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March 2007
Pullout votes scare mayor of Iraqi city
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The politics unfolding in the U.S. Congress frighten the mayor of this northwestern Iraq city almost as much as the multiple bombings and revenge killings that shattered the calm here this week.
“The situation right now would be out of control if it weren’t for American presence here,” Mayor Najim Abdullah Jibouri says. “Whoever denies this fact knows nothing.”
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| Louie Favorite/AJC |
| “It is the Iraqis who will pay the ultimate price for American politics,” Tal Afar Mayor Najim Abdullah Jibouri said in an interview. |
He has said it before. On Friday, he utters the statement again with new urgency surfacing in his voice after days of carnage.
His remarks are aimed at Washington lawmakers who want President Bush to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq. The Senate voted 51-47 Thursday on a war funding bill that included a provision calling for withdrawals to begin this year, with the goal of bringing all soldiers home in a year.
That makes Jibouri nervous.
“I know what’s-her-name, Hillary Clinton, knows very well that Bush is on the right track, but she has to oppose him because of the elections,” Jibouri says, taking a jab at Democrats who support the troop drawdown. “I am telling you that it is the Iraqis who will pay the ultimate price for American politics.”
Jibouri tried to console the inconsolable this week, meeting with mostly Shiite survivors of a massive truck bombing and Sunni families who lost fathers and sons in a reprisal rampage.
More than 85 people, including many children, died when a flour truck exploded in a busy marketplace. In the aftermath, gunmen shot 70 Sunni men execution style.
Jibouri says Iraqi security forces are nowhere near ready to maintain order in Iraq, as was evidenced in Tal Afar this week. On Friday, 18 Iraqi police officers were charged in murders of Sunnis.
He blames U.S. administrators for disbanding the Iraqi army in 2003 and says it will be another two years before the fledgling replacement forces will be able to stand on their own. For America to pull the plug now, he says, would result in nothing short of “catastrophe.”
He has told Bush that himself —- twice, in fact —- in letters, so far unanswered, that he says he sent to the White House after Bush, in a speech a year ago, touted Tal Afar as a model for freedom and security in Iraq.
But just as the Americans are racing against time here, so is the central government in Baghdad, Jibouri says. It must prove it is a secular entity able to keep sectarian power plays in check if Iraq is to succeed in quelling sectarian strife, he says.
His spirits visibly lowered by the bloodshed, Jibouri says he and other community leaders are determined not to let this week’s setback detract from the fight against terrorism, which he believes has been inflicted on Iraq by surrounding nations.
In an Internet statement, the Islamic State in Iraq, an umbrella group of terrorist organizations that include al-Qaida, claimed responsibility for the Tal Afar suicide bombings.
Jibouri defended the Iraqi police in his town, saying “a few bad apples” are tarnishing the reputation of the entire force. He calls the revenge killings inexcusable, but offers a reason for why they might have taken place. He says savage acts can beget other acts that are equally brutal.
He compares Tal Afar’s violence to the blackout and ensuing chaos in New York City in 1977.
“All hell broke out in that city then,” he says. “We didn’t have a blackout here. We had whole families wiped out. What would your reaction be if your entire family was killed?”
Permalink | | Categories: Reports from Iraq
When the clocks stopped in Tal Afar
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Tal Afar, Iraq — Amid the rubble are clues that a sinister chapter of Iraqi history was written here just hours ago:
A red-and-white stuffed toy, lodged forcibly into a crevice.
Crimson tomatoes spilled onto the splintered bricks and crumpled corrugated metal of a storefront.
A tan rubber sandal that once slipped onto the left foot of a child.
Bulldozers remove slabs of concrete, mangled cars and twisted wreckage. People carry away whatever belongings they can salvage. They are still looking for loved ones they have not seen since the clocks stopped here at 4 p.m. Tuesday.
• Click here for photos of the tragedy in Tal Afar
That’s when a massive bomb exploded in this busy shopping area.
“They found another body,” a neighborhood man screams.
A torso of a woman is placed in the bed of a pickup truck. A turquoise wrap holds feet, arms and other body parts.
“They are still searching for her head,” the man says.
The stench of death is fresh in al-Wahada, a predominately Shiite neighborhood in Tal Afar, a town that sits 65 miles east of the Syrian border. What had been a place of relative peace now withers in fear.
“Where can we live after such an attack?” school teacher Khalil Ibrahim asks 2nd Lt. Ryan Swinford, a Florida National Guard soldier who helps train local security forces. “What about my children? There is no police. No life.”
Swinford tells the desperate man that he is sorry. The soldier has two young children himself at home in Tavares, Fla.
“Unfortunately, it’s going to have to be an Iraqi solution,” he says.
It’s a sentence he utters a lot these days as the United States tries to stand up local authorities.
“Where is our government?” asks the man, pointing to his modest house, partially destroyed in the explosion.
“I don’t know how to answer that,” Swinford says.
He doesn’t know either what the next few days or weeks will bring. No one can say yet whether the recent spate of violence — a suicide bombing Saturday night, two on Tuesday followed by a night of vicious revenge killings — portends more sectarian strife here.
Tal Afar has been largely spared the senseless sectarian killings that shake Iraq almost every day. So much so that President Bush a year ago touted Tal Afar as the nation’s model for security, calling it “a free city that gives reason for hope for a free Iraq.”
This week, freedom is reduced to quick death. Hope is that a missing family member will still be found.
• • •
Tuesday afternoon, al-Wahada residents flocked to a truck carrying goods from a humanitarian organization, a magnet for poor people who had not seen such a shipment in months. The truck carried flour. It also carried a suicide bomber with 10,000 pounds of TNT.
The explosion looked like a mushroom cloud from nearby Forward Operating Base Sykes, the U.S. military post in Tal Afar. Even there, the earth trembled.
Minutes later, a second truck exploded in another, more mixed neighborhood. Police say that truck detonated prematurely before reaching the target area in al-Wahada.
At least 85 people died in the bombings; many were children. Another 200 were injured.
People in al-Wahada clawed through the destruction with their bare hands. Dust and flour combined to cover the dead with an eerie layer of white powder and streams of their own blood.
U.S. soldiers on the scene were sickened by what they saw. Some vomited.
The hallways and courtyards of Tal Afar General Hospital filled quickly. The victims were mostly Shiites.
Shiite anger against their Sunni neighbors erupted Tuesday night and into Wednesday morning, and Shiite gunmen continued the carnage. They knocked on doors and asked the men in Sunni households to come out. The gunmen, some of whom were Shiite Iraqi policemen, told the Sunni men they were looking for information about the explosions.
Then they put pistols to their heads and pulled the triggers.
About 70 Sunni men were blindfolded, handcuffed and killed, execution style. The vengeful bloodletting did not stop until the Iraqi army intervened.
Tal Afar General Hospital filled again, this time with Sunnis.
• • •
Thursday morning, Hasina Mohammed Amin sits next to a white metal gurney at the hospital. The day before, it carried the limp bodies of victims.
Her family, from the Sunni Nadar tribe, owned two shops in al-Wahada — one sold women’s clothing; the other carried automotive spare parts. The latter was destroyed in the bombing.
The knock on the door came late that night. The intruders were wearing Iraqi police uniforms, she says; they threw 25 men in her extended family into one room and shot them. One was her husband.
“Why? Why?” she says, wailing to the doctors and U.S. soldiers at the hospital. “I have eight children. I need someone to protect me. Please.”
Then she stands up and whispers into a translator’s ear so Iraqi security forces standing nearby cannot hear.
“I am scared of the I.P.,” she says of the local Iraqi police.
Her back is to a window that opens out onto a small garden of red poppies and golden coreopsis. When the hospital ran out of room, staffers laid the dead atop the flowers.
The white lab coat of Dr. Ali Hussein Mustafa is stained with dried blood. He is horrified by the week’s events, not just as a doctor but also as a Sunni.
“If one terrorist is Sunni, we cannot say all Sunnis are bad,” he says, adding the same about Shiites.
Since the bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra in February 2006, sectarian violence has spiraled in this troubled land.
In Tal Afar, Shiites form 60 percent of the population and occupy neighborhoods mainly to the south of a medieval, hilltop castle. The Sunnis live to the north, though some neighborhoods are mixed.
Though Tal Afar has seen its share of bloodshed — the insurgency raged here until an American offensive quelled it in the fall of 2005 — it had been largely free of sectarian killing until now. Many of the city’s 250,000 residents who fled earlier fighting were starting to return home.
“We had the calm before the storm,” says Staff Sgt. George Kakaletris, of the 10th Psychological Operations Battalion, who was here in 2005 when the “violence was unbearable.”
Today, Kakaletris is trying to cull information from local Sunnis about the reprisal killings. When he walks outside, it is already afternoon. The winter chill is gone. “Warm weather,” he says. “The violence always gets worse when it gets warm.”
There is speculation, too, that with an increased U.S.-Iraqi military presence in Baghdad, the bloodshed is spreading outward from the capital.
U.S. soldiers working with Iraqi security forces here say the recent atrocities are a big step backward, especially because Iraqi policemen are implicated in the revenge killings.
Dr. Salih Haider, Tal Afar General Hospital’s administrator, says Sunni residents are frightened.
“It’s a very dangerous situation for us,” he tells American soldiers who are trying to decipher what steps to take next. Haider says 90 percent of the people here trust the Iraqi Army, made up of soldiers who hail from all parts of Iraq and represent various ethnic groups and religions. The police, he says, are mostly local Shiites who can be swayed easily by sectarian preferences.
“Nobody,” he says, “trusts the I.P.”
• • •
Late Thursday, Tal Afar remains under curfew. Shops are shuttered. Few people dare to walk the streets. Five mortar shells fell earlier on another Shiite district.
Policemen suspected of participating in the reprisal killings were released, though local authorities did not provide a reason. The provincial government of Ninevah, to which Tal Afar belongs, is considering reconciliation talks between the city’s Shiite and Sunni leaders.
Soldiers at FOB Sykes are on alert. Regular patrols head into the city to keep watch. Even Company H, 121st Infantry (ABN)(LRS), the Fort Gillem-based Georgia Army National Guard unit that specializes in long-range surveillance on the Syrian border, is sending soldiers into Tal Afar.
At al-Wahada, the cleanup continues. As do the prayers of people who say this: Everything is in Allah’s hands. How can anyone but God control such tragedy?
Swinford, the Florida reservist, is frustrated and weary from the chilling images around him.
“I feel helpless,” he says, standing before an entire block of houses destroyed by the truck bomb and trying to assess the madness. “I’m really hoping this is an isolated incident.”
In other words, this is not Baghdad. Yet.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Reports from Iraq
Raise survivor benefits for military families
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
In a recent article by Rush Limbaugh, it was stated that the survivors of those killed on 911 in Twin Towers receiving an average of $1.18 million ranging from a guarantee minimum of a quarter-million to $4.7 million.
And some are complaining that its not enough. The victims of the Oklahoma bombing are agitating for “equal entitlements.”
What are the entitlements for our service men and women who sacrificed their lives to ensure that such events do not happen again?
The answer is about $10,000 a year to a surviving spouse, so long as the spouse doesn’t remarry, and a few thousand dollars a year to children under 18.
When it comes to receiving entitlements our military is usually on the bottom of the list.
Do you think survivor benefits should be raised? What should they be?
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Kenneth Hutnick
Staying in touch by sending packages
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
What better way to let your soldier know you’re thinking of him than to send him a care package?
My local postal workers know me by name because I’m at the post office several times a week mailing a package, card or letter to my husband.
I use those wonderful flat rate priority mail boxes and pack it full of coffee, magazines, toiletries, photos or anything my husband has requested.
Even when he doesn’t need anything, I’m compelled to send a package because it makes me feel as if I’m still taking care of him in some small way even though he’s gone. I can’t make him dinner, clean up after him or even give him a hug at the end of bad day, but I can at least provide him with reminders of home.
I was in line at the post office one day when an older gentleman behind me saw the APO address on the box. He was prior military so we chatted for a bit.
He handed me the money to pay for the shipping, which I refused until he asked me to take it as a small token of his appreciation for the soldiers. He wanted them to know that they have the full support of many people back home even though it doesn’t seem like it at times.
This simple act of kindness touched me deeply, and I want that gentleman to know how much military families appreciate those that do support our soldiers.
What items does your soldier like to receive?
Permalink | Comments (4) | Categories: Andie Heffernan
Homecoming: A dose of reality
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
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| Elissa Eubanks / AJC |
| When Dr. Guy Gober returned from a four-month tour in Iraq, his next challenge was adjusting to changes on the homefront. |
When you hear that a man had a four-month tour in Iraq, you think, “Well, at least he didn’t have to serve a year.”
Dr. Guy Gober went early in the war as a combat physician with the 214th Field Artillery of the Georgia National Guard. Before he left, he too was comforted by the phrase four-month tour. He figured he’d do his stint as a battalion surgeon then, God willing, come back safe and sound to his wife, six kids and their home in the Blue Ridge mountains of Tiger. How much could really change while he was gone?
