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New truck can keep bombs at bay in Iraq
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Baghdad, Iraq — Staff Sgt. Jamie Linen’s crew hits the road every day, taking supplies and transporting soldiers from Forward Operating Base Falcon to nearby patrol bases where Georgia-based “surge” troops of the 3rd Infantry Division are based.
Every time he rolls out of the gate, Linen thinks about the risks of roadside bombs, the No. 1 killer of American soldiers in Iraq. But since November, when the 1st Battalion, 30th Infantry Regiment received a shipment of the military’s new anti-mine vehicles, Linen’s confidence has been boosted.
The Mine-Resistant, Ambush-Protected vehicles, or MRAPs, are the new stars in the military’s vehicle inventory. The 1-30 was the first 3rd Infantry Division unit to use them.
Made by International, the $658,000 trucks sit high on the road — 36 inches off the ground — and come with a V-shaped hull that helps deflect the impact of an improvised explosive devise.
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| Curtis Compton/AJC |
| Soldiers from Fort Stewart get a briefing outside their MRAP as they prepare to leave on a daily supply run in Iraq. It gives them a “sense of security.” |
“It is the one vehicle that gives us enough confidence to go out there,” said Linen, who took a weeklong training course on operation and maintenance. “Nothing is invincible here. You got tanks with 3 feet of armor getting blown up. But the MRAPs give us a sense of security.”
Spc. Robert Nowlin, who drives Linen’s truck, said “the enemy is more afraid of us when we are in an MRAP.”
Before the MRAPs, Nolin’s platoon in Fox Company was using up-armored Humvees. The platoon leader, 1st Lt. Mark Little, is recuperating at Walter Reed Army Medical Center after an IED blast blew both his legs off last year. It’s difficult to speculate, but Linen and Nowlin said that perhaps Little would not be in prosthetics right now had he been in an MRAP.
Besides the heavy armor and state-of-the-art design, the MRAPs come loaded with safety features, including a fire suppression system that protects every part of the truck and a pressurized cab built to withstand a nuclear or biological attack.
The seats have shoulder harnesses, and the doors operate on a hydraulic system so that in a rollover, soldiers don’t have to push their way out of doors that weigh up to 1,000 pounds. That was a common complaint with the up-armored Humvees, whose doors weighed 700 pounds.
The MRAP’s dashboard and steering wheel look and feel more like one of a semi rather than a military vehicle. It has power adaptors, power steering, heating and, best of all, decent air conditioning. Compare that with a Bradley Fighting Vehicle, which has no cooling system. In the middle of an Iraqi summer, the heat in the back of a Bradley can rise above 140 degrees.
The only thing the MRAP lacks, joked Sgt. Luke Hitchcock of the 1-30th’s Bravo Company, is cup holders.
“I’m not going to lie. It was fun,” Hitchcock said of his experience at MRAP training. “You feel like you’re in a monster truck.”
As of Dec. 11, 900 MRAPs were under contract with plans to build up to 15,374 of them.
More than 1,500 are already in circulation in Iraq.
Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell told reporters in December that “these armored trucks … have been the military’s top acquisition priority for months now, and with good reason.
The MRAPs stand 12 feet tall and can hold four to six people in the main cab along with a driver, a truck commander and the gunner, who is the most vulnerable in the exposed hatch.
In fact, the only MRAP casualty in Iraq so far was a gunner in the 1-30 Infantry. Spc. Richard Burress died Jan. 19 when his MRAP rolled over a 300-pound bomb. The other soldiers in the MRAP survived with broken bones and cuts.
“We’re the luckiest battalion in the world,” said Lt. Col. Kenneth Adgie, 1-30 commander. “If that bomb had hit any other vehicle, it would’ve killed every soldier.”
Adgie said the height of the MRAP can also be a hindrance. The antennas sometimes pull down power lines — not a good move in counterinsurgency operations when soldiers are trying to win over the hearts and minds of the Iraqis.
