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April 2006
Baby Noor soldiers honored
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Georgia Commission on the Holocaust on Friday honored the Gainesville-based infantry company that rescued Noor al-Zahra, the Iraqi baby born with spina bifida.
Soldiers of Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment, returned from a yearlong deployment in Iraq a week ago. They were recognized for their humanitarian efforts at a noon ceremony at the Capitol.
“It was not their military mission,” said Sylvia Wygoda, commission chairman emeritus. “It was their mission as human beings.”
Charlie Company soldiers discovered tiny Noor last December during a raid of the baby’s family home in impoverished Abu Ghraib.
The soldiers won worldwide acclaim for helping shuttle Noor out of Iraq for critically needed medical care. The baby underwent surgery in Atlanta and is receiving follow-up treatment.
Wygoda said the Holocaust Commission honors a variety of individuals and organizations for their humanitarian deeds. Past winners include WSB anchor Monica Kaufmann and writer Pat Conroy.
Maj. Gen. David B. Poythress, commander of the Georgia National Guard, said some might find “ironic” that a Jewish organization was giving the award to the 48th Brigade Combat Team soldiers.
He said not too many of the soldiers were Jewish and the baby they rescued was a Muslim.
Poythress said the award celebrated America’s pluralism.
Commission Chairman Michael Altman said he felt the award for Charlie Company was “very appropriate.” He quoted a poem written by a Holocaust survivor that reads: “To save one life is to save a generation.”
“You’ve got to start somewhere,” Altman said of baby Noor’s rescue. “This showed the compassion we as Americans have.”
Eight soldiers, the two top officers and those who were present during the initial raid into Noor’s home, were singled out for individual awards. They were Capt. Anthony Fournier, first lieutenants Billy Chau, Jeff Moran, and Jeff Morgan, 1st Sgt. Bobby Mayfield, Sgt. 1st Class Michael Sonen, Staff Sgt. Archer Ford and Sgt. Nicholas Jelks.
Sonen commented that the soldiers felt it was the right thing to do to get Noor the treatment she needed to correct her birth defect.
The entire company also received a plaque that will hang in the armory in Gainesville.
Changes sought for handling of war dead
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Washington — Concerned over the mishandling of a Georgia soldier’s body last year, the state’s two U.S. senators on Thursday introduced a measure that would require the Pentagon to reevaluate the way it treats military war dead and their families back home.
Sen. Saxby Chambliss and Sen. Johnny Isakson, both Republicans, submitted the call for a comprehensive review of the military mortuary process as an amendment to the must-pass emergency budget bill needed to fund the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. The Senate had not voted on the amendment as of late Thursday.
Meanwhile, Rep. Phil Gingrey, a Republican from Marietta, pushed for legislation on the House side that would force more immediate changes, possibly including creating war-zone mortuaries that would more quickly prepare soldiers’ bodies for burial back home.
Chambliss and Isakson said they were prompted to act after the body of Paul Saylor, a 21-year-old Georgia National Guardsman, was returned home to Bremen last August so badly decomposed that his family was unable to hold an open-casket viewing, although Saylor had died just three days earlier. A member of the 48th Brigade Combat Team, Saylor was killed Aug. 15 when his Humvee rolled into a canal.
“Our family feels that the viewing would have provided closure and given us a chance to say our final goodbye to our hero,” the Saylor family says on a Web site, soldiersplea.com. They call for a mortuary facility to be built in the Middle East so soldiers’ bodies can be embalmed before they are flown home.
“The unimaginable grief and sorrow that a family experiences when their soldier makes the ultimate sacrifice should not be made even more distressing by not allowing the family an opportunity to say their final goodbye,” Chambliss, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said as he introduced the amendment.
Under current Pentagon procedures, Saylor’s body was packed in ice in Iraq and flown to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, where autopsies are performed and bodies are embalmed.
But the ice melted in the Iraqi heat and Saylor’s body lay in water so long that it was decomposing when it arrived.
The Chambliss-Isakson amendment would have the Pentagon evaluate the feasibility of setting up autopsy and embalming operations within a war zone.
It also calls for an evaluation of the way the military notifies the families of soldiers killed in war and would provide a way for families to get updated information, if they desire.
Chambliss said information provided to families now is often incomplete or inaccurate.
“I am grateful to the Saylor family for bringing this to our attention,” Isakson said. “And I hope this measure will help ensure the treatment of a fallen soldier is the absolute best our nation can provide.”
Reflections on Iraq
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
AJC’s Moni Basu and Curtis Compton talk about their experience covering the 48th Brigade in Iraq. • MULTIMEDIA REPORT
‘He’s really not coming home’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Curtis Compton
Heidi Shelly, 25, of Valdosta, widow of Sgt. Ronnie Shelley, 34, killed July 30 in Iraq, wipes away tears as she watches other wives embrace their husbands at Fort Stewart Thursday.
Fort Stewart — For Heidi Shelley, the reality of her husband’s death in Iraq last summer was finalized Thursday as she watched soldiers from Sgt. Ronnie Shelley’s unit reunited with their loved ones here.
Shelley sat in the shade of the reviewing stand, alternately cheering and crying while friends and family members swarmed the parade field in search of their soldiers from the 48th Brigade Combat Team.
“This means he’s really not coming home,” said Shelley, 25, a mother of three from Valdosta.
“Our kids have pretty much accepted the fact that their daddy’s in a coffin, and the coffin is buried in the ground,” she added. “But I’ve had a harder time accepting it. I had to see him not march off that field to me.”
Ronnie Shelley, 34, a bakery supervisor, was among 11 soldiers from the 48th killed in an 11-day stretch last summer. He and three others from his Cordele-based unit died when a roadside bomb destroyed their Humvee July 30.
Twenty-six citizen soldiers from the 48th were killed during the 4,400-member unit’s year-long combat tour in Iraq.
Thursday’s ceremony for returning soldiers was the second in less than 12 hours. About 300 troops, most from infantry companies based in Gainesville and Lawrenceville, arrived about 11 p.m. Wednesday. The bulk of the brigade is expected to be back in Georgia by mid-May.
Shelley didn’t bring her children, ages 13, 9 and 4, to the ceremony. Her older sister, Marty Garrett, stayed by her side during the brief reunion along with Sgt. 1st Class Frank Mills, 56, a Vietnam veteran and the casualty assistance officer assigned to aid Shelley following her husband’s death..
“When Heidi told me she was coming [to the reunion], I had reservations about it,” said Mills, a fulltime National Guard soldier. “One thing I’ve learned about her is that once she decides something, that’s it. She’s a strong woman.”
Shelley has stayed in contact with her husband’s fellow soldiers sending them e-mail, letters N even fishing rods.
Minutes after the ceremony ended, Spc. Jeffrey Anderson, 36, of Gainesville, and Staff Sgt. Gerald Coleman, 43, of Camilla, spotted her on the reviewing stand and embraced her.
“Ronnie was my battle buddy, my gunner and my best friend,” Anderson said.
They thanked her for coming and said they admired her courage. But Shelley disagreed.
“It’s not courage,” she said. “I’m falling apart inside.”
Shelley she said she was comforted by the fact that her late husband’s comrades kept his memory close to them.
“To know they haven’t forgotten means so much,” she said. “They didn’t push my husband’s memory to the side.”
Georgia Brunson-York was among those who showed up early for homecoming with her husband and two young sons in tow. She came to welcome home the soldiers who served with her brother, Spc. Jacques E. “Gus” Brunson.
Brunson, 30, a butcher from Cordele, was killed July 24 by a roadside bomb. Three other soldiers riding in the Humvee with him also were killed.
“I don’t have my brother coming back,” Brunson-York, 32, said as she stood near a redbud tree planted in his memory on the edge of the parade field. “I’m here because I believe in what our troops are doing.”
She recalled her brother’s big appetite, his smelly socks and the nickname she gave him when he played football at Worth County High School: “gorilla.”
“He loved my cooking. I didn’t have to worry about leftovers,” she said.
Brunson-York said she kept in touch with her brother by e-mail while he was in Iraq. He and her family had planned to go to Disney World when he returned.
When she saw the soldiers marching across the toward the reviewing stand, Brunson-York stood stood and cheered, waving a small American flag.
The families surrounding her scrambled out onto the field, in search of their their loved ones. Brunson-York slowly waded into the crowd. She immediately found her brother’s company commander and hugged him.
“I hated what happened. He was a great guy,” Capt. Marc Belscamper, of Savannah, told her.
Spc. Rodney Davidson, who was with Brunson when he was killed, tried to console Brunson-York.
“I’m sorry. He was wonderful,” Davidson, 39, of Thomaston, told her. “Thank you for being here. It means a lot to us. I was in the vehicle right ahead of him. It could have been any one of us that day. It still hurts.”
Brunson-York found herself sympathizing with Davidson and several other soldiers who witnessed the aftermath of the bombing that day.
“I hate that you had to see it,” she told Davidson. “It wasn’t fair. He was your friend.”
Brunson-York was among the last to walk off the field. She had finally met some of her brother’s friends in person. But she wasn’t certain the pain would ever stop.
Soldiers, families reunited at last
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Fort Stewart - After a year of living nervously, the families and friends of several hundred 48th Brigade Combat Team soldiers welcomed their loved ones home from Iraq in an emotional, late-night ceremony here Wednesday.
Joyous wives, children and parents rushed across the grassy, brightly lit parade field following a brief “job well done” from Gov. Sonny Perdue in an effort to find their soldiers.
“I feel like a 3-year-old on Christmas morning,” said an exuberant Spc. Leomar Jackson, 22, of Athens, as he embraced five family members and his girlfriend.
About 300 soldiers, most from infantry units based in Gainesville and Lawrenceville, were in this vanguard of the main group of 4,400 citizen soldiers in the brigade due to return home over the next three weeks after nearly a year in Iraq.
The plane carrying them touched down at Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah at 8:25 p.m. Wednesday, where they were met by Perdue and his wife, Mary.