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| Elissa Eubanks/AJC |
| Gober and his daughter, Georgia, 13, reconnect by playing golf in Clayton. |
Gober did come back safe and sound, still soft spoken with an easy smile. Now the war has been going on four years, and the current troop increase means there’s a good chance the 55-year-old colonel could be sent back to Iraq. Of course, he’d go willingly because he believes in the Army. But there is a price for sacrifice. He’s reminded of what can happen while you’re away:
Your 16- and 15-year-old sons learn how to chop wood on their own to help keep the house warm.
• • •
As the oldest male in the house, the 16-year-old assumes the authoritarian role. When you return, he does not want to give it up. It is hard for him to become just a boy again. It is hard for you to realize he’ll never again be just a boy.
• • •
Your wife essentially becomes a single parent in charge of a brood ages 3 to 16. When she can, she helps out at your urology practice with bookkeeping and such to make sure the business stays afloat. When she’s feeling overwhelmed, your daughters learn to comfort her.
• • •
Your 11-year-old daughter takes on a 4-H project making care packages to send to Iraq. She realizes that the busier she stays with sports and friends — willing herself to think of anything but the war — the less she likely she is to worry about you.
• • •
The oldest daughter becomes more quiet and introspective. She seems to feel her mother’s sadness the deepest of all.
• • •
The youngest child’s love for puppies and Daddy grows stronger.
• • •
Your second-oldest son writes you a letter recounting all the things you taught him that he’s thankful for, such as how to throw a ball, how to ride a bike. He writes, “Thanks Dad.” Reading it in Iraq, you realize for the first time that your children know they may never see you again.
• • •
Three birthdays and Christmas come and go. You look forward to the next year when, you tell yourself, you’ll be home to celebrate.
• • •
There’s a glee in your kids’ voices when they hear yours on the other end of the phone in Iraq. They’ve never sounded quite like that.
• • •
Some of your children become anti-military. Some can’t support it enough.
• • •
You begin to feel that the men and women who serve for a year or more are just plain stronger than you are.
• • •
You vow to listen more carefully, to your kids, your wife but also to the Army. Before you left Iraq, the Army sat you down along with other returning soldiers. You were told that the world at home would be changed when you got back, that there would be a new order at the house. They told you this through speakers, in questionnaires and on videos.
You didn’t pay attention. You believed you’d already survived the real storm.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Reports from the Homefront
It’s finally easy being green
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Louie Favorite / Staff
Kermit parachutes to the ground from atop an Iraqi Border Police fort near the Syrian border.
To get through war you need good body armor, good training and good support. You also need a good laugh.
Enter Kermit the Frog.
Click here to view a Kermit photo gallery.
Actually, that’s Corporal Kermit, of Company H, 121st Infantry, Georgia Army National Guard.
When did the Muppet get a rank? About the same time as Hotel Company’s Cpl. Patrick Heffernan.
Where Heffernan goes, Kermit goes. A digital photo album captures their travels: See Kermit peer through a rifle scope. See Kermit perched on the shoulder of Hotel Company’s Iraqi translator. See him in gunner turret of Heffernan’s Humvee. See him drift through air, parachute billowing against the blue Iraqi sky.
Heffernan e-mails the photos back to his wife, Andie, at home in Gwinnett County. She supports both corporals. When Cpl. Heffernan wanted his own personal Global Positioning System, she bought it. When he asked for a satellite phone he could take on missions, Andie cruised eBay until she found one for $900.
The same is true for Corporal Kermit’s battlefield needs.
Matter of fact, Kermit’s care packages are sometimes better stocked than Heffernan’s. Since arriving in Iraq last August, Kermit has received a .50 caliber rifle, combat knives, a helmet and canteen, all G.I. Joe accessories sized to fit his 12-inch frame. In his latest gift box from home was a parachute with harness. Coming next, a pinup calendar of Miss Piggy.
Out in the sand and dust, Kermit provides hours of entertainment for Company H soldiers. He’s also a goodwill ambassador of sorts. Heffernan said Iraqi children might not know who Kermit is, but when the Humvee pulls into a village, the sight of a frog in camouflage usually breaks the ice.
On a recent humanitarian mission near Tal Afar, Heffernan “secured” Kermit in the Humvee when Iraqi children caught wind of the well-appointed frog. They wanted to get their hands on the handsome green warrior.
The frog has been around for six years, plucked from toy store obscurity when Heffernan was in Ranger battalion at Fort Benning. Never hurts to have a mascot, particularly one that was beloved as a child. Back when things seemed safe and war was a game played in the backyard.
Heffernan is a big, strapping, good-looking guy. Manly man all the way. So there is risk in suggesting that his fuzzy green frog is a stand-in for the more traditional comfort toy: a teddy bear. But does it really matter if a grown man has a plush toy if it helps him get through the extreme stress of war? If it reminds him of home and of his beautiful wife and the life he is hopeful they will have, if he survives this tour of duty?
Heffernan said the green guy is his good-luck charm.
Andie agreed. “Oh, yeah, Kermit is coming back,” she says. “Absolutely.”
Staff writer Moni Basu contributed to this article from Iraq.
Permalink | Comments (29) | Categories: Reports from Iraq
Working the beat in Iraq
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
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| Louie Favorite/AJC |
| Sgt. Jason Strometz of Warner Robins looks through a video camera attached to night-viewing scope. It’s one of the tools used on the western fringes of Iraq by the soldiers of Company H, 121st Infantry (ABN) (LRS). |
• Click here for more photos from the border
Ninevah province, Iraq — Through the ballistic glass of an up-armored Humvee, Sgt. Jeff Stewart sees a brilliant night sky: diamond-bright stars that are impossible to see with the naked eye in urban Atlanta.
The constellation merges with the twinkling lights of Syrian villages on the other side of the border. It is just past midnight and yet the glow gives the appearance of dawn. Stewart almost does not need his night-vision device.
With his three-man team, he sits and waits.
And waits.
• SECOND OF TWO PARTS
Stewart is used to passing time like this. The 9-year veteran of the Atlanta Police Department has participated in enough crime operations back home to know how patience pays off.
“It’s like fishing,” he says.
Right now, he’s on the shore, scoping out the waters — or in this case, a rugged terrain of sand berms and snaking wadis that cut the land like dried-up riverbeds.
Stewart grew up in upstate New York but moved to Atlanta right after college when he was hired by the city police. Since then, he has driven a patrol car or his Kawasaki looking for lawbreakers.
Here on the western fringes of Iraq, Stewart and the soldiers of Company H, 121st Infantry (ABN) (LRS) work in tandem with the Iraqi Border Patrol in an effort to stop illegal border crossers and the flow of smuggled goods. Both, they believe, keep afloat the venomous violence of Iraq.
Company H soldiers leave a nearby Iraqi fort each night and drive to various locations along the border. They sit in the Humvees for five, six or more hours, until they spot illegal crossers or a surveillance plane hovering overhead tips them off.
“It’s the same … just with heavier stuff on,” Stewart says, comparing his task here to what he does in Atlanta. The body armor, Kevlar helmet, ballistic eyewear and ear protection make it impossible to forget that he is in a combat zone.
You have to know the streets
Not that the Georgia Army National Guard soldier is unaccustomed to wearing gear. His police flak jacket saved his life when he went down on his bike.
Police officers specialize in “working their beats,” Stewart says. They have to know the streets, know the little guys in order to catch the big criminals. It’s the same out here. To arrest the men who oversee weapons smuggling, Stewart knows he has to get the man crossing the berm on his mule and work up the chain.
“The problem is that the people we are trying to catch are equally as smart as we are,” Stewart says of the cat-and-mouse game that goes on every night on the porous borderline.
The quiet of the night is deceiving. It’s far removed from the menacing streets of Baghdad, Ramadi, Baqubah, Mahmudiyah. But Stewart knows at any moment all hell could break lose. He never lets down his guard.
Still, the soldiers take turns scanning the landscape; all must figure out ways to pass the long hours.
Stewart is a voracious reader, gobbling up everything from Kurt Vonnegut to grocery store paperbacks. Tonight he has “Seal Team: Combat Missions” illuminated by a headlamp with a red bulb, which gives off less ambient light. Spc. Gary Stanley, whom Stewart calls “Minion,” fumbles with a Boom box in the back seat. He keeps the volume low enough so it can be heard only inside the Humvee.
“Hey, Minion,” Stewart says, asking the 21-year-old from Calhoun to pass a can of Copenhagen.
Stanley is busy looking at photos of his newborn.
The minutes tick by slowly. The desert temperature drops quickly.
In the still of the night
Stewart and his men peer through binoculars and thermal devices that detect anything or anyone giving off heat. Company H has a high-tech Long Range Advanced Scout Surveillance System, which enables the soldiers to see the fur on a dog’s back up to seven miles away.
Tonight, everything is still.
There’s a lot of time to reflect.
Stewart just got back from two weeks leave. The 31-year-old soldier didn’t tell anyone he was going home because he wanted to spend uninterrupted time with his wife, Tara. He thinks of the small moments that add so much to life’s memories, like taking Tara to eat at Bella’s pizza around the corner from their apartment in Vinings. Bella’s has the closest thing to New York pies that you can find in Georgia, Stewart says.
“I wish the deployment went by as fast as my 15 days at home did,” he says. But there’s no sense dwelling on that which cannot be controlled. He abruptly shifts gear, hollering at a comrade:
“Hey, Sarah, make sure you close the turret tonight when we get back in so the cat doesn’t get in here and do crazy things,” he says to his gunner, Spc. Jonathan McLaughlin, whose nickname comes from the Canadian singer Sarah McLachlan, even though their last names are spelled differently.
A stray cat at the Iraqi border fort ate a soldier’s sandwich the day before and, even worse, relieved itself on a canvas backpack.
‘Missions’ around grandmother’s house
McLaughlin just crossed 20 last month. When he gets back home to Kennesaw, he wants to finish a degree in international relations. He loves traveling and hopes to visit China. In his hand is a book about an English missionary’s adventures on the mainland. And Sun Tzu’s military treatise, “Art of War.”
He has picked up enough Arabic to communicate with the Iraqis. His platoon mates call him a sponge — he soaks up stuff fast.
McLaughlin grew up playing soldier with his cousins and ran “missions” around his grandmother’s house. But he was the only one in the family who enlisted.
“I knew Iraq would be a life experience,” he says. “I’ve learned to be a lot more open to new ideas.”
Stewart is like a surrogate father to his young team. Every morning at 5:30, he rouses them from bed to exercise together. Stewart’s driver, Spc. Stephen Robertson, goes running again after the team has finished. That’s why Stewart nicknamed him “Crazy.”
“It’s because I have a lot of anger,” says Robertson, an electrical engineering major at Columbus State University.
“Do you know who Charles Whitman was?” Stewart says about the Texas man who in 1966 killed his wife and mother and then went on a shooting rampage atop a university tower. “He had a lot of anger issues.”
Stewart laughs. He is amused, too, by the suggestion that he is the acting dad for his guys. “My God, I would kill myself if they were my kids,” he says.
“One day, Sergeant Stewart, you’ll like me,” McLaughlin responds from the turret.
“Yeah. I’ll keep you posted,” Stewart says, returning to his book.
Bonds that last a lifetime
War has a strange way of creating the bonds of a lifetime. Stewart’s men are close. The friendships are especially important to McLaughlin, so young and for the first time without his brother Andrew, only 22 months apart in age. “When we were younger, people asked if we were twins,” he says. “Now, they can’t believe we’re brothers. He’s the brains; I’m more athletic.”
At Christmas, McLaughlin’s mother, Karen, sent everyone on her son’s team gifts. The sergeant and Minion received chewing tobacco. Crazy was happy with his Nutter Butters.
As the hours drag by, Stewart monitors the talk on the radio. Each night, a surveillance plane hovers nearby, sending information to Company H men sitting on the border.
“We have not seen anything tonight but one rabbit,” the pilot calls in.
“A rabbit,” Stanley says. “Hey, let’s go catch it.”
It would make for some fine eatin’ in the middle of nowhere.
“We can get you some business further north,” the pilot says.
The soldiers cannot be everywhere at once. Iraq’s border with Syria stretches 400 miles through Ninevah and Anbar provinces.
With morning fast approaching, the Georgia soldiers ride back to the fort with their headlights off, negotiating the bumps and crevices of the gullies until they reach the main road.
Maybe it’s the brightness of the night sky that kept people away. Maybe tomorrow night, they’ll see more action.
Another night of nothing
Day 2. Stewart learns it’s his team’s turn to guard the fort while the rest of the platoon heads out into the wilderness. His men are disappointed — until bad weather moves in.
Unlike the night before, the stars are gone; the sky is black as tar. A Georgia-style thunderstorm is fast approaching. Dust devils spray sand everywhere. In the central courtyard, plastic tables and chairs whirl through the air.
McLaughlin covers his head and face with a scarf, puts on his rain gear and forces his way to the rooftop guard tower.