“It’s a great vehicle. A tremendous vehicle. But there is no perfect vehicle,” Adgie said.
From the start, the insurgency here has been a game of one-upmanship.
As Americans introduce more heavily armored vehicles, the insurgents come up with more powerful and sophisticated bombs to kill soldiers.
U.S. forces here worry that there will be a bomb powerful enough to overcome the MRAP. But for now, soldiers such as Linen and Nowlin wouldn’t trade their truck for anything.
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U.S. base in Iraq offers no safety
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
BAGHDAD — This is a different sort of fear, the kind that can do a number on your head. You begin to live with the chilling notion that you can die a gruesome death at a random moment, in a random place.
“You think you’re on a FOB, that you’re going to be safe,” says Spc. Juan Herrera, 25. “The fact of the matter is they can get you right here.”
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| Curtis Compton/AJC |
| Soldiers fill a bunker during a mortar attack at Forward Operating Base Falcon, Arab Jabour, Iraq, Tuesday, March 25, 2008. View more photos |
Forward Operation Base Falcon is the current home to Herrera’s unit, 1st Battalion, 30th Infantry Regiment from Fort Stewart. Rockets and mortar rounds have slammed into this base southeast of the Iraq capital since mid-March. One soldier has been killed.
The attacks give new meaning to the common statement about Iraq: There are no front lines here. The war is everywhere.
After 10 most nights, the soldiers at Falcon unwind with music, a movie, a shower. Many are back in their tents and on their cots, spent after a hot, strenuous day.
Then comes the ominous whistle overhead. Immediately, the soldiers begin dropping to the ground. Everyone knows what’s coming.
Boom! Boom!
The earth shakes. Bottles of Gatorade and mp3 players fall from shelves. Obscenities fly.
“Go, go, go!” someone shouts.
They scramble to grab helmets and body armor. And run into darkness, all the time hoping another rocket won’t explode before they can get inside something more solid than plywood and tarp.
Like bees to a hive, the soldiers hurtle toward the nearest bunker, encased in 9-inch-thick concrete.
“It keeps you on edge,” says Spc. Matt Brawner, 23, of LaGrange.
“You think about it all the time. You’re always looking over your shoulder,” says Sgt. Wes Marriner, 44, of Hull, Mass.
Imagine a quiet afternoon at home, listening to music or watching television. A bomb comes out of nowhere and destroys your world.
Private 1st Class Tyler Smith 22, of Bethel, Maine, was a sapper scout but on March 21, he wasn’t out in Baghdad clearing roads or shooting at insurgents. He was on this fortified base that gives, perhaps falsely, a sense of security.
He was killed when mortar rounds hit near his living quarters. He died when he had his guard down; when there was no expectation of death.
There was no warning, no chance to seek cover. Soldiers aren’t supposed to die in that fashion on the FOB, said Tyler’s squadron commander.
This is the constant stress of Iraq.
When soldiers roll out of the gates of a military base, when they go “outside the wire,” they learn to expect certain things. They have their game-face on. They are mentally prepared, as much as they can be, to be targeted, to be shot at, to drive over an improvised explosive device.
But these days at Falcon, the soldiers are vulnerable in their beds.
The barrage of attacks on Falcon is part of a recent escalation of violence in Iraq that recently tipped the U.S. death toll over 4,000. The soldiers speculate that warmer weather brings out the insurgents.
Recent news reports suggest that the bloodshed is related to rising anger within the ranks of the Mahdi Army militia, led by Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
Black humor in the dark
Private Smith’s death on Good Friday cast a pall over Easter weekend and beyond.
Soldiers at Falcon are under orders to wear full body armor all day. The base feels desolate; no one wants to walk around carrying 70 pounds of extra weight. Or wander far from the bunkers.
Easter decorations in the dining facility were bright and festive — colorful eggs and bunnies and an ice sculpture. But the tables were empty. Safety regulations required everyone to get a plate to go.
