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Monday, March 5, 2007
‘Another day in the office’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Tal Afar, Iraq — Every soldier sitting in the right rear passenger’s seat on the patrol takes a card. One will draw death.
The ritual that 2nd platoon of Hotel Company goes through before it heads out to the Syrian border is all in jest — a moment of black infantry humor. Only once has the holder of the death card — the highest drawn — actually been wounded.
Today, the high card is the ace of hearts, and it belongs not to Hotel Company but a soldier riding in a fuel truck the platoon is escorting. The unlucky lad draws a roar of laughter.
Then everyone gets down to serious business. The Georgia men help each other put on their battle rattle — pounds and pounds of body armor, protective shoulder and arm shields, helmet, ammunition rounds.
They don’t forget the game face.
“Another day in the office,” they yell.
“It’s go time, ladies!”
The terrain in northern Iraq around the Sinjar Mountains is without vegetation, without undulation. It is without pity for the weak under summer’s searing sun and in the chill of night in winter.
Many of the soldiers prefer to wear the old-style Army desert camouflage rather than the new digital green uniforms. In this sea of sand, they don’t want to be seen. That is doctrinally what a long range surveillance company does: hide.
They burrow into dirt holes — and here, at border forts — surveying the land before them. The naked eye sees nothing but tan earth meeting blue sky on the horizon.
However, the soldiers of Company H, 121st Infantry (ABN)(LRS) have sophisticated equipment like a LRASSS, a Long Range Advanced Scout Surveillance System mounted on a Humvee that enables soldiers to see miles ahead.
At Forward Operating Base Sykes, Company H headquarters consists of a simple plywood structure but it is anything but shoddy inside. A large flat video screen is posted on one wall to watch black and white aerial images transmitted back from planes. They see people on the move — in cars, on mules and on foot.
On the opposite side of the room sits a bank of radios. Without communication, information is useless and Company H has an entire platoon dedicated to “commo.”
The Army has only five such specialized units — Fort Gillem-based Company H of the Georgia Army National Guard is one of them. They aren’t exactly James Bonds of the desert but their task is to look across the sand berms that separate Iraq from Syria and pick up any activity. They often work in tandem with the Iraqi Border Police.
President Bush has blamed the 400 miles of porous borders here for infiltration of armaments and foreign insurgents into Iraq.
“You can call this the wild, wild West out here,” says Maj. Thomas Burket, commander of Task Force Specter, which includes Company H as well as a private Florida firm that provides the aerial scanning and a small element of Army intelligence experts.
It’s wild because of unforgiving terrain and insurgent activity and because every Iraqi household is entitled to an AK-47 assault rifle. Burket leads prayer for the 40 Company H men going out on patrol.
“Lord, protect us during our mission today. … Just get us out there and back safe.”
The area here is by no means as violent as Baghdad or Ramadi, but just a few days ago Company H soldiers were hit by a makeshift bomb, known as an improvised explosive device.
In their traditional surveillance role, the Georgia soldiers, many of them airborne and elite Ranger school graduates, would consider their mission a failure if they were seen and got caught in a firefight.
During World War II, soldiers like these went in behind enemy lines by land, air and sea to gather information. On D-Day, they placed radio beacons and lights on the ground so that allied planes knew where to drop soldiers.
But Iraq is not conventional warfare.
Second platoon’s mission is to follow up on intelligence reports about planned movement tonight. First Lt. Shiloh Crane and his men have orders to catch the border-crossers from Syria. Just as weather has a say in how a battle will be fought, so does the enemy, says Burket. Meteorologists predict weather. Long range surveillance companies help predict enemy patterns.
Some day, unmanned aerial vehicles capable of doing surveillance without endangering human life could be all that the Army uses to keep watch on enemy lines, Burket says. For now in Iraq, soldiers from Georgia are kissing the sands near Syria.
As the men of Company H roll out of the base in a parade of heavily armored military vehicles, their commander Capt. Kenneth Hutnick salutes and bids adieu. Hutnick will be there, too, when his men return — all 40 of them.
