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DEL.ICIO.USSoldier shoulders memories of fallen
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Tal Afar, Iraq — There are reasons why soldiers make certain decisions that are difficult for the outside world to understand.
Why a man in Spc. Rodney Davidson’s situation would choose to return to Iraq when he had the option of resuming a quiet life in the backwoods of Thomaston.
Or how a man can witness what Davidson did and still not let vengeance steer his battles here.
He doesn’t talk much about what happened two Julys ago, though he keeps reminders around him at all times.
Few in his current unit know what he has been through. Some are fresh out of high school, with little combat experience. They cannot imagine the horror.
• Video: Davidson talks about being back in Iraq. • Photos
On two searing summer days in 2005, Davidson stood in the gunner’s turret and watched the last of three Humvees in his convoy explode beyond recognition.
Both times, Davidson was supposed to have been the fifth man in the doomed trucks. Both times, the platoon sergeant switched him at the last minute.
He was with Alpha Company, 2nd Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment then, just starting a yearlong tour of Iraq with the Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team.
Within a week, Davidson’s 16-man tent contained eight empty beds. He lost his entire squad to two massive bombs hidden in the road.
Most days, the gruesome images flash through Davidson’s mind. He sees the faces of his eight fallen comrades; he hears their words.
Particularly painful are memories of Staff Sgt. Carl Fuller and Spc. Gus Brunson. Fuller was a military guy all the way who kept things bearable with his wicked sense of humor. Brunson shared Davidson’s love of hunting. Davidson keeps in touch by phone with Brunson’s father, Jeffry, though he cannot bear to tell the father the details of his son’s death.
The three soldiers had volunteered to go to war with the 48th Brigade. They were on loan from a different guard unit — Company H, 121st Infantry (ABN) (LRS). But Davidson returned alone to Company H, after a grueling year in Iraq. When he heard Company H had been called up, he chose to return to the war, even though the Army would not have required him to do another tour so soon. He has been here since August.
“These are my brothers,” Davidson says of his platoon mates, stationed at Forward Operating Base Sykes, near Tal Afar. “This is where I belong.”
Davidson admits it’s a hard concept to grasp. It was for his wife, his mother, his sister. He had not even been home a month last May when he announced he was leaving again.
Such is a soldier’s sense of duty to his band of brothers.
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The Company H Humvees push out of the gates at Sykes, past jersey barriers and enormous bags stuffed with sand. These are meant to protect the base and are just like those at Camp Striker in Baghdad. The roads are safer here than they were down south, but Davidson cringes when the truck hits a jarring bump. He has a nervous habit of tapping his foot while standing in the hatch.
The driver, Spc. Jesse Wilkes, puts on music for the long ride north of the Sinjar Mountains, to the Syrian border. Davidson sings along with the band Poison: “I won’t forget you …”
On his right wrist is a blue metal remembrance bracelet with Fuller’s name on it. On his left wrist are two stainless steel bracelets that Alpha Company special ordered. Each has the names of four of their own who died in July 2005.
Makeshift bombs, otherwise known as improvised explosive devices, are the No. 1 killer of U.S. soldiers in Iraq; more than 1,200 of the 3,200 American casualties were from IEDs. Usually, it’s the gunner’s job to survey the road ahead for suspicious people, vehicles or things like tires or bags or wires.
“Got a vehicle on the left,” Davidson yells, referring to a car parked off to the side. “Not sure what he’s doing.”
When his plane landed on Iraqi soil last August, Davidson wasn’t sure how he felt being back here. The blast of blistering air, the flour-like dust, the familiar smells of burning trash. His time with the 48th rushed through his mind.
“This place wasn’t good to me before,” he says.
Davidson thought, too, about all that he had missed during his first tour: His mother suffered a stroke, his grandmother died. Family members “all say they understand,” he says. “But that doesn’t make it easier. I’ve been married seven years. Three of them, I’ve been away from home,” training or deployed overseas.
It helps that Davidson’s team leader, Sgt. Ellis Lowery, a law enforcement officer from McDonough, is on his third tour of Iraq. Lowery spent a year with the 48th, first in a tent not far from Davidson’s at Camp Striker and later at Tallil Air Base, escorting supply trucks to northern destinations.
Now Lowery is with Davidson as their convoy rolls north toward an Iraqi outpost. Lowery looks over at his platoon mate and shakes his head. It takes a unique person to be in that man’s shoes, he says.
Lowery knows the details of the blasts that killed the Alpha Company Soldiers — that both were caused by 600-pound bombs, that the entire platoon received trauma counseling and that for months afterward, Davidson saw pieces of body armor, Humvee seats and tools still strewn in the nearby fields.
It helps that Lowery knows, even though it rarely comes up in conversation.
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Despite everything, Davidson recently re-enlisted. He wants to finish a career in the Georgia Army National Guard.
With Company H, he has already spent another seven months in the Iraqi desert, where it is pitch black once the sun goes down. The soldiers use headlamps as they check weapons and trucks for the long night ahead on the Syrian border.