“I always wanted to be a tornado chaser,” he says.
Stewart and his men take turns up in the guard tower. It’s another night of nothing. The rest of Company H return to the fort early because of the storm.
In the morning, the sun has dried the desert mud. Stewart gets his men and equipment ready to head out again later in the evening.
In the past, Company H has confiscated fuel, cigarettes and other smuggled goods. They have caught and detained people crossing from one nation into another.
Stewart believes the Georgia soldiers’ presence has acted as a deterrent. Perhaps tonight will be quiet again on this distressed nation’s border.
That in itself is a rare, tangible measure of success for Stewart and his team. Progress is often difficult to chart here in Iraq, where circumstances can change with the flick of a detonation device.
Inside the fort, Stewart takes a few free moments in the afternoon to relax atop his Humvee.
Seven months, he says. That’s the time Company H has been running these missions since arriving in Iraq on August 14.
“I never lose track of the 14th of every month.”
Stewart hopes he will only have to count five more ’14s’ before he gets back on the downtown connector, chasing down speeding Atlanta drivers or just writing a parking ticket.
Permalink | Comments (7) | Categories: Reports from Iraq
Bombings in Tal Afar
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Tal Afar, Iraq — Two thundering booms shattered the afternoon lull here today.
The metal containerized housing units at Forward Operating base Sykes shook, the earth underneath rumbled. I had not felt a blast like that since last year when I spent months at Camp Liberty in western Baghdad.
Two truck bombs exploded five minutes apart in markets at Tal Afar. The Associated Press reported that 48 people died here and another 103 were wounded.
One of the trucks was detonated by remote control while people gathered to buy the flour it was carrying in a central Shiite neighborhood, the AP reported. The other truck was loaded with vegetables and parked near a wholesale market, not far from a primary school that was closed for the day.
Witnesses said the “body parts were thrown to the ground and the walls and vegetables were scattered in pools of blood.”
It was the second attack here in four days — a suicide bomber killed 10 people at a pastry shop in a Sunni neighborhood Saturday.
This northern Iraqi city near the Syrian border has been relatively quiet in the last few months, so the bombings jolted the soldiers stationed at Sykes, which sits just outside Tal Afar.
In Baghdad, such bombs are so disturbingly regular that soldiers on the base would hardly notice the booms.
Today’s bombings were a wake-up call here for those not accustomed to hearing loud noises. Some wondered whether they should be heading for bunkers.
Atlanta-based Company H, 121st Infantry (ABN)(LRS) soldiers were put on alert to head out to Tal Afar but in the end, were not not part of the “quick reaction force” that the 3rd Squadron, 4th Cavalry Regiment sent out.
The U.S. military tried to make its presence known after bloody attacks like this to calm the fears of residents, most of whom are Turkomen.
But how do you calm a grieving mother? How do you erase the chilling images of today that residents will forever keep in their minds?
A year ago, President Bush hailed this city, about 60 percent Sunni and 40 percent Shiite, as a model for improved security in Iraq. And just yesterday, a group of Georgia soldiers spoke to me about how lucky they were to be in this part of Iraq.
Tonight, however, they might be thinking differently.
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Border war: Where it all begins
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
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| Louie Favorite/AJC |
| An Iraqi fort on the Syrian border, temporary home for Georgia-based Company H, 121st Infantry (ABN) (LRS). |
• Click here for more photos from the border
Ninevah province, Iraq — It is sundown when 3rd platoon rolls into the Iraqi border fort in a parade of Humvees and a military truck carrying supplies to last a week. Here on the Syrian border, the Georgia soldiers will rest by day and, at night, when darkness propels illegal activity, they will stake out the unforgiving desert that lies between two nations.
The acting commander of the Iraqi Border Patrol battalion occupying this fort comes out to greet the Americans.
This is where the war begins, says Capt. Staff Waleed Mohammed Ibrahim, of the foreign fighters, smuggled fuel and weaponry that drive Iraq’s toxic mix of hatred and bloodshed.
• FIRST OF TWO PARTS
The world focuses on Baghdad’s mayhem, but it can all be stopped on the border, he says. “My men are the first line of defense for Iraq.”
In this little-known border war, Ibrahim’s battalion works closely with the soldiers of Company H, 121st Infantry (ABN) (LRS), a Georgia Army National Guard long-range surveillance unit based at Fort Gillem. Hotel company soldiers, whose home in Iraq is Forward Operating Base Sykes in Tal Afar, rotate in and out of border forts like this one.
The partnership is not always seamless; different cultures and work ethics can get in the way. And, there is no such thing as instant trust.
Ibrahim depends on the Americans for tactical support; the Georgia soldiers turn to Ibrahim, whose men are more familiar with the region, for information and tip-offs on suspicious activity.
The United States accuses Syria of supporting terrorism in Iraq; Syria denies it. Whether the crossers are Syrian or Iraqi, the business is smuggling goods for money that can be used for sinister purposes.
Platoon leader 1st Lt. Brooks Askew sits down for a brief conversation in Ibrahim’s office. The Iraqi leader asks about a bridge that was blown up on the main highway to Tal Afar.
“It’s good now,” says the officer from Atlanta. It has been rebuilt.
As the two leaders talk, 3rd platoon soldiers unload their gear. Later, they will head out on their first reconnaissance mission. An Atlanta police officer, Sgt. Jeff Stewart, will take his men north with Askew. Other 3rd platoon Humvees will cover territory to the south. They will work under the cover of night and return at daybreak to this border post.
A sand berm separates two nations
It is a fort only in name, a shell of a building with a guard tower and Soviet-era binoculars attached to a metal stand. There is no electricity here save a small generator. Most of the time, there’s no fuel to run it.
The Syrian flag flies so close that the Georgians manning the guard tower can almost reach out and pluck it from the other side of the sand berm that separates the two nations.
It is a barren landscape with the Sinjar Mountains in the distance, and a small graveyard along the border. The Americans surmise that some headstones belong to men who served in the Iraqi Border Patrol.
Since 2003, Iraqi border forces belonging to the Sinjar division have endured 25 terrorist attacks that killed 13 of their own and permanently crippled another dozen.
As the Iraqis surrender their sheltered space to the Americans, the whitewashed rooms fill with rows of green canvas Army cots and camouflage sleeping bags. Without heat, it can be uncomfortably cold at night.
In the central open-air courtyard, the soldiers set up Coleman camping stoves so they can heat water and make Starbucks coffee in the morning. There’s a stash of sweet, sticky honey buns, otherwise known as LT steaks because they are Lt. Askew’s favorite snack.
Ibrahim’s men have seen U.S. soldiers many times. Still they stare, curious. They are amused by the brown bags containing MREs, the Meals Ready to Eat, affectionately called Mr. E’s.
Cpl. Ryan English of Atlanta refuses to touch the military rations. He pulls out a bag of hydrogenated Pad Thai that he ordered online.
The soldiers come here equipped with hand sanitizers, anti-bacterial wipes and toilet paper. The only water available comes in bottles and is conserved for drinking and brushing teeth.
An invitation to dinner
Next to the Americans, the Iraqis look like a ragtag army. They wear whatever uniforms they can scrounge up: Some are dressed in Gulf War-era U.S. chocolate chip blouses and cargo pants like those seen in the movies “Black Hawk Down” and “Jarhead.”
The Iraqi captain invites the Georgia soldiers to join his men for dinner. His compound has a kitchen staff and mud ovens where hundreds of pieces of flatbread are baked every day.
“We’re tired,” Askew says, declining.
“Then lunch tomorrow?” Ibrahim asks.
“OK. Maybe 10 of us.”
“Ten? No, no, no. Twenty.”
“I don’t want to take your food,” Askew says, accepting instead an offer of chai, a heavily sweetened tea.
Behind the commander’s office is a detailed sand table that depicts the lay of the land. It is kept hidden in a zippered U.S. Army tent.
In the aftermath of Saddam’s ouster, border posts were deserted, and squatters settled in. Since 2003, the Iraqis have reclaimed the buildings and erected eight border posts; the Syrians have 10 times that many. Little flags on the table mark the border stations and checkpoints along the main north-south Iraqi road.
Askew eyes seven pickup trucks parked outside. The last time his platoon was out here, they cornered the drivers and confiscated their trucks as they tried to cross the border illegally. The Georgians also seized cardboard boxes each containing 50 cartons of cigarettes: Jordanian made Wall Street Lights and United 100 Lights. Ibrahim has them piled up in a storage room.
Cigarettes, explains Ibrahim, are much more expensive in Syria; each box carrying 50 cartons is worth $75 there. “They sell them in Syria and maybe buy weapons with the profits,” he says. “Terrorists in Iraq get big help from outside.”
Other smuggled items such as fuel similarly cross the border all the time. Iraq has one of the world’s largest oil reserves but gasoline is in short supply and frightfully expensive. In this area, Ibrahim says gas can cost $4 a gallon, prompting insurgents to look West for fuel.
A computer is ‘a good friend’
The Iraqis lack the sophisticated surveillance equipment the Georgians possess. Until recently, Ibrahim didn’t even have access to the Internet or adequate radio communication. The Russian-manufactured radio he used felt like two blocks of cement on his back.
The Georgians helped him on that front, too. “It’s a good friend,” he says about the flat-screen computer monitor now sitting on the commander’s desk.
Ibrahim hints that corruption and bureaucracy keep the central government in Baghdad from lending much support to border security forces. “There is no country in the world that can secure 100 percent of its borders,” Ibrahim says. “But we don’t get what we need for the men.”
He says his men leave their families to work here for two weeks at a time, without electricity or running water. It’s human rights abuse, he says, to not even have a way to shower. They are paid only $370 a month, half of which is burned up in gas to get out here and back.
Ibrahim, like many Iraqis in this area, is grateful for American support. With U.S. assistance, he says, roughly 35 border crossers have been detained so far this year. Among them, five were known terrorists; two were suspects in anti-American incidents.
A rocky marriage between troops
The relationship between the Border Patrol and the Americans, however, is sometimes an uneasy one. It’s almost like a marriage in which each partner suspects infidelity.
Ibrahim explains that in the past, U.S. soldiers entered the area, did their own thing, and left. He even recalled a firefight between the Iraqis and Americans that erupted from miscommunication. The Georgians, in turn, look over their shoulders to make sure the Iraqis stay honest. Corruption and sectarian allegiances within security forces throughout Iraq are common and can impede policing operations.
Ibrahim slouches in a heavily upholstered chair and yells for his cook to bring out another round of tea for Askew.
He is extremely proud of the red stripe that sits under the three gold stars on each shoulder of his old American uniform. The stripe entitles him to the “staff” designation and is an Iraqi equivalent of the elite Ranger tab that many of the Company H soldiers have earned.
Two Company H officers paid their Iraqi counterpart soldierly respect by presenting him with Ranger tabs. One day, Ibrahim says, he hopes for an opportunity to go through the grueling 61 days of Ranger school that starts at Fort Benning.
Though they come from separate worlds, Askew, a 25-year-old Georgia Southern graduate, and his seasoned Iraqi host know they have to work together. The conversation between the two men is punctuated with laughter, until discomfort surfaces in awkward moments of silence.
An interpreter lights up a Marlboro red and offers his pack around. Both Askew and Ibrahim decline.
Ibrahim may be the only Iraqi soldier who does not smoke. He laughs at that observation, and when he does, the wrinkles on his sun-damaged face add age to his 34 years.
Sitting under a framed passage from the Quran, the Iraqi officer leans forward toward his American counterpart.
“There’s a local saying,” he tells Askew, laughing. “As long as there’s chai and cigarettes, there’s no problem.”
Tomorrow: An Atlanta cop and his crew go out on a mission, hoping to snag infiltrators and smuggled goods that fuel the war in Iraq.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Reports from Iraq
Top commander: Dialogue needed
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Louis Favorite / AJC
Gen. David Petraeus, commander of US forces in Iraq (right), greets Sgt. Jason Goza, who is from Marietta and is with Company H, 121st Infantry. Gen. Petraeus visited the base and had lunch with a selected handful of soldiers.
Tal Afar, Iraq — On a visit to northern Iraq on Sunday, the overall commander of U.S. forces, Army Gen. David Petraeus, said the fresh drive to stifle sectarian violence is working in a “pivotal moment” for this troubled nation.
Petraeus, in an interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, pointed to lower numbers of violent incidents in recent weeks as an “encouraging indicator” that the new U.S. strategy is succeeding, though a bloody spate of bombings ripped through Iraq this weekend.
Even here in Tal Afar, which has seen relative calm during the past year, a suicide bomber wearing a vest of explosives blew himself up Saturday in a pastry shop in a heavily Sunni commercial area, killing at least 10 people.
The “s-vest” bombing was the buzz on the base here as Petraeus landed with his entourage. The general, who infrequently grants interviews, spoke briefly with the AJC after lunch with Atlanta-based soldiers at Forward Operating Base Sykes.
