Oh, Irbil province... :-)
Posted on 01/03/2005 11:44:39 AM PST by chava
DIYANAH, Iraq -- The sun has not yet touched the snowy peak of Korek, the 6,943-foot mountain that towers over Forward Operating Base Round Top. But already, Staff Sgt. Steve Bond is up preparing breakfast for his Charlie Company platoon.
"It's beautiful, isn't it?" says Bond, who has been here nearly seven months and still starts each day in awe of the postcard-perfect scenery -- unlike anything he'd see back home in Waterford. "I haven't minded this one bit."
Nor have the people in this northeast corner of Iraq minded having Bond and his comrades from the Maine Army National Guard's 133rd Engineer Battalion. When they depart this outpost at the end of this day and return to their main base two hours away in Mosul, the Maine soldiers will be missed by people who came to know them not as invaders or occupiers or easy targets for a remote-controlled bomb.
Not a chance. Here in Irbil Province, part of what is commonly called Kurdistan, the people came to know the Americans as friends.
First with Alpha Company and then with Charlie Company, the 133rd labored hard here to build health clinics and schools and community centers. The soldiers repaired old roads and created new ones, cut ribbons while local television cameras rolled and brought candy and school supplies to legions of smiling children.
They dined with local leaders, haggled with savvy contractors and, on virtually every project, made sure that the finished product co-mingled American and Iraqi sweat and ingenuity.
They even adopted a gray-and-white puppy with oversized paws and a voracious appetite for anything the Bond and his fellow cooks had to offer. Her name is Puddles.
"That's 'cause she pees a lot," says Bond, chuckling as Puddles reveled in a slice of beef jerky.
The work done by Alpha and Charlie company here, just like the dozens of similar projects completed by Bravo Company in neighboring Dohuk Province, grew from the determination of Lt. Col. John Jansen, the 133rd's commander, to leave a lasting, positive imprint on Iraq during the battalion's 12-month deployment.
With Mosul far too dangerous to carry out such missions, Jansen, who makes his home in Mount Vernon, sat down last spring with a civil affairs battalion attached to Operation Iraqi Freedom's Task Force Olympia and asked where his 500-plus engineer soldiers might do what they do best.
From there, the two-province improvement plan soon sprouted. Jansen still remembers sitting down with Brig. Gen. Carter Ham, the task force commander, to make his pitch.
"I go to the first slide, and he says, 'Move out,' " Jansen recalls. "I go to the second slide, and he says, 'Move out.' "
His finger poised over his computer mouse, Jansen finally turned to Ham and said, "Sir, I guess you don't want to see the whole presentation, do you?" "Move out," replied Ham.
And so they did.
The 133rd's three "line companies" -- Alpha, Bravo and Charlie -- spent months in remote forward positions. Now, with their deployment winding down, they've begun packing up their equipment, sharing one last glass of tea with local leaders and pulling back to Forward Operating Base Marez in Mosul. But not without, on this last day of Charlie Company's forward deployment, a final tour.
TWIZZLER 'AMMO'
The four-Humvee convoy sets out just after breakfast. Led by Jansen and Capt. Michael Mitchell of Embden, commander of Charlie Company, the trip will cover but a fraction of the projects that fill the map -- a colored pin for each job site -- inside FOB Round Top's tactical operations center.
Down a paved two-lane highway the Humvees rattle, suddenly veering off onto a gravel side road that hairpins high up into the mountains. Jansen turns and removes the packing tape on two large cardboard boxes crammed between the seats.
Inside are boxes of Crayola crayons, plastic bags stuffed with sunglasses and enough candy -- strawberry Twizzlers, Wonka Bottlecaps, peppermint Life Savers -- to take on an army of young Kurdish children. All of it came from the people back home in Maine.
Jansen picks up a pack of Twizzlers and smiles.
"Ammunition," he says.
VILLAGE'S NEW CLINIC
The first stop: Sharokian Village, a hamlet of 80 families, or 400-plus people, about 20 minutes from FOB Round Top. From a distance, one building stands out: a one-story structure with a slightly pitched metal roof perched on a newly graded gravel clearing above the village houses.
It's Sharokian Village's new health clinic.
Waiting to greet the visitors is Muhammad Sheroky, 47, the village chief. He takes them on a tour of the clinic, explaining through an interpreter how the soldiers built the basic structure -- a waiting room, two examining rooms, office and storage space, a bathroom -- and installed the generator, the electrical wiring and the plumbing.