“Welcome back. Thanks for everything. Great to see you. Glad you’re back on Georgia soil,” Perdue said as he shook each soldier’s hand.
Several soldiers, still clad in rumpled camouflage and dusty boots, fell to their knees and kissed the concrete tarmac.
“It feels great,” said Sgt. Thomas Denny, a city of Gainesville employee.
Another group of several hundred 48th soldiers is expected to arrive here this morning.
Following their arrival in Savannah, soldiers spent a few minutes shaving and brushing their teeth before boarding buses for the 40-mile ride to the reunion with their family members.
Once the buses arrived at Fort Stewart, loved ones carrying American flags and wearing yellow ribbons could barely contain their excitement, breaking into cheers and screams.
Once dismissed from formation following the singing of the national anthem and the Army song, the soldiers and family members scrambled to find one another, sometimes almost in vain.
Stacey Self of Lawrenceville, with 6-month-old Katelyn in one hand and 3-year-old Madison in the other, wandered through the crowd in tears, calling out “Bobby,” unable to find her husband.
When Spc. Bobby Self was called to the podium and finally reunited with his family, he could barely believe how much Katelyn had grown in his absence.
“I’m just happy to death,” Self said. “I’ve been waiting so long. God, she has grown a lot since I last saw her.”
Sgt. Roger Cameron Jr., must stay at Fort Stewart with the rest of his unit for several more days to turn in equipment and wrap up personnel issues. Jeannie Cameron also wants to give her husband time to decompress.
“Having the children jumping all over him would be kind of a concern,” said Cameron, 30. “We just decided to wait until he comes home for good to do the reunion.”
Other parents decided to keep their young children home because of the lateness of the soldiers’ arrival or because those of school age are required to take standardized tests this week.
But Brandy LeBrescu came with her 19-month-old daughter Makayla and 4-year-old son, Damien. LeBrescu said it was a struggle caring for both children while her husband was away.
“It’s been fairly difficult. I’m kind of outnumbered,” she said.
As the families waited into the night for the soldiers to arrive, many could not help but notice a nearby memorial of flowering trees, each planted in honor of a Fort Stewart soldier killed in Iraq or Afghanistan. Twenty-six of the living monuments shading “Warrior Walk” bear the names of 48th Brigade soldiers lost during this deployment. More than 200 were wounded.
Hoffman said those who served with the 48th have formed unbreakable bonds with fellow soldiers. “No one who was there will ever forget the faces of the Iraqis or the people they served with,” Hoffman said. “Those experiences, those people, will always be with you.”
While the cities and towns the soldiers patrolled for nearly a year are still in the throes of a violent insurgency, the Georgia soldiers say they take pride in the personal sacrifices they and their families made to perform their duties.
“Our soldiers can all point to some tangible good they did in Iraq,” Hoffman said. “They performed extremely well and honorably. They did their utmost to protect the people around them. They did everything we asked of them and more.”
‘I can’t believe it’s finally over’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Savannah —The first plane carrying the main body of Georgia’s citizen soldiers home from Iraq touched down at Hunter Army Airfield here at 8:25 p.m. Wednesday — seven time zones and a world away from the violence of the war zone.
Several soldiers of the Georgia National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team, still clad in rumpled camouflage and dusty boots, fell to their knees and kissed the concrete tarmac.
“I can’t believe I’m home. I can’t believe it’s finally over,” said Capt. Mike Cannon, commander of Lawrenceville-based Alpha Company of the 121st Infantry Regiment’s 1st Battalion.
Gov. Sonny Perdue and his wife, Mary, shook each soldier’s hand as he or she stepped off the plane.
“Welcome back. Thanks for everything. Great to see you. Glad you’re back on Georgia soil,” Perdue said as the soldiers filed past.
The chartered World Airways MD-11 jet carried about 300 soldiers, most of them members of infantry companies based in Gainesville and Lawrenceville.
Ray Gastor of Savannah, a 63-year-old Vietnam veteran and USO volunteer at the airfield, was among those who greeted the returning soldiers.
“When they’re going, it’s emotional. There’s a lot of trepidation. Now that they’re home, it’s just joy and relief,” said Gastor, who also bade the 48th farewell last May.
Another group of several hundred 48th soldiers is expected to arrive here this morning. Flights will continue to flow through here over the next three weeks. Most of the brigade’s 4,400 soldiers are expected to be back in Georgia by mid-May, ending the unit’s first combat deployment since World War II.
“We went through this as a team, not as individuals,” said Lt. Col. Joe Hoffman, a veteran of the recent deployment who returned early to coordinate the brigade’s homecoming. “It won’t be over until everyone’s home.”
About 200 family members and friends of the 48th soldiers, who spent a year of worry and uncertainty while supplying their loved ones with an unending flow of letters, sweets, DVDs and prayers, waited for them at Fort Stewart, about 40 miles southwest of the port city.
Throughout their final day of waiting, family members and supporters decorated a grassy parade ground on the base — the same spot where they said their tearful goodbyes last May — with flags, yellow ribbons and signs cheering home their loved ones.
Jeannie Cameron of Cumming was among the first family members to arrive in Hinesville, home of Fort Stewart, pulling in about 2 a.m. Wednesday to help others prepare for the big day.
Like several other parents, Cameron decided to leave her children at home. She worried her 3-year-old son, Roger, and 5-year-old daughter, Sydney, would not understand why their father couldn’t come home immediately.
Sgt. Roger Cameron Jr. must stay at Fort Stewart with the rest of his unit for several more days to turn in equipment and wrap up personnel issues. Jeannie Cameron also wants to give her husband time to decompress.
“Having the children jumping all over him would be kind of a concern,” said Cameron, 30. “We just decided to wait until he comes home for good to do the reunion.”
Other parents decided to keep their young children home because of the lateness of the soldiers’ arrival or because those of school age are required to take standardized tests this week.
But Brandy LeBrescu came with her 19-month-old daughter, Makayla and 4-year-old son, Damien. The three sat on a motel bed and watched cartoons, eagerly awaiting the return of Spc. Chris LeBrescu, a former Marine from Kathleen.
As he watched television, Damien sorted through the multicolored rubber worms in the fishing tackle box he sleeps with. He said he wants to go fishing with his father again once he comes home.
Just outside their motel room door in the trunk of their Honda Accord was a stack of homemade blue and red signs sprinkled with glitter. The signs proclaimed: “Welcome Home Daddy. We Love You.” Makayla scribbled brown and blue squiggles on one.
LeBrescu said it was a struggle caring for both children while her husband was away.
“It’s been fairly difficult. I’m kind of outnumbered,” she said as Damien played with their motel room phone and Makayla yanked tissues out of a dispenser near the sink. “This is why I need another parent.” Her troubles were compounded when her 20-year-old brother died in an auto accident last April. Her paternal grandmother was diagnosed with breast cancer two months later.
Brandy and Chris were high school sweethearts in Warner Robins. They married just before he left for training at Fort Stewart. Since he left, she said, she has worn a silver pendant around her neck that says, “Half of My Heart is in Iraq.”
On their way to long-anticipated reunions at the base, those waiting passed an orchard of flowering trees, each planted in honor of a Fort Stewart soldier killed in Iraq or Afghanistan. Twenty-six of the living monuments shading “Warrior Walk” bear the names of 48th Brigade soldiers lost during this deployment. More than 200 were wounded.
Hoffman said those who served with the 48th have formed unbreakable bonds with fellow soldiers. “No one who was there will ever forget the faces of the Iraqis or the people they served with,” Hoffman said. “Those experiences, those people, will always be with you.”
While the cities and towns the soldiers patrolled for nearly a year are still in the throes of a violent insurgency, the Georgia soldiers say they take pride in the personal sacrifices they and their families made to perform their duties.
“Our soldiers can all point to some tangible good they did in Iraq,” Hoffman said. “They performed extremely well and honorably. They did their utmost to protect the people around them. They did everything we asked of them and more.”
— Dave Hirschman reported from Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah, Jeremy Redmon from Fort Stewart.
48th starts unwinding as they depart war zone
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Shannon, Ireland — A chartered jet carrying the first Georgia soldiers home after a year deployment in Iraq landed here early this morning. Two companies of infantrymen were halfway home.
Alpha and Charlie companies of the 1st Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment are scheduled to arrive at Fort Stewart tonight around 11 p.m.
“I’m excited. I’m ecstatic,” said a tired Spc. Jared Calloway, 20, a student at Jordan College in Barnesville.
As the plane took off from Kuwait, Staff Sgt. Brian Cagle, 35, an employee at the Riverside Military Academy in Gainesville, yelled to Sgt. 1st Class Patrick Eaton: “Hey, Pappy, shall we dance?”
Eaton, a fulltime Guard soldier from Athens, said those words to his crew every time he commanded his Bradley Fighting Vehicle out of the gates of Camp Liberty near the Baghdad airport.
Brig. Gen. Stewart Rodeheaver, the 48th commander, met the soldiers on the tarmac and congratulated them on a job well done. He shook their hands as they climbed the stairs to the aircraft. He knew this was the day Georgia’s citizen soldiers had dreamed about since they arrived in the Middle East last May.
“I’m glad to see them going home,” Rodeheaver said. “I’m glad to see them get back to their families.”
The excitement on the World Airways MD-11 was almost uncontainable until the exhaustion from days of travel quickly set in.
The journey back home for the Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team soldiers began with a freak hailstorm in Baghdad on Monday and then long hours of waiting in Kuwait.
But no one seemed to mind. They were finally out of the war zone.
That mood was apparent outside sleeping tents at Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait.
Spc. Jeffery Campbell, 23, who works in building supply and construction, danced a jig to an audience of fellow Charlie Company soldiers waiting for a bus. Sgt. George Branson, 37, a Fayette County Sheriff’s Deputy, showed off his ability to turn cartwheels. Laughter bounced across the sand.
Some soldiers finally received their coveted Combat Infantryman Badges in an impromptu ceremony. The badges had not been issued in time for a formal awards ceremony several days ago.