Petraeus took over as U.S. commander in February and has since implemented a plan that placed American soldiers in the heart of restive Baghdad neighborhoods to protect residents, revamped counterinsurgency tactics, cultivated community leaders and pushed Iraqi forces to stand on their own.
The plan included the deployment of more than 21,000 additional troops in Iraq. The “surge” has been ripped by congressional Democrats as an escalation of hostilities in the face of anti-war sentiment at home.
Earlier this month, Petraeus said military action would not be sufficient to improve Iraq’s security and that real dialogue was needed between sectarian leaders. On Sunday, he reiterated that America alone cannot rescue Iraq.
“It’s about Iraqi leaders taking a firm stance against sectarian violence,” Petraeus said in the interview.
Petraeus, who commanded the 101st Airborne Division in the 2003 invasion, credited the efforts of Shia Prime Minister Nouri Maliki and Sunni tribal leaders in the violent Anbar province as key to reducing daily atrocities committed in the name of religion.
Two weeks ago, Maliki toured parts of Anbar with Petraeus. The U.S. commander called it a “historic trip of enormous significance.”
Petraeus said Maliki has extended a hand to the Sunnis and shown a concerted effort to crack down on every party involved in inciting violence. In the past, Iraq’s Shia-dominated government has been accused of protecting Shia militias.
“The Euphrates River valley is a dagger pointed at the center of Baghdad, an area through which foreign fighters have moved,” Petraeus said about Anbar. “And so again it was very significant for [Maliki] to show that he is a prime minister for all Iraqis and not just for Shia political parties.”
Petraeus also said the terrorist group al-Qaida’s targeting of Sunnis is backfiring.
“Certainly, al-Qaida and other extremist organizations have continued to re-ignite sectarian violence,” Petraeus said. “Because the Sunni tribes in Anbar province have stood up and said enough, they are fighting back against al-Qaida.”
At Sykes, Petraeus met with soldiers of 3rd Squadron, 4th Cavalry Regiment under which Atlanta-based Company H, 121st Infantry (ABN)(LRS) falls.
After a closed-door informational meeting, Petraeus chowed down on a chili dog with a dozen handpicked soldiers at the dining facility. Among them was Company H’s Sgt. Jason Goza of Marietta, who found Patraeus’s words of encouragement “inspiring.”
“They are a special bunch of young men and young women,” Petraeus said. “Especially in a place like this. It’s far from everywhere.
It’s remote. It’s hard.
“When the summer comes, it’s going to be 125 degrees out here and it’s a religious experience to be on patrol in body armor and Kevlar in 125 degrees,” the general said.
Goza, a student at North Georgia Military College in Dahlonega, raised the issue of protective wear and heavily armored vehicles as a point of concern for the soldiers. He said the heavy armor reduces maneuverability of both the men and their Humvees.
Company H Humvees weigh 12,000 pounds each and sometimes have difficulty driving over sand and mud near the Syrian border.
Goza normally would have eaten earlier but he and the other soldiers waited patiently for Petraeus to finish his meeting. Goza said no one minded - to the soldiers, it might as well have been the president.
“I’d wait all day,” he said.
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Spa-like conditions
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The last time I wrote about my adventures in the Wild, Wild Iraqi West, several readers wrote in calling me spoiled. Obviously, my blog was an attempt at humor — not a cry for sympathy. We could all use a good laugh in the war zone.
So here is the continuation of the story.
Trip No. 2 to the Syrian border was with 2nd platoon, Company H, 121st Infantry (ABN)(LRS). Living conditions are difficult at the border forts, where electricity is scarce and there is no running water.
Once again, I knew that the bathroom situation would be awkward for me, the only woman for miles around.
But 2nd platoon rose to the challenge.
Spc. Andrew Prater, the platoon’s young medic from Newnan, strung together three Army cots to create a small room. Everyone was impressed with Prater’s engineering feat.
Each day brought further improvements: yellow flowers in a cup, wet wipes and hand sanitizer placed on a small ledge. When the rains came in, Prater even covered the roof with a camouflage tarp.
Welcome to the Ritz Carlton of the Iraqi desert.
I knew what I was getting into when I volunteered for this assignment. That doesn’t mean that it isn’t rather uncomfortable at times.
Prater’s was a small gesture that went a long way. And I am grateful.
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| Louie Favorite/AJC |
| Spc. Andrew Prater (left) and Spc. Ernie Churchwell stand by the latrine they had just finished for Moni Basu. |
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A mother’s mentality
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
At the war’s midpoint, Kathy Barnes saw a snake’s corpse and took it as a sign.
Will my son die in Baghdad?
A few weeks later, she saw two Canada geese soaring over treetops near her Blue Ridge mountain home.
My son will come back from Iraq to be with his wife.
A rational mind plays this game in wartime. A thunderclap becomes a herald, a bird’s song a prophecy. Looking for omens doesn’t necessarily evidence lack of faith as much as it acknowledges that we really can’t foreknow anything. All we can do is hope.
This war is putting Barnes’ training and faith to the test.
As a therapist in Tiger she helps others deal with fear, both irrational and real. But what of her own fear? Especially when it comes to her son, Edward Berg?
Berg is an Army captain in the 4th Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division out of Fort Stewart. He’s a 34-year-old prosecutor who, in the military, is a judge advocate general officer. During his first deployment to Iraq in 2005 he was stationed at Camp Liberty. His job was to train Iraqis in international law. Barnes took this to be an early good sign.
He’s not in direct combat, so that means he might be a little bit safer.
Then Barnes discovered that her son’s job required flying for 10 months from city to city in a Blackhawk helicopter.
What if his helicopter is shot down? What if a bomb explodes? How will his wife cope alone with two children? What will I do if I lose him?
Much as Barnes tried to stifle her questions, they would creep up anyway. Each day as the body count of dead American soldiers rose, she wondered if she’d get a knock on the door. She’d wake up crying in the middle of the night, her thin frame shaking. Then she’d get angry that her son enlisted in the military in the first place back in graduate school. He didn’t grow up in a duty-to-country family. But then Barnes would remind herself that his personality is to be loyal to a cause.
So Barnes followed the advice she gave her clients and wrote her feelings down, in journals and poems.
Doing it taught Barnes what her clients knew: Seeing your fears in black and white doesn’t make them disappear.
Her husband, Travis, an ordained minister, told her that being in the clergy and being in the Army were a lot alike: You’re giving your life over to a higher power.
That helped.
Barnes kept writing but she also kept praying. She pulled together a group of other military families who were going through what she was. They’d meet and talk, laugh and cry. She told herself, “Feel, Kathy; feel all the way.” Barnes accepted that she couldn’t control her son’s safety, that she’d just have to let go and trust.
A year ago last January, Berg came home with a bronze medal.
With her son’s return, Barnes’ support meetings waned. The mood of the country shifted against the war. Barnes stopped looking for signs.
Then came the troop surge early this year and a call from her son saying it looked like he’d be going back to Iraq. This time he will serve as a chief justice at Camp Victory near Baghdad. He’s not sure whether his deployment will be four months or 10 months.
One day, not long after the call, two military jets roared through the sky above Barnes’ home, rumbling the house and the valley below. Barnes looked upward, as if searching for another sign.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Reports from the Homefront
Gateway to Iraq
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Rabbiyah, Iraq - One this side of the entry point is an arched concrete slab that welcomes newcomers to Rabbiyah, the “gateway to Iraq.”
On the other is a similar structure glorifying Hafez al-Asad, the late dictator of Syria, with a gaudy painted portrait. It resembles those that Saddam Hussein erected in his honor and used to dot all of Iraq before they were defaced or torn down in 2003.
The border slices Rabbiyah in two - one half sits in Syria; the other half exemplifies Iraq. Open fields are strewn with trash, streets are pock-marked, houses only half-constructed and there’s no evidence of a drainage system.
The city council wants the central government in Baghdad to fund a “beautification program” that includes garbage cleanup and planting trees. Officials here are proud their city is the first glimpse of Iraq for foreigners entering the country.
Ironically, a cleanup now would only end up offering a better last view to transient Iraqis who pass through Rabbiyah, although the last thing on their mind is the greenery on the main thoroughfare.
Droves of frantic people leave the troubled nation through this border point every day. The only other official point of entry in the region is farther north in Kurdish territory.
Iraq, a nation of about 27 million, is losing citizens who are escaping the violence and climate of fear. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that at least 700,000 Iraqis have crossed over into Syria and an equal number have fled to Jordan. Many crossed through this chaotic entry point.
Others, like Evan Mallalah Khalid of Mosul, among the millions of Iraqis who are unemployed, walk across the border in hopes of earning money.
On this day, the lines are long at passport control and customs. A desperate family from Baghdad traipses back through thick mud and pools of water after being turned back by Syrian border forces.
Ziad Abdul Razak, a Kurdish doctor from Baghdad, is trying to join his wife and children, whom he sent to Syria months ago. He is among thousands of professionals who have given up their careers and are trying to make another life for themselves away from bombs, bullets and the constant threat of abduction.
Razak says he will travel to the Syrian capital Damascus to find his family. Not that he wants to surrender Iraq for good. He wants to return to Erbil, under Kurdish control, and resettle there.
But it’s hard to plan anything in Iraq these days. Razak’s future will be where destiny takes him, he says. “I just want a better life for my family,” he says.
Capt. Gregory Lee, of Apache Troop, 3-4 Cavalry Regiment, says the entry point used to be far more open and disorderly. He says U.S. Border Training Teams have been working with the Iraqi Border Police to help control the entry point.
The Iraqis now have 20 designated lanes for commercial trucks, divided by the kind of goods they are carrying — wood, produce, fuel. Special vehicles with X-ray machines scan the contents of the trucks before they are approved entry.
Lee says 14,000 gallons of smuggled fuel was confiscated here recently. “That’s how bad the fuel situation is in Iraq,” he says.
Last month, Iraq temporarily closed its official border points with Syria and Iran to stave off spiraling sectarian conflict.
The United States accuses Iran and Syria of allowing the flow of foreign fighters and weapons into Iraq. The two nations deny the charge.
Farther south, Georgia Army National Guard soldiers of Company H, 121st Infantry (ABN)(LRS) routinely send teams out to the wide open borders, separated only by sand berms, to catch people who bypass the official entry point.
The Georgians have interdicted illegal crossers carrying fuel, cigarettes and other items that are potentially sold in exchange for weaponry.
Today at the Rabbiyah entry point, there is a “Tourism Trail” bus sitting in the makeshift parking lot. One day, perhaps, that bus will go unnoticed among others waiting to enter Iraq.
But on this March morning, when the threat of death remains omnipresent in Iraq, the tourist bus, like the efforts to cleanup this gateway, represents but a dream. One that could take a long time to realize.
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When the start of R&R brings the end closer
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Every wife with a deployed husband knows what R&R means — having your husband home for two blissful weeks.
But there’s much preparation before he gets here. You tell everyone he’s coming home, you work out like a fiend, you buy new clothes, you clean every crevice of your house, you make plans for what you’ll do while he’s here, and when the long-awaited day finally comes, you show up at the airport hours before his flight arrives.
I was in the arrivals area pacing and bothering the volunteers at the USO booth until they informed me my husband’s flight had landed. I was so excited that the moment he walked in I threw myself into his arms and unexpectedly burst into tears from the sheer joy of seeing him again. Even after months away, it was as if he’d never left.
We did all our favorite things, talked into the wee hours of the night and savored every moment together.
Two weeks becomes mere days, and then stark reality hits and you’re packing up his things and taking him to the terminal to report for duty again.
Fortunately, the airport allows wives to go to the gate with their soldiers. I guess they know we need every precious moment we can squeeze out of their time here. As the hours pass and boarding time nears, the tears you were able to stifle earlier start trickling until you’ve run through all the Kleenex and your husband can’t hold back his either.
He promises he’s coming back and tells you how much he loves you. You send the man you love back to war knowing it’s one of the hardest things you’ll ever have to do. Then, the wait for him to come home starts all over again.
How did you spend your R&R? Was your husband leaving after R&R harder than him shipping out initially?
Permalink | Comments (8) | Categories: Andie Heffernan
How do we handle dissent against the Iraq war?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Though I never personally experienced it on my return from Vietnam, I recall the great amount of disdain, ridicule and animosity heaped upon our veterans who served in Vietnam.
Not so today. For the most part, our service men and women who served or are serving in Iraq receive the honor and respect their sacrifice deserves.
Though opinions and support of the war may differ greatly among the American people, I believe they overwhelmingly support the soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines fighting it. For that, I am most grateful.
There are some however who by their loaded questions and actions seem to belie this sentiment.
Do we recognize them? Do we give them credence? Do we give dissent a voice?
Permalink | Comments (72) | Categories: Kenneth Hutnick
Marking time in Iraq …
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Ninevah province, Iraq — The concept of time is altered out here in the northern Iraqi desert, where the days of war are marked not by calendars but by the sun and moon. And when the next mission begins.
