April 19, 2005 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Dispatches with U.S. soldiers in Iraq
Baghdad, Iraq – During their first tour of duty in Iraq, Sgt. 1st Class Chris Joseph and his tank crew named their M1A2 Abrams “Allah My Ass.”
A supervisor nixed that as culturally insensitive.
Joseph and crew renamed it “American Oppressor,” which passed muster, and churned through the desert on missions near the Syrian border.
Now as the U.S. occupation enters its third year and the emphasis shifts toward helping Iraqis maintain and govern their own country, the soldiers call their tank the “Angry Beaver.”
It growled in the dust recently amid dozens of other tanks lined up in a camp south of Baghdad – a superpower show of heavy force in an area where remote-control bombs target troops.
From a distance, the tanks look hard, uniform, impersonal.
Yet soldiers delicately have stenciled black letters along barrels of tank guns. “American Muscle.” “Adrenaline Rush.” “Albert Taco.”
The naming “makes it yours – same as you name your favorite pet,” Staff Sgt. Nicholas Curnell, 32, of Charleston, S.C., said while sorting gear with members of the “Angel of Death” crew he commands.
Soldiers are naming things all around as the Colorado-based 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment begins a second deployment away from their families and friends.
Some soldiers name their guns. Sgt. Andrew Gieseke, 23, of Kansas City, Kan., calls his M-4 assault rifle “Laura,” after a former girlfriend.
“She was a heartbreaker. This baby’s a heartbreaker,” Gieseke said, slapping the butt. “I associate the two.”
Also hanging from his shoulder: a shotgun labeled “My Boomstick.”
One soldier even names dustpans, brooms and a fly swatter. It started at basic training in Kentucky, said Spec. Wesley Vanbruaene, 27, of South Bend, Ind.
“In the Army, you need to mark everything, or somebody will take it,” he said.
Here he named the fly swatter Doug E. Fresh.
“You’ve just got to try to make it fun because everything here sucks. That’s why I started doing it here,” he said.
Rows of tents – surrounded by sandbags – show increasingly personal touches. Seven Apache attack helicopter pilots recently declared theirs “The Purple Palace.”
They’ve hooked up three video-gaming consoles, four televisions, including one with a 29-inch screen, seven laptop computers, air conditioning, and carpet salvaged from contractor trash heaps.
And now, Chief Warrant Officer Roger Wood, 34, of Los Angeles lifted a white blanket to show off a couch.
“Look at this,” Wood said, gesturing at regal dark upholstery. “I mean, for the desert, this is a nice couch.”
Soldiers in neighboring tents call it a “Taj Mahal,” and “a mini Wal-Mart electronics store.” The pilots take pride.
“You have to,” said Chief Warrant Officer Larry Wilson, 33, of Winchester, Va. “We’re here for a year. A situation is always what you make of it. It’s not going to be home, but at least you can make something out of it.”
Back by his tank, Angry Beaver commander Joseph recalled how “my wife came up with the name.”
“We were just sitting on the couch watching television” with their two sons – a cartoon featuring two hostile beavers. His wife suggested that might work for his tank.
And in the open back of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle named Albert Taco, one crew member hunched over his helmet, painting intricate tan camouflage splotches as Staff Sgt. Carlos Richardson, 37, of Nogales, Ariz., the crew chief, climbed through.
Richardson remembered how, during an early morning motor-pool meeting at Fort Carson, he and fellow Apache Troop tankers were trying to come up with good names.
Their Bradley carries TOW missiles, depleted uranium- coated bullets the size of fire hydrants, and explosive rounds with the punch of five grenades.
Military tradition requires that tank names begin with the same letter as the troop name.
“But a name starting with a vowel is really hard. We came up with ‘Al Capone.’ Somebody had that. And there’s already ‘American’ this and ‘American’ that.”
As they chewed on all this, they also were chewing breakfast burritos and tacos from Albert Taco, their favorite place, southeast of Colorado Springs.
That solved it.
A little humor like that can build spirit – which is essential, Richardson said.
Regimental superiors, too, want to build esprit de corps. But they also worry that too many names and labels could help enemies track troop movements.
Commanders have been discussing whether to paint over the names on tank guns, or at least prohibit stenciled logos, Command Sgt. Major John Caldwell said.
“It won’t take the insurgents long to figure out who’s who if we aren’t careful,” he said.
April 15, 2005 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Dispatches with U.S. soldiers in Iraq
South of Baghdad, Iraq – Hot gravel crunching beneath their boots, Pfc. Nicholas Sauceda and seven fellow soldiers gathered around the broken engine of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle on Thursday afternoon. They ran their fingers over the metal searching for an oil leak.
Their eyelids hung heavy after a nighttime mission that had them grinding along roads in gun-mounted Humvees outside their camp here, in an area military commanders say has experienced increased attacks on U.S. troops by insurgents – up to 72 a day.
