All gave
some and some gave All
The Best
there is of that there is no doubt.
Searching,
Looking; Many “Tours” gone by.
Friendships
made and renewed
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To be there for those that are out there yet.
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And so The Circle continues to grow.
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Each one
Knowing they will Never Forget
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The Family of The Herd
The
173rd
Sky
Soldiers.
It`s 0nly the
Land
of the Free 
BECAUSE of the Brave!
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Through
Our Bunker~s...
.
The hardest job, the dirtiest
Infantryman.
Our doughboys come from Brooklyn
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'Grunts' labor through security duty Elite Army paratroopers have an important job - but away from the action. |
,
Northern Iraq -
They
get up at first light. "Stand to," the sergeants say, shaking the feet of the
unstirring.
Mornings here have been bitterly cold, so they keep on their snivel gear (that's what they
call hats and fleece tops) as they wait for Habib (that's what they call the sun) to get a
little higher in the sky and start beaming warmth. Before they eat or brush their teeth, they check and clean their weapons.
None of them get uninterrupted sleep, because they run guard shifts - two hours on, four
hours off. They have to do that, because they are providing security for hundreds of other
soldiers - mainly rear-echelon types they call "pogues," for "People Other than Grunts,"
who sack out on cots in thick tents a half-mile away near headquarters. These
guys don't have cots. They are an infantry platoon. They bed down on thin, inflatable pads under cursory shelters made from ponchos stretched over stakes. Instead of sleeping bags, they use thin poncho liners and waterproof covers. When the cold becomes unbearable, they snuggle up together, unashamedly.
This
particular collection of 40 paratroopers
is known as Second Platoon, one of three in Able Company, which is one of three rifle
companies in the Second Battalion, 503d
Airborne Infantry. Men
like them were once the bedrock of the Army, though in this war they have been eclipsed by
tanks and planes and fancy bombs. Their
gear and food and weapons are better, but they live the way foot soldiers have lived for
thousands of years. They perform difficult, monotonous tasks and usually aren't told why.
They wallow in dirt and have no place to wash. They go to the bathroom in a trench that
they dig themselves and cover over when they leave. This reporter has spent the last week living with them at their checkpoints around what the Army calls Bashur air base.
"It's a strange paradox," said Sgt. Chris Charo, 24, of Saratoga, N.Y.,
"because as much as we hate living like this, it's a point of pride." They are part of the Vicenza, Italy-based 173rd Airborne Brigade, a force of about 2,000 men who, other than some special forces soldiers, are the only U.S. troops in this part of Iraq. The brigade's mission has been to secure the airfield and to bring in more firepower for future operations.
In
the field, living 24 hours a day with men they have known and worked with for two years,
they speak in sentences laced with profanity. Their jokes are dark and unprintable. But
most are mature, thoughtful, well-informed men. The eldest, Troy Ezernack, 37, of
Shreveport, La., was once a pastor in Lancaster. Most say they joined the Army to serve their country, but now their biggest concern is one another.
"I've got 39 families just praying right now that I bring their sons back home,"
said Sgt. First Class Jason Gueringer, 30, of Los Angeles, the platoon sergeant who runs
things along with Lt. Larry Lee, 33, of San Francisco. At the airfield, some soldiers have Internet access, crude bathrooms and showers. The men of Second Platoon clean themselves with wet-naps and hand sanitizers. One day, as a treat, they got to wash their feet and socks in a creek.
To the grunts,
though, their deployment is a relative picnic, because it hasn't rained. When they last
did field training in Germany, they spent 15 days living under cold drizzle in
near-freezing temperatures. Here, the challenge is the whipsawing temperatures.