Others loaded up on triple lattes at a local coffee shop. As energized as they were at the prospect of home, they knew the night would be long - and tiring.
Calloway waited with roughly 300 other soldiers, most from the 121st Infantry Regiment’s 1st Battalion, in U.S. customs holding tents at Ali Al Salem into the early hours of Wednesday morning.
He had begun his journey a day earlier from Camp Liberty in Baghdad but watched day turn into late night at the airport when a violent thunderstorm deluged the Iraqi capital with rain and hail.
“Allah didn’t want us to leave,” joked 1st Lt. Will Phillips, a fulltime Guard soldier from Roswell.
Other Charlie Company soldiers left for the airport late at night, trudging through ankle deep mud and humidity that rivaled summertime in Georgia. Lighting lit up the sky as rucksacks and backpacks were loaded onto buses. Fitting, commented the soldiers, for the brigade whose insignia is a lighting bolt.
The cheers were loud as the wheels of the C-17 military plane lifted from Iraqi soil.
In Kuwait, the Georgia soldiers were bused into a customs facility Tuesday evening, where they underwent an arduous search process that took several hours.
“It doesn’t matter,” said Calloway, drooping in a black pleather chair in one of the holding tents. “This is nothing compared to the last 12 months.”
After 11 months of grueling combat missions, the infantry soldiers were relieved to be going home without having lost any men in their battalion. Alpha and Charlie companies, both mechanized infantry units, patrolled areas south and west of Baghdad in Bradley Fighting Vehicles.
A few soldiers from other companies - Bravo and Charlie Companies of the 148th Support Battalion and the brigade’s Headquarters and Headquarters Company were also on the flight home with 1st Battalion. Most of the 48th Brigade is expected home by mid-May.
Alpha Company Staff Sgt. Joe Neely, 44, an insurance salesman from Lawrenceville, said he was looking forward to going home and seeing his family again.
“Pretty much anybody would jump through all these hoops because they know we’re on our way home,” Neely said. “This is a lot easier than being on the MSR,” he said, referring to the patrols on the main north-south highway around Baghdad.
Goodbye Iraq, hello worries
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Curtis Compton/AJC
Mitchell Winne rests as he awaits word to go. Troops are glad to get out of Iraq, but many dread the issues they must face at home.
Baghdad, Iraq — After he rolled into the darkness of Camp Liberty from his last Baghdad patrol, Sgt. 1st Class Patrick Eaton, silhouetted in red and yellow lights, gave the soldiers in his platoon one last pep talk.
“Remember, boys,” he said. “Nobody owes us anything. That’s the deal. When we get back, we fit right back in.” Eaton, 40, a full-time Georgia National Guard soldier from Athens, wanted his Gainesville-based troops to know that theirs had been selfless service for America.
They would soon return home and unceremoniously slip back into their lives as husbands and fathers, teachers and firefighters, truck drivers and law enforcement officers.
Silence fell over the soldiers after they celebrated the end of the last mission. The reality and uncertainty of the days ahead was setting in.
“I’m nervous,” said Spc. David Smith, 23, a scrap yard worker who is returning to a troubled marriage and a 19-month-old son who will not recognize Daddy’s blond hair, blue eyes or freckles.
“Are we anxious?” asked Sgt. Mike Brown, 35, a heavy equipment operator from Griffin. “I think everybody is. I think we are all pretty shot out.”
These soldiers from Charlie Company of the 121st Infantry Regiment’s 1st Battalion are expected to reach Georgia late tonight, when their plane lands at Hunter Army Air Field near Savannah.
Charlie Company is one of the first of the Georgia-based 48th Brigade Combat Team’s units to return home. Brig. Gen. Stewart Rodeheaver, the 48th commander, has said most of the brigade’s 4,400 soldiers will leave Iraq by mid-May.
Unlike active duty soldiers, National Guard troops resume the lives they left behind. After being gone for 18 months for training and overseas deployment, many of Georgia’s citizen soldiers said they will look for new jobs. Some will start college. Some plan to wed. Some will get a chance to bond with children born during the deployment and they saw for only a few hours. Still others will deal with the death of parents and other family members. Or go home to face marital or financial troubles.
Freed from combat missions, the soldiers spent their last few days at Camp Liberty’s Pad 14 leaning on one another.
In the afternoons, they sunned themselves outside the rows of two-man trailers; in the evenings they downed nonalcoholic brews and smoked Marlboros. Sooner or later, the jokes about Spc. Scott Odell’s sunburned belly or Sgt. Guy Serapion’s thick mop of just-barely-regulation-cut hair stopped for moments of reflection.
“Hey, at least you have a job to go back to.”
“I got pictures of the new house we bought. Do you want to see?”
“I don’t know what I’m going to do with my life, man.”
“I can’t wait for drill weekend to see you guys again. I’m kind of sad to be leaving this place.”
There was talk, too, of their year in Iraq.
They recalled the big things — roadside bombs, children playing on the trash heaps of Abu Ghraib and a Bradley Fighting Vehicle rollover last June that almost killed an entire crew.
How would anyone at home understand?
How should they answer the questions?
“No I did not kill anyone in Iraq. Yes, my vehicle ran over a bomb. Yes, it was 150 degrees inside the Bradley last summer,” Eaton joked about putting together a “Frequently Asked Questions” list.
For 11 months, Charlie Company soldiers patrolled the dangerous roads of western Baghdad and eastern Abu Ghraib.
They were weary from long hours in cramped Bradleys, tired of squinting into thermal optical equipment at night, the fumes from the armored vehicle’s exhaust burning their nostrils and eyes.
Staff Sgt. Brian Cagle, 35, made light of the matter.
“I’m really going to miss that exhaust,” joked Cagle, who works at Riverside Military Academy in Gainesville. “I’m gonna go into my garage once in a while and reminisce.”
In their last days in Baghdad, the men of Company C counted their blessings — they had lost no one. Maybe it was testament to their exceptional soldiering. Maybe someone was looking out for them. Or it could have been just plain luck.
Yet they knew they would not return home unscathed from the war. They all had a lot of time for introspection.
“I know I’m going back a changed man,” Brown said. “You do a lot of thinking over here.”
A son out of reach
From Day One, the deployment had been difficult for Smith, but not because he crawled into a driver’s seat of a Bradley every other day to face the insurgency.
He went home from training in February 2005 to marry the mother of his son, Landyn, who had been born the previous October. But by the time he arrived in Iraq, Smith knew his marriage was on the rocks.
“They train you to put it all out of your head when you go out on a mission, but you can’t,” he said.
On the streets of Abu Ghraib, Smith could hardly stand to see an Iraqi man holding a boy’s hand. He wanted desperately to be a part of his little boy’s life.
“How could I not think about it?” he said.
Sometimes, his marital problems consumed him to the point where he would seek the advice of his platoon sergeant through the Bradley’s radio headset.
“You learn to lean on the guys a lot,” Smith said. “We fought together. We bled together. For a young guy like me, I can’t ever replace them.
“I love what I do here but I’ve missed out on the first year and half of my son’s life,” he continued. “My wife and I — we were as happy as we could be. At least I thought we were,” he said. “Nobody wants to go back to a broken home when you’ve done your duty for 18 months.”
Smith talked often with his battle buddy Spc. Mitchell Winne, 30, a finance manager from Locust Grove. Winne, too, argued with his wife. He worried that his children Trinity, 5, and Tristen, 6, would not accept him as their father anymore.
“Do I even have the right to make any decisions for them again? Winne said. “Do I have the right to order them to clean their rooms? I haven’t done it in so long.”
“What we do in Iraq is easy,” Winne added. “This is the only place where you can do what you have to do and feel no remorse for it. I have no idea what I’m going to do when I get home.”
When he was in Georgia on a two-week leave last September, Winne mowed his lawn and smoked three packs of cigarettes a day. By the third day, he tried to get on a plane to return to Baghdad.
Winne was sent back to Georgia in late March to deal with his family problems.
“I’m leaving one war for another,” he said. “Except I don’t know how to fight this one.”
Close relationships
In the last week of patrols, 1st Lt. Will Phillips touched the photocopied picture of his 9-month-old twin sons and then placed his fingers to his lips. The photo hung on a bulletin board above the armor rack in the Charlie Company headquarters.
Married for three years, Phillips has been away from his wife, Tanya, for more than half that time. His sons, Chance and Stone, were born last May while he was away.
When he returns to the United States, Phillips will leave his full-time position with the Georgia Guard and relocate to Little Rock.
Last week, Phillips saw e-mailed photos of the new house that his wife has purchased. He seeks comfort in the fact that she is also a soldier — she serves in the 39th Infantry Brigade of the Arkansas Guard.
“I have two sons I don’t know. I’m worried about going home. I am counting on my wife. She’s my kindred spirit,” he said.
He is counting as well on motorcycling and parachuting to “get his rush,” the adrenaline high that he won’t get anymore from the riding around in an imposing Bradley, turret spinning and the wind slapping his face.
But Phillips is keenly aware that he will no longer have what he counted on daily on this deployment — the friendship of the other officers in the company.
At Liberty, the Charlie Company officers dined together and spent evenings at their makeshift “smoking club,” a circle of plastic outdoor chairs and a few fine cigars. The men gathered each night to talk about everything from combat to the latest video games.
After you spend every day with someone for 18 months, Phillips said, it’s hard to let go. No one else could possibly understand what they had gone through. Phillips knew the separation would be painful.
“We were able to validate our own villains with each other,” he said. “The only reason I didn’t have to see a counselor when I rolled over in my Bradley was because I have these guys.”
At the officers’ favorite dining hall down by the lake, where they gather nightly under an outdoor gazebo, the talk began centering on Georgia as it got close to going home.
One night, Phillips, a resident of Roswell, struggled to remember the exits off Ga. 400.
“Hey, what road is Exit 7?”
“Isn’t that Mansell Road?” replied 1st Lt. Billy Chau, Charlie Company’s executive officer and full-time Guard soldier from McDonough.