Sauceda and crew are among up to 5,200 Colorado- based troops in the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment starting their second stint in Iraq. As they gathered around the Bradley, they could have been catching up on sleep, but the soldiers – scouts trained for a variety of duties, including providing security for regimental commander Col. H.R. McMaster – prefer just about anything, including engine repair, to sitting behind sandbags on their rickety green cots.
“I just want to get it through with,” said Sauceda, 21, of Phoenix. “And the busier we are, the faster it goes by.”
With the possibility of running across improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, never far from their minds, and with occasional bursts of small-arms fire and mortar thuds in the distance, some of the troops have modest goals for this tour in Iraq.
Spec. Arturo Lopez, 20, of Mission, Texas, said: “Just hope I don’t get blown up.”
Here for about a month, Sauceda has already written five letters, used up eight 550-minute phone cards, and mailed a Kuwaiti blanket and ring to his fiancée, Megan Blanton, 19, a first-year student at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
“It’s not like we don’t want to think about home,” Sauceda said. “But it makes the time pass harder when you’re always thinking about home.”
So they worked. It was hot. They wore T-shirts, no flak vests, as they picked over the Bradley’s engine. About halfway between northern Kuwait and Baghdad, the vehicle broke down at night. At dawn, Pfc. Reed Monson, 20, of Boise, Idaho, noticed a shiny black pool beneath it and, when he checked the oil level, found the engine was dry. A truck hauled the Bradley into camp here.
Now Capt. David Rozelle, 32, the company commander, wanted it fixed. Rozelle stood in the shade of a shipping container, watching. He lost his lower right leg when a Humvee he was riding in set off a land mine his first time in Iraq, in June 2003 in the western Anbar province.
After a few months back at Fort Carson with his wife and toddler, Rozelle became the first amputee to return for a second tour in Iraq. When his war is over, he’s slated to go to work at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C.
That’s the future. Today, he needs his soldiers to find the leak.
Sgt. Erik Houghton, 34, of Massillon, Ohio, spotted the tear. “In the hose, sir, to the oil filter,” Houghton called to Rozelle.
Rozelle: “That’s easy!”
Houghton: “Can you find me one, sir?”
Rozelle sent him to base aviation mechanics. “Take them this hose. They can make a new one.”
“Crescent wrench,” said Staff Sgt. Jeff Marjerrison, 28, of Widefield, south of Colorado Springs, moving to disconnect it from the engine.
Marjerrison and Monson muscled bolts loose, then sliced open an empty drinking water bottle and caught more black oil.
The aviation mechanics couldn’t make a new hose right away. That meant one less Bradley Fighting Vehicle for now. The 3rd Armored Cavalry has about 125 Bradleys, along with 120 or so main battle tanks and more than 40 helicopters.
Meanwhile, the troops turned to gearing up Humvees for another convoy through a hot zone known as “the mixing bowl.”
Gunner Pvt. 2 Martin Gaymon, 19, of Brooklyn, N.Y., welcomed the upcoming mission even as he reread a prayer card. He’d be out front on this one.
“As long as you are doing something, you feel like, the reason you are out here, it’s worth it,” he said as they headed out Friday morning. “I’d rather be out on a convoy.”
Sauceda would be driving a hardened Humvee behind him.
“I just want to get it done,” he said. “Get back in here with everybody alive.”
April 15, 2005 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Dispatches with U.S. soldiers in Iraq
Hillah Province, Iraq – Rolling out on a reconnaissance patrol through Iraq’s deadly “Mixing Bowl,” Pvt. Martin Gaymon tucked two white prayer cards inside his bulletproof vest.
They give added “protection,” he says, against the remote-control bombs that worry the Colorado-based soldiers of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment.
Before the sun set on Saturday night, the 19-year-old hip- hop music fan from Brooklyn, N.Y., would earn a medal for extending that protection to his fellow soldiers.
The Mixing Bowl area south of Baghdad, named for the melange of traffic and people driving and wandering about, looms as one of the most dreaded hot spots in Iraq. Here, in this high-traffic gnarl of roadways and dust pits littered with metal debris, Iraqi fighters and suicide bombers, sometimes drugged, have killed dozens.
U.S. commanders call controlling the area a priority in putting down the insurgency. They’re regularly sending out 20-soldier, four-Humvee patrols like this one Saturday to find out who’s planting the remote-controlled improvised explosive devices, or IEDs. These often are mortar shells wired to cellphones.
Grinding along in one of the Humvees, Gaymon and his crew moved cautiously from their base camp. They clicked in their ammo clips as the sergeants pressed radio receivers to their ears. Gaymon scanned fields of blowing grass and palms from atop a Humvee in a rotating turret. He gripped a .50-caliber machine gun.
The soldiers saw barefoot boys waving, farmers bent near ancient Mesopotamian canals, small birds singing, a few cattle grazing. Here and there along roadways, men squatted by apparently disabled cars watching the troops pass.
Through the double-paned clear glass from his armored Humvee, Command Sgt. Maj. John Caldwell, 44, saw a black sedan parked on the side of the road facing traffic. He waved to a family inside. Eight or so tiny hands in the back seat waved back while a veiled mother looked out silently.
