Base Tour

Posted by mauer

Posted: February 16, 2007 - 9:53 am

FORWARD OPERATING BASE KALSU, Feb. 9 — Going to war doesn’t always mean going to fight.

Maj. Will Stewart and Capt. Carolyn Carden of the 725th Brigade Support Battalion.

Hundreds of soldiers from the 4th Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, based in Fort Richardson, rarely if ever get outside the wire — the blast walls and razor wire surrounding this sprawling base some 35 miles south of Baghdad.

Some of the soldiers are doing what they’ve been trained to do — the mechanics, electronics technicians, medics, warehouse and order clerks, and the gutsy troops who manage the ammo dump.

Other members of 725th Brigade Support Battalion don’t have their regular jobs. The riggers, who fold and prepare parachutes for the airborne troops, didn’t even bring their parachutes to Iraq. This isn’t the kind of war that calls for soldiers to drop from the sky. And the battalion’s cooks aren’t needed because all the food is prepared by contractors.

Medical tent crew.

So the riggers pull duty in the watchtowers or the helicopter landing zone. Some of the cooks are there too, and they also monitor the contractors or check IDs at the mess hall.

As part of my introduction to the brigade, I went for a drive around Kalsu with Maj. Will Stewart and Capt. Carolyn Carden of the support battalion.

Sgt. Jeremy Obst runs defensive operations.

Stewart, a paratrooper himself and the battalion’s executive officer, was one of the first officers assigned to build the brigade when he arrived at Fort Richardson in June 2005. He remembers someone pointing at a spot of ground there and saying, “There is where your building will be built.” Less than a year and a half later, they were a fully constituted brigade deployed in Iraq. His wife and three kids are back in Anchorage, where they live on base.

Lt. Michelle Kovachich in the shop.

Carden’s husband Don is also in the brigade, assigned to work with the Iraqi army on a military training team near Iskandariyah. Their two kids, ages 1 and 4, are with grandparents.

We stopped at medical tent, home of Charlie Co., the brigade’s medical unit. The trauma ward gets a soldier about once a week, including from the Iraqi army. They’re geared up for serious injuries, though the worst cases will be medivaced to Baghdad and from there, if necessary, Germany or the United States. There’s a dental office in another tent.

L to R: Spec. Sean Green, Warrant Officer Joseph Mazza, Sgt. 1st Class Leon Huggins. All work on electronics.

Sgt. Jeremy Obst runs base defensive operations. That means the guard towers, the gates and also the quick response team — the 911 force called out when someone gets in trouble outside the wire. Obst, like many of his own force, is a parachute rigger pulling other duties.

Lt. Michelle Kovachich is the shop officer, in charge of fixing electronics, humvees, monster vehicles that test for roadside bombs, and most everything else. Stuff gets blown up, filled with dust, and just plain worn out from use and abuse. Like everyone else in the unit, she has to practice jumping out of planes, though not here in Iraq.

Lt. Isaac Watson in the warehouse area.

Specialist Sean Green, Warrant Officer Joseph Mazza and Sgt. 1st Class Leon Huggins were working on electronics when we walked by. Some of it is classified gear that helps identify where humvees and other equipment of friendly forces are in a battle. The United States has not provided that gear to the Iraqi army. One result was that when the Jan. 28 battle in Najaf lingered into the night, Iraqi forces were sent out of the battle, in part to prevent them from being accidently bombed.

Lt. Isaac Watson runs the warehouse and supply operation. His staff, like Sgt. Melanie Hunter, who compared her job to those in the warehouse of Home Depot, place the orders and unload and secure the stuff, from ammo to food to replacement vehicles. Most of it arrives by the super convoys of 20 to 50 semi trucks that drive all night at reckless speeds from Kuwait to avoid ambush and bombs. The Army has named the four-lane highway, built by Saddam, as Route Tampa. Along the way, roadside scanners read the mircochips embedded in the cargo so Hunter can tell where any shipment is along the road.

Spec. Fabian Gloria at the ammo dump.

Watson came with us to the ammo dump, at a far corner of the base, even more distant the detention facility. “All it does is hold bullets — bullets and bombs, is all,” he said.

Stationed there is Spec. Fabian Gloria. “If it happens, it happens,” he said, fatalistically, at the thought of a mortar or rocket landing there. The place is designed to send the force of a blast straight up.

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