“Nah. Nah. I think it’s Haynes Bridge. That’s pretty bad when I can’t remember a road I used to drive all the time.” Phillips said.
“I think we’ve been away too long,” Chau said.
Had it been that long since they were home last?
And what did gas cost these days? They were looking forward to leaving behind Humvees to get into their Dodge Rams again. To open the windows and feel a balmy Georgia breeze.
“You know, I can’t even imagine paying for food again, let alone gas,” Chau said.
The soldiers think about even the smallest changes. Like a gas station that was constructed around the corner from their home. Or the smoking ban implemented in restaurants.
Charlie Company soldiers realize that while they fought a war on the streets of Iraq, the world moved on.
Now it is time to play catch-up.
“You all have been through hell, and nobody’s going to repay you for that,” Eaton told his platoon. “Be proud you guys are infantrymen. This company did excellent work.
“But now, I’m telling you to go home and do great things,” he added. “To borrow a phrase from my father, ‘This is the beginning of the rest of your lives.’ “
Georgia GIs full of jitters about homecoming
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Baghdad, Iraq — After he rolled into the darkness of Camp Liberty from his last Baghdad patrol, Sgt. 1st Class Patrick Eaton, silhouetted in red and yellow lights, gave the soldiers in his platoon one last pep talk.
“Remember, boys,” he said. “Nobody owes us anything. That’s the deal. When we get back, we fit right back in.”
Eaton, 40, a full-time Georgia National Guard soldier from Athens, wanted his Gainesville-based troops to know that theirs had been selfless service for America.
They would soon return home and unceremoniously slip back into their lives as husbands and fathers, teachers and firefighters, truck drivers and law enforcement officers.
Silence fell over the soldiers after they celebrated the end of the last mission. The reality and uncertainty of the days ahead was setting in.
“I’m nervous,” said Spc. David Smith, 23, a scrap yard worker who is returning to a troubled marriage and a 19-month-old son who will not recognize Daddy’s blond hair, blue eyes or freckles.
“Are we anxious?” asked Spc. Mike Brown, 35, a heavy equipment operator from Griffin. “I think everybody is. I think we are all pretty shot out.”
These soldiers from Charlie Company of the 121st Infantry Regiment’s 1st Battalion are expected to reach Georgia late tonight, when their plane lands at Hunter Army Air Field near Savannah.
Charlie Company is one of the first of the Georgia-based 48th Brigade Combat Team’s units to return home. Brig. Gen. Stewart Rodeheaver, the 48th commander, has said most of the brigade’s 4,400 soldiers will leave Iraq by mid-May.
Unlike active duty soldiers, National Guard troops resume the lives they left behind. After being gone for 18 months for training and overseas deployment, many of Georgia’s citizen soldiers said they will look for new jobs. Some will start college. Some plan to wed. Some will get a chance to bond with children born during the deployment and they saw for only a few hours. Still others will deal with the death of parents and other family members. Or go home to face marital or financial troubles.
Freed from combat missions, the soldiers spent their last few days at Camp Liberty’s Pad 14 leaning on one another.
In the afternoons, they sunned themselves outside the rows of two-man trailers; in the evenings they downed nonalcoholic brews and smoked Marlboros. Sooner or later, the jokes about Spc. Scott Odell’s sunburned belly or Sgt. Guy Serapion’s thick mop of just-barely-regulation-cut hair stopped for moments of reflection.
“Hey, at least you have a job to go back to.”
“I got pictures of the new house we bought. Do you want to see?”
“I don’t know what I’m going to do with my life, man.”
“I can’t wait for drill weekend to see you guys again. I’m kind of sad to be leaving this place.”
There was talk, too, of their year in Iraq.
They recalled the big things — roadside bombs, children playing on the trash heaps of Abu Ghraib and a Bradley Fighting Vehicle rollover last June that almost killed an entire crew.
How would anyone at home understand?
How should they answer the questions?
“No I did not kill anyone in Iraq. Yes, my vehicle ran over a bomb. Yes, it was 150 degrees inside the Bradley last summer,” Eaton joked about putting together a “Frequently Asked Questions” list.
For 11 months, Charlie Company soldiers patrolled the dangerous roads of western Baghdad and eastern Abu Ghraib.
They were weary from long hours in cramped Bradleys, tired of squinting into thermal optical equipment at night, the fumes from the armored vehicle’s exhaust burning their nostrils and eyes.
Staff Sgt. Brian Cagle, 35, made light of the matter.
“I’m really going to miss that exhaust,” joked Cagle, who works at Riverside Military Academy in Gainesville. “I’m gonna go into my garage once in a while and reminisce.”
In their last days in Baghdad, the men of Company C counted their blessings — they had lost no one. Maybe it was testament to their exceptional soldiering. Maybe someone was looking out for them. Or it could have been just plain luck.
Yet they knew they would not return home unscathed from the war. They all had a lot of time for introspection.
“I know I’m going back a changed man,” Brown said. “You do a lot of thinking over here.”
A son out of reach
From Day One, the deployment had been difficult for Smith, but not because he crawled into a driver’s seat of a Bradley every other day to face the insurgency.
He went home from training in February 2005 to marry the mother of his son, Landyn, who had been born the previous October. But by the time he arrived in Iraq, Smith knew his marriage was on the rocks.
“They train you to put it all out of your head when you go out on a mission, but you can’t,” he said.
On the streets of Abu Ghraib, Smith could hardly stand to see an Iraqi man holding a boy’s hand. He wanted desperately to be a part of his little boy’s life.
“How could I not think about it?” he said.
Sometimes, his marital problems consumed him to the point where he would seek the advice of his platoon sergeant through the Bradley’s radio headset.
“You learn to lean on the guys a lot,” Smith said. “We fought together. We bled together. For a young guy like me, I can’t ever replace them.
“I love what I do here but I’ve missed out on the first year and half of my son’s life,” he continued. “My wife and I — we were as happy as we could be. At least I thought we were,” he said. “Nobody wants to go back to a broken home when you’ve done your duty for 18 months.”
Smith talked often with his battle buddy Spc. Mitchell Winne, 30, a finance manager from Locust Grove. Winne, too, argued with his wife. He worried that his children Trinity, 5, and Tristen, 6, would not accept him as their father anymore.
“Do I even have the right to make any decisions for them again? Winne said. “Do I have the right to order them to clean their rooms? I haven’t done it in so long.”
“What we do in Iraq is easy,” Winne added. “This is the only place where you can do what you have to do and feel no remorse for it. I have no idea what I’m going to do when I get home.”
When he was in Georgia on a two-week leave last September, Winne mowed his lawn and smoked three packs of cigarettes a day. By the third day, he tried to get on a plane to return to Baghdad.
Winne was sent back to Georgia in late March to deal with his family problems.
“I’m leaving one war for another,” he said. “Except I don’t know how to fight this one.”
Close relationships
In the last week of patrols, 1st Lt. Will Phillips touched the photocopied picture of his 9-month-old twin sons and then placed his fingers to his lips. The photo hung on a bulletin board above the armor rack in the Charlie Company headquarters.
Married for three years, Phillips has been away from his wife, Tanya, for more than half that time. His sons, Chance and Stone, were born last May while he was away.
When he returns to the United States, Phillips will leave his full-time position with the Georgia Guard and relocate to Little Rock.
Last week, Phillips saw e-mailed photos of the new house that his wife has purchased. He seeks comfort in the fact that she is also a soldier — she serves in the 39th Infantry Brigade of the Arkansas Guard.
“I have two sons I don’t know. I’m worried about going home. I am counting on my wife. She’s my kindred spirit,” he said.
He is counting as well on motorcycling and parachuting to “get his rush,” the adrenaline high that he won’t get anymore from the riding around in an imposing Bradley, turret spinning and the wind slapping his face.
But Phillips is keenly aware that he will no longer have what he counted on daily on this deployment — the friendship of the other officers in the company.
At Liberty, the Charlie Company officers dined together and spent evenings at their makeshift “smoking club,” a circle of plastic outdoor chairs and a few fine cigars. The men gathered each night to talk about everything from combat to the latest video games.
After you spend every day with someone for 18 months, Phillips said, it’s hard to let go. No one else could possibly understand what they had gone through. Phillips knew the separation would be painful.
“We were able to validate our own villains with each other,” he said. “The only reason I didn’t have to see a counselor when I rolled over in my Bradley was because I have these guys.”
At the officers’ favorite dining hall down by the lake, where they gather nightly under an outdoor gazebo, the talk began centering on Georgia as it got close to going home.
One night, Phillips, a resident of Roswell, struggled to remember the exits off Ga. 400.
“Hey, what road is Exit 7?”
“Isn’t that Mansell Road?” replied 1st Lt. Billy Chau, Charlie Company’s executive officer and full-time Guard soldier from McDonough.
“Nah. Nah. I think it’s Haynes Bridge. That’s pretty bad when I can’t remember a road I used to drive all the time.” Phillips said.
“I think we’ve been away too long,” Chau said.
Had it been that long since they were home last?
And what did gas cost these days? They were looking forward to leaving behind Humvees to get into their Dodge Rams again. To open the windows and feel a balmy Georgia breeze.
“You know, I can’t even imagine paying for food again, let alone gas,” Chau said.
The soldiers think about even the smallest changes. Like a gas station that was constructed around the corner from their home. Or the smoking ban implemented in restaurants.
Charlie Company soldiers realize that while they fought a war on the streets of Iraq, the world moved on.
Now it is time to play catch-up.
“You all have been through hell, and nobody’s going to repay you for that,” Eaton told his platoon. “Be proud you guys are infantrymen. This company did excellent work.
“But now, I’m telling you to go home and do great things,” he added. “To borrow a phrase from my father, ‘This is the beginning of the rest of your lives.’ “
At last, troops begin journey home
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Curtis Compton/AJC
Spc. Todd Freeman, 25, Winder, Ga., shows his feelings Monday as bus pulls out for long journey home to Georgia. • Photos
Baghdad, Iraq — The day that Charlie Company soldiers had dreamed about since Day 1 of the deployment arrived Monday.