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| Louie Favorite/AJC |
| Staff Sgt. Brett Paul of 2nd platoon of Company H, 121st Infantry (ABN)(LRS) detains an Iraqi briefly after weapons were in his family’s home. He was released because he had the proper permit for the weapons |
• More photos from Company H patrol
The birth of Tuesday, March 20, 2007, is heralded by three distinct sounds:
Staff Sgt. Damon Russell yells, “It’s 06:00. Time to wake up, ladies!” and soon afterward there is the revving of engines as drivers warm up their Humvees. And then, a lone soldier’s song: “It’s a Beautiful Morning …”
The dew has barely dried off weeds sprouting on sand-swept dunes when 2nd Platoon, Company H, 121st Infantry (ABN) (LRS) rolls out of the gates of this Iraqi border outpost, where they have been camping out.
It is a day like countless others for these Georgia men who belong to a long-range surveillance company based at Fort Gillem in suburban Atlanta. In daylight, they gather information on suspicious people. At night, they hide near ramparts separating Iraq from Syria, trying to catch illegal border crossers and their smuggled goods and weaponry.
The Humvees traverse rugged terrain through the Sinjar Mountains to surprise the residents of Barrah, a densely populated village in the valley. On the way, Spc. John Giunta, a student at North Georgia College and State University, notes a giant crater created by a bomb that disabled an armored vehicle a while back.
That’s another way American soldiers mark time in Iraq. When was the last bomb? The last firefight?
The Sinjar Valley is inhabited in part by Yezidis, an obscure community who follow a little-known religion. They are not Muslims and have few allegiances to sectarian factions in Iraq. But poverty can propel anyone into wrongful acts. That makes few in Iraq free from suspicion.
In Barrah, Staff Sgt. Jon Hughes of Gainesville talks to the mayor while his men search the house and surrounding compound. The soldiers empty out cabinets and toss weapons and ammunition onto an open verandah.
“It’s another day in the office,” says Spc. Andrew Prater, 2nd Platoon’s young medic from Newnan, repeating a line often heard from soldiers.
It’s another day that takes Prater and his comrades closer to home. That is a soldier’s mental calendar.
Not that the significance of every day is lost amid war. Sunday was 1st Sgt. John Gunning’s birthday. Saturday was St. Patrick’s Day — the soldiers chowed down on green corn bread and cake at the dining hall back at Forward Operating Base Sykes in Tal Afar.
They never forget a child’s birthday. Or a wedding anniversary. But ask a soldier what day of the week it is and the answer might require some calculating.
On this Tuesday in March, while Hughes is inside speaking with the mayor, Staff Sgt. Brett Paul of Columbus takes three soldiers with him to a small shed at one end of the property.
Sgt. Ryan Stephens, another student at North Georgia College and State Univerity, opens up a wooden box. Inside are 5,000 rounds of 7.62 ammo that can be fired with an AK-47 automatic assault rifle. Iraqis are allowed only one AK-47 per household and only one magazine, or about 30 rounds of ammunition.
Hughes gets on his radio and calls Capt. Kenneth Hutnick at the Company H headquarters at Sykes. “Do you want us to confiscate the rounds?” he asks.
The answer is yes. The soldiers pack the ammo into the trunk of a Humvee, and soon they are racing through the desert again, in full body armor, machine guns pointed outward from the gunner’s turrets.
Second Platoon has to get back to the border fort. By 7 this evening, they are due to head back out on reconnaissance.
In the Iraqi fort’s courtyard, Sgt. Billy Massingale gathers his usual group for a round of Yahtzee. Prater knifes open his second MRE (Meals Ready to Eat) of the day. Others use the precious down time for a nap.
Theirs is a world far removed from the streets of Washington, where anti-war marchers voiced their sentiments this weekend, and from the streets of Baghdad, where bloody attacks marked the start of the war’s fifth year. Those are the images that America saw this Tuesday, March 20.
But Company H soldiers took no notice of the date. The war’s anniversary is a milestone unobserved on this edge of Iraq.
As the sun sets, 2nd Platoon soldiers are back outside, gearing up. All they know right now is that it’s time for another mission.
Permalink | Comments (12) | Categories: Reports from Iraq
My kingdom for a port-a-john
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Ninevah province, Iraq - I am the first woman ever to step foot onto an Iraqi border fort that Georgia soldiers are temporarily using.
I know this just by the expression on Capt. Staff Waleed Mohammed Ibrahim’s face when I walk in with 1st. Lt. Brooks Askew of Atlanta.
Ibrahim quickly confirms my suspicion.
He adds that many of his men, who hail from nearby villages and small towns, have probably never seen a woman wearing pants.
Louie Favorite
Two soldiers from Company H created a makeshift outhouse for the woman on the mission.
I fear that Ibrahim will refuse to be interviewed by a journalist of the “second sex.” I have forgotten on this day to bring along hijab, a head scarf that I wear when I am in conservative Muslim company.
I am relieved when Ibrahim not only agrees to talk but insists that I dine with him. But that is only where my battle begins.
At the border fort, I am surrounded by a platoon of soldiers from Company H, 121st Infantry (ABN)(LRS) and curious Iraqi men who have never seen a woman here, let alone have one live among them.
You could, perhaps, call it one big camping trip out here.
But it’s not as fun as it sounds.
There is no water. No bathrooms.
Think about it. There are no trees in sight. No cover anywhere. And then I am with a bunch of infantrymen who specialize in long range surveillance techniques.
Where am I to find bathroom privacy here?
Cpl. Patrick Heffernan realizes my predicament.
He and Spc. Jonathan McLaughlin set up posts with a blue tarp over it as a makeshift outhouse. I am thankful for the privacy.
Two nights later, a violent storm rolls over the fort. I am burrowed deep in my sleeping bag, thankful for the roof over my head. But all the while I am fraught with worry about the fluttering blue tarp down the hill from the gate. I am thinking the whipping winds will surely bring it down faster than it went up.
In the morning, I walk with great trepidation to the gate. And my greatest fears are confirmed. The tarp is flatter than the surrounding desert terrain.
I start walking to find a safe space. I know there are soldiers in the guard tower with powerful optical devices.
But when you are in the war zone, when your first concern is to stay alive, some things just don’t matter anymore.
And so I’m going back to the border, with another Company H platoon. I am waiting to see which chivalrous soldier will come to my rescue this time.
Permalink | Comments (22) | Categories: Moni Basu
Unfortunately, a display of patriotism can make you a target
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
As with every military wife, I have the mandatory “Support the Troops” magnet on my car.
Of course, I always make note of other cars with them. I wonder what loved one they have overseas and feel a kinship with them.
Unfortunately though, those little magnets can instigate an unforeseen rage in others that is startling.
I recently learned of an incident where one of our soldier’s girlfriends was stopped and a stranger banged on her car window. He proceeded to yell at her while calling her soldier a “baby killer” in a tirade that made her fear for her safety.
While we support our soldiers, we always have to be wary of those who don’t agree with the war and those who prey on the fact that we’re home alone.
I’m not saying you can’t have a car magnet, but I do suggest being careful of having too many of them especially the ones that say “Half My Heart is in Iraq”.
It’s unfortunate that we have to use such caution when we are so proud of our soldiers, but those magnets regrettably advertise that you’re home alone.
Do you frequently tell people your spouse is deployed? Do you worry about your safety if others know he’s gone?
Permalink | Comments (45) | Categories: Andie Heffernan
Hoping for different results than in Vietnam
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A recent AJC article on the men of Company H going on border patrol brought back memories of Vietnam.
Being in the Air Force we were spared those dangerous treks through the jungle on search and destroy missions. Our mission was to fly three or four times a week over Cambodia and Laos along the border looking for trucks bringing supplies from the North.
Now, having a son in Iraq, there is a tendency to want to compare the two combat actions.
Though the environment in Iraq is different and the equipment and communications vastly superior, the mission is still basically the same: route out and destroy the bad guys.
Hopefully, looking ahead to looking back, we won’t be comparing the same results.
Do any you ‘Nam parent’s feel that way?
Permalink | | Categories: Kenneth Hutnick
Gifts for the children of Ayn ash Shababit
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Ayn ash Shababit, Iraq — When the Humvees roll into the village, Anwar is one of the first to greet the soldiers from Georgia. Americans mean one thing to him: presents.
Troops passing out beanie babies and candy to throngs of Iraqi children is a cliched image of this war. But the public relations game is lost on Anwar. He just wants a new toy.
Louie Favorite
Cpl. Patrick Heffernan of Atlanta-based Company H dotes on the children of Ayn ash Shababit, Iraq. |
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Read Andie Heffernan’s blogs from the homefront
And today, there’s something special for the 13-year-old boy.
The soldiers of Atlanta-based Company H, 121st Infantry (ABN) (LRS) have adopted the people of this village, which sits hidden off the main road stretching from the city of Tal Afar, near the unit’s base, to the Syrian border.
A conglomeration of mud and brick huts connected by dirt paths and the odor of raw sewage, Shababit is home to about 100 families. They have been without electricity for 21 days. When the villagers do have power, it’s only for an hour or two a day.
The people here are desperately poor; many of the men are day laborers who will do anything to put food in their bellies. The children wear tattered hand-me-downs; dust cakes their faces.
Orphans of war
Abdul Hamid, an electrical engineer, says most of the children are orphans living with relatives. They lost their mothers and fathers to the bombs and bullets that perforated nearby Tal Afar, one of Iraq’s bloodiest cities before American forces quelled the insurgency in 2005.
Anwar, luckily, is not an orphan. He lives with his parents and four brothers and three sisters.
“IP, IP,” he says proudly, pointing to his older brother Hassan, who works for the Iraqi police.
In his dirty maroon sweat suit and girl’s sneakers, Anwar is anxious as the soldiers unload brown cardboard boxes from the trunks. He cannot wait to see the presents.
Maj. Thomas Burket’s wife, Judy, Cpl. Patrick Heffernan’s wife, Andie, and 1st Lt. Brooks Askew’s mother, Judy, collected the items in Atlanta and sent them to the unit at Forward Operating Base Sykes for distribution to the children. Heffernan, 30, a graphics designer from Atlanta, wants to have children of his own: two boys and one girl.
He says he is proud that his wife is so involved with the children of Shababit. Andie’s family fled Vietnam as refugees. So she gets it, he says.
“She does this stuff without me.”
Anwar hovers around the men. His heavily stained teeth look like those of an old man who has chewed for a lifetime. But Anwar probably has never felt the tingling sensation of toothpaste in his mouth.
Lined up for gifts
In the heat of the village, the soldiers order the children to form two lines behind a plastic outdoor table. When a language barrier causes confusion, the local schoolteacher helps line them up.
Anwar stakes out his place but cannot stand still. The youngster can hardly bear the excitement.
In the past, presents from Company H have included school supplies, clothes and candy. This time, the girls and boys will receive different gifts:
For the girls, stuffed animals.
For the boys, soccer balls.
Anwar is antsy. He must wait until the balls are inflated with hand pumps. Each takes a few minutes.
“This is why I joined the Army,” jokes Cpl. Ryan Hern, a mortgage broker from Roswell, as he picks up a pump.
Patience is not a child’s virtue. Anwar shuttles about the soldiers, begging, pleading. Heffernan tells him to wait his turn.
The mob scene is straight out of an out-of-control rock concert.
A stampede could occur at any moment.
When Heffernan hands out the first shiny black-and-white ball, Anwar leaves his place in line and runs to the front. Sgt. Billy Massingale, a former restaurant owner from Fort Oglethorpe, scolds him and sends him back to his place.
“America no good,” Anwar says.
“You’re going to the back of the line,” Massingale retorts.
“OK, OK, America good,” Anwar concedes.
Life not always fair
In Iraq, one learns to take sides out of expedience.
The children are on top of each other. The thrill of the moment lights up their faces. Some are so striking with flawless complexions, blue eyes and blond hair that they could be making television ads in America.
“I’d love to show these kids what life could be like,” says Spc. Sheppard Bowen, who works on his family’s ornamental landscaping farm near Cartersville.
The children of Shababit, however, could probably never even imagine Georgia. In this rustic hamlet, life has changed little over the years.
The young Iraqis attend schools that are short on pencils and paper. They don’t have Disney-themed bedrooms and toy bins filled to the brim. They don’t take dance lessons or go to the movies on weekends.
Pandemonium erupts as every boy fears the supply will run out before he gets his ball.
After 45 minutes, Anwar finally makes it to the table. Alas, the box is empty.
He picks up a beanie baby meant for one of the girls.
“All right, it’s either that or a football,” Massingale tells him. “Which one do you want?”
It’s a hard choice for Anwar. He is unsure the soldiers will bring out more soccer balls. If he doesn’t take the stuffed animal, will he end up with nothing?
Life here is always about taking a chance.
Anwar slams down the beanie baby and waits, his hands grasping the edges of the plastic table.
He is relieved when Hern arrives with another box.
At last, Anwar gets his arms around a soccer ball. It’s just a simple black and white ball, one of 250 sent to Company H soldiers, the kind you can pick up for a few bucks at Target or Wal-Mart.
But now, this is Anwar’s ball. It’s his pot of gold.