The 1-30 Infantry has soldiers scattered at several bases near Falcon: patrol bases Red, Murray and Hawks and two smaller outposts farther south. The unit was part of the surge, and the idea was for soldiers to live among the local populace, not commute to work.
Falcon is a fairly large and established U.S. military base. The 1-30 soldiers living at the smaller facilities rotate through here so they can eat a decent hot meal, get a haircut, shop at the PX or use a bathroom with a flushing toilet.
But at the moment, they are glad to stay away. Last Tuesday, the sirens rang as late as 11 p.m. after a day of constant runs to the bunkers. On Thursday, a rocket whizzed through the air, again late at night. Friday, the sirens for incoming rounds rang past midnight.
As the rockets rain down, soldiers huddle between the barriers in the dark and wait for more booms.
“Get down. Get low. They’re close,” comes an order from a sergeant.
Hearts are racing. Everyone is thinking the same thing.
Every few seconds, a face is illuminated in the glow of another cigarette lighting up. Nervous small talk is interrupted only by crackling radios. And occasional black humor.
“You know why they put up fences around graveyards?” asks one soldier. “Because everyone is dying to get in.”
Lulls only temporary
Every night, I push back the time when I take a shower for fear of being caught in an unprotected area of the base during an attack. Friday night, I have just put shampoo on my head when I hear that all-too-familiar whiz. Then the sirens. “Incoming! Incoming!” I drop to my knees inside the plastic shower stall.
For a few seconds, I am paralyzed, not knowing whether to stay in the shower or run. Run where? And expose myself to the attack? I have no body armor or helmet.
Finally, I manage to get clothes on and sprint to a bunker, shampoo still in my hair.
Someone else has been caught in midshower. He is there in his black Army shorts and flip-flops. You keep laughing to get through the ordeal.
Spc. Francisco Martinez is standing in his socks on dirt and gravel. He was sleeping and had no time to put on boots. “At least they match,” one of his platoon mates says.
Martinez, 25, of Lubbock, Texas, doesn’t look down at his feet, doesn’t respond to his friend. He contemplates the war: “It’s not like a video game.”
Relief comes finally through the loudspeaker: “All clear!”
But everyone knows the lull is temporary.
The medics ask if the soldiers are OK. A few days ago, I watched the medics run instinctively toward the place where mortar rounds exploded, stretchers and medical bags in their hands.
They wore no body armor, no helmets. They were doing what they are trained to do: seek out the injured. I don’t know many people with the courage to run toward bombs.
There’s not much you can do when you’re hit by an incoming rocket or a mortar round. You can’t fight back. All you can do is hope that it doesn’t send shrapnel slicing through your body.
Nearing their 12th month of a tough 15-month deployment, 1-30 soldiers are starting to turn their thoughts on going home this summer. With rounds slamming into Falcon almost every day, they say they just want to stay alive to see their families again.
“Everyone wants a break,” Herrera says. “We’re not going to get it.”
Marriner, the sergeant from Massachusetts who is on his second tour of Iraq, has a solution: “I’m going to put a bunk bed in the bunker for the next three freakin’ months.”
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Talkin’ trash
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Patrol Base Hawks - Remember the movie “Jarhead?” I’m talking about the scene where Jake Gyllenhaal’s tough Marine character gets put on latrine duty.
Not a pleasant thing to have to pull out large tin drums of poop and burn it all.
That’s the only way to dispose of it here at Patrol Base Hawks, where a bathroom means a small wooden box with a seat and a can.
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| Curtis Compton/AJC |
| Pfc. Joseph Reardon’s smelly detail takes three hours to perform. |
It’s not the kind of detail Pfc. Joseph Reardon joined the Army for. Nor had he expected this job when he arrived in Iraq last August. But four days a week, the 22-year-old from Decatur is on latrine detail.