Davidson, a piano tuner at the Yamaha plant in Thomaston, is proud to be a part of this long-range surveillance company and is determined to go through Ranger school when he returns home. He has been trying to lose weight to “get ready” for the physically punishing 61-day course. Lately, he has been eating salads for dinner and lunch though he admits that the creamy, high-calorie dressing he slathers on probably defeats his effort.
Davidson will turn 41 this June; he tells everyone that he was born on 6-6-66. Others tease him and call him “Hippie.” In his younger days, he sported long hair and rode a motorcycle. But Davidson’s age and maturity helped temper the anger that overcame him right after his squad mates were killed.
On the road to the border fort, he points out a village in which Company H soldiers confiscated bomb-making materials. He remembers wanting to “slug those guys.” He doesn’t believe in abusing human rights but says he would consider it if he knew getting the right guy would save other soldiers’ lives.
Every time he looks into a detainee’s eyes, he still wonders whether that person was connected to the booby traps on Route Aeros and Route Red Sox in southwestern Baghdad.
“I’m not God, I can’t know a man’s heart and mind,” he says.
But he wishes that soldiers were given more authority to take action. He believes there are too many restrictions on when they can shoot their guns or detain suspects, especially after the incidents at Abu Ghraib prison.
Davidson is also troubled by politicians in Washington who he says make a political football out of this war. “If we pull out now just because the Democrats or new Republicans want it — well, that bothers me. That means by buddies died in vain.”
After arriving at the Iraqi outpost, Davidson gets ready for a reconnaissance mission by moonlight.
The Army issued him new equipment for his second tour of Iraq, but Davidson climbs atop his truck and throws on the body armor he had when he was with Alpha Company.
The vest with bullet-stopping plates is stained and dusty, the helmet equally so. On the right corner at the back of the Kevlar is a nick. That was from the explosion that killed Fuller. Davidson refuses to wear any other helmet.
He settles into the gunner’s stance all too familiar to him. The Humvee moves a few feet forward and then, boom. The truck comes to a sudden halt.
Davidson almost falls onto his 240 Bravo machine gun.
For the few seconds that pass before everyone realizes the truck rolled over a sawed-off pole, Davidson holds his breath.
He survived certain death twice. He knows at any moment his luck could run out.
ABOUT THIS STORY
Reporter Moni Basu first met Spc. Rodney Davidson in the summer of 2005 when she was embedded with the 48th Brigade Combat Team. She covered the memorial services at Baghdad’s Camp Striker for eight of Davidson’s platoon mates. Six months later, she caught up with him at Tallil Air Base and accompanied him on convoy security missions on the main north-south highway in Iraq.
Davidson returned from the war in May 2006. Two months later, in July 2006, Basu visited Davidson at Fort Hood, Texas, where he was preparing to return to Iraq. She is currently embedded with Company H, 121st Infantry (ABN) (LRS) in Tal Afar and recently joined Davidson on a surveillance mission to the Syrian border.
Permalink | Comments (5) | Categories: Reports from Iraq
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By Traci Pate
April 7, 2007 10:36 PM | Link to this
God bless you Spc. Davidson! I appreciate your dedication, sacrifice and service to our country!
By Nancy Sanders Scouten
April 9, 2007 8:16 PM | Link to this
Rod, I just wanted you to know that you are in my thoughts and prayers every day. You have been adopted by my 2nd grade class. They ask about you often and I have shared your pictures and some information with them. Be on the lookout for cards, pictures, and notes from the class. Love ya! Nancy Sanders Scouten
By Ivy
April 10, 2007 10:52 AM | Link to this
God be with you Rodney. My ex husband, Rod Shelley was one of those soldiers and he is missed very much.
By Edna Martinez
April 10, 2007 8:21 PM | Link to this
Thank you Spc. Rodney Davidson for your dedication to your present platoon mates and for your dedication to the memory of your former platoon mates. Thank you for your willingness to fight our fight.
On behalf of SGT. Jonathon C. Haggin who was killed on July 30th of 2005, we, his former mother-in-law, his daughter and son thank you for carrying on the memories of the Fallen Heroes. The simple deed of keeping your original Kevlar with the nick in memory of your friend touched my heart.
Thank you for being bold enough to voice your concerns that the Democrats and New Republicans may want the troops out of Iraq too early. We believe in fighting to win the war and in fighting for the freedoms of the Iraqi children. Our men DID NOT die in vain. I will ALWAYS believe that a greater purpose was served even if I don’t see it immediately.
We combine our prayers with others for your safe return back to your family. May God give you inner peace, His peace, in the midst of war and terror. May He protect you in body, mind and soul through His Son, Jesus.
By David Knight
April 11, 2007 2:38 AM | Link to this
Hey Rockin Rod. We have been like brothers our entire lives. I am very proud of you. You and everyone over their are doing an awesome job. You are in our prayers everyday. See you soon. David Knight