The sound of bouncing balls echoes through Shababit.
Anwar shows off his dribbling technique.
“I am sportsman,” he says in his broken English.
Then he runs home to put his treasure away.
When the soldiers leave later in the afternoon, Anwar is already at the entrance to his dreary village.
He is patiently waiting to wave goodbye.
Permalink | Comments (5) | Categories: Reports from Iraq
Weedy wonders
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Tal Afar, Iraq — I have weeds growing around my CHU (containerized housing unit). If I were back home in Atlanta, I’d be in my garden fighting these very same weeds, yanking them out with bare hands or spraying them with horrible chemicals.
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| Louie Favorite/AJC |
| Various unidentified weeds spring up with recent rains at FOB Sykes near Tal Afar, Iraq, the current home of Atlanta-based Company H, 121st Infantry (ABN)(LRS). |
But here, they are not a nuisance. In fact, they are the only green I see amid sand and gravel.
The patches of crab grass are a good substitute for lawn.
Some of the weeds have started blooming — delicate yellow flowers. I picked a few today, put them in a Styrofoam cup with water and brought them inside.
I thought of a soldier in the 48th Infantry Brigade I met last year at Camp Liberty in Baghdad. He was a landscaper back home and tried to grow a patch of grass behind his trailer. It was an act that defied all odds and eventually his experiment gave in to the elements.
Baghdad is dotted with date palms. I plucked dates and ate them once and even though they were covered in dust, again, it was the simple act that was so exhilarating. In the middle of war, it’s rare to be able to eat fruit freshly picked from a tree.
Not that I am complaining about living arrangements here at Forward Operating Base Sykes. It’s one of the most comfortable military camps in all of Iraq. And, apparently, a well-kept secret.
When I told soldiers in Baghdad that I was going to embed with Company H, 121st Infantry (ABN)(LRS) up at Sykes, almost all had the same reaction. “Where?” they asked. “Never heard of it.”
From the air, Sykes looks much the same as other bases. But the CHUs are comfortable — each has its own heating and air unit. I even have use of a flushable toilet just two minutes away. How’s that for luxury?
Just down the road are the dining hall, post office, PX and recreational facility, which has a movie theater with stadium seating. (I haven’t had time to check out a flick yet and even if I did, I probably wouldn’t admit to it in public lest my editors think I am not working hard enough.)
The 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, which fought tough battles in Tal Afar in 2005, built most of the amenities in this camp. The Georgia Army National Guard soldiers aknowledge they are lucky to be reaping the benefits.
It’s tough to be away from home for an entire year, especially when you are fighting a war. Soldiers I have met here have all told me the same thing: that they will never again take for granted the lives they left behind in America. Or complain about insignificant things.
Here, in the chaos of Iraq, it’s best just to appreciate what one has and not dwell on all that one is missing.
So, I greet every morning thankful that I am still healthy — and for the yellow flowers struggling to stay alive in front of my doorstep.
Infantryman out of his element
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Tal Afar, Iraq — Sometimes, one little number can change a soldier’s entire life.
Take Spc. Ryan Thomas, who as a teenager joined the Georgia Army National Guard intending to specialize as a military policeman. The Army’s designation for that job is 95 Bravo.
But when he signed on the dotted line at a recruiter’s office in Columbus, somehow 95 Bravo became 96 Bravo, the code for an intelligence analyst. It’s not clear who made the mistake.
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| Louie Favorite/AJC |
| Spc. Ryan Thomas, 19, is an intelligence analyst at Forward Operating Base Sykes near Tal Afar, Iraq. |
Regardless, it made Thomas a rare breed. He’s an infantryman who is willing to sit behind a desk and study intelligence reports all day, but also a military intelligence analyst who’d rather be roughing it on foot or jumping out of planes.
So it was that Thomas, 19, went from working as a dairy manager stocking shelves at Piggly Wiggly to taking stock of classified material for the U.S. Army.
Talk about turning butter into guns.
When Fort Gillem-based Company H, 121st Infantry (ABN) (LRS) deployed to Iraq, they needed an intelligence analyst. Thomas now sits at a computer in the Company H headquarters at Forward Operating Base Sykes near Tal Afar and is the liaison between the Georgia Army National Guard’s long-range surveillance unit and the Army’s intelligence support element here.
Capt. Kenneth Hutnick, commander of Company H, and Maj. Thomas Burket, who heads up the task force under which Company H falls, rely on Thomas to keep track of both American and enemy action in the area. He records and disseminates information, like which routes are safe for soldiers to take.
Remember Radar O’Reilly from “MAS*H”? If anyone resembles that character here, it’s Thomas.
On a recent day, Company H has two important visitors —- colonels who sit higher up on the unit’s chain of command. Burket wants to make sure his guests can return safely to their home bases to the south.
For this highly sensitive task, Thomas uses sophisticated short-range surveillance techniques. He jumps out of his chair, runs out of the room and into the dirt parking lot outside, where he has a clear view of the Sykes airstrip.
“Bird is on the tarmac,” he shouts, signaling that the colonels’ C-130 transport plane has arrived.
The conversation returns to normal in the office. Thomas returns to his station in front of a dusty Dell laptop.
An infantry soldier rarely likes to engage in office drudgery. Thomas says he has been out on only two of the unit’s surveillance missions to the Syrian border, and he would like to see more action.
He is excited about donning full combat gear later today to roll out on a special one-day mission with one of the platoons.
Burket interrupts. He orders Thomas to check on the birds.
Thomas, tall and gangly, adjusts his black-framed glasses, skips outside and returns within seconds.
“Rotaries are spinning, sir,” he says.
In his other life in Columbus, Thomas spends much of his time in church activities. He is devout in his Pentecostal faith and wants one day to be a licensed preacher.
That, too, makes him somewhat of an anomaly in an infantry unit full of foul-mouthed, hard-living soldiers.
“I don’t curse. I don’t drink,” he says, holding up his can of Coca-Cola. He drinks up to five of them a day and says he could make some fine advertising if the soft drink giant would have him.
“I don’t care if they are hot or cold,” he says, bagging one in his pocket for the ride out this afternoon.
One time when he was “out there with the guys,” he came face to face with illegal border crossers from Syria. Get down, he told them. But they couldn’t understand English. He repeated the order. But they still didn’t oblige. Thomas’s adrenaline was pumping. He was frustrated and nervous. And in that frantic moment, he let the “f” word slip.
That’s what his teammates say. They tease the clean-cut boy from Columbus who, by accident, came to their company. “Honestly, I’m still denying it.”
The roar of the C-130 outside drowns the conversation in the Company H office. This time, Thomas doesn’t need to run out to do his job. “Bird’s in the air, sir,” he says.
With that final piece of intel, Thomas is on his way to put on battle dress for his day out of the office.
When he returns to Georgia, he wants the Army to switch his designation to 11 Bravo, the code for an infantryman.
This time, he wants there to be no mistake.
Permalink | Comments (4) | Categories: Reports from Iraq
Gumby goes to war
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Spartan warriors were strongly outnumbered when they faced a 10,000-strong Persian army in 480 BC. But the 300 Spartans refused to surrender. Their motto then was Molon Labe. In Greek, that roughly translates into “If you want them, you have to come get them.” The Spartans fought bravely for four days before all were killed on the battlefield.
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| Louie Favorite/AJC |
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Sgt. First Class Shane McCray (top) brought a Gumby to Iraq for luck. The figure was included in his platoon’s patch, as worn by Spc. Joshua Perryman of Lithonia. |
That warrior spirit lives in 2007 on the unofficial left arm patches worn by the soldiers of 3rd platoon, Company H, 121st Infantry (ABN)(LRS). Except the official mascot isn’t a Spartan fighter but Gumby (this is not a typo).
Here’s the scoop on Gumby.
Sgt. First Class Shane McCray, the platoon sergeant, bought a green rubber Gumby at a dollar store in Columbus just before he entered grueling Ranger school at Fort Benning in 1987. He bought it for good luck and has carried it with him since. Gumby now sits mounted on the barrel of his M-4 rifle.
So last summer at Fort Hood, when the platoon designed its own patch, Gumby made it as the official insignia.
U.S. soldiers are only allowed to wear officially sanctioned unit patches — Company H wears the wild boar insignia of the Georgia Army National Guard’s 78th Troop Command, under which they fall — so the Gumby patches are donned when 3rd platoon is out here along the Syrian border where no one is supposed to see them on their surveillance missions.
But the 36 soldiers in the platoon are proud of their special patch.
“There’s a history behind it,” says McCray. It’s quite a history, too. McCray’s Gumby is older than several of his soldiers.
That awkward, awful moment of saying goodbye
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Driving home after dropping my son Ken off at the MARTA station after his two-week leave, I had a deja-vu experience of returning to Vietnam after one of my leaves.
I didn’t have a new baby - as Ken does — and Ken was 7 at the time, but I recall that the anxiety and apprehension of returning was more intense than it had been during my initial departure for Vietnam.
The first time, I went with my unit. The camaraderie of going as a unit or crew makes it a little easier. But when returning from leave, you’re generally alone.
I wondered if Ken was experiencing the same emotions as I had felt.
His leaving also gave me a sense of what my family must have felt, seeing their father and husband going to war in some far-off corner of the world, perhaps, God forbid, not to return.
Does your knowledge as a war vet make it harder to send a son or daughter off?
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Kenneth Hutnick
Should you tell all the homefront news?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I imagine at least once during any deployment a wife is faced with the decision about whether to give her husband bad news.
On one hand, you want his mind completely focused on his work — difficulties at home can distract soldiers and put their lives at further risk. On the other hand, you don’t want to create a trust issue between the two of you when he eventually learns of the news.
Because my husband and I only had a few weeks notice before he deployed, this issue never came up for discussion before he left.
It wasn’t until another military wife experiencing serious health issues asked for guidance on this topic that I even gave it a thought.
Knowing my husband, my guess was he would want to know all news — good or bad. A phone conversation confirmed this and it was quite a relief for me, as I have difficulty keeping anything from him.
I recently gave him news of a death in the family and as upsetting as it was for him, he was comforted by the fact he was still involved in life at home. Knowledge is powerful even when you’re thousands of miles away.
Have you agreed to tell your spouse everything while he is gone? Has it worked out well?
Permalink | Comments (15) | Categories: Andie Heffernan
War through the front door
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Baghdad, Iraq - The call crackles on the radio just before 1 p.m.
Casualties coming in by road.
Several children.
Mortar attack.
“Here we go,” says Staff Sgt. Tristan Hartfield, swinging his nurses into action. The soldier from Savannah had predicted things would get busy around lunchtime; he knows the rhythms of bloodshed in Baghdad.
Minutes later, the silence along the corridors of Ibn Sina Hospital is shattered by screams. The wounded: six children, two women, two men.
Fayad is only 3. His fragile little body is speckled with shrapnel; his head lacerated by shards of metal.
The young Iraqis are quickly strapped to gurneys and hooked up to mobile medical monitors that read vital signs. Blood pressure. Pulse. Heart rate. The emergency room fills with twinkling orange lights and the beeping sounds of monitors.
This is Baghdad’s busiest hospital, built by Saddam Hussein. The staff sees horrific injuries two or three times a day — the kind you’d see at Grady Memorial Hospital maybe once in three months.
One child has a fragment in his spleen. Several have abdominal and head injuries. Mohammed, 14, has shrapnel lodged deep in his left arm.
Hartfield, 31, has seen the unthinkable during his six months in Iraq with the 28th Combat Support Hospital, housed at Ibn Sina. Bodies burned beyond recognition, limbs blown off, eyes blasted from sockets. Blood. And more blood.
Near the front desk, remnants of a soldier’s body armor sit on the floor. Earlier in the morning, he was treated here for third-degree burns on 80 percent of his body.
That’s the effect of a remotely detonated IED, an improvised explosive device, a term for makeshift bombs so common in the news that it no longer registers with many Americans. And shrapnel? It can slice open the body and make meat of a human being.
Hartfield, in charge of the enlisted emergency room staff, had to put a 4-month-old infant into the morgue once. He works at lightning speed to make sure he won’t have to do that again today.
GSW spells relief
1:30.
The staff is still busy tending to the Iraqi children. At the front desk, Hartfield puts down the phone.
“We got two more coming off a bird,” he yells.
“What is coming off the bird?” asks Maj. Chris Hoyt, a general surgeon.
“Sir, I don’t know yet.”
Minutes later, Hartfield finds out. “We got an interpreter with GSW [gunshot wound]. U.S. male with GSW.” They’re coming by helicopter.
GSW spells relief to Hartfield. “That’s nothing,” he says.
Not like the soldier who came in this morning. He is fighting for his life in another ward. The doctors give him a 50 percent chance to survive if he does not develop any complications. What usually kills burn victims is infection.
The sounds of the Black Hawks get louder and louder. Hartfield’s staffers run out with gurneys to the landing pad and wheel in Pfc. Jared Isbell, 21, of the 10th Mountain Division and an interpreter from Somalia, Ahmed, 20. (His full name is being withheld for security reasons.)