Habib is their Middle Eastern variant on the usual Army name for the sun - Bob, for Big Orange Blob. Habib is a friend in the early hours, but he becomes fierce and unforgiving in the afternoons, especially to the men in the open. At night, the temperatures in this high, hilly landscape plunge into the low 40s. The paratroopers
hate sitting as glorified security guards, fingering their machine
guns and M-4 rifles. They are elite soldiers, better trained than the average grunt. The
problem is, once they jump out of the airplane they are just another lightly armed group
of ground-pounders in a war being fought by men in armored vehicles and jets.
As they listen on short-wave radios to the war raging to the south of them, soldiers here have mixed feelings about wanting to be part of the action.
"Part of me wants to get into it," said Staff Sgt. Tim Hogan,
28, a squad leader from Eagle Point, Ore. "Because you don't come all the way out here to sit in the sun. But on the other hand, the longer
I can avoid getting my guys shot at, the happier I am."
The grunts have
seen no Iraqis but have seen plenty of Kurds, whom they call "Hadjis,"
after the turban-wearing character in the old Jonny Quest cartoon series. It's not
meant as a slur. The paratroopers have gratefully eaten the warm bread and rice that Kurdish soldiers and civilians have often dropped off for them.
When the sun disappears and darkness falls, most of those not on sentry duty go to sleep, because they are prohibited from using white light out in the field. Some turn on their red-lens field flashlights and write in their journals.
"We've got to push ourselves every single day to live so we can see our loved ones back home," Staff Sgt. Jay Pasion, a native of Guam, wrote in his recently. "I think about my wife, Silvia, and my 1-year-old baby girl, Jasmine, every day.... I have to survive so I can go home and see their faces again."
Then they put back on their snivel geer and try to stay warm as wind whips through their position and the temperature falls.
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Veteran salute successors in
173rd
By Eric Peterson Daily Herald Staff Writer |
Bob "Ragman" Getz of Bartlett got together with some old Army buddies last week
to toast their successors in the 173rd
Airborne Brigade
after the younger men parachuted into northern Iraq.
Getz, who works as assistant to the vice president for construction and special projects
at Harper College in Palatine, is a Vietnam
War veteran
just elected to the Elgin Community College board.
The 173rd
Airborne Brigade
he
once served in
is now acting as a replacement for the other U.S. troops who were not allowed to use
Turkey as an entry point into northern Iraq.
This is the first time since the Vietnam War the 173rd
has been used for this type of airdrop mission
- and that was the first since World War II.
Although Getz, who was a commander in the brigade, did not personally participate in the
Vietnam airdrop, one of his friends did.
Everyone in the brigade is trained for such a parachute mission, and Getz found it easy to
empathize with the more than 4,000 men now acting as an independent force in the desert
north of the major battles so far.
"It's very difficult," Getz said. "They're probably scared to death. People
should pray for them and send them letters.
Moving as quickly as they are and having arrived in Iraq by the route they did, the men of
the 173rd
are living a life as hard as they ever trained for, Getz said. They are sleeping wherever
they can and expecting danger at any moment as they block any attempt by enemy troops to
flee north. "They don't have the reporters with them so we have to wait to find out what they're up to," Getz said.
The 59-year-old said he and his fellow Chicago-area veterans feel a protective pride over their successors. When there was prior speculation of another group being sent on the northern mission, the friends joked that they knew it would really be the "better" 173rd Brigade.
"But I don't want to give the feeling we're in favor of war," Getz said. "Once you go through a horrific event, you don't want to see anyone else go through it. The president and the Congress have committed us to this war, so you have to support the troops. And when you support, you have to support whole-heartedly.
"
Getz also feels sympathy for the Iraqi people and soldiers, even those firing at American
troops. The pride they feel in defending their homeland from invasion cannot be much
different than that Americans would feel in the same situation, he said. "It's very hard for them to look at us as saviors and conquering heroes when they lost family members in the last war, which was only 10 years ago."
Death will always affect the mindset of people on either side in a war, he said. When American soldiers became the victims of a recent suicide bombing involving a pregnant woman, their comrades' impression of Iraqi civilians was inevitably changed.
