CHAPTER 1

Fort Stewart, Georgia13 February 2005-31 March 2005

After the New Year rang in 2005, the soldiers of third platoonand the mountain company prepared to move out to themobilization station at Fort Stewart, Georgia. The date forthem to leave as a unit on a chartered aircraft was January 7. The unitleft Rhode Island with no idea of what to expect over the next year,other than a long time away from home.

The platoon arrived at Fort Stewart and the soldiers settled intothe place they would call home for the next four or five months. Theliving quarters were on the main post and consisted of three open-baybuildings and a rundown shoddy stone building that was to be used asa tactical operations center (TOC) and an arms room/supply room. Thearms protection was not up to par, so the headquarters section neededto have one person on duty at all times to guard the weapons and othersensitive items.

The platoon barracks was a Vietnam-era wooden building with atile floor and cinder block walls, complete with two-by-four rafters anda roof that leaked. The barracks stank like sawdust and mildew, and I'msure there was a hint of mold under the floorboards. To an infantryman,the living quarters were acceptable, although any other soldier wouldconsider them the worst of the worst. The beds were the standardarmy-issue metal bunk beds with a mattress that could be either reallyuncomfortable or really comfortable.

The first few nights the soldiers settled in to these five-star hotels.The next thing to write home about was the showers and the latrines.In tradition with almost every army barracks across the nation, the hotwater was erratic and would come and go throughout the time we werethere. But all in all, it wasn't as bad as it could be. The weather was atleast cold and dry, not the summertime sweltering heat and humidity.

The platoon began to get acquainted with the higher unit we weregoing to war with. The company was to be attached to Task Force (TF)Cobra for the next seventeen months. Task Force Cobra was madeup mainly of members of the Georgia Army National Guard's FirstBattalion, 118th Field Artillery Regiment, which fell under the 48thInfantry Brigade Combat Team. The TF consisted of a headquartersbattery, a service battery, an alpha battery, Bravo Company 1-115thInfantry (Maryland Army National Guard), and Delta Company, 3-172IN (MTN).

The battalion commander was LTC Don Beard, a highly motivatedAirborne Ranger who gave an unforgettable introduction speech tothe company upon its arrival at Fort Stewart. The staff seemed to havesome issues at the beginning, as all units do their first few weeks at themob site, but everything started to mend as the platoon got into itstraining.

The crawl-walk-run phase was a big part of the first month oftraining for the platoon. The army likes the idea of first trainingindividual tasks, then team tasks, and then moving on to collectivetasks. Individual tasks were such things as qualifying with your assignedweapon, performing voice communications, first aid, call for fire,reacting to indirect and direct contact, and nuclear, biological, andchemical (NBC) survivability. Team tasks were done at the fire-teamlevel, such as battle drills, clearing a room, hallway, or staircase, andcrew serve weapons qualification. The final part of the training wasat squad and platoon levels, where all elements work together. Thesetended to be the most confusing and most practiced events, especiallyif it involved live fire while mounted on Humvees or while dismountedand clearing villages.

A problem that many of the soldiers had was that the trainingsupport battalion (TSB) constantly lost their training records. Thesoldiers' morale dropped as they had to repeat training again and againin order to get cleared and so we could move on to the collective training,which was to take place in March. After hearing enough complaintsfrom company and battalion leadership, by the time February rolledaround the TSB finally got its act together.

I was taken aback by the quality of equipment, weapons, andammunition the army gave us. In my more than eight years in themilitary, I had never seen so much top-of-the-line resources given to ourunit. Like a marine in the Pacific theater getting a meal of steak andeggs before a beach landing, we infantrymen were given the best of thebest before going to fight our generation's war in Iraq.

Another downside to the training at Fort Stewart was that combat-supportsoldiers taught us our combat arms training, such as convoy livefire. People who had never been to Iraq or even fired a machine gun outof basic training were talking as if they were experts, and they'd barkorders and commands at us as if they were drill sergeants.

The best part of the unit's time at Fort Stewart was when the menreceived their new army combat uniform (ACU). The ACU was thenew digital uniform being fielded by the army. It was similar to themarines' desert uniform, but it was a camouflage of gray and light gray.The 48th Brigade would be the first unit in Iraq to wear the new ACU,and it would probably raise many eyebrows among Iraq citizens and theinsurgents. The Army Times even reported the event, and a few of thecompany's men were pictured on the cover.

