Soldiers who invaded Iraq must return

[Moses]

December 20, 2004

Soldiers who led Iraq invasion must return
By Steven Komarow
USA Today

FORT STEWART, Ga. — Two dozen sergeants are sitting around a table — hard men who led troops into downtown Baghdad last year and helped end Saddam Hussein’s regime. They shake their heads and chuckle softly: What kind of question is that — did they ever expect to be returning to Iraq?

“”Nobody” expected this, a year later,” says Staff Sgt. Ken Austin, a veteran of Desert Storm in 1991 as well as Operation Iraqi Freedom. “The first Gulf War was in and out. I thought this would be pretty much the same.”<br>
Sgt. 1st Class David Richard recalls that even Fallujah — the city north of Baghdad where U.S. and Iraqi troops fought a brutal, weeklong battle in November to root out insurgents — was quiet when he and other soldiers of the 2nd Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division headed home in the summer of 2003. “We had that thing in a lockdown,” he says.

But continuing insurgent attacks have forced the United States to boost its force in Iraq toward 150,000, its highest level yet. So the 3rd ID — as the division is commonly referred to throughout the Army — is loading up again, to try to finish up the mission.

The division has been retrained and more heavily armored for a different kind of war. From its senior officers to the spouses back home, it’s also ready for a reality where the enemy is everywhere and deaths and injuries could be worse than when it led the invasion.

Last year, 44 3rd ID soldiers were killed and 258 wounded. The division was the Army’s lead invasion element. The 2nd Brigade’s “Thunder Runs,” when it raced its tanks into downtown Baghdad much sooner than expected, shocked the world and ended Saddam’s regime. But it turns out the bold attacks didn’t end the war. Since the 3rd ID’s soldiers left Iraq, their victories have been clouded by a fierce insurgency.

“Winning the war itself, if you will, is often the easy part,” says Lt. Col. Steven Merkel, commander of the 1-9 Field Artillery, part of the brigade. “The much more complex task is at hand.”<br>
Different, but not light

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s goal for the Army is to be lighter, faster and more deadly, rather than slow and armored. In the past year, the 3rd ID has become the first of the Army’s 10 active-duty divisions to be reorganized to be “modular,” easily divided into smaller, more self-sufficient units the Pentagon can plug into place quickly when emergencies arise.

But the demands of Iraq — where insurgents attack U.S. convoys with roadside bombs, rocket-propelled grenades and suicide vehicles — mean the 3rd ID is going there anything but light. It’s bringing its 70-ton Abrams tanks and its armored Bradley troop carriers, the kind of bulk the Pentagon was pulling out of Iraq a year ago in favor of quicker, lighter vehicles. The division’s convoy trucks and Humvees sport new steel cladding. Maj. Russ Goemaere, the 2nd Brigade spokesman, says troops will drive no unarmored vehicles in Iraq except for those that never leave military compounds.

The division’s vehicles are so heavy they would destroy roads if they drove. Rail lines taking them to port offer an intimidating display. Fresh desert-tan paint can’t hide the heft riding on hundreds of flatbed cars.

The Humvees in particular show how experience in Iraq has translated into metal. Gone are the canvas-like doors that were standard equipment. In their place are windowless steel panels that go about three-fourths of the way to the roof. The gaps at the top are shaped so soldiers can fire across a wide angle, as insurgents pop out of doorways or alleys.

The attacks can come “out of basically anywhere,” says Staff Sgt. Leo Levesque, 29, of Benton, Ill., a veteran of the 3rd ID’s first deployment. “You could be down a street 1,000 times and then, on that one day-” Levesque leaves the sentence incomplete.

The division is bringing all its 155mm Paladin howitzers: 32-ton, tank-like mobile guns that can fire explosive salvos 15 miles. It’s a lot more artillery than is probably needed, but Lt. Col. Merkel says the Paladins are extra insurance and more armored protection for the unit’s troops.

When the 3rd ID was rushing north along the Euphrates River in March and April of 2003, there was a front line. Troops to the rear were protected behind it. It’s one of the many characteristics of the Iraq war then that no longer apply today.

An unfamiliar mission

Advance teams from the 3rd ID’s home here are scheduled to fly to Kuwait after Christmas, followed shortly by the rest of the division. Unless there’s an emergency, the division convoy won’t come into Iraq before the elections Jan. 30. But over its yearlong deployment, one of the 3rd ID’s chief missions will be to try to get control over the insurgency in central Iraq in time for further Iraqi elections planned for next summer.

The 3rd ID, which still carries the World War I moniker “Rock of the Marne” for its stoic defense of that French territory from the Germans, prides itself as a division of warriors. They are, says the division song every member must memorize, “dog-faced soldiers.” Audie Murphy, the most decorated soldier of World War II, was a member of the 3rd ID.

The fighting aura is so persistent that commanders regularly put down rumors here that the division isn’t really going back to Iraq but is getting ready to invade someplace else — Iran? Syria? — in the war on terrorism.

Younger soldiers such as Pfc. Richard Smith, 18, of Lakeville, Minn, who was in high school last spring, says he “would have liked to have been there for the invasion. Now it’s more like police work and stuff,” he says.

The Army doesn’t like the term “police work” for its missions. It also doesn’t like to highlight the fact that no matter how much armor it brings, troops must regularly get out of their armored shells and engage Iraqis, friends or foes. But that’s what will happen, and the Army has trained the soldiers for it.

“When they enlisted, they thought they were going be on a tank or a vehicle. But now they know they could be clearing a room,” says Col. Joseph DiSalvo, commander of the 2nd Brigade.