"The rest of the Americans around that are not going to be the same that they were the day before," Getz said.
"I don't envy Mr. Bush or the Congress," Getz said. "A lot of good or terrible things can happen. If you allow (the Iraqis) to pick their own leader, how do you know that they're not going to pick someone you hate? We can't be there telling them how to run their own country."
But as a retired soldier himself, Getz's thoughts are mostly with the troops and hoping for the safe return of the 173rd's current members.
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Playing diplomat for a day
|
 KIRKUK,
Iraq -
He
has never set foot in the State Department, but 30-year-old Capt. Eric Baus, of
Collingswood, N.J., was the man conducting diplomacy for the United States in this
strategically important northern city yesterday.Baus, a company commander in the Army's 173rd Airborne Brigade, began the day with what seemed a fairly straightforward mission: clear and occupy a compound that had been the center of municipal government under Saddam Hussein.
 After
hours of negotiating with Kurdish officials and militiamen occupying the center, Baus and
his paratroopers
had learned a lesson about what U.S. forces face as they seek to restore order while
keeping a lid on volatile ethnic tensions: Nation-building makes winning a war look easy.
 "This
is just a power struggle, and we can't get in the middle of
it," Baus said at one point, as he tried to figure out the difference between Kurdish
police, who will be allowed to carry guns in Kirkuk, and Kurdish soldiers, who are
supposed to be barred from the city altogether.
Baus' day started simply enough.
After
he got his orders, he set out in his humvee with about 40 infantry soldiers following on a
rented flatbed. Crowds of Kurds cheered and waved, as they have for every American vehicle
they see.
No one had bothered to tell Baus that Jalal Talabani, head of the Patriotic Union of
Kurdistan, the faction that holds sway in Kirkuk, had scheduled an appearance in the
building that Baus was intending to take.
His soldiers stood around, bristling with machine guns and grenades. As Baus waited, he spoke with Mahmoud Mahmoud, a
U.S.-educated civil-engineering professor.
Baus heartily agreed. He had spent his first weeks in territory controlled by the KDP, and now he was in PUK-land. His goal was to stay neutral and be seen as an independent force looking out for all the civilians in Kirkuk, a city that includes Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen.
After asking his advice about which sites in Kirkuk the 173rd should occupy as a show of force, Caraccilo and Baus spent several minutes requesting that Abdulkadir clear all the soldiers out of the building.
"I don't understand why you need guards with machine guns," Baus said. "If
you stay here, we will protect you. If you have civilian staff, that's fine." He added: "Whether it's official or unofficial, this can't turn into a PUK political office."
When it was over, Caraccilo rolled his eyes. "We're going to decide who we're going to put in the regime in Baghdad next, too," he said wryly.
For the moment, the well-armed Kurds seemed willing to follow American orders. Peace
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As Turkey casts wary
eye on Kurdish-held territory, U.S. forces move into position for a fight with Iraqis
|
 NORTHERN IRAQ - After
two weeks deep in Kurdish-held territory, elements of the 173rd
Airborne Brigade,
now supported by newly arrived tanks from the First
Infantry Division,
moved south yesterday to within 20 miles of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan had said earlier
that Kurdish control of Kirkuk or nearby Mosul would be grounds for a Turkish invasion of
northern Iraq. Turkey and its neighbors Syria and Iran fear that Kurdish control of the
region and its oil would create a source of income to purchase weapons for use in trying
to create an independent state called Kurdistan, spanning an area that today covers parts
of the four countries.
Turkey has an estimated 40,000 troops along its 218-mile border with Iraq.
There are only an estimated 3,000 U.S. troops in northern Iraq, and it is unclear how they
would prevent Kurdish fighters from taking the cities or the local Kurdish population from
rising up against the remnants of Saddam Hussein's forces and taking control.
The first forward elements of the U.S. force had moved out of Bashur Air Base late
Tuesday, just hours after the first M1 Abrams tank rolled off a C-17 transport plane. The
rest of the brigade, with an unspecified number of tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles, is
to follow.
