DEL.ICIO.USONE TOWN'S WAR / An occasional series
A soldier's fear and faithThe Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 10/16/05
BAGHDAD, Iraq — At 3 in the morning the heat still radiated from the gravel strewn around the soldiers' tents to keep the dust down. In the desolate darkness of Camp Striker, Sgt. Ricky Stanley stood outside his temporary home — Tent 3-111 — and stared into the distance.
Two months before, he had similarly slipped out of bed in the middle of the night at home in Dublin, kept awake by nightmares about having to kill in Iraq. Those dreams subsided when the real danger began.
 Curtis Compton/AJC | |||
| In his Army sweatshirt, Sgt. Ricky Stanley leads other soldiers in prayer at their camp in Iraq. Many of the troops call him 'Pastor,' and though he's not yet an ordained minister, he has substituted for the chaplain at services. But even the strongest believer is bewildered by the horrors of war, and sometimes Stanley feels burdened by the danger, the monotony, the separation from his family. He's sure God is testing him. | |||
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MOST POPULARThe perceptions he had of grim hand-to-hand combat gave way to reality: He wasn't in a foxhole firing at the enemy. Instead, he was driving trucks over treacherous roads laced with bombs meant to kill Americans.
Stanley found himself wide awake from a fear of the unknown that lurks in every corner of Iraq. And a constant aching for home.
He missed his family and the verdant vistas of Georgia so badly he couldn't lie still on his Army cot any longer. He was staring aimlessly at his surroundings when Sgt. Rufus Veal returned from a mission.
"What the hell are you doing out here?" Veal asked.
Stanley didn't have to answer. Veal could see how much his friend was hurting. He knew he had started writing in a personal journal and lifted weights at the gym for two hours every day to take his mind off things. He knew that conversation could be as soothing for Stanley as the aloe balm that soldiers use on sunburned skin.
So Veal stopped to talk. He tried to comfort the man who had persuaded him to join the Georgia Army National Guard, take karate classes and learn to lay bricks, a skill that Stanley's father passed on to his son.
The two friends sat under an ebony sky and imagined they were back home in Middle Georgia: They would return to their longtime jobs without complaint at the YKK aluminum plant; they would not even say "no" to their wives if they wanted to go shopping.
Journal entry:
July 17, 2005
I didn't have a problem with the mission but at 10 I was going to church. At 8:45 (I found out) the mission was at 10. I did get angry. The 1st sgt ? hasn't been to any services since we've been here. So he doesn't know my spiritual needs. Nor has he been out on any convoys. It was easy. They could have replaced me with someone [who] was not doing anything.
Near the gates of Camp Taji, a U.S. military base north of Baghdad, Stanley, 36, sat for hours in his armored truck, waiting for a team of bomb experts to deactivate an improvised explosive device that lay ahead on the road.
Later he would he learn that his vehicle was sitting atop 13 tank rounds daisy-chained to that IED. One wrong move and he might have been blown to bits.
"Only by the grace of God were we all alive," he recalled. "Even though we've got .50-caliber guns, I'll take God and his word any day."
Soldiers in Stanley's unit, Alpha Company, 148th Support Battalion, have periodically come under fire and run over roadside bombs since arriving in Iraq in early June. No one from the 148th has been killed, though the 18 deaths suffered by the 48th Brigade Combat Team in Iraq are always on Stanley's mind.
He falls to his knees in front of his bed and anoints himself every time he has to drive "outside the wire," the term soldiers use for leaving the relative security of a military base. "Oh, Lord," he prays. "Dispatch your angels to watch over me tonight."
He studies a Bible that his wife of 12 years, Belinda, gave him in 1991. The pages are tattered and frayed; the words, many of them highlighted in pink and yellow, are precious to him.
The first few times he left the gates of Striker, the fear was paralyzing.
"I called Belinda. I said, 'I love you. I love the children. I may not be back.'" he said. "I was so scared she could feel it on the other end. And it put her on edge.