From their helmets to their boots, the 3rd ID’s troops are dressed as foot soldiers. The Army has issued them Wiley X wrap-around sunglasses to keep debris from explosions out of their eyes and kneepads for when they drop and fire in Iraq’s urban battlefields.

Arabic phrases for “good morning,” “I don’t understand” and “put your weapon down” come from the lips of soldiers who never expected to get near enough to an Iraqi to converse. Few troops bothered to learn much about Iraq before last year’s invasion. Now, learning everything possible about the language and culture of the country is a life-preserving obsession. Cheat sheets are taped to the stocks of their assault rifles.

“We have to deal with the Iraqis one on one. It’s a lot more fluid environment,” Sgt. 1st Class Richard says.

At Fort Polk, La., the division was put through the paces by Iraqi expatriates posing as potential troublemakers, whose reactions depend on how they are treated by the soldiers.

“They act as you act. If you act as a fool,” then that’s what they’ll do, Staff Sgt. Levesque says. Soldiers must be disciplined and respectful, and neither too friendly nor hostile. He tells his soldiers: “Set the example.”<br>
“We are going in prepared, but we are also prepared to help out another country and to help out civilians,” says Staff Sgt. Bart Hatcher, an artilleryman in the 1-64 Armor. “We’re not going over there guns blazing.”<br>
Key officers from the division were sent to Jordan for seminars on the Arab world. The division’s recommended reading list on Middle Eastern culture would make a graduate student wince.

Lt. Col. Gary Luck, commander of the 3-15 Infantry, says the lessons have direct practical impact. Troops will find “the enemy is not clearly separated from non-combatants,” he says, and battle zones are not separate from mosques and other sensitive sites.

Street-smart tips and stories from units in Iraq are passed along on the Internet, on a bulletin board called Cav-Net and another from the Army’s CALL — Center for Army Lessons Learned. “There’s a lot better sharing of tactical experience and tactical expertise” between units than before, Luck says.

The online discussions include descriptions of how terrorist bombs are made from old artillery shells, hidden in cars or dead animals, and then remotely detonated using cellphones or garage door openers.

The soldiers who were in Iraq before pass along hard-won knowledge. One sign that a bomb is nearby: The local children aren’t out playing.

Even the veterans of the invasion say they’ve learned much since they came home. “Something as simple as offering a person a cigarette has meaning,” says Staff Sgt. Hatcher, recalling a lesson from field training at Fort Polk. “It made people think you now sided with this person,” which could make enemies of others. Now, “before I even offer a bottle of water to someone, I’m going to think about what to do,” he says.
(continued)

[Moses]

Preparations at home

Rebecca Smith, wife of Capt. Todd Smith of 1-9 field artillery, says she knew this was a different kind of fight when her spouse asked for a riot baton for Christmas. She says her husband is the kind of officer who would step in front of his troops to take a bullet, and she has an order for him:

“Don’t you dare — you’d better friggin’ duck!” she tells her burly soldier. Turning back again to a reporter, she calmly asserts that “a state of denial is therapeutic. ... You can’t live every day wondering if your husband is still alive.”<br>
Smith and other officers’ spouses have been working with the division’s chaplains and its personnel office to address what they say was the least prepared part of the division — the families.

In late 2002, when the 2nd Brigade shipped out to Kuwait, it was ostensibly for a regular six-month training rotation. Though war had been discussed, family members hoped a diplomatic solution would result from President Bush’s threats. Families weren’t mentally prepared for the war and the extended deployment in Iraq. [Bush had no intention of his threats resulting in a diplomatic solution]

This time, everyone knows the plan. On Dec. 1, all division soldiers scheduled to deploy were ordered into their desert camouflage uniforms, a daily reminder of the year to come.

Jackson Cook, 4, son of Maj. Terry Cook, calls it his daddy’s “bye-bye uniform.”

The Army and family volunteers are making sure families understand what’s happening in Iraq and the risks of injury or death. “We don’t sugarcoat anything. We’re Army wives,” says Rebecca Merkel, the battalion commander’s wife, who was an officer in the British army. She met her husband when they both were stationed in Germany.

“If we expect the worst but the best happens, we’ll be ecstatic,” she says.

Soldiers and spouses attend special readiness fairs where soldiers go table to table to prepare and sign their wills, powers of attorney and other paperwork needed for a year’s absence, or absence forever. “For this 19-year-old wife who has never paid bills before, never had tires rotated on the car ... the stress does get pretty high,” Rebecca Smith says.

Despite the risks, despite discouragement from senior sergeants and commanders, young love seems to have intensified at Fort Stewart in the weeks before re-entering the war, much as it did before units headed out to ongoing conflicts in the past. Chaplain Capt. Charlie Lee of the 1-9 Field Artillery says he married 12 of the battalion’s 500 soldiers in November. He also expects a rash of “deployment babies.”<br>
Lt. Col. Merkel says he has promised to do all he can to get the soldiers back unharmed. He’s added a twist to the soldier’s mantra of “leave no man behind” to reflect the grisly reality of Iraq, where capture could mean an Internet-televised torture and execution.

Merkel says he warns his soldiers that none of them should ever be taken prisoner. “And they believe it,” he says, “It’s in the look in the eye.”<br>
Soldiers also look you in the eye when they say they’d like to be the ones who see Iraq turn the tide away from terrorism and toward democracy, so the U.S. Army can go home.

“We’d love to be the last rotation,” Austin says.