Commanders say they cannot discuss their plans publicly, but they promise that a ground
attack against Iraqi forces arrayed along the line with the Kurdish region is not far off.
A convoy of Kurdish guerrillas driving jeeps mounted with multiple rocket launchers and
towing artillery pieces was seen late yesterday near Chamchamal, 20 miles east of Kirkuk.
The commander said the guerrillas, known as peshmerga, had been ordered to deploy
on the front lines close to Kirkuk.
Iraqi forces at Mosul and Kirkuk, estimated as high as 40,000 troops with hundreds of
tanks, have been pounded for weeks by air strikes directed by 10th Special Forces Group
soldiers operating in the area.
Tuesday night, as the 173rd paratroopers bedded
down in a grassy field, thunderous booms erupted in the distance. Air Force combat
controllers traveling with the
paratroopers said U.S.
B-52 bombers were dropping loads of 2,000-pound satellite-guided munitions on the Kirkuk
positions. The special forces have been aiding Kurdish fighters in small ground battles against Iraqi forces. On Monday night, as many as 150 Iraqi soldiers were killed in one such encounter, special forces officers said in a briefing Tuesday. Two Iraqi prisoners were taken and were being interrogated by Kurds in the basement of the compound. Soldiers of the 173rd said they observed Kurds beating one bound prisoner.
The special forces briefing
offered insight into what essentially has been a low-visibility, non-conventional northern
front: Small numbers of highly trained U.S. troops, backed by air strikes, have helped
Kurdish peshmerga forces push Iraqis miles from their original positions.
The central issue is whether the Iraqi troops in the north, including those arrayed around
Kirkuk, will fight to the death or surrender.
Brigade officers of the 173rd acknowledge that their force is not large enough or strong enough to attack and defeat several mechanized divisions. What the highly mobile paratroopers can do, though, is secure key locations and destroy parts of the Iraqi lines in hit-and-run operations as they wait for the regime to collapse.
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Penned by a young Marine in the For all the free people that still protest. You're welcome, we protect you, and you're protected by the best. Your voice is strong and loud but who will fight for you no one standing in your crowd. We are fathers, brothers and sons, wearing the boots and carrying the guns. We are the ones that leave all we own, to make sure the future is carved in stone. We are the ones who fight and die, we might not be able to save the world, well, at least we try. We walked the paths to where we are at, and we want no choice other than that.
Corporal Joshua Miles and all the boys from
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Air
strikes push some Iraqis back on the northern front
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BASHUR,
"We saw the old Iraqi positions, and it looked like they had the living... bombed out
of them," said Capt. Eric Baus, a Collingswood, N.J., native and company commander. Elsewhere in northern Iraq, the heavy bombing of Republican Guard and Fedayeen paramilitary positions in the still-disputed town of Mankubah, 12 miles east of Mosul, continued. It was the third day of the battle, and the Iraqis had fought the Kurdish guerrillas and U.S. special forces to a standstill.
It remained unclear, even to senior commanders, how U.S. forces planned to take the
strategically important cities of Kirkuk and Mosul. With American tanks rolling through
Baghdad, there was a growing hope that no battles would have to be fought in the north at
all, that the Iraqi forces there would either surrender or melt away if Baghdad fell. No tanks or armor had yet been brought in to join the lightly armed 173rd paratroopers, though members of the First Infantry Division had been working for several days to facilitate such a delivery by air.
The reconnaissance mission, led by Lt. Col. Dominic Caraccilo, rolled out from Bashur
Airfield at dawn yesterday in a convoy of humvees. The paratroopers drew smiles, waves and
cheers as they drove through villages in this semiautonomous Kurdish enclave.
"I love you," one young girl yelled in English at the soldiers.
"Where are you going? Please stay," another man said in Kurdish as the
procession left one area.
