Posted on 10/26/2005 6:24:22 PM PDT by SandRat
CAMP VICTORY, Iraq — A call for help is being answered.
But this time, instead of sending in the Marines, it is the Leathernecks who are seeking the help of the 69th Signal Company’s cable dogs.
A group of soldiers from the unit’s 1st Platoon, who will help put in a 40 miles fiber ring at an undisclosed Marine headquarters in this war-torn nation, left late Monday night on the assignment.
When the job is done, Sgt. 1st Class Bobby Brown said it would not surprise him if 70 miles of communication cables of all types are installed.
Since the 69th arrived about a half year ago, slightly more than 206 miles of communication lines have been installed by the unit’s soldiers, a distanced greater than from Sierra Vista to Phoenix.
The 69th’s mission is more than working with Army units.
“We’re a theater asset,” said Brown, the company’s noncommissioned officer in charge of operations.
Being a theater asset means doing any task that comes from the senior leadership in Iraq, to include working with all the services, other U.S. government agencies, non-government organizations and coalition forces.
Much of the supervisory work is done by young NCOs, the 22-year Army veteran said.
“Most NCOs here are very adaptable,” Brown said.” Most of the staff sergeants are on top of it.”
It’s the staff sergeants who lead the teams, he said, noting with sending of a team to help the Marine’s there will be four groups at off sites throughout the country, besides the ones at Camp Slayer and Victory. He said all the groups have strong NCOs.
Staff Sgt. John Enos is in the main leadership role for the 15 soldiers who will provide support to the Marines.
He was initially assigned to Company B, 40th Signal Battalion at Fort Huachuca.
Then a call went out for volunteers to deploy to Iraq with the 11th Signal Brigade’s 69th.
He raised his hand, but wasn’t chosen.
But 10 days before the company left and just after returning from a brigade field exercise on the southern Arizona post, Enos got the word he would be part of the 69th’s deployment.
Brown said mission tasking in Iraq is given to platoons that are between jobs. The object is not to take a group off a job and have them do something else unless it is a major priority change.
And, priorities do change.
As a team chief, Enos knows when cable dogs aren’t working they are unhappy.
“It gets worse if there’s nothing to do,” he said.
Or, as Brown puts it, “they grumble a lot.”
That is why some good old boy projects keep them happy and helps provide other services, such as installing TV cable for the Armed Forces Network in the living areas.
“Once the word gets out, cable dogs are here all kinds of requests come in,” he said.
He emphasized mission work is always first.
“We don’t rob Peter to pay Paul,” Brown said.
Like Enos, he volunteered to return to Iraq.
It’s Brown’s fourth deployment to one of the world’s hot spots. In 1991, he was part of Desert Shield/Desert Storm, the initial attempt to get Saddam Hussein’s attention to change his ways.
After the terrorist attacks on the United States in 2001, Brown went to Afghanistan. Brown also took part in the pre-invasion and attack on Iraq, which took him away from his wife and daughter.
He now expects this yearlong deployment will be his last as he prepares for retirement.
For Enos, this is his first time in Iraq, although he has been to Kuwait before. The 11-year Army veteran, too, has a family in Arizona — a wife and two sons.
Enos looks at soldiering as a pact between an individual and the country.
No one forces a person to enlist, and he tells his soldiers “you put your name on that piece of paper.”
What he expects is that they work.
“As long as they don’t quit, that’s all I expect,” the staff sergeant said.
The mission for the Marines will be hard, and the 69th will prove they are worthy of respect, he said.
Spc. Nicholas Kujaczynski looks forward to the job.
Saying he was glad to have been picked, the soldier said, “It will be a good learning experience. Perhaps I will earn some new things.”
The work will also help the time go faster.
Brown said being the only active-duty Army unit fully dedicated to installing communication lines the 69th is being tasked heavily.
Occasionally cable material is not readily available, and jobs may not be started. It is up to the organization that wants the work done to ensure the material is on hand, he said.
The 69th provides the tools and soldiers to accomplish a mission.
“It’s back-breaking labor,” the NCO said, adding the lines have to be buried or placed in underground conduits.
Often going into underground passages means using manholes, and those areas have water, sewage and rats in them “which they (the soldiers) don’t like,” Brown commented.
Although the GIs complain about pushing cable through what in essence is a sewer system, they do it knowing it has to be done.
With a small laugh and slight smile on his face, Brown said the cable dogs work fast when it comes to certain type of conditions.
But the 69th’s soldiers always work fast, usually cutting the time of an estimated job in half, even if they have to dig trenches by hand, which in the Iraq soil can take hours.
While Brown makes sure the company’s tasking is done through controllers, he also runs the administrative, training and supply functions for the 69th.
He handpicked soldiers — all cable dogs.
“They are the forgotten few,” he said, noting the jobs they do eliminate worries for the deployed soldiers.
SENIOR REPORTER Bill Hess can be reached by e-mail at bill.hess@svherald.com.
I hope the Army is decent enough to pet and feed them.
Oops got it backwards, I hope the Marines are decent enough to pet and feed them.
PING
Isn't all of the Army a bunch of Gog Face GIs to the Marines?
What is the breed?
Mmmm... fiber. :-)
I have no idea.
BTTT
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