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| Louie Favorite/AJC |
| First Lt. Shiloh Crane briefs his platoon before starting their mission. The tattoo on the soldier in the foreground is for LRS, long range surveillance, and says “Eyes On the World” in Latin. Many soldiers in this platoon, including the officers, have it. The mission took them near the Syrian border, about 65 miles away. |
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Food glorious food
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Tal Afar, Iraq — Sunday night at Forward Operating Base Sykes means steak and seafood at the chow hall, known to the soldiers as DFAC (dining facility).
1st Sgt. John Gunning of Ball Ground helped himself to both. Oh, he had a bowl of rice and cantaloupe, too, to offset the red meat cardiac arrest.
All the dining facilities on the U.S. military bases are similar, though some have gained reputations by word of mouth. Some soldiers are quite the chow hall connoisseurs and could possibly get jobs as restaurant reviewers upon return home.
At the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone, the highlight for me was an avocado and onion salad tinged with fresh lime — the first time I had eaten avocado in my six trips to Iraq. And we had poolside seating under a brilliant blue sky. California dreamin’ on such a winter’s day. (Is there a war going on here?)
At Camp Victory, there’s an Indian food bar, though it’s certainly not my mother’s chicken curry. At Camp Liberty last year, the Bengali cooks came closest to the curry of my childhood but that food was slipped out to me from the kitchen. The staff there prepared separate meals for the non-American workers who kept the base running.
At Tallil Air Base, pies were tempting because, conveniently, there was a microwave set up next to the pastry case. Grab a cherry pie, warm it up and then head to the ice cream bar for a dollop of vanilla and voila, pie a la mode.
Taji’s dining hall was so big that I got lost in there a couple of times. And I am convinced the food tasted better at Anaconda because of the real plates and silverware instead of the standard plastic and Styrofoam.
The bigger bases have allowed fast food chains to invade the premises. There’s Pizza Hut, Burger King, Subway and KFC.
At Scania, an enterprising Iraqi opened a small restaurant within the confines of the military fueling station. Kasim offered yellow lentils, hummus and freshly baked flat bread. The tables were filled every day.
At more austere camps, the food is made by Army cooks — the contracted caterers are nowhere to be found. Or there are MREs, meals ready to eat, that come in brown plastic bags and with their own heater packs — a long way from the rations of previous wars. The MREs are not bad, I say, especially the vegetarian meals. The spicy penne pasta is quite tasty and beats a lot of the fattening fried stuff.
In fact, photographer Louie Favorite enjoys MREs as much as he likes Willies burritos. On his last trip out of Iraq, Louie spent time in Kuwait’s fancy dancy JW Marriott hotel. It was the month of Ramadan and very few eating establishments were open during the day. So Louie sat on his big fluffy bed and ate MREs to his heart’s content. Bet no one has ever stayed at that hotel and eaten cheese tortellini out of a bag.
My friends think I don’t eat well in Iraq. That’s another myth about Iraq, or should I say, about the U.S. military in Iraq. Most Iraqis, of course, don’t eat half as well. It makes my heart ache to see how much food is wasted in the chow halls when there are so many people in this country who are malnourished. I met a family in Sadr City once who told me they survived on bread and tea every day.
Here’s the other thing that strikes me every time I go to eat: I never thought I would see so much pork flowing in a Muslim nation: hot dogs, pork chops, whole hams and cold cuts.
The massive, overflowing chow halls also means that there are, unfortunately, many overweight soldiers in the U.S. Army. Several in the Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Infantry Brigade gained weight during their one-year tour here.
If the United States loses this war, it won’t be for want of nutrition for the soldiers.
Luckily at Sykes, a gym that rivals mine in Atlanta, sits directly across from the entrance to the dining hall. You can eat all you want and then get on a treadmill for a day or two.
It must be working. Haven’t seen too much girth around these parts.
Well, it’s nearing 7 p.m. Time for dinner.
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