After all of the individual training had been completed and theweapons qualifications had been sorted out, the platoon moved onto more squad-level and advanced-individual training. The platoonhad the chance to train at the live fire shoot house and to take partin reflexive fire training using the M4 carbine and the M249 squadautomatic weapon. Once soldiers were familiar with the reflexive fire,we moved into night-vision marksmanship with devices like the PEQ-2laser sight, which could be used for many things other than firing atnight. We would later find out it was a good way to communicate withpilots hovering above us during nighttime operations in Iraq. All in allthe equipment we received at Fort Stewart was a far cry from what wehad back in Rhode Island for training. This was definitely a change forthe better.

One of the better training events conducted at Fort Stewart wasthe convoy live-fire lane. Over twelve miles long, the live-fire lane hadnumerous different scenarios built into it, from improvised explosivedevice (IED) simulators that were remote controlled to moving targetsoff in the distance for gunners to engage. Some of the training wasunrealistic as we were in soft-skinned Humvees with only radio mounts.The problem was, again, the consistency of the instructors' experience.Not that they didn't have combat experience, because many of them did.The problem was that they were teaching us Operation Iraqi Freedom 1tactics when we would be there during the time of up-armored Humveesand IEDs, rather than the time of soft-skinned vehicles and small-armsfire.

During contact, you would never dismount an up-armored Humveeon the noncontact side. It wasn't just that you wouldn't, you couldn't!The radio mounts and the blue force tracker were much too large toallow a soldier any chance of dismounting safely with all his gear on.Still, we executed the exercises as instructed, and at least the soldiershad a chance to fire down range.

After we had completed the squad-level training, the companymoved on to the Fort Stewart MOUT site to begin the training formilitary operations in urbanized terrain. The site consisted of an arrayof houses such as we would encounter in Iraq. There was a town square,a few alleyways, a large three-story building surrounded by a courtyard,and numerous other shacks, buildings, and shops that resembled whatwe would see in Baghdad.

The platoon began training on the team clearing-room technique,which included sectors of fire, stacking on a door, and securing a shortor a long room. Once the teams graduated from that, they spent aday walking through squad-level MOUT exercises. These focused onteams bounding one after the other from room to room and markingthe cleared rooms with either panels or chemical lights. This trainingwould be critical to the platoon's successful clearing of apartments andhouses in Iraq in the coming year.

Another positive aspect of the time at the MOUT site was theplatoon training time we were given at the end of each day. Squadleaders were able to retrain their soldiers and develop standard operatingprocedures (SOP) for certain convoys or battle drills. It meant the guyshad fifteen to eighteen hour workdays, but they didn't really mind. Thelong days tended to bring the soldiers together and tighten the bondthey would need for the coming deployment.

After the completion of the MOUT training, we gathered in one ofthe large buildings and received the first news of our area of operationsin Iraq. We all had a feeling it would change several times before wegot there. So goes the army. But this report stayed pretty solid until themoment we left the United States.

The first thing we learned was that our mission would be what we hadhoped for. We would be landowners responsible for counterinsurgencyoperations. This was a dream come true for an infantry soldier. Wewould be out there among the population on a daily basis. We wouldbe driving up and down the highways and knocking on doors at night.We also learned that we could expect to do this mission for five toseven months before the relocation of the entire brigade. Our area ofoperations would be northern Baghdad, just outside the city in an areacalled Taji.

After the MOUT training, the company turned to garrisonenvironment to prepare for the capstone training exercise. This trainingevent would take place at FOB Oliver, which was a small outpost abouttwenty klicks (short for kilometers) from the main base. The trainingwould include quick reaction force, route clearing, cordon and search,and a few live-fire ranges. In addition, soldiers would be rotated throughmake-up training that was going on back at the main base. This wassupposed to be the culminating training event for us and would be theprecursor to our time at the National Training Center (NTC) at FortIrwin, California.

For a week the company conducted numerous cordon and searchesof villages filled with civilians on the battlefield (COBs), which was goodtraining and sometimes ended up with heated tensions on both sides.One of the most memorable experiences was when our first platoon gotinto a fight with a platoon from a different company that was guardinga checkpoint in the road. You could tell guys were getting antsy and justwanted to get the hell out of Fort Stewart and go anywhere else, evenif it was a place like NTC.

After we completed the training at FOB Oliver, we moved backto the main base and began conducting recovery operations. Once allvehicles were cleaned and equipment turned in, the brigade allowed theunits to go on a four-day pass, March 9-13, 2005. When we returned,we all thought we would be on a plane to NTC in a few days, and wecould finally check off that big block. But it wasn't going to be thateasy.

We were told we had to conduct make-up training and platoontime/squad-leader time. As the days passed, I realized that "squad-leadertime" was one of my favorite things to see on a training schedule. Squad-leadertime gave the NCOs time to train their soldiers on what they felttheir weak points were.