In a telling moment, though, the convoy's Kurdish escort, from the Kurdistan Democratic
Party, refused to cross a checkpoint maintained by a rival faction, the Patriotic Union of
Kurdistan.
Robert Young, a retired Brigadier General who lived in the region from 1993 to 1994 and is
advising The 173rd, said he
worried that strife among the Kurdish factions was brewing just under the surface. The convoy eventually linked up with members of the 10th Special Forces Group, who are working with Kurdish forces and directing air strikes on Iraqi positions. The Special Forces escorted Caraccilo and his men to the Iraqi lines.
The Special
Forces Troops
reported that bombing had been so successful in the north that they were running out of
targets, Baus said.
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Special
 Ops
|
KUWAIT CITY --
As U.S. air and ground forces blast into Baghdad, dozens of CIA
Paramilitaries
and thousands of U.S.
Special Operations Troops
are waging a hidden war in Iraq shadows.
Under the cover of darkness, they're hunting and assassinating Baath Party members and
Republican Guard leaders, rigging selected bridges to explode when suspected Iraqi leaders
drive by in armored vehicles, and using viruses to disable computers at military command
centers, power plants and telephone networks. Their efforts, largely off-camera, burst into view with the dramatic rescue last week of Pfc. Jessica Lynch from a hospital in Nasiriyah where she was being held as a prisoner of war.
Lynch, 19, had been captured March 23 in an Iraqi ambush of an Army supply convoy. But most of what the Special Operations forces do has been conducted undercover. Their chief goal: finding and killing Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and other top officials.
The  Commandos'
efforts, seen and unseen began in October. They have paved the way for the rapid U.S.
advance on Baghdad, U.S. military and intelligence officials say. ''Special
ops and the agency's paramilitaries are the secret weapons of this war,''
says a U.S. military official with direct knowledge of the operations. ''Our conventional
forces would never have gone this far, so quickly, without them.''
''As a percentage of (overall war) effort, they are unprecedented for a war that also has
a conventional part to it,'' Army Maj. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, vice director of
operations of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last week in Doha, Qatar. ''It's probably
the most effective and the widest use of special operations forces in recent history.''
U.S. intelligence officials, who refuse to comment publicly about their operatives, say
there are about two dozen CIA
Paramilitaries, mostly
former military officers, inside Iraq. USA TODAY spoke with three senior intelligence
officials and three military officials for this story. When provided with a description of
the contents of this article, they made no request to withhold any of the story's details
from publication. Special ops 'playground'
CIA Paramilitaries and Special Operations Forces , joined by their British, Australian and Polish counterparts, have one mission in Iraq: to hasten the collapse of Saddam's government, U.S. officials say. If they can remove Saddam from power, U.S. officials say, support for his regime among Iraq's people and military will collapse. Officials hope that would force the Republican Guard to negotiate a surrender rather than fight U.S. forces that have encircled Baghdad and made forays into the capital.
U.S. military and intelligence officials say the Paramilitaries and Commandos have operated throughout Iraq:
Most of the work done by the CIA
Paramilitaries and Special Operations Forces is
conducted at night to take advantage of U.S. night-vision equipment.
Thursday hundreds of Special
Operations Troops
were flown by helicopters into the Iraqi capital after Baghdad lost power at 9 p.m. local
time, U.S. military officials say. The Pentagon denied reports that U.S. forces cut off
power there.
The Commandos
are helping other Special
Operations Forces
set up ambushes, search underground tunnel complexes and raid homes in hopes of killing
members of Saddam's regime. They've also set up checkpoints to isolate Baghdad from the
rest of the country.
The Commandos
remain in hiding in Baghdad, where they communicate with officials at Central Command in
Qatar and at CIA Headquarters in Langley, Va.
The Commandos and CIA Operatives
appear to be working together with few, if any, of the territorial disputes that have
plagued the Pentagon and CIA in the past, military and intelligence officials say. They
cite the rescue of Lynch as an example.