Roughly half of the Gainesville-based infantry company boarded buses at Camp Liberty’s Pad 14 for Baghdad’s airport. It was the first step in a long journey home.
Remaining soldiers of Company C, 1st Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment will follow later Monday and Tuesday to Kuwait, from, where they will board a plane back to Hunter Airfield near Savannah.
They are part of the 4,400 soldiers in the Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team, which is winding down its one-year mission in Iraq. Most of the brigade is expected home by mid-May.
Amid hazy morning skies in the Iraqi capital, soldiers loaded their rucksacks onto baggage trucks and picked up demobilization paperwork before heading to the airport.
Staff Sgt. Brian Cagle, 35, an employee at the Riverside Military Academy in Gainesville, had just one word to describe his emotions.
“Blessed,” he said.
First Sgt. Bobby Mayfield, 44, a school teacher from Dahlonega, said he was relieved to be going home with all of his soldiers. Charlie Company lost none in its 11 months of patrols in eastern Abu Ghraib and western Baghdad.
“That’s always been one of our top priorities and we accomplished it,” Mayfield said. “They’re good Joes and I’m proud of them,” he said of his soldiers.
Some were still in disbelief that they were heading home.
“It won’t be real until I get on the plane,” said Sgt. 1st Class Clint Cowser, 34, a fulltime Guard soldier from Cleveland. “Reality will not set in until I hit Georgia because anything could happen between now and then.”
An excited Sgt. George Branson, 37, a Fayette County sheriff’s deputy, got on the bus with a green aluminum street sign: “Blacksheep Rd.” The sign was made a year ago when the 48th Brigade was in combat training at Fort Irwin, Calif.
Soldiers of Charlie Company’s third platoon, a hodgepodge of men from various units thrown together for the Iraq deployment, proudly carried the sign into combat in their Bradleys and hung it in their platoon sergeant’s trailer.
Branson was determined to carry it back to Covington, where 1st Battalion’s Bravo Company is based. Many of the Blacksheep platoon was comprised of Bravo Company soldiers.
“We’re the Blacksheep through and through,” Branson said. “We’re the rebels. The mishmash crew.
“I’m very excited to be going home,” he added. “I miss my wife, my daughter, my dog.”
Troops, families brace for return
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Keith Hadley/AJC, Louie Favorite/AJC, Allen Sullivan/Special
(Top) Life become much more complicated, says Lorie Moran, when her husband went to Iraq, for her as well as for children, Sean and Emily. (Center) Friends and relatives (left to right) Darlene Gaffney, Theresa Jones, Geneva Glover and Willette Hudson watch Felicia Gaffney model her wedding dress. Felicia Gaffney says she and her soldier finance have been apart more than they've been together and need to get reacquainted. (Bottom) Sierra Sonen demonstrates how to work a pinwheel. "She wants to stay a kid but she knows she can't do it," says her mom, Tina, about Sierra's dad's deployment to Iraq.
Georgia’s citizen-soldiers are finally coming home after a grueling year in Iraq.
The 48th Brigade Combat Team has endured Iraq’s scorching heat. Its soldiers have patrolled garbage-strewn streets in impoverished neighborhoods. They have been shot at and survived repeated roadside bomb attacks. Twenty-six of them will not be coming home, victims of accidents or casualties of war.
The first units of the 48th are scheduled to begin returning to Georgia this week. Meanwhile, the soldiers’ families at home have had to deal with their own unique hardships.
The deployment has strained budding relationships. It has tested marriages. It has traumatized their children. And now somewives and girlfriends are bracing for how the men in their lives have changed in Iraq. They know they won’t be the same after serving 12 months in a sometimes terrifying combat zone.
In Cumming, a stressed-out wife is coping with the death of her father while raising two young children and working a new job. In Dahlonega, the absence of a father is forcing a 12-year-old girl to grow up faster than her family expected. And in Jonesboro, a young woman is finding that planning her wedding is a welcome distraction from nagging fears about her fiance’s safety in Iraq.
All three plan to travel to Fort Stewart this week to welcome their loved ones home. Here are some of their stories:
Lorie Moran: ‘Wow, it’s over. We survived this.’
There were days when Lorie Moran was so tired and lonely she struggled for the will to get off the couch.
Life became infinitely more complicated while her husband, 1st Lt. Jeff Moran, was away.
Her father died in February. She started teaching for the first time this year — first-graders.
Her son, Sean, has been going through puberty and has struggled with his grades.
She has worried about her daughter, Emily, holding her emotions in. And then the family golden retriever, Rush, got heartworms.
“I had several times where I just broke down crying, saying, ‘I can’t do this,’ ” said Moran, 37, of Cumming, who teaches at Vickery Creek Elementary School.
While her husband has been away, she said, “Little things that happen turn into major things.”
Moran’s children have noticed the stress building. Sometimes they have trouble getting her attention because she is lost in thought.
“Sometimes I don’t know how I’m functioning,” she said.
Some of her sadness has turned into resentment toward her husband. She said his enthusiasm for going to Iraq irritated her. Yet, she said, she supports his career. He has been in the military since he was 17, she said, and had been training for years to go into combat.
In her darkest moments she would think, “He should be here.”
When he was heading back to Iraq from emergency leave for her father’s funeral, she remembers telling him, “I need you. I can’t do this.”
Still, Moran said his deployment has made her stronger.
“All of a sudden it’s like, ‘Wow. It’s over. We survived this,’ ” she said. “I tell my kids, ‘When your dad gets home I’m going away for a year. I need it.’ “
Felicia Gaffney: Wedding plans a welcome distraction
She has booked a lakeside chapel in Jonesboro, chosen wine-colored bridesmaid dresses and is about to pick a wedding dress. And now all Felicia Gaffney needs to do is get to know her fiance again.
Sgt. George Kofa is coming home. Almost everything is set for their big day: Sept. 16.
But how much have the two changed while separated for the past year? He has been in a combat zone, seeing things most people never will. She has been living on her own and working a full-time job.
Gaffney said she and Kofa agree they will need to get reacquainted. They have even talked about going to premarital counseling.
“We have been apart longer than we have been together,” said Gaffney, 36, who manages a network of mental health clinicians for United Behavioral Health. “I just want the whole thing to be over.”
Gaffney remembers a handsome stranger approaching her at a CVS pharmacy nearly two years ago and telling her, “I think you are an incredibly beautiful woman.” They exchanged phone numbers. And he called her the next day.
“He is a very attractive guy to begin with. He was very persistent,” she recalled about Kofa, 32, a native of Liberia who was attending Atlanta’s Morehouse College before his deployment. “There was just something about him.”
They set a first date. But she had to cancel because her father had gone into septic shock. He was battling colon cancer.
“He probably thought, ‘This girl probably doesn’t want to have anything to do with me,’ ” she recalled thinking about Kofa.
But once she explained the situation, Kofa understood, Gaffney said. He stuck by her side and supported her emotionally and financially, she said. And then he broke his own news to her: He was headed to Iraq for a year. Kofa, she said, offered her a way out of the relationship, saying he would understand if she didn’t want to be with someone who would be away so long.
“He’s just always supported me and accepted me for who I am. He was there for me in my father’s illness,” Gaffney said. “I told him I am here for the long haul.”
The two got engaged in May while he was on a break from his military training. Her father eventually died from complications resulting from his cancer. So Kofa asked Felicia’s mother for permission to marry her daughter.
After Kofa left for Iraq, Gaffney started worrying about his safety “on a day-to-day basis, more like minute by minute.”
“I watch the news every day, and every time I hear someone is killed that thought runs through my mind, ‘Is it him,?’ ” she said. She admits that, “Even now, I am still fearful.”
But she has been able to distract herself by planning their wedding. She has three bags stuffed with wedding planning books, menus and invitations. And now Kofa’s return date is fast approaching. He is supposed to return to the United States on a big day — her 37th birthday.
Sierra Sonen: A daughter grows up and grows closer
Sierra Sonen sat in the shade in her mountaintop yard in Dahlonega recently, munched on a slice of watermelon and smiled. Her father is coming home.
Sgt. 1st Class Mike Sonen missed his daughter’s 12th birthday, her ballet recital, Christmas and so much more.
“It’s just really hard when your dad goes away. He is just so important to me,” said Sierra, who is well-spoken for her age. “I know that he has good men around him and I know they have his back and he is perfectly safe, but I still worry.”
Sierra said she especially misses his advice. “His biggest thing was, ‘Don’t grow up too fast because you need to enjoy life,’ ” she said.
But Sierra couldn’t help it, according to her mother, Tina Sonen. She said her husband’s absence has made their daughter mature.
Sierra dotes on her 5-year-old cousin, Jay, as if he were her own son, keeping him occupied while her mother entertains a visitor. Her polite speech is laced with “yes sir” and “no sir.” She helps her mother make dinners.
“She has probably taken it the hardest,” said Tina, 43, a registered nurse, whose father died from lung cancer in October while her husband was away. “Since she is the oldest she has felt like she needs to take more of a parenting role and she has tried to help me out. She wants to stay a kid but she knows she can’t do it.”
A young girl has her limits. Mike’s phone calls home from Baghdad were both soothing and heart-wrenching to Sierra. She said she was glad to know he was OK. But she occasionally cried because the calls reminded her how far away he was.
The two have grown particularly close. So close that they speak in code. For example, they hold up three fingers with each finger signifying a different word: “I love you.” Sierra said her father often tells her, “I love you more than the sun, the moon and the stars in the sky. Thank you for being my daughter.”
Sierra has three “Daddy’s Girl” T-shirts in her wardrobe. She has a fourth one, but it is in the “too-little box.” She still sleeps with the stuffed animal he gave her before he was deployed to Bosnia six years ago, a white kitten with blue eyes. A 6-year-old photo of the two at her Girl Scout father-daughter night dance occupies a prominent place in her room, where she can see it from her bed.