Doctors determine that Isbell’s is a flesh wound that won’t require surgery. But fresh white bandages on Ahmed’s right leg turn crimson within seconds. He begs Hartfield for water.
“I can’t give you water in case you need surgery,” Hartfield says.
He disappears, then returns with a few wet cloths and places them on Ahmed’s parched lips.
“I’m here for you, man.”
War is an equal opportunity destroyer. As doctors and nurses, the staff in this hospital consider themselves equal opportunity healers. Every patient receives the same quality of care.
Upstairs in the intensive care unit, an insurgent with an amputated right leg lies shackled to a gurney, gasping for life with the help of a ventilator. The man tried to attack American soldiers in a Bradley Fighting Vehicle.
He is treated like any soldier, though every nurse and every doctor here wonders if they are saving a man who will one day return to the streets to kill their brothers in arms.
‘He just wants to go home’
Hartfield runs among the three trauma rooms, now brimming with patients.
He wags a white beanie baby, a winged dragon, in front of the howling 3-year-old, Fayad.
“He just wants to go home. Right, baby?” Hartfield says.
“I don’t blame him,” says pediatrician and anesthesiologist Col. Jim McLane. “So do I.”
Hartfield sits down to wash Fayad’s head wounds with saline. He thinks of his own children, Keaton, 7, and Kaydence, 15 months, and how he will never get this time back to spend with them.
He and his wife, Trelease, have made a life for themselves in Fayetteville, N.C., home of Fort Bragg. Hartfield is known as the joker in the trauma center — the one who keeps everyone laughing through the most trying times. But his smile fades as he says he missed his daughter’s first birthday.
Fayad is about the same size as Kaydence, though he is almost two years older.
“These guys are a lot smaller than their age,” he says, gently rubbing Fayad’s head. For the first time, the child stops crying.
Outside, in the hallway, Staff Sgt. Joshua Campbell paces back and forth. He wants to know how Fayad and the other kids are doing.
Two hours ago, his patrol had just finished clearing a block in al Dora, a neighborhood racked by sectarian violence in southern Baghdad. The children were standing along the road waving to the soldiers.
That’s the first mortar fell and scared them away. But they didn’t run fast enough to escape a second blast.
Campbell, 24, of the Kansas-based 13th Infantry Regiment, has brought soldiers into the combat hospital before. But never any children.
Campbell’s own son, Blake, turned 2 the previous day. It was the father in him that rushed Fayad to a Humvee.
“I know this kid’s a fighter, he says. “He punched me in the mouth when I was carrying him.”
Hartfield rushes past Campbell with Fayad on the gurney. The nurses wheel him to the elevator and to the second-floor intensive care unit. At the end of a hall in the ICU, they lower Fayad into a crib.
While the toll of dead and wounded soldiers is closely tracked — more than 3,100 U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq; 23,000 have been wounded — everyone debates how many Iraqis have suffered. The United Nations estimates that as many as 35,000 Iraqis died in 2006 alone.
But Hartfield doesn’t care much for statistics. They are just numbers until you see what a combat wound looks like. Until you smell burning flesh, body fluids, drying blood and explosives. Those are the smells of Ibn Sina.
A Purple Heart, just in case
It’s almost 3:30.
The badly burned soldier awaits a chopper ride to Balad, an air base north of Baghdad. From there he will be transported to the burn unit at Brooke Army Medical Center in Texas.
He is wrapped in foil to keep him warm on the ride. Without skin, his body cannot hold heat.
Before he is taken out, the soldier is awarded his Purple Heart. Just in case.
The goal of the 28th Combat Support Hospital is to treat people with fresh trauma and stabilize them until they can be transported to more permanent facilities. The hospitals here have life-support gear so advanced that some of it is not yet available in the United States.
At one time, the hallways of Ibn Sina displayed photos of Saddam Hussein. The Iraqi dictator built this hospital for use by his family and the Baath Party elite. It’s within the heavily fortified “Green Zone” and now serves as the emergency hospital for the U.S. military.
Iraq has several such hospitals, all of which are overseen by the 3rd Medical Command based at Fort Gillem in Forest Park, outside Atlanta.
The mantra here is simple: golden hour, platinum 15.
Medics on the battlefield have 15 minutes to stop the bleeding. The paramedics have an hour to get patients to the hospital. At a regular hospital, Iraq’s wounded might not survive, but if they make it to Ibn Sina, they have a good chance.
In Vietnam, it sometimes took 40 days to return a wounded soldier home. Now critical patients are back on U.S. soil within 72 hours.
Not a day goes by when the 28th Combat Support Hospital doesn’t see its trauma rooms fill up. Hartfield has seen as many as 38 patients in 12 hours.
“It’s sobering,” says Col. Harry Snowdy, 58, an orthopedic surgeon from Augusta.
Snowdy was in the Army Reserve for 26 years and had his own practice in Augusta. He gave it all up to work at Ibn Sina. He wants to be able to say: “I did my part.”
He once watched a helicopter lift off with a dead American soldier. He never stands outside anymore.
Quiet, but not for long
In the operating room, Snowdy asks his assistants for a fresh X-ray before he begins operating on Mohammed, the 14-year-old brought in with five other children. Snowdy wants to see if the metal fragment embedded in his arm has moved.
Then he washes Mohammed’s arm with a mustard-colored Betadine solution and begins to cut.
The boy has a fracture, too, but the priority is to get the shrapnel out. The staff can’t afford to tie up the operating room for long. Someone else could come through the doors to the trauma room even as Snowdy operates.
The surgeon digs deeper into Mohammed’s arm.
“I don’t see it,” he says, ordering more X-rays.
After 10 minutes of struggle, Snowdy pulls out the blade-like shard.
He saves it to give to the boy when he wakes up.
It’s past 5 p.m. when the pace finally slows. With little Fayad in good hands in the ICU, Hartfield has returned to his post downstairs. He inspects a mobile medical monitor and goes over the shift change this evening.
He enjoys the lull in activity. He knows it won’t stay quiet long.
In six months, Hartfield is scheduled to return to America and work at Fort Bragg, where he will snip bandages and fix twisted ankles.
He will go home to Savannah — maybe sit on the beach at Tybee Island with his family and eat a lot of seafood. Oysters on the half-shell are his favorite.
At Christmas, he won’t have to look at the dozen bloodied uniforms, cut from wounded soldiers, that surrounded the tree at the combat hospital last December.
Here, Hartfield goes to sleep thinking about what the next day will bring. He can’t know yet the fate of the patients he has seen today, or what the war will deliver tomorrow.
When he gets “back there,” to America, he worries that Iraq will haunt him, that the numbness bestowed by the daily grind will wear off. That when it gets dark and quiet, memories of Ibn Sina will lurk like ghosts.
Permalink | Comments (7) | Categories: Reports from Iraq
Breaking bread
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Louie Favorite
Lunch earlier today in a village near Tal Afar included chicken with couscous (foreground) and chicken with rice. The bowls contain a tomato-potato soup that doubles as a dipping sauce.
Ayn ash Shababit, Iraq - The feast was laid out on plastic tables. Chicken and rice, couscous, potatoes in tomato broth, chunks of onion and flatbread.
The soldiers of Company H, 121st Infantry (ABN)(LRS) look forward to these Iraqi meals whenever they visit this village, about 15 miles from Forward Operating Base Sykes.
The food served in the Sykes chow hall is good but variety is the spice of life.
In Iraq, as is the custom in most Eastern cultures, visitors cannot leave without sips of chai and a full stomach. It’s considered rude to refuse.
The Georgia soldiers oblige. Not that anyone would want to refuse meals here. In the past, the villagers have slaughtered a lamb for the feast.
The Georgia men are covered in the large, round pieces of flatbread. A debate erupts on which nation has the best bread.
We eat with some of the village leaders. They are all men. The village sheik was noticeably absent — he was attending his brother’s funeral.
I am the only woman at the table, the only woman seen in public. This is a conservative Shiite village and not a single woman was out of her house. I wonder who prepared the tasty meal.
It’s a glorious day, not a cloud in the sky. There’s a view of the Sinjar Mountains as the backdrop. A few bottles of red wine and for a moment, it could have been Tuscany — except the gunfire at the checkpoint down the road.
A short honeymoon and he was gone
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
My husband and I were engaged when he re-enlisted and left with Company H in June 2006. With only three weeks notice of possible deployment, we spent those harried weeks getting his affairs in order and preparing ourselves mentally.
There was no doubt we wanted to be married, but there was no time for wedding preparation and only a few of our family members would be able to attend. We set aside our original wedding plans and were married by our priest in a private ceremony.
Even though the situation was less than ideal, it was still the happiest day of my life. I’d waited my entire life for this man and if it would be a year before he returned it was worth every additional moment I had to wait. I won’t say I wasn’t sad when he left, but I understood why he needed to go and fully supported his decision.
I shed many tears during those three weeks, but when I dropped him off to catch his flight, we both knew we were doing the right thing. We make sacrifices in life for those we love and strangely enough, for those we don’t even know.
How is married life with your spouse away?
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Peace precarious even in model Iraqi city
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Louie Favorite
Najim Abdullah Jibouri, mayor of Tal Afar, credits the U.S. military for peace in his city, but worries about the future.
TAL AFAR, Iraq — From a medieval-style Ottoman Turk fortress on a hill, the mayor has a panoramic view of his city — densely packed cement houses mimicking hues of the desert. Some stand empty, abandoned by frightened residents who fled when their city was second only to Fallujah as Iraq’s most violent.
Mayor Najim Abdullah Jibouri’s office faces a shell of a building — a reminder of the days when mortars fell like rain and mothers wailed for their dead sons and daughters. The apocalyptic force of bombs and bullets, Jibouri recalls, even drove the sparrows away.
In the fall of 2005, Tal Afar was a stronghold for Syrian fighters and al-Qaida cells. Then the U.S. military crushed the insurgency here. In recent months, this city in western Nineveh province has seen relative calm, though it is not free yet of makeshift bombs and small arms fire. Still, in a speech last year, President Bush touted Tal Afar as the role model for all of Iraq.
Litmus test
The mayor knows his small city is seen as the nation’s litmus test. If long-term security and stability cannot even be achieved here, then what does it bode for Baghdad?
Dressed in a tan blazer and dress pants, Jibouri lights a cigarette and takes from his desk a single white sheet of letterhead emblazoned with a map of Iraq bearing the national colors of red, white and green. It is a letter he plans to send to the White House today.
“Mr. President,” it begins, “the words you mentioned in your address that ‘Tal Afar is today a free city that gives reason for hope for a free Iraq’ are indeed true.”
His letter goes on to thank the efforts of “brave U.S. Army soldiers,” but then it asserts, in diplomatic terms, something the mayor is more blunt about in conversation.
Tal Afar’s calm could easily revert to “rivers of blood,” he says. He pauses and stirs the sugar that has settled in his chai tea. “If coalition forces pull out,” he continues, “not just Tal Afar, but all of Iraq will go to hell.”
He attributes the modicum of success here to the U.S. Army and describes American backing as the glue that holds everything together. Once an officer in Saddam Hussein’s army, Jibouri was appointed police chief here at a time when no one wanted the job. He has little faith in the ability of the Iraqi army and police to function without corruption and sectarian influence if they are no longer kept in check by the United States.
So, with debate raging in Congress about the U.S. role in Iraq, Jibouri is making a plea to the president. Again.
His first letter to Bush was widely circulated after the president referred to it in his speech. In that letter, Jibouri called American soldiers “avenging angels.” He urged the president to not draw down troops.
“Long term success in Tal Afar, and all of Iraq, will be dependent not only on the capabilities of our security forces to establish the peace,” he writes in his second letter, “but of the reconstruction and economic incentives to maintain the peace and create prosperity among the Iraqi people.”
Heavy security
Tal Afar is patrolled by Iraqi forces as well as U.S. soldiers from nearby Forward Operating Base Sykes, where the 3-4 Cavalry Regiment from Hawaii is based. The Georgia Army National Guard’s Company H, 121st Infantry (ABN) (LRS) patrols the Syrian border, just 60 miles away, to prevent infiltration.
The people here are mainly Turkoman Iraqis, the third largest Iraqi ethnic group. They speak a Turkic language and are descended from Central Asian tribes. Their city has not been spared Iraq’s sectarian divide. The Shiites live south of the Ottoman castle, the Sunnis to the north.
Iraqi army and police, which recently took the lead in providing security, have set up checkpoints throughout the city. The ratio of security forces to the 100,000 or so residents is high.
The heavy security manifests itself in signs of normalcy. In a barren yard, a dozen boys play soccer. Nearby, a hawker has set up a roadside stall selling colorful plastic ware dulled by a thick layer of dust. Men with prayer beads in their hands gather at a chai stand.
The mayor could very well be the president’s biggest fan in Iraq. But he has not always been.
He faults America for purging Baathists from the military and civilian institutions after Saddam’s ouster in 2003. He says that policy resulted in an open invitation to al-Qaida to set up shop in Iraq.
