Long read, but well worth it.
I can't even begin to thank the wonderful men and women who put their lives at risk to protect our country. They are an exceptional and special breed. Please be sure to check out the slide show at the end of the article.
I want to make mention of a wonderful friend who from the PA National Guard who lost his live in Iraq, a month before he was due home.
Although time has passed, you have not been forgotten Gennaro Pellegrini. Your famiy misses you, the 26th District at the PPD misses you, your friends miss you, and I miss you. You gave the ultimate sacrifice and you will NEVER be forgotten. R.I.P. Jerry. :(
Pa.-based Stryker brigade trains for Iraq
By Tom Infield
Inquirer Staff Writer
FORT POLK, La. - Simulated bombs were going off noisily. Smoke grenades were exploding. Blank rifle shots were popping all around.
This was just a training exercise amid the pines of Louisiana, but it felt very real. And for a platoon of Pennsylvania National Guard soldiers headed to Iraq, it was about to teach a lesson.
Sgt. First Class William King jumped from the rear of an armored Stryker vehicle and started to lead his men into the woods to pick up a wounded soldier. Abruptly, an instructor shouted out, "Hey! Hey! Come back here!"
"What's this?" the instructor asked coldly, pointing to the side of the road.
King looked down and saw an artillery shell half-buried in the dirt. His shoulders sagged.
"And what's that?" the instructor asked, motioning to a spot a few feet away.
It was a second artillery round, wired to the first to make what appeared to be a powerful bomb.
"What happened?" the instructor asked.
King, 39, of Manheim, Lancaster County, looked annoyed - at himself.
"We got killed," he said.
The lesson?
Pay attention, of course.
A veteran platoon sergeant, King certainly knew that. It hurt only his pride to be reminded. "This is how you learn," he said later.
Come January, King and his men - who, overall, did quite well in the exercise - will go to Iraq for about eight months with the 56th Stryker Brigade Combat Team.
The 4,000-member brigade, headquartered in Northeast Philadelphia and drawn from armories across the state, will be the largest group of Pennsylvania guardsmen sent to a combat zone since World War II.
Best of equipment
The brigade is historic in other ways, too.
Its commander, Col. Marc Ferraro, called it the best-equipped brigade the Army has yet sent to Iraq - not just among Guard units, but among all units. No more "hand-me-downs" from the regular Army, he said.
The brigade is equipped with 300 Strykers, the most up-to-date troop carrier the Army has. The current version has been upgraded from the Strykers first deployed to Iraq after the 2003 invasion.
Of seven Stryker brigades in the Army, only the 56th is attached to the Guard.
The unit has been training for two years. The complexity of learning all about new vehicles and new communications equipment required many soldiers to give up more than 100 days a year while struggling to stay in college or hold down a job.
"It's a big commitment for the soldiers, and families as well," Ferraro said. "There was a lot of extra training."
Called up for a year of full-time duty in September, the brigade spent about 45 days undergoing infantry training at Camp Shelby, Miss. It arrived early this month at Fort Polk for six weeks of advanced exercises at the Joint Readiness Training Center. The troops will get a 10-day home leave at Christmas and depart for Iraq around the second week of the new year.
The entire National Guard is counting on the Pennsylvania troops to advance its reputation, said Mark Deutsch, the command sergeant major of a battalion based in Plymouth Meeting.
"All eyes are on us," he said. "We are making history. We are here to show the world what we can do."
Another combat tour
Spec. Michael Smith, who served with a Pennsylvania Guard company that lost six men in Iraq in 2005, said of going back: "I'm shaking in my boots."
It was an unashamed comment, uttered as he stood next to a big, green Stryker stopped on a dusty road in a pine forest.
"I got lucky the first time," Smith said. "The second time, I might not get that."
Smith, 23, of Reading, formerly was a member of Alpha Company of the First Battalion of the 111th Infantry, the hardest-hit state Guard unit since World War II battles with the German army.
Of 132 Alpha survivors, 29 are returning to Iraq with the brigade, according to the Guard. Most had opportunities to get out of the Guard as their enlistments expired, so they have essentially volunteered to go to Iraq.
But some, including Smith, are being compelled to go under the military's "stop loss" program, which allows essential troops to be held in the ranks even if their enlistments are up.
Smith's enlistment was to run out next April. He'll have to stay until the brigade gets home five months after that.
He has a girlfriend and a 1-year-old at home.
He said he might have re-enlisted anyway. He really isn't sure. Whatever fears he may have, he said, he felt an obligation to remain with the men in his section.
"I've got a lot of guys looking up to me," he said. "I've got my times when I run my mouth a little bit, but when it's time for mission, it's time for mission."
Smith now belongs to First Battalion's Charley Company, which has several Alpha veterans in its ranks. Among them is the commander, Capt. Pete Muller.
Muller, of Clifton Heights, said about half of his 169 men were war veterans - some with the Guard, some with active-duty units in the Army or Marine Corps.
Since 9/11, about 4,000 Pennsylvania Guard troops have been deployed to Iraq, and about 1,000 have gone to Afghanistan. Thirty-two have been killed and 250 wounded.
Muller said the combat experience of so many added to his unit's readiness for Iraq.
"I would match these guys in my company up against anybody in the military right now," he said.
Danger up ahead
Third Platoon had been inching along for an hour. Its mission was "route clearance." The men were scanning the road for signs of planted bombs - fresh dirt, a pile of trash, maybe even a triggerman hiding in the trees.
King poked his head from the hatch. His vehicle commander was monitoring the road through a camera on a .50-caliber machine gun. One solider was manning a machine gun in back, and another was at a grenade launcher.
Four, with nothing to do for the moment, were talking on bench seats in the belly of the vehicle.
Sgt. James Zimmerman, 41, of Yukon, Pa., said he was leaving his pets - a pit bull, a beagle and a rabbit - at home. But his wife, Kolleen, is going to Iraq with him. She's also a sergeant in the Guard, a medical lab technician.
They were well aware when they married two years ago that one of them, or both, might be called up.
"I knew we were at war," Zimmerman said. "I could have gotten out. I didn't."
As the men sat half-dozing, King suddenly barked: "Everybody down in the hatches."
Up ahead, a bomb had erupted. From somewhere came a rocket-propelled grenade and the rattle of automatic rifles. The door dropped, and the men jumped out.
Quickly, four men from the platoon were down - two killed, two wounded.
"Just drag him. He's dead," Zimmerman, the platoon medic, yelled at several men trying to roll a man onto a litter.
King yelled for his guys to mount up again. Another wounded man was in the woods. They had to get him.
The Stryker lurched up the road, and King and his men jumped out again. It was then that they ran right into the half-buried artillery shells.
"Organized confusion." That was how King described it.
The Army, in training, "throws everything at you all at once," he said.
Better to overlook something in Louisiana than in Iraq.
|