In the mornings, he pulls out the eight drums, douses them with JP-8 (jet propulsion fuel used in military vehicles)
“It’s unbelievably gross,” Reardon says. “It doesn’t smell too good.”
Reardon says the job can take up to three full hours. Yuk.
But, he looks on the bright side. In the winter months, when low temperatures in the Baghdad area can hover around the freezing mark, a fire, no matter how smelly, can be a good thing.
“To be honest, people want that detail,” Reardon says. “It’s cold in the winter. Everyone would come out there to get warm.”
Never thought of it that way, but he has a point.
Of course, now the days are getting warmer. There are hints in the air of the sweltering summer ahead. Reardon isn’t thinking about it. He’s going home on leave to Atlanta in a few weeks. It’ll be good to be back to the land of thermostats and flushing toilets. And the smell of fresh blossoms billowing in the breeze.
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Grady baby honored
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Capt. Micah Hutchins had his moment in the sun here in Baghdad, a proud Grady baby made good.
Hutchins, 28, born at Grady Memorial Hospital and raised in Decatur, relinquished command Friday of Georgia-based 1st Battalion, 30th Infantry Regiment’s Fox Company to Capt. Jonathan Kirkland.
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| Curtis Compton/AJC |
| Capt. Micah Hutchins, 28, Decatur, Ga., right, is hugged by Cpt. Andrew Kirby, both with the 1st Battalion, 30th Infantry Regiment, Fort Stewart, Ga., as Hutchins is honored. |
The military values its change-of-command ceremonies, steeped in tradition and honor. Officers read out Hutchins’ achievements and the many medals he has been awarded. Hutchins participated in an elaborate passing of the company colors.
Hutchins, who attended Southwest DeKalb High School and Atlanta Bible Baptist Church, said it was a bittersweet moment for him. After 22 months with the company, he was moving on. He said he would miss the soldiers he has been deployed with for the past 11 months.
Since 1-30 Infantry arrived in Iraq last May, Hutchins’s 218 soldiers in Fox Company have been the backbone for combat operations. As the support guys, they have run 450 combat missions moving 1 million gallons of fuel, all the water the soldiers drink, 100 tall concrete barriers and “the unaccountable number of widgets” the battalion has needed in the patrol bases spread out throughout the area, said Lt. Col. Kenneth Adgie, the battalion commander.
Fox Company has also become sort of a “taxi service” for soldiers wanting to travel between the bases since it runs a supply convoy almost every day and often has empty seats in the trucks.
“You made the difficult look easy,” Adgie said about Hutchins and his company.
Then it was Hutchins’s turn. Not too many officers begin speeches by thanking their wife first. Hutchins did.
Rhea is also an Army captain, stationed at Q-West near the city of Mosul in northern Iraq. Relatives back home are taking care of their children, Abria, 5, and Peyton, 2. The parenting hardship was not lost in ceremony on this day.
As Adgie said: “They have sacrificed much.”
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‘Robin Hood’ risks life for his people
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Arab Jabour, Iraq — Brig. Gen. Mustafa Kamel beams with pride. He adjusts his red-and-white head scarf, tied and knotted the way Iraq’s Jabouri tribe wears it, and the leather holster that holds his 13 mm pistol. He stands and faces a dozen Iraqi television crews.
For the first time, high-ranking government officials have traveled from Baghdad to Arab Jabour. They want to hear how darkness turned to light in this impoverished rural, Sunni district southeast of the capital.
Once a stronghold for al-Qaida in Iraq, the area is now hailed as an example of “surge” success.
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| Curtis Compton/AJC |
| Lt. Col. Kenneth Adgie is greeted by religious leaders as he arrives to meet with Baghdad officials and Brig. Gen. Mustafa Kamel. |
There had been no sustained U.S. presence here since November 2005. The surge in troops brought the Georgia-based 1st Battalion, 30th Infantry Regiment to Arab Jabour in June.