Those last few weeks of March unfortunately passed by more slowlythan any other time at the mobilization station. On many occasions theGeorgia soldiers who were next to us in the living area would have theirfamilies come down at night. They would have huge cookouts whilethe infantry soldiers from the Rhode Island and Maryland NationalGuards were left with one another, and a lot of time to think aboutwhat was to come.

On March 25 we got word to pack for our trip west, as the advanceparty began shipping out to Fort Irwin to prepare for the main bodyarrival. The National Training Center would be an effective but longtime in the dustbowl of the country. Just one more step closer.

CHAPTER 2

NTC Fort Irwin, California31 March 2005-29 April 2005

The fasten-seat-belt sign pinged, and that sound over theplane's loudspeaker woke me up. The sun was just setting as Itried to get my bearings. I looked out the window as the pilotannounced that the Grand Canyon was off to our south. I could see itand it was quite the sight. Many of the guys jumped over one another toget a view of this landmark. This was easily the farthest they had beenaway from home, and they would go even farther over the next year.

We landed in what seemed to be a black hole. This part of theMojave Desert had no city lights, no illumination over the horizon, justdarkness. We got off the plane and climbed onto the buses that werewaiting to take us the two-hour drive through the California desert toFort Irwin.

Upon our arrival at Fort Irwin, we unloaded at the FOB we wouldcall home for the next three and a half weeks. We scurried blindly withour weapons and assault packs and tried to form up in a line. I thinkby the time we got to the FOB half of us were asleep as our bodies feltthe effects of jet lag. We had been traveling since 5:00 a.m. EST, andhere in California it was about 8:00 PST. Only in the army would a 6hour plane ride turn into an all day affair.

After getting accountability, we filed into a classroom and receivedour welcome to NTC from a major stationed at Fort Irwin. Aftersurviving the death-by-PowerPoint about wildlife and not leaving thecantonment area, we moved along to our assigned tents. The advanceparty had done a good job in marking the tents, showing where theplatoons and squads would bunk. Much to their dismay, the soldiers ofHeadquarters, TF 118th, were stuck in the same tent as us. The jokingand jostling that was an integral part of the life of an infantryman wouldsoon draw numerous complaints, and a few soldiers even demanded tobe moved out of our tent.

I remember that first morning when I stepped outside to be greetedby the wind, dust, and haze of the Mojave Desert. It was the firstmorning I had ever been in a desert. I usually just flew over it on myway somewhere. I looked at my watch. It was almost 0800 and thetemperature had already passed eighty-five degrees. By the time I gotback to my bunk my things were covered in a thin film of dust, eventhough my cot was about a hundred feet from the doorway. This wasgoing to be an interesting few weeks.

We were situated just off the main post at Fort Irwin in a makeshiftlogistical support area called LSA Longstreet, named after ConfederateGeneral James Longstreet. The living quarters were tents that were largeenough to hold two companies with the standard army-issue cots. Theentire brigade was on the FOB and was broken down into battalionareas. Our chow halls consisted of concrete slabs with overhead coverthat provided little protection from the desert sand blowing into ourfood. The showers were centrally located at the head of the tent city,and to the dismay of Delta Company we were located across the streetfrom the female tent area. Great idea to put the infantry companiesthere. Remember that later on during our time at the national trainingcenter.

A lot of white time was built into the schedule at NTC. This wasalways a good thing, so squads and teams had the chance to train onthings that the NCOs felt needed improvement. The leadership thosefirst few days was busy with briefings about the area of operations andtaking language and negotiations training on main post. In additionto the white-time training, the company was randomly tasked outas a quick reaction force (QRF) or told to conduct a presence patrolalongside the road outside the FOB. All in all the men were definitelygetting used to the hurry up and wait theory that would continue to bea big part of our mobilization.

The good-idea fairy struck again at LSA Longstreet the first week wewere there. The NCO in charge of the FOB was convinced he needed todrill into everyone the necessity of maintaining space and not bunchingup while moving around the FOB. It was probably the funniest thing atNTC to see the soldiers standing ten feet apart while waiting in line atBurger King or the phone trailer. A line that was normally fifteen feetlong would become one hundred and fifty feet long and cross the PXAvenue, where all the shops and food stands were.

One day my platoon had about four hours of time to kill beforeconducting language training, and a few of the soldiers asked the squadleaders if they could climb the hill just south of the LSA. I had noproblem with it and sent the request up through the channels as aphysical training event. The exercise was okayed, but unfortunately, theother officers and I couldn't go. We were with CPT Tuttle conductingmore negotiations training, but I was glad the platoon had a good timethat morning. They took assault packs, water, and MREs up the largehill and spent about an hour up there. Each squad took pictures next toa makeshift flag they had made the night before that read: Hooligans,3rd Platoon, Delta, 3-172 IN (MTN).