An Iraqi lawyer tipped off U.S. Marines that Lynch was being held at the hospital in
Nasiriyah. The paramilitaries tracked down the foreign contractor who built the facility
and passed on the global positioning satellite coordinates and layout of the hospital to
the Delta Force.
As Delta Commandos and other U.S. forces moved in, Marines, who control most of Nasiriyah, created a diversionary attack that occupied most of the Iraqi troops in the city. Army Rangers set up a perimeter around the hospital to prevent any other Iraqi troops from attempting to join the fight. Then, Delta Force and Navy SEAL Team 6 Commandos carried out the raid as an Air Force gunship and communication plane circled overhead.Getting
Saddam
CIA Paramilitaries and Special Operations Forces,
in particular the Army's
Delta Force,
face perhaps their toughest job yet: capturing or killing Saddam. Although the CIA says it cannot confirm whether Saddam is dead or alive, most intelligence officials say they believe he is probably hiding in an underground bunker or tunnel in the Baghdad area. But where is anybody's guess.
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Dear  American~
You don't know me, but I know who you are, and I will not forget.You are deploying from Fort Carson and Fort Hood and Fort Bliss and Fort Stewart. You hail from Middletown and Middleboro and Greenville and Redding and Thousand Oaks and Maple Tree. You are white, black, brown and yellow -- but always Americans first. You are with the 3rd Brigade Combat Team and the 10th Combat Support Hospital and the 571st Air Ambulance Medical Evacuation Company. You are with the 1st Cavalry Division and the 3rd Infantry Division and the "Iron Horse" 4th Infantry Division. You are Black Knights with the 2nd Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment. You are engineers, drivers and medics in the 13th Corps Support Command. You might be The 173rd Airborne or The 82nd Airborne or 101st Airborne! Your motto is "We Will," "Steadfast and Loyal," "Swift and Deadly." "Always Prepared," "First to Fight," and "No Task Too Tough,"or “Airborne ALL THE WAY!” You will be joined overseas by thousands of sailors and Marines on the USS Boxer and USS Bonhomme Richard and USS Cleveland and USS Dubuque and USS Anchorage and USS Comstock and USS Pearl Harbor. You will get support in the Gulf from an Airborne Infantry Brigade, a squadron of F-117 Nighthawk stealth fighters, and two squadrons of F-16CJ radar-jamming fighters. You have friends on the USS Constellation in the Persian Gulf, and the USS Harry S. Truman in the Mediterranean Sea, and the carrier USS Abraham Lincoln stationed at Perth, Australia, and the USNS Yano en route to the Red Sea, and the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson on its way to a training mission in the Pacific. You have classmates and colleagues and cousins who died at the Pentagon and in the Twin Towers on September 11. You have buddies who took bullets over the past year in Afghanistan and Kuwait and the Philippines during Operation Enduring Freedom. You have uncles and brothers and fathers and grandfathers who sacrificed their lives in past wars. Their deaths haunt you. Their heroism inspires you. Their footsteps beckon and you cannot resist.
As you pack your green Army duffel bags, press your desert camouflage fatigues, polish your boots and kiss your families goodbye, please take these words with you:Thank you. Thank you for answering the call to arms. Thank you for being fit and young and brave and willing. Thank you for loving freedom enough to put your own life on the line to defend it. Pay no attention to Sean Penn and Sheryl Crow and Baghdad Babs. Tune out the half-naked loonies and Flower Power leftovers. Stand tall. Fight hard. And know that there are legions of Americans who are boundlessly grateful for what you have volunteered to do. We know who you are. We will not forget. And we will pray every day for your safe return, and then you can visit with... Our |
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Vote
Here!
Ric
r0c
@
DR
GrafiX
GuestBտլk~
Casper's New Patriotic Page!
H00-
AH!
Musical selection: Skirashikkur Earth Trybe.
RIC
r0C
@
drgRAFIx`O8
BunKer~s