Now, nine months later, Lt. Col. Kenneth Adgie, 41, commander of the 1-30, shares the spotlight with Mustafa, 54. Adgie is eager to credit the former Iraqi general with the area’s transformation.
He calls him a Robin Hood who risked his life for his people.
‘These kids were punks’
After the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, Mustafa was left without an Iraqi army job. He wanted to settle down as a beekeeper. That never happened as discontent among disenfranchised Sunnis made Arab Jabour a perfect breeding ground for al-Qaida ideology.
Adgie likes to describe the area as a petri dish for terrorism. He says the seeds were sown here by outside forces. Out-of-work, listless, rogue residents took up the mantle for al-Qaida. But they were hardly in the vein of Osama bin Laden. “These kids were punks,” he says, who did it for money.
The violence was so out of control that Adgie was ready to call it quits just days after his battalion arrived here.
Mustafa, meanwhile, hunkered down in his house, an AK-47 in his hands. The insurgents' threats came via phone, e-mail and text messages: "We will cut off your head."
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| Curtis Compton/AJC |
| Despite threats to cut off his head, Brig. Gen. Mustafa Kamel walked outside his compound and told Adgie he wanted to help. |
Then one day in early August, Mustafa walked outside the gates of his compound and told Adgie he was ready to help. He was determined to save his familial land and people.
The soldiers knew it would be a hard fight, and it was. The Fort Stewart infantry unit has lost 14 men and had more than 80 injured.
As the Americans began to clear routes and detain suspects, residents fed up with the spiraling violence followed Mustafa’s lead and found the courage to stand up. In the winter, U.S. forces staged large air assaults to drive out remaining al-Qaida cells. It was the intel that came from residents — whom the Americans call “bird dogs” — that made the bombing campaigns a success, say the 1-30 soldiers.
Now, as Mustafa recounts his story for the Iraqi media, he pulls out a U.S. Army fever-line chart that tracks the number of terrorist attacks by month. In June, Arab Jabour averaged almost 100 attacks.
There were times it was so bad that Mustafa admits he even wished for a return of Saddam Hussein. Adgie stationed an entire tank platoon to guard Mustafa and his family.
“He was a dead man walking. He was the guy we had to keep alive,” Adgie says.
The American commander and his new Iraqi ally met seven days a week, under cover of night, sitting in vehicles with the lights out to talk about what they could do to rescue Arab Jabour.
Men who were insurgent one day became a “concerned local citizen” the next. The CLCs were Sunni militias who have since rebranded themselves as the Sons of Iraq. They wear bright orange reflective vests, carry U.S.-issued identity cards, man checkpoints (Arab Jabour has no police presence) and are the eyes and ears of the counterinsurgency here.
The Sons of Iraq
They began as a group of 89 men. Now they number more than 1,400. Mustafa uses the chart again to show the correlation between militia recruitment and the downturn in terrorist attacks. In February, there were fewer than five incidents.
“The more recruits we got, the more intel we got,” Adgie says. The Sons of Iraq collect $10 a day from the Americans for their efforts. The Americans also reward residents for helping turn in unexploded ordnance that litter the area.
The soldiers of the 1-30 take personal satisfaction in Arab Jabour’s turnaround. Adgie, a pragmatist at heart, acknowledges the fragility of peace here. It’s on everyone’s mind, especially in recent days as the number of violent attacks in Iraq seem to be on the uptick again.
The Georgia-based soldiers have turned their attention to reopening local power plants, water pumping stations and schools. Last week, they helped the Iraqi police establish a presence here with a recruitment drive.
Mustafa, too, admits that Arab Jabour’s tale is far from finished. As he closes his speech to the crowd gathered at his house, he says he hopes officials in Baghdad will pay heed to the needs of his people.
That they even deemed Arab Jabour secure enough to make the drive down from the capital is, in itself, a victory.
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