The Americans hired Sheroky and the villagers to finish the walls with gypsum and paint and to install the blue porcelain tile floors. Over the main door to the clinic, side by side, hang colored computer printouts of two flags. One is American. The other is Kurdish.
"Come," Sheroky says to his visitors, motioning toward his house below. "The tea is ready."
He sits cross-legged on his immaculate Persian rug while his 15-year-old son, Gaylan, scurries from guest to guest with glasses of piping hot, sweet tea. Outside, the village is quiet, tranquil.
It wasn't always that way.
It happened in 1989, on the heels of the Iraq-Iran war. One day, without warning, Saddam Hussein's troops rolled up the winding road in tanks. They announced over a loudspeaker that the residents of Sharokian Village had five minutes to leave -- if they stayed, they would be killed. Five minutes later, the tanks leveled the village.
"We had no power to resist this man," Sheroky says. "Some fled to Iran. Some others went to collective towns (that Saddam left standing)."
For two years, until Operation Desert Storm in 1991, the region remained off-limits. Iraqi fighters and helicopter gunships patrolled the skies day and night, he says.
And?
"Anything that moved," he says, "they killed."
After Desert Storm ended and the United States imposed a no-fly zone over northern Iraq, the villagers gradually returned. They rebuilt their houses, restocked their herds of goat and sheep, replanted their terraced fields.
With Saddam gone, Sheroky says, the Kurds feel more secure than ever. Since their new clinic was completed last month, they've begun the search, through their district government, for a doctor to come once or twice a week and attend to their medical needs.
But the concrete building's significance extends far beyond improved health care.
"This clinic builds a relation between the Kurdish people and the Americans," Sheroky says. "We know why the soldiers are here. They are here to help us."
'WE ARE NO LONGER ALONE'
The 133rd's farewell tour continues.
The convoy stops next at Kawnagund Village, slightly larger than Sharokian Village and another recipient of a new health clinic.
Ramazan Hamad, 32, a village spokesman, echoes Sheroky when asked what this means to his small community.
"The meaning is the relationship, the friendship, between our people and the American people," he says. "The meaning is we are no longer alone."
As he speaks, dozens of children come running from every direction. Out comes Jansen's candy.
"You! You!" the kids holler, climbing over one another to reach the sweets. "You! You! You!"
A bag of Hershey Kisses splits down the side, and the foil-wrapped pieces of chocolate cascade to the ground. The small human wave descends on them and, within seconds, the ground is bare.
A few yards away, Hamad and the other adult men watch with bemused smiles. They've seen this all before. It happens whenever the Americans come.
WORK ALWAYS GETS DONE
Onward, across an hour of sometimes smooth, sometimes bumpy road, to the town of Khalifan.
Here, sometime in the next week or two, the 16,000 residents will open their new community center -- a warren of offices surrounding an open courtyard that only months ago lay in abject ruin. Again the local leader -- Mayor Rizgar Hassan Nasir -- appears. Again, he talks about how much his company appreciates the American help, how soon there will be offices here to house much-needed social services.
"This will be the place how to learn our young guys to use the computer," Nasir says.
Capt. Mitchell takes it all in with a twinkle in his eyes. Getting this job done, getting any job done in these parts, he says, was not easy.
You need to learn local politics before handing out subcontracts, he says. You also need to accept that kickbacks are a way of life.
"We've pumped almost $700,000 into this community," Mitchell says. "And still, they're coming to us every day, saying, 'Can you do this project? Can you build this road?' "
Mitchell credits Sgt. 1st Class Peter Kelley of Scarborough with riding herd on subcontractors who dragged their heels, maybe even tried on occasion to milk the system.
"Sergeant Kelly's had to tell them a few times, 'Look, stop what you're doing and do this! This doesn't get done -- and you don't get paid!' " Mitchell says.
The work, sooner or later, always got done.
From the community center's roof, one can look across town to a new bypass that runs parallel to Khalifan's muddy, congested main street. Alpha Company built the two-mile road -- start to finish -- last spring and summer.
"I think this town will really grow," Jansen says, staring out at the new thoroughfare. Already, he points out, "there are so may new buildings out there."
ATTENDING A WEDDING
Site visits completed, the convoy steers out of Khalifan and heads for Diyanah. At Jansen's request, they take the scenic route -- a breathtaking ride through a deep canyon cut over the millennia by the Rawindus River.