"I don't do that anymore. Now it's systematic. I've learned to prep physically as well as mentally for missions. And that's what it's all about over here — to be ready for the unexpected."
A deacon at Mount Tilla Missionary Baptist Church near Dublin, Stanley relies on his faith more than anything else to carry him through his yearlong deployment. In the beginning, not even that seemed enough.
After the initial fear came intense anger over why he was sent out on convoys over and over again while other soldiers were not yet trained to go.
In his down time, he watched all six "Star Wars" movies to take his mind off things. He wrote furiously in the journal he began keeping when he arrived at Striker. He curled up on his cot in his defined space, hidden from view by a waist-high plywood partition and a brown and white Mexican serape, and listened to T.D. Jakes and LutherVandross on his CD player. He even played Christmas music in the middle of summer.
Other times, he just lay there, thinking.
His friends said Stanley became sluggish. It was hard to get him up from bed to do anything else but go out on a mission. He began to suffer migraine headaches and lost 25 pounds from acid reflux.
"I didn't like getting so angry," Stanley said. "I believe God was just testing me. He wanted me to control myself."
Journal entry:
July 25, 2005
I went to the phones and talked to Belinda. I could sense that she has been taking this pretty hard. I told her not to worry; it would be alright after a while. I'll be home soon. My dad doesn't want me to come home on leave — just wait until my tour is up. I need a break from here!
Stanley doesn't always have a chance to interact with Iraqis. Many of his missions are carried out under the cover of night. One time, however, when he was driving in daylight through an area south of Baghdad, an Iraqi man looked him straight in the eye.
But there was no expression. No wave back. Just a vacant stare.
"It makes me want to go home," he said. "I'm risking my life for what? What am I here for?"
Even when he is hauling lumber from Striker to a 48th brigade forward operating base, Stanley makes himself believe that his missions are somehow helping to prevent terrorists from operating in his backyard; that he is protecting his wife and daughters.
"Then it's worth it," he said. "But we got too many mixed feelings. Mixed emotions. I think we are trying to liberate a country that won't ever be free."
High in the cab of his sand-colored Army vehicle that looks like a Brinks armored truck, the soldier who had never before traveled outside the United States was transfixed by scenes he had not anticipated. From behind bulletproof glass and steel doors that close like a bank vault, he was touched by the children with no shoes and the sparse huts they call home.
"I wonder how these people sustain themselves," Stanley said. "I can't imagine my children like that. Anyone who's got compassion in their heart has got to be changed."
Iraq has been a shock for many of Georgia's citizen soldiers. Others hope to see more of the country one day. But not Stanley.
"I don't want to see the world. Let me just get back to Dublin, Georgia."
Journal entry:
August 16, 2005
I praise God for this day. I feel really good in my spirits. I am beginning to get used to being over here.
In his gray Army T-shirt and black shorts, Stanley directed the church choir in a rousing rendition of "Victory is Mine." The members of the congregation was on its feet, stomping and clapping. The midweek revival resembled one that Stanley and his family would have attended in Dublin.
The music in the chapel tent wasn't loud enough, however, to drown out the drone of Black Hawk helicopters lifting off for a three-day raid on a suspected weapons factory.
In Iraq, not even the church sanctuary can fully shield Stanley from war, but he is most at peace here.
A few days earlier, he was studying the Book of Genesis in his tent when 1st Lt. Paul Douglas, a fellow Dubliner and chaplain for the 148th Support Battalion, walked in and asked him to fill in while Douglas was on leave.
"I am thrilled," Stanley said, flashing a smile almost too wide to fit on his face. He had been reading about Joseph the dreamer. Now some of his own dreams were coming true.
He is not yet ordained as a minister, but he plans to be when he returns home next year. Some of his fellow soldiers have nicknamed him "Pastor."
"The things that the Lord is allowing me to go through here is helping me prepare," he said.
It's Stanley's devotion to Christ that forces him to wrestle with the moral dimensions of war. Last month, he was on a convoy down south to Scania when his soldiers came under fire. He ordered his gunner to shoot back.