“Suddenly all these people didn’t get paid and began to work with the terrorists,” he says. “If you do not have a salary, what do you do?”
Jibouri knows that eventually, the U.S. military will go home, though he would like a long-term commitment from Bush.
“The insurgency is just waiting for the Americans to leave,” he says.
He knows it will be tough to shore up his ravaged city — tougher if the Americans leave sooner rather than later.
Peace is precarious
About 70 percent of Tal Afar’s residents are unemployed. Jibouri fears poor, restless men could easily be swayed into barbaric acts.
Agriculture used to be the region’s economic driver. A city landmark is the enormous granary which processed wheat harvested in outlying fields. But now people are afraid to drive out to their lands or they can’t afford the fuel to do so.
Tal Afar’s biggest employer is the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior, for which more than 2,000 Iraqi police work. The second biggest is probably the U.S. government, which has plunked down millions of dollars in rebuilding projects.
“I depend on the American money,” Jibouri says.
Huge sums also have been promised to Jibouri from the central government in Baghdad. At the moment, he is waiting for a bureaucracy that moves at a snail’s pace to release an approved $37 million.
Jibouri has memories of his boyhood in a vibrant Baghdad — before Saddam, before decades of war and hardship. He grew up a Sunni who married a Shiite, and at 49, he has five children. They don’t live in the city where he is mayor, but in the Kurdish-controlled town of Dohuk, north of Tal Afar.
That alone is an indication that the peace in this city is, at best, precarious.
The mayor dreams of repairing crumbled buildings. He has visions of a verdant park along the gully that winds down the hill and through the city. He wants to see flowers blooming and women walking down the streets wearing handsome clothes.
One day, it might all happen, he says.
For now, he is glad the sparrows have returned to Tal Afar.
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A cold hard rain
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Tal Afar, Iraq — Mention of Iraq conjures up images of hot, dusty towns. A few nights ago, it felt much more like Atlanta in early March.
It started drizzling in the evening and by midnight, the skies had burst open.
The cold winter’s rain pounded down on the metal containerized housing units that dot Forward Operating base Sykes. Ever been in a house with a tin roof? This is louder.
Lightning lit up the entire base, where it is normally pretty dark. The thunder could have eclipsed falling mortars.
After the storm moved on, the skies cleared. There’s not a single cloud visible today. Just blue skies and the city of Tal Afar in the distance.
Daytime temperatures have started rising into the 70s. That presents Georgia Army National Guard soldiers with dressing dilemmas. Company H, 121st Infantry (ABN)(LRS) goes out for days at a time to keep watch on the Syrian border. They are often out all night and sleep under the moon. They have all sorts of cold-weather gear to keep them from shivering — Gore Tex jackets and sleeping bag covers, hand and foot warmers.
All night in near-freezing temperatures can be dangerously cold. But during the day, all the stuff has to come off — think layers.
Soon, they won’t be needing anything but air-conditioning. By May, the rains will dry up; the nip in the air will turn to heat that makes Atlanta summers seem pleasant.
The people of this region are hoping for more rain before summer sets in. Their crops need a good drenching. And besides, as one Iraqi American working here told me, all of Iraq could use a good cleansing.
‘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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A day of highs and lows
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Louie Favorite
Col. Keith Geiger presents a Combat Infantry Badge to Spc. Hector Arbosferrer during a ceremony at Foward Operating Base Sykes at Tal Afar, Iraq.
Tal Afar, Iraq — The second day of March brought with it a rapid swing of the pendulum for the soldiers of Hotel Company.
At a sobering afternoon service, they eulogized a buddy. Moments later, they stood in formation at a ceremony to celebrate the heroism of two dozen of their own.
A day of highs. A day of lows.
Some lamented that it had to be so.
Two ceremonies back to back — one a celebration of the human spirit; the other a sad reflection of how it can be snuffed out.
At 2 p.m., soldiers of Company H, 121st Infantry, filled the royalblue stadium seats in the auditorium here at Forward Operating Base Sykes.
In their hands, a memorial program for a medic everyone knew as “Doc.” But Spc. Christopher Boone did not fall in combat.
There were no boots and dog tags hanging from upended rifles, as is military tradition to honor the dead.
The Army says Boone, who listed his address as Augusta, died from a drug overdose on Feb. 17, and that he killed himself intentionally.
Capt. Kenneth Hutnick, commander of Company H, 121 Infantry, reflected on Boone’s death.
Somehow, he told his men, suicide seems especially tragic in the war zone.
“We each have our demons to bear,” Hutnick said. “Doc Boone was no different.”
The soldiers took in his words, then marched to a spot near a bunker designated for Company H.
Under a clear, blue sky, Col. Keith Geiger, commander of the military intelligence brigade to which Company H is attached, pinned shiny blue combat infantrymen badges above the left chest pockets of the selected men.
He, too recognized the cir cumstances of the day.
He thanked the soldiers of this Fort-Gillem-based Georgia Army National Guard company for the “magnificent” job they have done in protecting the border between Iraq and Syria. He told them they were “well-respected for their capabilities.”
But if the recent tragedy was ripping anyone inside, Geiger urged them to seek help. “We want to make sure,” he said, “the rest of you get back home.”
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Army wife has mission of own
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mikki K. Harris
Sybil Laudermilk endures husband's absence with mission of own.
If you wanted to, you could call Sybil Laudermilk a promise keeper.
When her husband got called up to go to Iraq, this is what she told him:
“If you’re gonna be on a mission, I’m gonna be on one. You’re deployed and activated, then I’m gonna be deployed and activated working just as hard as I can for you.”
No use worrying about what you can’t control, and Sybil Laudermilk knows for sure that she can’t control Congress, the troop increase, insurgents or public opinion. Yet in the messy situation that is this war, Sybil Laudermilk can keep her word. And calling herself up for her own tour of duty might make enduring her husband’s tour a little bit easier.
Her husband is Georgia Army National Guard Sgt. James Laudermilk of Flovilla, by way of Everywhere, USA, because he was a Navy brat. She never once told Jim, “Don’t go.” Maybe she cried to herself in private, but to his face she told him, “Go and serve your country.” Her daddy served 40 years in the Army National Guard and her uncle was military, so, by her telling, she’s got it in her honest. She cries when they play the “Star Spangled Banner.” And she doesn’t particularly care if some people find that hokey.
Jim has been over there now seven months with Company H, 121st Infantry. When she’s not in downtown Atlanta working as a personnel administrator at CNN, Sybil’s post is in their home in Flovilla, south of Atlanta.
She starts each week of her tour at Jackson Church of the Nazarene. She and Jim found each other later in life, and Nazarene is where they made their oath. Hardly a Sunday goes by that she doesn’t have the pastor lift up Jim’s name in prayer. Maybe it changes things, maybe it doesn’t, but it helps her stand all this a little better.
By Monday or certainly Wednesday, she’s wrapped up a cardboard box of supplies to mail. She buys for Jim. She buys for the guys in his unit. Like the other week, Jim was hankering for some barbecue sauce from Shane’s Rib Shack over in Locust Grove. Sybil got it for him and sealed it up in a ketchup bottle. Jim told her it’s made the chicken over there taste a lot better. Jim’s captain got a satellite for the unit so they could access a Webcam to keep in touch with family. But they needed extra cable to reach an Internet connection. Sybil went online and found the 4,000 feet of cable they needed and shipped it. She told Jim it was her gift. He started to protest but decided it wasn’t worth fussing with a woman with a made-up mind.
Every two weeks, Sybil lugs 15 pounds of magazines down to the post office and plunks down $20 to get it to Iraq. Sometimes she puts movies in there or clothes for Iraqi kids.
Walking up to that mail box, a feeling comes over her that’s as close to pride as she likes to get. There’s comfort in every pound.
Just like the guys go on special missions over there, Sybil has one here. Almost every day she hits the treadmill and elliptical machine. She’s down 60 pounds now and counting. Jim will be home on leave soon. When he sees her he’ll probably come as close to pride as he likes to get.
Every night before she goes to sleep, she sends him an e-mail saying good night. Because he’s eight hours ahead of her, she tells him good morning in that e-mail, too. By 4:15 a.m. her time most days, he has responded.
She doesn’t burden him with details of what broke down in the house or stuff like that, because she’s 47 and can fix it herself or get it fixed. Besides, he needs to worry about staying safe, not that the plumbing is acting up.
Sybil has a purpose over here. She can’t worry about what ultimate purpose the war will have served.
“Whether you support the war or not, whether it does any good or not, I don’t know. But I’m gonna support them while they’re there. Those are human beings.”
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Terrorized by mud
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Moni Basu
The mud takes on a life of its own, clinging to boots and anything else it can get its greedy hands on.
Imagine walking with 50 jars of Peter Pan peanut butter stuck to both your shoes. Well, that’s what it feels like in Iraq after an evening of rain turns the U.S. military bases into giant mud pits.
No amount of gravel can save us.
And so it was that I ventured out, nice and clean from the “female shower CHU” (that’s a containerized shipping unit) at the CPIC (Coordinated Press Information Center) offices in the Green Zone.
Photographer Louie Favorite and I were ready to make the long trek up to Forward Operating Base Sykes in Tal Afar. Distance wise, Tal Afar, about 60 miles west of Mosul, is not that far from Baghdad. But this is war and all embedded journalists travel by military transport.
That meant that after four days of sitting in a stuffy, smelly “media lounge” (no, there is no bar) with about 10 colleagues (in the end, they were all men I barely knew), I had to take the rhino (not the horned beast but an armored bus) back to Camp Striker.
The rain fell lightly all night. The ground was awakening like a sleeping monster.
A shuttle driven by a Bosnian man took us to BIAP (Baghdad International Airport) at 5 a.m. By then, we were sure to lose our battle with Mother Earth.
He dropped us and all our luggage off in the dark, smack in the middle of a pool full of sloshy goo that, as 2nd Lt. Shiloh Crane of Kennesaw pointed out, “not only will stick to anything it comes into contact with but cling to it.”
So much for being clean. Or walking to the terminal (a tent with a bunch of Air Force guys).
It was like trudging through quicksand carrying cement blocks on my back. By the time I finally got on the C-130, I looked like I had jumped into a vat brimming with creamy chocolate ice cream.
The soldiers have perfected their technique for removing mud from their desert combat boots. They kick jersey barriers, scrape wooden planks, wade through pools of muddy water and shuffle on gravel (all the while using language that cannot be repeated in this space).
The stuff still doesn’t come off.
At some bases like Sykes, the Army requires soldiers to carry an extra pair of boots if they want to use recreational facilities. They have to change into the clean boots before they can enter to use the computers or watch television.
Crane, a platoon leader with Company H, 121st Infantry, theorized that the mud was causing enough anger in Iraq to drive people to blow themselves up.
According to Crane, the answer to combating terrorism here was to send every Iraqi an extra pair of shoes. Until the two-shoe system is introduced, every rainfall will produce a terror cell and American soldiers will have to keep fighting.
At Sykes, the sun was dazzling at mid-day; not a single cloud in sight. I sure hope it stays that way.
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Scouting the Iraqi way
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Louie Favorite
Karrar (front) and his cousin, Mohammed, attend the three-year anniversary ceremony for the Iraqi Boy Scouts Green Zone Council-Baghdad in the US Embassy in the Green Zone.
Baghdad, Iraq — Karrar, like most young boys in Baghdad, likes to play soccer and get into mischief when he can.
But there aren’t too many times that he can in the Iraqi capitol.
Mostly, Karrar, 11, and his cousins Mohammed, 11, and Yusuf, 12, are housebound. It is too dangerous here for the three boys just to be boys.
They can’t enjoy weekend family outings to the park or the movies. Or splash in a swimming pool.
The boys have only school. And now, perhaps the Boy Scouts.
They went once to a Scout meeting and on Wednesday they were invited as VIP guests at the U.S. Embassy, which hosted the third anniversary of the Scouts’ Green Zone Council.
Karrar said he was impressed by what was said about the Scouts. He thinks he could learn a lot if he joined.
His cousins agreed.
Mohammed, whose favorite subject in school is English, said he would like to learn about other peoples and cultures through the Scouts. It will take a while before any Scout in Iraq can go camping outdoors.
Iraqi Scouting started in the 1920s, not long after the birth of the organization in the United States.
Iraqi Scouts fell out of good standing during World War II and during the latter part of Saddam Hussein’s rule. The Green Zone Council was started in 2004 in the hopes of reestablishing the organization.
The Iraqi Scouts now boast more than 150,000 members.
U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad was on hand at Wednesday’s ceremony, telling the audience of the virtues espoused by the Scouts: to be loyal, trustworthy, friendly, and, he said, “in this environment, brave.”
Inspiring, especially for children, in a country struggling to rebuild.
Rear Admiral Mark Fox asked everyone in the audience who had ever been a Scout to stand up. More than half the hall did, including several journalists.
One day, maybe Karrar and his cousins will be able to stand up with them.
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