Meanwhile, Sierra has a long list of things she wants to do with her father now that he is coming home. She wants to ride dirt bikes with him and Michael, her 10-year-old brother, go to the movies and play games. She held off on going to Atlanta’s new aquarium for the first time so she could experience it with him. And she is excited to show him something new — her smile. She is preparing to get her braces off the day before he is scheduled to return home.
Medals for the 48th
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Curtis Compton/AJC
At top, Staff Sgt. Brian Cagle, 35, of Gainesville (from left), Sgt. Roger Cameron, 29, of Cumming, Sgt. Archer Ford, 32, of Conyers, Staff Sgt. David Garland, 37, of Mineral Bluff and Cpl. Wade Key, 21, of Augusta, stand in formation during a medal ceremony for Charlie Company as they are awarded the Bronze Star for exceptional meritorious service and courage in a hostile situation. Below, Cpt. Anthony Fournier, 38, of Augusta (left) returns the salute of Spc. Christopher Shannon, 21, Harlem, Ga., after awarding Shannon a Purple Heart during the medal ceremony.
Baghdad, Iraq — It was their moment of honor.
At a morning ceremony in the Camp Liberty chapel on Friday, Charlie Company soldiers were awarded medals for their service and courage in the combat zone of Iraq.
“I’m proud of all of you,” said Capt. Anthony Fournier, commander of the Gainesville-based unit of the 1st Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment, a part of the Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team.
Fournier, a schoolteacher from Augusta, told his soldiers that several awards had not come in yet, even though the company is heading home on Monday. Some of the paperwork for the awards was submitted months ago.
Brigade officials acknowledged that bureaucratic problems have delayed awards and promotions for some of the the 4,400 soldiers who deployed to the Middle East last May.
Brig. Gen. Stewart Rodeheaver, the 48th commander, said that as of early April, 5,600 awards had been processed and that more than 700 are pending.
“The trick now is that I am running out of time,” Rodeheaver said. “I may not get it all done before we head home. But that’s a phenomenal number of awards.”
In Charlie Company, for example, several soldiers will head home without their coveted Combat Infantryman Badges, awarded to infantry soldiers who perform their duties under fire.
Promotions, too, have taken an inordinate amount of time to process.
When Rodeheaver visited Charlie Company soldiers in December, he was bombarded with questions about why soldiers had not yet received their promotions. The platoon sergeants said several of their soldiers were missing out on extra pay because their promotions had been held up.
“I promise you, the system is broke,” Rodeheaver told Charlie Company. “I have nothing against any of you.
Rodeheaver said in the last few years, the National Guard system for promotions has been through several changes.
“Because it was changing so many times, people would start going through the process and the system would change and they could never quite catch up with the system. We got all that straightened out,” he said.
Earlier this month, Rodeheaver said he had signed paperwork for 1,410 promotions for enlisted soldiers (some were promoted twice) and for 32 officers.
Brigade Command Sgt. Major James Nelson Jr. said promotions turned out to be “the biggest thorn in my side.”
He said one problem was that the 48th was more than 7,000 miles from the state office in Georgia reviewing soldier promotions.
“We’re sending a lot of paperwork back to the States,” Nelson said.
He said there were not enough people to input information and that some of the documentation had been misplaced. He said the state Guard office has added more personnel and that policies have been better defined.
He said late promotions, when they are granted, will be backdated.
“We owe [the soldiers] to fix those things,” Nelson said.
With three days left in Iraq, Charlie Company soldiers wore their medals proudly as they headed off to clean their rooms and pack up their gear.
“I’m very proud,” said Sgt. 1st Class Clifton Aldridge, a bus driver and dispatcher for a civilian contractor at Fort Benning.
Aldridge, who ran the vehicle maintenance shop for Charlie Company, received a Combat Action Badge for surviving an improvised explosive device that hit his vehicle last September, just two days after he returned from a two-week leave.
“This means I am still alive,” said Aldridge, the lone man in the company to receive the CAB. Only infantrymen can qualify to receive the CIB; all others, even though they are attached to infantry companies, are given CABs.
A handful of Charlie Company soldiers were pinned with Bronze Stars for exceptional performance and courage in combat.
Staff Sgt. Brian Cagle, an employee at the Riverside Military Academy in Gainesville, said he shared his medal with his entire squad.
“It’s not anything I did in particular,” Cagle said. “This is a culmination of my squad’s hard work. We all earned this together.”
Staff Sgt. Bobby Hollar taught them a lot. The hardest lesson, they had to learn without him
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The students at Crescent Elementary School in Griffin remember their pen pal as the smiling soldier who popped into their classroom one day last May, wearing his new mint green uniform and desert combat boots — a real-life GI Joe.
With his 1-year-old son, Wesley, at his side, Staff Sgt. Bobby Hollar brought the students pepperoni and cheese pizzas. He told them about his upcoming mission in Iraq with Georgia’s 48th Brigade Combat Team and signed autographs.
A postal carrier in civilian life, the 35-year-old soldier from Thomaston knew the magic of mail that arrives from afar. He pledged to write the students.
And then he was gone.
The e-mails, postcards and photos from Iraq started arriving at the school in August. Hollar wrote of Iraq’s 125-degree heat. He described Iraqi children playing soccer.
“They call it football. We see them playing almost every day,” he wrote.
The children responded with their own letters, written on lined notebook paper: “Don’t be scared because you are gonna be all right.” “Do Iraqi people ride bikes or do they walk?” “Thank you for saving us.” Some drew pictures of bright yellow suns, red hearts and U.S. flags. They closed their cards with “love.”
From Hollar the students learned about soldiering. They learned about the war in Iraq. They learned that many children there live in poverty.
‘You mean he is dead?’
They also learned a more difficult lesson, one that made the war closer and more real.
At the start of September a packet of the students’ letters came back from Iraq, bearing an official stamp: “Return to Sender. Left No Address.”
The school year was just a few weeks old. Hollar’s pen pals were fifth-graders by then. On Sept. 2, Katie Cobb assembled her fourth-grade students — and the fifth-graders she had taught the year before. With a guidance counselor alongside, Cobb began the lesson she hoped she would never have to teach. She told her students their friend had hit a bomb.
“And unfortunately, he didn’t make it,” she told them.
She recalls a young boy asking, “You mean he is dead?”
Hollar and Sgt. George Ray Draughn, 29, a Coca-Cola delivery driver from Hiram, were fatally wounded when their Humvee hit an insurgent’s roadside bomb south of Baghdad. They were members of the Griffin-based Echo Troop, 108th Cavalry Regiment.
The news stunned the youngsters crowding Cobb’s classroom. Some were expecting to hear they were getting a new letter from Hollar. Others said they knew something was wrong because Cobb was red-faced and appeared upset.
“Everybody in the class started crying really hard,” said Caylee Wilson, 10, a fifth-grader who had given Hollar her camouflage “Courage” bracelet for good luck when he visited.
When the students were dismissed for recess that day, they moped around outside instead of playing. One boy vowed revenge against Hollar’s killers.
Cobb and the principal sent letters home to the children’s parents. They offered counseling. One evening later that month, several kids stood in a grocery store parking lot near their school and watched the hearse bearing Hollar’s body drive by. Some saluted and waved U.S. flags.
“I wanted to see the car go by. I was sad. I missed him,” said Lesley Hitson, 10, a fourth-grader.
Lesley’s 10-year-old classmate, Tiffany Holloway, attended Hollar’s funeral the next day, Sept. 11.
“It was sad. My mom started crying. I wanted to go because of what he did for our freedom,” Tiffany said. “And I wanted to support him in some way.”
On Thursday afternoon the students honored Hollar, who was promoted posthumously to sergeant first class, on what would have been his 36th birthday. They dedicated a freshly planted magnolia tree in his memory near the school’s main entrance. The students sang “Proud to Be an American” and unveiled a granite plaque with Hollar’s name on it.
Another friend to write to
Hollar’s parents and his widow, Amanda, met the children for the first time at the ceremony. Since her husband died, the students have been sending Amanda letters telling her, “We miss him,” “We are praying for you,” “We are sorry he died.” Amanda led the children in singing “Happy Birthday” to her husband. She said she had seen him in a dream, wearing his postal uniform, the night before.
“He is probably looking down on us right now,” Ryan Ragsdale, 10, a fourth-grader, told Amanda.
“He probably is,” she replied. “I know he is proud of what you all have done.”
After the ceremony, the students showed Amanda something else that helps them remember their friend. They have dedicated a wall in their classroom to Hollar. Just to the right of the door are the postcards, e-mails and photos he sent from Iraq. A girl inched up to Amanda and hugged her as she studied the wall.
Around the corner is a new display of letters and photos. The children have started a pen pal relationship with one of Hollar’s friends from the same unit.
Staff Sgt. Rex A. Duke, of Locust Grove, visited the classroom while he was on leave from Iraq the week before Thanksgiving. They asked Duke what kind of gun he carried. They asked him whether he was afraid. He told them he missed Hollar.
And then he was gone.
The children are expecting Duke to return from Iraq before the school year ends. They’re waiting expectantly for him to step through that classroom door one more time.
Preparing to go home hard work
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Curtis Compton
Sgt. Steven Wilson, 53, Athens, Ga., HHC 48th Brigade, waits to have his tote box go through a customs inspection before loading it into a connex container for shipment home.
Tallil Air Base, Iraq — A red bull and a rolling W.
More and more of the U.S. Army patches emblazoned with those crests have been showing up at the offices, living areas and chow hall at Camp Adder on this base in southern Iraq.
And they are a welcome sight because those insignias belong to incoming troops who will replace the Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team.
After a yearlong deployment in the Middle East, the 48th Brigade begins returning home in a couple of weeks with virtually all the soldiers due home by mid-May.
Brig. Gen. Stewart Rodeheaver, the 48th commander, said his staff has been working around the clock to get the 4,400 soldiers safely back to Fort Stewart and reunited with their families.
“Folks don’t realize what it takes to move this many people,” Rodeheaver said.