“When I wave, and they wave back, that’s a good deal,” Caldwell said.
The troops stopped periodically, checking suspicious debris, studying Iraqi vehicles.
In the middle of the Mixing Bowl, parked U.S. tanks provided support for 30 Iraqi national-guard soldiers atop an overpass.
Caldwell spotted one U.S. tank gunner who had taken off his helmet. He launched his 250-pound ex-Alabama State linebacker’s frame at the gunner.
“Hey!” he shouted – just the start of an enthusiastic warning to the gunner not to let down his guard or remove his protective equipment.
He later explained that “energizing” troops this way, “is a matter of saving lives. … Something can go bad here any second.”
On his gun, Gaymon stayed alert even as the hours wore on. “Run the gun, scan” is how he describes his existence out here. And in the 90-degree-plus heat, he spotted it – a green box the size of a footlocker hidden in a heap of concrete rubble. Red wires ran from the box.
“Whoa,” Gaymon shouted down to the crew in the Humvee.
Staff Sgt. Jeff Marjerrison, 28, of Widefield broke in on the radio keeping the Humvees connected. He alerted the others and the convoy stopped.
The troops then stopped traffic and called in an explosives disposal team as Iraqis leaned out of their windows to watch.
As Gaymon and crew headed back to their base camp, the bomb exploded, detonated remotely. No one was hurt.
In camp, the regiment commander, Col. H.R. McMaster, called them to join him after an intelligence briefing. He put a hand on Gaymon’s shoulder – “a powerful man, owns the regiment,” Gaymon later said he was thinking – and pinned a green commendation medal on his uniform.
Gaymon then went back to work, repairing fuel leaks and cleaning his gun.
“I guess one of them could have got blown up,” he said. “Hope we can find all the IEDs before someone gets hurt.”
April 15, 2005 · The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley, Denver Post Staff Writer
Dispatches with U.S. soldiers in Iraq
Babil Province, Iraq – Every patrol down bomb-laden Iraqi roads is an act of faith for many of the soldiers here. They carry laminated “Soldiers’ Psalm” cards and pray for protection before rolling out in dusty Humvees from base camp.
They jam a tent chapel for religious services.
In the mess hall, some bow their heads before eating.
On cots, others stroke rosary beads.
The pre-patrol prayers in particular give comfort, says Pfc. Thouen Yen, a Cambodian-American father of three who escaped the Khmer Rouge killing fields as a boy. Poised beside Humvees with fellow troops of the Colorado-based 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment recently, Yen, 31, silently reread the psalm’s promise that God will keep them safe from all hidden dangers.
Superior weapons and high-tech equipment are sometimes useless against suicide bombers and remotely detonated blasts targeting troops. Over the past week, the Colorado-based soldiers found 25 roadside bombs. They pre-emptively set off 21.
The others damaged three Humvees, but so far, no one has been hurt.
“We live by faith every day,” Yen said. “Hopefully, we’ll all come back.”
Before heading out to a risky high-traffic area Tuesday, Yen and his crew prayed together.
Four versions of the Bible, downloaded into a pocket computer, help Spec. Clayton Palmer, 21, of Broomfield, study passages when he has spare time. Palmer and Spec. Oscar Prado, 32, of Milwaukee, bowed their heads Sunday in the mess hall. Heartbroken about the death of his 15-year-old Alaskan malamute, Nikko, shortly before he left Fort Carson, Prado reckoned that “my faith is going to be tested here.”
“The first time we were in Iraq, I relied on God. This time, I’ll rely on him more. The first time, we weren’t under mortar alert the way we were this week.”
Kneeling in a tent converted into a chapel, Sgt. David Rivera gave thanks that he had survived another week. He prayed for his wife and daughter back in Fayetteville, N.C. He prayed for the U.S. mission of regaining control in Iraq when some Iraqis want troops to go home.
“There are so many things the insurgents have now,” Rivera said. “They are getting smarter. They are looking for new ways to harm us. You know they are out there. Death could touch you any time.”
Some things he doesn’t tell his wife “because I don’t want her to worry about me,” said Rivera, whose duties include driving fuel trucks. And so he just prays.
Gripping his assault rifle while rolling past Iraqi farms, Yen gazed out sympathetically at farmers, their veiled wives and their children “who may have no food or shelter.” He wished he could help them.
A refugee who settled in North Hollywood, Calif., Yen grew up worshiping in the Buddhist and Hindu traditions. He and his father fled Cambodia in 1979 and “now I must give my life” in service to the American people who embraced him and his family, he said.
Looking out through thick Humvee windows at Iraqis, “I have a profound sadness,” Yen said. “But I also hope the situation is getting better for these people here and that we all can go home in one piece.”
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A journalist and lawyer, Bruce Finley has investigated local, national and international issues with on-site reporting in more than 40 countries. In his position as a staff writer for the Denver Post, he is focusing on environment-related news including water challenges, the oil and gas boom and wildfire.