The convoy stops frequently at scenic overlooks. Each time, soldiers spill out of the Humvees and take turns photographing one another.
Approaching Diyanah, Jansen tells Spc. Jason Riordan of Norway, his driver, to make one last stop at Jundian Falls, a tourist area where water from a huge mountainside spring cascades down a maze of man-made channels. But there are two problems.
First, the spring is all but dry this time of year. No waterfalls.
Second, there's a wedding in full swing.
Jansen tries to order a U-turn, but the elders of the two families come running, hands outstretched and smiles on their faces. The next thing the lieutenant colonel knows, he's being escorted through a throng of dancing men and women into an adjacent restaurant.
There, Jansen and others in his party are photographed, over and over, with Hameed Ismail, the nervous 24-year-old bridegroom, and Miryam Guli, 21, the petrified bride.
Back outside, more candy for the children. More handshakes and greetings.
"Well, there's a first," Jansen muses, as the Humvees finally exit the parking lot. "That's the first wedding we've crashed."
FOOD, LIFE IS GOOD
On to teeming downtown Diyanah, where Mitchell directs the convoy to his favorite restaurant. The dozen Americans feast on lamb, beef and chicken kabobs, fried chicken, green salads and mounds of freshly baked bread.
Majeed Soramy, the 133rd's professional interpreter, discreetly approaches the owner to inquire about the bill. Mitchell will hear none of it -- this one's on him.
Soramy protests.
"Any more trouble from you," deadpans Capt. Mitchell, a Maine State Police detective, "and you're fired!"
Jansen hears the exchange. Now he, too, wants to know about the bill.
"Any more from you," Mitchell tells his commanding officer, "and you're fired too!"
The long table explodes with laughter. On this afternoon, in this restaurant, in this faraway corner of Iraq, life is good.
One more stop remains before heading back to FOB Round Top.
In the back of one Humvee sit dozens of large boxes in clear plastic bags. They're full of toys collected by Matt Jones, the son of Sgt. Randall Jones, and his classmates at the Agnes Gray School back home in West Paris. The toys will go to the children at Soran Hospital. It's right down the street from the Diyanah Institute for Prosthetic Rehabilitation.
Along the way, a teenage Kurdish boy sees the Humvees approaching and reaches into his pocket. He pulls out his brightly colored wallet and opens it wide for the passing soldiers to see.
It's an American flag.
'HERE WE GO'
The sun sits low in the sky as the convoy pulls into FOB Round Top. Korek Mountain now casts a long shadow over what soon will be an outpost for the Iraqi border patrol.
Staff Sgt. Bond's cooking equipment is packed and good to go. Other members of Charlie Company have loaded their gear aboard trucks that, after all these months, will carry them back to their battalion.
Jansen disembarks his Humvee and, moments later, is hunched over the company's radio along with Spc. Anthony Sturgis of Lewiston. The look on the battalion commander's face forecasts the bad news: There's been an attack on a 133rd convoy in Mosul. There are casualties.
"Three hurt," Jansen says. "One litter-borne, two ambulatory. That's all we know. We'll find out more when we get back."
The convoy drives through the darkness toward Mosul, where none of this -- the health clinics, the community centers, the carefree outdoor weddings, the dining out on the captain's nickel -- will happen anytime soon.
Two hours later, passing beneath Mosul's outer arch, Jansen gets on his radio and orders the gunners up in their turrets. Master Sgt. Greg Madore of Saco, tightening his grip on his M-16, peers intently out his up-armored side window.
The burly master sergeant looks around the Humvee and speaks, for the first time in miles, to no one in particular.
"OK," Madore says, resignation in his voice. "Here we go."
Oh, Irbil province... :-)
Why dont we just protect the Kurdistani's and any other peaceful tribes that want us to and let the rest just fight it out amongst themselves?
Thank you so much for the report. During the past year, I sent care packages, cards and letters to a 133rd unit.
It is surpassingly sad that I will not see any of this in Old Media, in the light it should be shown, with unabashed pride in our servicemen and women and their awesome accomplishments in OIF.
Great Good News post!
ping!
What's up with the pic......I am just curious?
HUH?
Great Good News post!
Something tells me it has something to do with girbils and Gere.
Great way to honor our troops/sarcasm..
Thanks for the ping! A rarity...a good news story from Iraq!! God Bless our troops for all that they are doing!!!
Thanks again for posting. Don't be discouraged by asinine, off-topic stuff; it always occurs on topics like this.
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