Besides getting that many soldiers on flights home, brigade officials have to move a massive amount of equipment onto ships at Kuwaiti ports and then train their incoming counterparts on the jobs they are about to inherit.
The official transfer of authority from the 48th to the Minnesota Army National Guard’s 1/34 Brigade Combat Team is set for May 6.
The 1/34th, whose soldiers wear the red bull insignia on their left uniform sleeves, will take over base security and convoy escort duties that Georgia units have been providing since the 48th shifted from a full combat role to support duties in November.
“For me, the center of gravity is shifting back to Georgia,” said Rodeheaver, an economic and community development planner for Georgia Power Co.
Lt. Col. George Fisher, the brigade logistics officer, said the 48th will fill about 400 full-size shipping containers with communications, office and other types of equipment, including what are known as “tuff boxes,” which are filled with soldiers’ personal belongings. More than 300 vehicles will be cleaned, sanitized and loaded onto ships.
Many 48th vehicles, including new armored Humvees and Armored Security Vehicles, will remain in Iraq for other units.
Fisher said planning for the redeployment began last November. The process, both physically and bureaucratically, is challenging.
“Every time the phone rings, it’s something different,” said Fisher, who started out as an infantryman. “It’s a thankless job. What we have to do is make it seamless.”
The job is made that much more difficult because the 48th is dispersed throughout Iraq — from Balad north of Baghdad, to al-Asad near the Jordanian border, to Baghdad and to Tallil, near the southern city of Nasiriyah.
“It would be a lot easier if everyone was in one place,” Fisher said. “But communication is a lot easier now than compared to the first Gulf War. Can you imagine what it was like without e-mail?”
The brigade has about 150 soldiers in Kuwait and at Fort Stewart to assist in the move.
Several units have already ceased operations. Others are in the process of training their replacements.
“If I pull out too quick and the unit that’s coming to take my place is not ready to take that territory so they can control it, the enemy will move in, set up mortars and start shelling the bases,” Rodeheaver said.
“I have to do a relief-in-place so that my guys are replaced by their guys and there is no break in the contact.”
On a recent afternoon, Sgt. Daniel Muns, a soccer coach from Columbus, and two other soldiers from Bravo Company, 2nd Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment, were training soldiers from the Lincoln, Neb., Army Reserve unit on the new Armored Security Vehicles.
These soldiers from the 308th Transportation Company, who wear the rolling W patch, will be taking over Bravo Company’s convoy routes from Tallil to Taqqadam, Anaconda and the Baghdad airport.
Their sage-green uniforms are still in mint condition, their goggles dust-free and their energy levels high.
It was how the Georgia soldiers were last May when they arrived in Iraq.
Bravo Company soldiers were happy to teach the new guys about convoy security duties.
“We’re infantry. They’re transport. The irony of it is that this is a military police mission,” Muns said. “It doesn’t fall under either purview.”
The Armored Security Vehicles are new to most soldiers. Bravo Company has only been using them for a month.
“These 48th guys, they’ve got this stuff pretty squared away,” said Spc. Daniel Shields of the 308th.
On the other end of Camp Adder, Headquarters and Headquarters Company soldiers had opened their tuff boxes for inspection. There were stacks of books, CDs, cold-weather gear, gloves, letters and video games for the inspectors to look through.
Rodeheaver peered into a trunk full of food items. One soldier even planned to send an extra supply of Spam and Vienna sausages home.
“It does amaze me how much stuff people have over here,” Rodeheaver said.
“I could not believe some people actually brought three or four sets of civilian clothes,” he said, eyeing a pair of jeans in a tuff box. “When were they going to wear them?”
Rodeheaver was among those who had to remove items — cigars and packets of Crystal Light tea — since customs won’t allow alcohol, aerosol cans, food items that may carry bacteria, classified information, weapons or ammunition.
With all the packing up that’s going on, every soldier’s conversation these days is about leaving the war zone.
“I’m hearing there’s pollen on Lake Lanier,” Rodeheaver said. “It’s time to go home.”
Noor’s father returns to Iraq
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Curtis Compton
Spc. Mabry Brown, 34, Athens, loads baby Noor's wheelchair on a Humvee as her father, Haider, waits to return home at Camp Liberty.
An Iraqi infant brought to Atlanta for much-needed medical care is to go back to the hospital next week, but her father and grandmother have returned to Iraq, an Atlanta nonprofit said Friday.
Noor al-Zahra’s father and grandmother accompanied her to the United States after Georgia soldiers arranged for treatment of a severe birth defect. They went back to Iraq last week to reunite with relatives and attend to family affairs, said Helen Shepard of Childspring International, an agency that arranges U.S. medical care for children from abroad.
Georgia soldiers with the 48th Brigade Combat Team encountered Noor while raiding a house near Baghdad several months ago. She suffered from a severe form of spina bifida. Relatives said Iraqi doctors told them she probably would die.
Baby Noor, as she has come to be known, has been staying with volunteer host families in metro Atlanta since her arrival. Childspring described her appointment next week as routine. Depending on her medical condition, she probably will stay for at least several more weeks before returning to Iraq.
Guarding palace a welcome change
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Baghdad, Iraq - Through the enormous carved wooden doors, patterned marble foyer, chandelier-lit halls and up a set of spiraled stairs, Capt. Michael Cannon’s soldiers sit in a makeshift office overseeing base security operations.
Outside on the terrace of the hilltop Radwaniyah Palace, the scenic vistas are a welcome change for any soldier in Iraq. The greenery of date palm groves and blue waters of the man-made lakes are especially a relief for Lawrenceville-based Alpha Company of the 1st Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment.
Not a bad place for Georgia boys to be: in one of the many opulent structures built by the ousted dictator of Iraq.
After months of patrolling in Bradley Fighting Vehicles in southwest Baghdad, the Georgia Army National Guard soldiers were reassigned in February to duties guarding gates and towers at one of Saddam Hussein’s palaces that sits just outside the U.S. military base complex at the Baghdad airport. One Alpha Company platoon is assisting with security duties at nearby Camp Liberty. The company also has a maintenance team from another 48th Brigade Combat Team unit — Bravo Company, 148th Support Battalion.
The soldiers stand watch perched atop three towers and two entrance points as they count the days until they board a homeward bound plane. Alpha Company is slated to return to Georgia later this month.
The mechanized infantry unit turned in its Bradleys in March and on Friday loaded up its last shipping container for transportation from Kuwait.
Radwaniyah Palace served as Saddam’s main residence in the Baghdad area. The compound is about nine square miles and is just a few miles west of the Iraqi capital’s nerve center. The Iraqis also know it as al-Qaddissiyah.
Alpha soldiers know it primarily as relief from grueling patrols that made them vulnerable to sniper fire and roadside bombs. The guard duties are easier and safer, said Cannon, commander of Alpha Company.
Some Alpha soldiers live in buildings on the palace grounds, though their accommodations are not what they would seem. The sleeping bays are dark and cramped but the soldiers who lived in dusty tents for the first eight months of their deployment in Iraq are hardly complaining.
Other Alpha soldiers occupy bunkers used by Saddam’s Republican Guards and a small wooden cabin on a lake.
“It’s night and day difference,” Cannon said. “The guys are still living in open bay barracks but it’s a real roof over their heads and a floor under their feet.”
Young Iraqi wins hearts of soldiers
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Curtis Compton/AJC
Dahlia stands outside the gates of Camp Cedar II.
Camp Cedar II, Iraq - In the barren fields of dust and scrub, the young girl appears, walking testament to her name: Dahlia. A bright flower in the midst of drab.
In her crimson and lemon yellow printed robe, her head covered in a black scarf — at 10, she is old enough to respect the modesty taught by her culture — Dahlia stands barefoot in front of the lone Humvee that stops before entering the gates of Camp Cedar II. That’s where soldiers of the Georgia National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team pick up convoys of supply trucks moving north on the main Iraqi highway.
The other children who often line the bumpy road into Cedar rush the military trucks. They brazenly beg the soldiers: “Give me money, mister. Give me food.” Some Iraqi youth even try to sell pornography.
Not Dahlia.
She has never asked for anything.
She says Saddam Hussein killed her father, though the circumstances are unclear. She points to a small, makeshift tent visible from the road. She lives there with her mother and brother.
She learned English somehow from her mother, who, she says, picked up the language when she lived in Kuwait.
“Dahlia!” yells Spc. Bobby Cash, 28, from the gunner’s turret. The Richmond County sheriff’s deputy has been bringing Dahlia food and drinks for the last three months.
“We used to stage outside the gate here,” Cash says. “She would come talk to us. She never asked for anything.”
The soldiers were impressed with the Iraqi girl’s good manners; they were charmed by her sparkling eyes and the inner beauty that bloomed before them.
When asked if she went to school, Dahlia replies: “There are no schools here.”
“What do you want to be when you grow up?” she is asked.
“Nothing,” Dahlia says, looking at the ground.
Nothing, because Dahlia has little hope of breaking through the poverty that binds her to the bleak sands of southern Iraq.
She thinks about it for a while and then says: “I want to work at Cedar.”
But the U.S. military has plans to shut down Cedar in the coming months. The truck stop will be incorporated into Tallil Air Base, just five miles down the road.
Even before that, Dahlia will stop seeing Cash and the driver on his truck, Spc. Carl Moyer, 20, of Marietta. The two soldiers of the 48th Brigade’s Military Police company are heading home next month.
“If I could, I would put her in a [shipping container] and taker her back with me,”says Moyer, who works at an Abercrombie & Fitch store and hopes to go to college soon.
“I feel terrible,” he says. “I wish we could do a lot more than we are doing. She is special.”
Cash jumps down from the turret and notices that Dahlia has hurt several toes on her right foot that is filthy and cracked from the lack of shoes.
He props her foot up on his thigh and tapes the injured toes. Dahlia, as always, is appreciative.
She collects her bags of candy, snacks and soft drinks. She delicately adjusts the scarf about her head.
Somehow, she senses that the next group of soldiers might not show the same kindness.
“I like the Americans,” she says as the soldiers mount up to go.
