A year down and 3 months to go in Iraq
Town of Tonawanda soldier trudges on
http://www.buffalonews.com/home/story/148769.html
(If you go to the story on the Buffalo News Web Site,
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By Nathan S. Webster - SPECIAL TO THE NEWS
Updated: 08/26/07 7:09 AM
BAYJI, Iraq — Out here, on the garbage- strewn desert hardpan by the unused city railroad tracks, the early afternoon temperature on a thermometer probably reads about 130 degrees. It lies.
Spc. Joseph Vergo, 21, from the Town of Tonawanda, trudges through that punishing Iraqi heat under some 90 pounds of gear and armor — even before factoring in the 27-pound, M- 240 machine gun strapped over his shoulders, and all the ammo that goes with it. In the early going of the day’s patrol, he takes up the column’s last spot, walking backwards at times, scanning the long and empty city streets for suspicious behavior.
Outside the city limits, the patrol of a dozen soldiers from Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 3rd Bridge Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division, spreads apart. Squad leader Sgt. Matt Toups, 25, from Erath, La., hollers back to Vergo and another soldier to run up to the middle, so they can fill a gap with the heavy weapon.
“I gotta headache now, all that running,” the other soldier mumbles, when their jog concludes.
Walking out here is bad enough, but run for any distance and the heat becomes nothing less than the Devil’s right hand, pushing down with every hateful sunbeam. Under the gear, with the heat reflecting off the packed sand, it probably feels like 150 degrees.
“Yeah, it’s awful,” Vergo says, and laughs, because what else is there to do.
The soldiers laugh and joke about almost absolutely everything. That, and don’t let any one problem bother them too much — because plenty more problems are coming up right behind. A year is behind them, and there are about three more months to go.
“Having patience is the number one virtue in the Army, and I’ve learned that a lot, since I’ve been out here,” Vergo says later, in the air-conditioned comfort of a guard tower observation point. “We’ve all been victims of the button pushers, and you can’t let them get you down.”
Vergo makes clear he did not expect anything different. He did not join the Army two years ago for some desk job. He joined not in spite of Iraq, but because he knew that’s where he would end up going.
“That’s pretty much why I joined. To do my part. Get some combat experience,” said Vergo, a graduate of St. Joseph’s Collegiate Insitute. “And if you’re going to join the Army, you got to be in the infantry. And if you’re going to be in the infantry, you might as well jump out of planes.”
No parachute jumps have marked this deployment for the paratroopers. It’s been a year of frustration, anguish and small victories. The unit’s deployment was extended by three months, from 12 to 15, in a morale-sapping move. Snipers killed three soldiers.
A change in mission
And, the company’s mission has changed from the raids and combat assaults the infantryman loved to “engagements” and “reconciliation” with the populace — a must for the long term, but a hard sell to 20- something warriors.
The company of paratroopers is based out of a Joint Security Station in downtown Bayji, where they work alongside Iraqi policemen, conducting patrols alongside them like this one. The presence in the city is meant to show the Americans are ready and able to work with local security forces.
More importantly, the U.S. soldiers give the Iraqis the breathing space they need to establish credibility among their own countrymen. But the soldiers, now used to being mortared every other day, see themselves as stationary targets at their station — not an infantryman’s usual identity.
In the first months of the deployment, back in late 2006, the company would detain suspected Sunni insurgents and feel some sense of accomplishment. Now, their company commander meets with some of those very same former Baathists for tea — at homes where Saddam Hussein almost certainly hid, when he was on the run in 2003-04.
“Maybe it makes sense to the higher-ups,” Vergo said, “but it doesn’t make sense to us.”
Their commander, Capt. Tim Peterman, 32, from Roy, Utah, readily understands his soldiers’ deep cynicism. The stated mission of the infantry is “close with and destroy the enemy.”
But here, the enemy is shadowy and elusive al-Qaida-affiliated terrorists, known as the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), wishing to govern Iraq with a Taliban-style theocracy. If former Baathists are willing to work with Americans to stop that from happening, then that’s what has to be. To Peterman, it does make sense.
“You’ve got to have resolve. Counter-insurgency takes a long time, and it’s hard for my troopers to see they’re making a difference. They are,” Peterman said. “I know the soldiers don’t trust the Iraqis, and I don’t want them to. The toughest thing they can do is the right thing, not doing raids, but getting out and meeting people.”
Hope for progress
A comparison Peterman agrees with is the end of World War II, when the United States worked with former Nazis against the Soviet Union. By shaking hands with former Sunni insurgent leaders in 2007, the United States is showing that the 2003 war is truly over — and a more clear-cut battle against al-Qaida terrorism can begin. Peterman sees what he hopes is progress, because he leads the meetings with locals that soldiers like Vergo intensely dislike.
When speaking with Peterman, the tribal sheikhs are engaged and interested in the plan formulated by top U.S. commander Gen. David Petraeus to form “neighborhood watch” groups that will eventually become Iraqi army forces. In theory, this will build local control from the street level up, rather than waiting for help from the still-ineffectual central government.
And since this policy of peaceful engagements began in earnest, back in March, “significant activities” in the sector — mortars, kidnappings, IEDs and shootings — have dropped from March’s 76 to 39 in July.
Numbers, though, mean very little to the soldiers on patrol. They carefully walk through a series of three-story apartment buildings, and Toups motions upwards to Vergo and the rest.
“Keep an eye out on those roofs,” he says.
Vergo speaks as matter-offactly as most of the infantryman, but he is not nearly as boisterous as some. They complain all day, but all their complaints cease the moment they leave the relative safety of the security station. They focus on their mission and the safety of each other.
Vergo says it just isn’t possible to describe or explain exactly what a day out here is like, with the heat, the threats and the rough living conditions all adding up to one long hard stretch.
“I can’t make people see things the way I see it,” he said. “But all the struggles I’ve faced, I’ve definitely matured as a person.”
Attack outraged Iraqis
Today’s patrol, before it got to the bleak desert outskirts, saw the soldiers introduce themselves to children and teachers at a school — including a small boy who lost both legs to an al-Qaida roadside bomb. Indiscriminate tragedies like that have motivated local Iraqi leaders, who have no love for Americans, to realize the United States is not their greatest threat.
The final straw may have been a June 25 suicide bomb attack on the Joint Security Station. Five Americans were slightly wounded, but 27 Iraqi policemen died.
Local Baathists who would not have cared about American deaths were outraged over the murders of their fathers, sons and brothers. Violence like that is what ISI brings, Peterman tells them through a translator and the sheikhs nod and murmur in agreement, or at least not dispute.
If this new reconciliation works, it could be the beginning of what allows U.S. forces to leave Iraq. Vergo expects he’ll get a chance to find out. His enlistment isn’t up for several more years.
“I’m probably coming back here in another year or so,” he said, since he anticipates another deployment for the 82nd before his enlistment is up. “I’ll see what kind of results all this had then.”
He doesn’t mind the patrols, doesn’t mind the hard living. That’s all part of the infantry.
But he hopes no one thinks U.S. ideas and beliefs will ever come to Iraq.
“These people like their old ways,” he said. “They don’t want a Wal-Mart.”
Freelance photojournalist Nathan S. Webster of Stratham, N.H., was recently embedded with the 82nd Airborne in Iraq. He is a graduate student in the University of New Hampshire’s Master of Fine Arts in Writing program and an instructor in first-year writing.
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