The adrenaline was pumping.
I don't want to die, he thought. I want to see my daughters grow up. I want to have me some granddaughters.
In his Bible studies, Stanley had thought long and hard about the Sixth Commandment. And he'd decided there was a difference between killing and murder. Murder is premeditated.
The commandment, he concluded, should read " Thou shalt not murder" instead of "Thou shalt not kill."
But he remains haunted by the thought that one day soon, he might have to shoot to kill.
All around him, Stanley sees soldiers tainted by tragedy and pushed closer to God because of it. He can see it in the rising attendance at Camp Striker's church services.
On a recent Sunday, he opened the hourlong worship with the ease of a veteran.
"How's everybody doing this morning?" he said.
He never needs to use the microphone. His voice reverberates throughout the large tent.
"Are you glad to be here? Are you glad to be alive?"
Journal entry:
August 30, 2005
Truly the Lord has been gracious to me. I thank him for this day. These past few weeks I have really been going through some emotional changes. I guess it's because I'm ready to go home. It's hard when your mind is a thousand miles away.
'Hey, baby girl," Stanley said to his daughter Ra'Teema on the phone. She had a virus and was home with her mother when her father called from the booth in the AT&T trailer on base.
"I believe you're trying to play hooky from school. You ain't fooling Daddy, are you?" he said. "Ready for me to come jump up on your bed?"
Stanley laughed, but the thought of going home, the thought that has sustained him these months, is now cause for more anxiety.
He is scheduled to begin his leave Oct. 18. But he is afraid that the man who left Dublin won't be the one returning home.
His fears are based on his experience in May, when he went home for 10 days before deploying to the Middle East. That was after four months of training at Fort Stewart and Fort Irwin, Calif.
"Every morning, I felt wrong," he said. "I'd have to catch myself. I thought I should be in formation."
He thinks about those sometimes awkward days and worries that now, after five months in a combat zone, he won't be the husband and father he once was. He worries he won't be able to pick up where he left off and dive onto the bed to wrestle with Ra'Teema, 14, and Chazmine, 13.
"I wouldn't want to do anything to hurt their feelings," he said. "I'm the same person, but I've been around different people, a different routine, a different lifestyle."
The trip home presents other worries as well. When he returns to Iraq, Alpha Company will be all over the place, splintered across several bases as the 48th Brigade assumes a new combat support mission. Stanley, who has depended on his tentmates to laugh him through tough days and nights, may be separated from them when he gets back from Dublin.
He thought his entire company would be moving south to Tallil Air Base in a less hostile zone. Now he's not sure where he will end up. He needs the camaraderie of buddies who call him "Slick Rick" and poke him with fake snakes in his sleep. What will he do if he can't confide in a friend in the wee hours of the morning? As Veal said, separation now would be like breaking a backbone.
Stanley doesn't talk about what's worrying him on the phone with Belinda.
"I had a sweet attack the other day," he told her. "I've been trying not to eat so much at night. I'm going to get back down to 210 pounds.
"I'll call back and check on y'all in the morning."
Stanley hung up and made the trek back to his tent.
She sounded well, he thought. She's a good actor.
When he got back to 3-111, his friends were already in for the night. They were huddled around Sgt. Tony Brazile, the techno whiz of the bunch. Brazile queued up a slide show of photos of Alpha Company soldiers. The images showed Stanley and his friends in front of their Striker home, at the gym, on their vehicles. It was a montage of what life has been for Stanley in the last few difficult months.
As Brazile scrolled back, photos of the soldiers training among the tall pines of Fort Stewart popped up. On those cold, damp days, Stanley had hated the sprawling Georgia base. He had complained about life in the barracks and the hour-and-a-half drive home.
Now, on another desolate night at Camp Striker, Stanley and his friends could not take their gaze off the screen. Fort Stewart felt different. It felt so familiar — in this place that would never be familiar.
"Oh, Lord, oh, Lord," Stanley said. "Yes, take me back there."
Staff writer Dave Hirschman contributed to this article.
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