown, the battalion commander, said soldiers have been pulled in many different directions.
Baghdad, Iraq - It’s good to feel needed, but the “special” capabilities of a Gainesville-based infantry unit have made for a grueling deployment in Iraq.
From day one in the war zone, Charlie Company of the 1st Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment has been separated from the Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade Team to which it belongs, and attached to other units fighting in the western Baghdad and Abu Ghraib areas.
Charlie Company soldiers currently fall under the 10th Mountain Division’s 1st Brigade, 2nd Battalion, 22nd Infantry Regiment. Lt. Col. Kevin Brown, the battalion commander, said the biggest challenge for that Georgia unit has been that its soldiers have been pulled in so many different directions.
“It’s because they are special. Different,” Brown said.
Special because Charlie Company is the only mechanized infantry unit in the 1st Brigade. Whenever their 25-ton Bradley Fighting Vehicles are needed to supply some muscle to an operation, the Georgia soldiers are called on, Brown said.
“For your local Abu Ghraib terrorists, seeing, feeling and hearing a Bradley Fighting Vehicle roll up on you is flat more intimidating than an [armored] Humvee. That’s just a fact,” Brown said. “The ground rumbles. It’s big, loud. It’s got a big gun on it. If you’re an insurgent, you don’t want to hang around.”
Brown said when his battalion arrived in Baghdad last September, Charlie Company’s main task was to secure the highways in the area. But he said his goal was to get all his soldiers to own a piece of territory that they could get to know well.
Brown put Charlie Company in charge of an eastern Abu Ghraib neighborhood known as White Gold.
“We’re going to get into the neighborhoods where the people are,” Brown said recalling what he told his company commanders. “We’re going to find out what they’re all about. We’re going to find out what they know and we’re going to root the insurgents out from inside the neighborhoods.”
Charlie Company fared well there, Brown said, because the soldiers had already been on the ground for several months. He said he often relied on the opinions of Charlie Company’s commander Capt. Anthony Fournier, a social sciences teacher from Augusta.
It was in a house-to-house search in Abu Ghraib that Charlie Company soldiers discovered Baby Noor, the Iraqi child with spina bifida who was sent to Atlanta for medical care.
Besides patrolling, Charlie Company has also been on call for protection of the Abu Ghraib prison, a top priority for U.S. forces in this area. The Georgia soldiers are also called on as a quick reaction force when things heat up in other areas.
“If a platoon gets into a tough fight or there are casualties, Charlie Company is the unit that gets called out,” Brown said. “They have to be ready just like that, at a moment’s notice.”
Fournier keeps soldiers ready at the western gates of Camp Liberty, sitting in their Bradleys, waiting for that call.
Now, with the end of its deployment in sight, Charlie Company has been called out to support patrols in the western Baghdad neighborhoods of Gazaliyah and Amariyah.
“It’s been tough on these guys,” Brown said. “Quite honestly. Talk about a precious commodity. Everybody wants to make use of that Bradley company. That’s easy for me to say, hard for these guys to do.
“They’ve done an outstanding job,” he continued. “They are great people. Very mission focused. Very professional.”
The Georgia soldiers said they were thrilled to have had the opportunity to work with such a storied Army division as the 10th Mountain, based in Fort Drum, N.Y. Brown said his battalion treats Charlie Company just like any other active duty unit.
He said the only distinction between a National Guard and an active duty soldier was the amount of sacrifice the Guard soldiers have had to make, giving up their families, jobs and civilian lives and being away from home for 18 months.
“I signed up to this every day,” Brown said. “[Their] level of sacrifice should not be lost on anyone. They’re doing their bleeding and fighting like everyone else.”
Watch duty in Iraq fires out cultural lessons
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Moni Basu/AJC
Sgt. George Kofa of Georgia's Army National Guard helps train Ugandan Guma Kayondo David (left) in Baghdad.
Baghdad, Iraq — Guma Kayondo David and Erimu Moses scanned the date palm groves and dirt roads from high in their watchtower.
Southwest Baghdad is far different from their home in Kampala, Uganda, where warm, tropical climes keep the landscape lush.
The two Ugandans were scared when they first landed at Baghdad’s airport in late February. Not that war was new to them — they had seen warfare and atrocities in their native land — but because the temperatures were so chilly then.
“It was shocking to us,” said David, 26. “Everyone was shivering. I have never been out of Uganda. I have never seen a desert before.”
The two former Ugandan army soldiers are more comfortable in Iraq now that the weather has warmed. They stand guard on 12-hour shifts at one of many watchtowers that surround the Camp Liberty complex.
Late last week, they took over the watchtower duties from Georgia Army National Guard soldiers who have been training the newcomers the past few days.
“They are very motivated,” said Sgt. George Kofa, 32, a Morehouse College student who serves in Charlie Company of the 48th Brigade Combat Team’s 1st Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment. “They are doing good.”
The Ugandans are contract workers for the EOD Technology, a Tennessee-based company that specializes in unexploded ordnance cleanup and security services for the military. Putting them on guard duty frees American soldiers for missions outside the base.
The Ugandans said their initial contract is for six months, but many of the 400 former soldiers would like to stay longer. David said most took the job in Iraq for the attractive salaries.
“If possible, I would like to stay here,” said David, who runs a small retail shop in the Ugandan capital, Kampala.
David left his home during the Ugandan elections in February that kept President Yoweri Museveni in office for a third term. Since Museveni grabbed power in 1986, rebels of the Lord’s Resistance Army have been fighting a brutal war in the northern part of the country that has displaced 1.5 million people.
Both David and Moses were deployed to northern Uganda during their army days.
“Iraq is a dangerous place,” said Moses, 32. “But we don’t fear.”
The Georgia soldiers have been training the Ugandans to use M-16 rifles instead of the AK-47s they are accustomed to. They have been taught how to scan the area, radio in what they see and fill out official reports. The Ugandans were curious, too, about the relationship between U.S. soldiers and their Iraqi counterparts.
Occasionally, mortar attacks or roadside bomb explosions shake the area.
Gunfire near the walls of Liberty made David do a double-take recently.
“Whoa,” he said, thinking there might have been an attack.
The Georgia soldiers assured him it was the Iraqi Army firing out, not insurgents firing in.
For Kofa, a native of Liberia, hanging out with the Ugandans has been an interesting experience. He said they spent hours discussing African politics and differences between East and West.
“People from New York and L.A. don’t look at life with the same perspective,” Kofa said. “The same with people from West Africa and East Africa. I’ll miss talking to these guys.”
The Ugandans have also been eager to learn about American culture.
“Things in Uganda are quite different. For example, we have bride pay,” said Moses, referring to the three cows, the wad of cash and the house he built in order to marry his wife.
“You pay much because you need her,” he said with a laugh.
Then, there are the differences in culinary tastes. David said he misses eating cassava, bananas and traditional Ugandan dishes.
Instead, they have been adventurous in the mess hall, feasting on hamburgers, French fries and barbecued chicken for the first time.
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