The Humvee begins rolling, leaving a trail of dust behind it. So, too, trail the words of a soldier whose heart aches for one Iraqi child.
“Bye,” yells Cash. “Love you, Dahlia.”
48th gained ‘life experience’ in Iraq
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Curtis Compton
Brig. Gen. Stewart Rodeheaver (right), 53, of Macon clowns around with his soldiers at Tallil Air Base Monday as they prepare to load their belongings into containers to be shipped home.
Tallil Air Base, Iraq — Under a Georgia Bulldogs banner in his second-floor office at the 48th Brigade Combat Team’s headquarters, Brig. Gen. Stewart Rodeheaver sipped a Diet Coke as he anticipated relief that is just around the corner.
By the middle of May, the 4,400 soldiers of the Georgia Army National Guard unit will be home after a year-long deployment in Iraq. As commander of the 48th, Rodeheaver will no longer have to worry about so many lives at risk in the war zone that is Iraq.
Rodeheaver, 53, a manager of economic and community development for Georgia Power Co., gave his citizen soldiers high marks for their performance. It was the first time a Georgia Guard unit had seen combat since World War II.
In its full combat role in south Baghdad between early June and late October, the 48th Brigade completed what Rodeheaver called “an amazing” 12,640 patrols, trained over 26,000 Iraqi security officers and captured and detained 474 suspected insurgents. The Georgia soldiers discovered 150 roadside bombs and weapons caches with 15,000 munitions.
The brigade’s 2nd Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment conducted the largest air assault raid ever by a National Guard unit.
Rodeheaver said the brigade also did much with humanitarian efforts, making more than 200 drops of food, water, clothing and school supplies. It opened medical clinics in Baghdad and Diwaniyah and a new school in Batha in southern Iraq. The soldiers helped establish 22 polling sites for the Iraqi elections.
Since November, most of the 48th Brigade has been in a combat support role, providing security for military bases and traveling 1.2 million miles with supply truck convoys.
“The soldiers have done a tremendous job here and I am certainly proud of them,” Rodeheaver said. “I am looking forward to getting them back with their families so they can get on with their lives.”
Rodeheaver reflected on his brigade’s year in Iraq in an interview this week. Here are excerpts.
Q: What is the 48th Brigade’s greatest accomplishment in Iraq?
A: I think that we really accomplished three major things. One was the combat deployment itself — being able to move a National Guard unit like we have over here and then get back with all of our parts and pieces. The relationships we built up and parts of the government we built in south Baghdad was a huge accomplishment because those areas had never had an election. The other accomplishment is the relationship between the National Guard and the active Army has gotten better because of the relationships we built with the 3rd Infantry Division, 4th Infantry Division, 18th Airborne Corps and some of the other units we dealt with.
Q: How was it different for you, being a National Guard unit?
A: We typically are older [in average age of soldiers] than active Army units and because of that we do things a little bit differently. We are trained to fight but we also have secondary skills that we bring that the active Army units don’t have. For instance, the young men in the active Army units are not old enough to have had a job for long or build a career, whereas I had environmental engineers, construction engineers, people who built water plants, policemen, all those kinds of things that brought those life experiences to the fight. So the big difference is that when we went into some of the cities, we were more accepted by the elders in the tribes because our folks were older and they understood more about how to build a city, how to build a community rather than just come in as a fighting soldier.
Q: How will your soldiers gain from the Iraq experience?
A: Gray hair. For a lot of the folks, this was their first deployment and they are going back now with a lot of combat experience. But I think they are also going back with a lot of life experience because they had to deal with another culture. They had to learn to communicate with people they couldn’t speak the same language with. They are taking back some compassion they probably didn’t have before. A lot of them understand a lot more about people from other places that they may not have understood before.
Q: What lessons did you learn from this deployment?
A: We might have done some of our preliminary training a little differently before we came over here. I think we might have tried to give more of the cultural training because again we’re not going to teach our soldiers to speak Arabic — we just don’t have the time to do that — but we can make them understand why someone [who is Arab] does something the way they do versus the way we do it and make them understand those things so that it helps them when they go through an Iraqi house, how they treat people.
Q: What are your projections for Iraq’s future?
A: My opinion is that Iraq is standing up very quickly on its own. But it’s going to take some time. It’s not something you change with just an election; it changes with generations. What we’re trying to do here is change mind-sets and procedures so that generations that come behind this can change without having to fight for what you can change all the time. I think Iraq has got a brilliant future.
Q: Should U.S. forces stay here for some time?
A: If you look at rebuilding Iraq, I can see what people would say — maybe it’s time to pull our boys back. But if you look at the global war on terrorism, and say how is this affecting that, then I think we need to see it through to the end.
A faraway birthday
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Curtis Compton/AJC
Sgt. Dave Bill, 45, Milledgeville, a teacher at Georgia Military College, has a blast at his office at Tallil Air Force Base as he gets his last shipment of goodies from home.
Tallil Air Base, Iraq — It arrived Monday afternoon — a neatly wrapped U.S. Postal Service box.
Sgt. Dave Bill, the smiling recipient of said box, gingerly took out the contents — Pringles cans that carried homemade chocolate chip and Macadamia nut cookies, wrapped in plastic in pairs. There were also party favors and balloons, a plastic Easter wind-up toy, Skittles and cashew nuts.
Oh, and three cards — one for Easter, one for an upcoming 45th birthday, which also included a $20 bill, and one that momma sends each week counting down the days until her son will return to Georgia. This card said 45 weeks down, seven more to go.
Bill, a teacher at Georgia Military College in Milledgeville who works in the 48th Brigade Combat Team’s public affairs office, received the gift from his mother, Ethel Bill, of Warner Robins on Monday afternoon.
He opened the package with the glee of a child on his birthday. Bill will have to celebrate his birthday here in Iraq — he won’t make it home until mid-May.
Not too many more such packages will be coming the way of the Georgia Army National Guard soldiers based at Tallil in southern Iraq. Packages mailed after April 1 will likely be returned to sender.
But the soldiers don’t really mind. They’ll be able to accept gifts in person soon.
Echo Troop earns spurs
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Balad, Iraq - Spc. Styron Bell sat atop his Humvee under a half-moon. Flashlight in hand, Bell, a wildlife refuge operations specialist, opened his book, “1491: New Revelations of the Americas” by Charles Mann.
The book chronicles the last years of the Aztec and Inca empires. Bell was catching up on his reading before stepping into the gunner’s turret for the two-hour ride to the Baghdad airport.
The war in Iraq these days for the 48th Brigade Combat Team’s only cavalry troop is about providing security for trucks carrying all sorts of supplies up and down the main highways.
• Photos
The Georgia Army National Guard’s Echo Troop, 108th Cavalry Regiment, based in Griffin, spent its first six months of deployment under harsh circumstances in an area south of Baghdad known as the Triangle of Death. The troop’s soldiers occupied rustic forward operating bases in Mahmudiyah and Yusufiyah, where they regularly patrolled for insurgent activity.
“We were on the offensive then,” said Bell, 30, who lives on the Piedmont Wildlife Refuge near Macon. “We were taking the fight to the enemy, so it felt more gratifying. We captured a lot of insurgents and establish a good rapport with the local people.”
Capt. John Alderman, the troop commander, said his unit’s biggest accomplishment was the success of the referendum on the Iraqi constitution last October.
Echo Troop helped establish a Mahmudiyah City Council modeled on the U.N. Security Council, which included Iraqi Army soldiers, local sheiks, teachers and business leaders. Alderman said the council was a big factor in the voting process.
But Echo Troop soldiers said they were glad to be in their current role, too, although the task at hand is not really any less risky.
Second Lt. Joshua Lasley said the convoy security role is in line with the history of U.S. Army cavalry regiments.
“Our mission today is true to the covered-wagon missions in the old West,” said Lasley, referring to the security and reconnaissance roles cavalrymen played as pioneers pushed West into Indian territories.
Still, after driving to the same bases 30 or 40 times - Baghdad airport, Camp Speicher north of Tikrit and Tallil Air Base near Nasiriyah - the novelty wears out.
“The mission is extremely relevant but I’m not going to say I like it,” said Staff Sgt. Stan Fulghum, 40, a Marietta resident who works as a store manager at Pike Nurseries.
“Part of it is our traditional scout role - we are protecting the Army and its assets,” Fulghum said. “But it’s a more passive role. It’s not as exciting as Mahmudiyah but it’s less nerve-wracking. It’s a lot safer than kicking in doors and not knowing what’s around the corner.”
Echo Troop began providing convoy security for trucks carrying water, PX items, food and other supplies after the 48th Brigade shifted to a combat support role last November. The troop has been based at Camp Anaconda near Balad since early January.
Alderman said the convoy security mission has been “much, much easier” and easier on the families, too. But mentally, it was a big change for his soldiers.
“Now they defend the convoy and depend on others to do the hunting,” Alderman said. “This is a key difference, and one that took some getting used to.
“None of us miss being blown up by IEDs on a very regular basis, and we certainly don’t miss putting our brother troopers on medevac birds,” he said. Echo Troop lost three soldiers last summer in roadside bomb blasts.
“Yet I do miss working with the civilians and training the Army, and I think that as Guardsmen we are uniquely qualified for those missions particularly,” Alderman said. “It takes a long time to develop the relationships and intelligence sources we had in Mahmudiyah, and we were getting more effective at our mission over time. I guess that leaving us there might have been better for the Army, but worse for us and our families.”
Fiercely proud of their heritage and tradition - the term cavalry generally refers to soldiers who fought on horseback - Echo Troop soldiers proudly wear their black Stetson hats and gold spurs.
Later this month, all 140 soldiers of Echo Troop will be honored with gold spurs, the equivalent of an infantryman receiving a Combat Infantryman Badge, for their efforts in a war zone.
The ceremony is scheduled April 23 at Anaconda.
“It’s the most coveted prize for us,” Lasley said.”Everyone gets the hat but you have to earn your spurs. Our soldiers have certainly done that.”
