Posted on 04/09/2004 6:29:31 PM PDT by BenLurkin
CAMP VICTORY, KUWAIT - "The Things They Carried" was the title of a well-known Vietnam war reminiscence by Al Santoli that told the story of the war by describing the things the soldiers carried.
Almost a year after deployment to Kuwait and Iraq, the tales brought home by soldiers of the California National Guard are among the things they carry.
They carry other things, too. Laptop computers. Cell phones with expensive overseas "minutes plans." An endless succession of liter bottles of "Haji" water, mineral water bottled in Gulf states. Kool-Aid and Tang to flavor the water. Of course, DVD movies and collections ranging from Vin Diesel action flicks to, yes, the entire first season collection of "Green Acres."
Earlier this week, during the first hours of news that renewed fighting across Iraq had killed at least five Marines and other coalition troops, the unit's leaders were carrying hopes that their long journey of 2 million miles of road trips carrying supplies across Iraq was coming to an end.
"What I am hoping is that we can get our 'stray cats' home," 1st Sgt. James Norris said early Wednesday morning. "They have completed their mission, and it's time to come home."
Late at night in the 1498th Transporation Company headquarters, digitally remastered Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor serenaded each other to the amusement of a few soldiers more than ready to come home after nearly a year in Iraq and Kuwait.
The digital "rerun" of the old 1960s goofy sitcom provided a little comfort and irony as headquarters soldiers worked on paperwork needed to finish the troops' mission.
"Fresh air!" Eddie Albert declares in the cheery TV theme song first aired in 1965.
In 2004, the air outside the 1498th tents in Kuwait is dust-filled and the desert sky mixes patches of blue, gray and brown between seasonal sand storms that look like something from "The Mummy."
To her TV mate, Eva Gabor extols the benefits of "Times Square!"
Of course, she chirps about a pre-9-11 Times Square. And merrily, she coos, "Darling, I love you, but give me Park Avenue."
Anybody in this Guard company who has soldiered for more than a year in the cause of liberating Iraq during a guerrilla war against a murderous insurgency would take Times Square over Iraq and Kuwait's hot air.
Getting ready to go home, Staff Sgt. Linda Freeman inspects some emergency leave paperwork prepared for a soldier and muses aloud about her year in and out of the danger zones.
Freeman, one of the many "fiftysomething" soldiers of this slightly superannuated company, shifted from a truck-driving assignment that took her into the Sunni Triangle to a staff headquarters assignment in a metal shipping container equipped with computers, a TV and chocolate chip cookies from the PX.
After a year in Kuwait, new tents at Camp Victory have sprouted up like new tracts in the Antelope Valley. But these tracts are without design features and share a common color motif, dusty brown.
"I swear I will never wear anything brown again," she said. "My husband and I talked, and a trip to Australia or Hawaii, we could do that. What I really want is just to be home."
One of her fellow soldiers, Staff Sgt. James Nichols of Palmdale, smiles and nods agreement. Home with family seems better than parades.
"Home is where we ought to be," Nichols said. "Just home."
Along with the rucksacks and body armor, the DVDs and Camelback drinking systems, the soldiers carry memories.
Stories about combat encounters generally are told without embellishment and without self-glorification. Just the strange things they saw and the occasionally extraordinary things they did.
Sgt. Michael Dufresne, a scholar of medieval history, recalls that his journey to Iraq enabled him to see the storied gold-domed mosques and minarets that he taught about in classes to his gifted students.
While troops from the 1498th prepared to leave on their final missions, Dufresne was writing up paperwork for awards and commendations, like the Purple Heart paperwork for Sgt. Lafoia Mauga Jr., a "Screaming Eagle" 101st Airborne veteran of the first Gulf war, now a wounded veteran of the second.
A while back, Mauga was driving in an armed 1498th convoy and he injured his foot. Placed in the rear cab of one of the unit's heavy equipment transporter trucks, Mauga was attempting to achieve some comfort when a roadside bomb called an improvised explosive device was triggered, sending shrapnel tearing through the truck cab like an opener slicing a beer can. Mauga caught the shrapnel in the throat.
The next thing Mauga did, according to Dufresne, was to ignore his own wounds, evacuate the vehicle, then rescue the injured driver.
"Pretty heroic stuff," Dufresne said quietly.
Freeman, whose military career spans 30 years and began while the United States was still in Vietnam, wasn't afraid to acknowledge the fear she faced before moving from truck convoys into the staff job. Her respect for her fellow soldier, Dufresne, accompanied her memories of roadside attacks in the dangerous Fallujah area.
"Our truck got stuck, and I was there trying to dig out 60 tons with an "e-tool," an entrenching tool that was about the size of a fork. All I could think of was that I was going to get shot. And then I turned and there was Dufresne, helping me. I'd place my life in his hands any time."
The average age of soldiers in this Guard company composed of troops from the Antelope Valley, Riverside and Sacramento was 38, according to Norris. Thirty-eight is late in the day for combat soldiering. It's a time when many 20-year regulars contemplate early retirement.
Some of the soldiers heading out on their final missions Tuesday were well past the 50-year mark, like Staff Sgt. Jay Kallsen, who takes his teasing about being "the old man" in stride with a grin.
"We just tell the young soldiers in the regular Army that he's confused," joked Sgt. Doug Duhaime of Hesperia, a relative youngster in the unit, just shy of the 40-year mark.
"Keep it up," Kallsen, one of the convoy team leaders, joked back. "I'll get you up in a truck."
Duhaime was not on the "manifest" for the last set of driving missions.
Members of the unit are proud of their accomplishments and they are proud they are finishing the job they started when they were activated for overseas duty on Valentine's Day, 2003, just a month before President George W. Bush unleashed the invasion of Iraq and dubbed it "Operation Iraqi Freedom."
"This unit has done real well," said Sgt. William James Mathers of the Sacramento area, an Airborne Ranger who volunteered to serve as a combat support trucker. "These soldiers have driven through ambushes and they returned fire every time. They did what they were supposed to do. They were attacked, and they shot back. They shot back a lot."
In May, more than 260 of an original nearly 300 soldiers arrived at Camp Victory as part of the California Guard's contribution to Operation Iraqi Freedom. During 11 months, nearly 50 of those soldiers were sent home for reasons ranging from injuries to mental stress, to emergencies. Some of the soldiers who "have gone the distance" resent some of the soldiers who made the trip home early. Real emergencies and injuries were understood and forgiven, but some soldiers were suspected of slacking.
"These soldiers have done a lot of hard work out here. They shouldered the whole load, so some resentment is natural," a senior noncommissioned officer said.
Norris summed up the remarkable nature of the accomplishment of soldiers in the 1498th.
"I tell folks back home, try to imagine going camping for a year with 300 of your friends and see how you get along. We've been camping for a year, and when we started, 300 people didn't even know each other."
Now, the unit is getting ready to strike its tents and head for the "green acres" of home far away from the deserts of Kuwait and Iraq and the dangerous roads they have traversed.
Spc. Bruce Dobrowski prepared his giant truck for a last convoy mission up into the strife-torn Sunni Triangle, where fresh fighting had broken out in the past 48 hours.
The message chalked on the side of his big HET truck was straightforward: "San Diego Bound - Please Don't Shoot at Me."
The things they carried? Prayer rugs from Saudi Arabia and, in Staff Sgt. Gary Whaley's rucksack, an alarm clock shaped like a mosque that calls the faithful to prayer in a wail of Islamic zeal. He will carry that strange token back to his home in Sacramento.
Along with the prayer rugs and the prayer clock, no doubt, are the prayers of all the families waiting for their soldiers to come home with the things they carry, their keepsakes and their memories of a year spent on the wildest side of life imaginable to people who left their homes and families for service on one of the National Guard's longest weekends ever. EDITOR'S NOTE: Valley Press Editor Dennis Anderson has returned to Kuwait as the National Guard's 1498th Transportation Company prepares to return home from Operation Iraqi Freedom.
That's not far from the war-wide average, actually (35).
The Old Guys can still show the youngsters a few sneaky tricks, can't we, fellas?
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