To track A1/5 search Gordon Dillow on News.google.com. He's with the Orange County Register
GEAR AND GOO: Pfc James Welter of Chicago and other members of the 2nd Platoon of Alpha Company clean their equipment early Wednesday after a dust storm turned into a mudbath as rain fell overnight in Iraq.
MARK AVERY / The Register
Lance Cpl. Brad Rusher of Carthage, S.D., maintains radio contact with an artillery battery during a sandstorm Tuesday in Iraq.
MARK AVERY / The Register
1st Battalion, 5th Marine division members Pfc. James Emerson of Billings, Mont., from left, Cpl. Steven Moore of Quincy, Ill., and Cpl. Johnny Daniel of Porterville try to rest while riding atop equipment in the back of an amphibious assault vehicle.
MARK AVERY / The Register
In the wind-blown Iraqi desert, foes take many forms - and not always the ones the Marines of Alpha Company expect. By GORDON DILLOW
The Orange County Register WITH ALPHA CO., 1ST BATTALION, 5TH MARINES, IN IRAQ – Alpha Company is expecting to be part of a battle. They believe it's why they have been assigned to head north, where there was supposed to be an Iraqi force that was putting up resistance. Alpha Company was preparing to help fight it. But now the fight is not materializing, and no one knows why. Inexplicably, the plans changed. That's the way it is with a small Marine outfit. Plans are altered, the situation changes, and none of the grunts in Alpha Company will ever know the reason why. The Big Picture is not their job; they have little if any idea what's going on in other areas of the war. They simply follow orders and do what they're told to do. So as daylight fades on Monday, they load back up on the "tracks," the amphibious assault vehicles that carry them to war, and head out for routine duties - if any duties out here are routine. They spend much of the night providing moving security for the main column - its size and destination can't be revealed – the tracks churning this way and that through the sand, stopping, watching, then moving again. FATIGUE IS A CONSTANT Finally they are relieved, and the Marines roll out of the crowded tracks to sleep in the pit left by the construction of the highway that leads north. Their sleep will be brief, just a few hours, and for some of the Marines even those few hours are interrupted by guard duty. In wartime, Alpha Company is never completely asleep. Fatigue is a constant. Then, in the morning, Tuesday, the sixth day of Alpha Company's war, something bad happens. It is just past first light when suddenly the blue dawn explodes with the sound of a grenade. As Marines leap for cover behind sand and earthen berms that line the highway, rifle fire crackles up and down the line. The object of the fire is a white utility truck that's barreling northward along the road, directly into Alpha Company's position at the far southern end of the column. Unlike other civilian vehicles in the area, it flies no white flag; no one knows its intent. It's a dangerous situation; this was how Lt. Shane Childers of Alpha Company was killed on the first morning of the war, during a fight at an oil-pumping station near the border: A civilian vehicle sped into the area and the occupants suddenly opened fire, mortally wounding the lieutenant. No one's about to let that happen again. "We're going to do what we have to do to protect our Marines," Capt. Blair Sokol, CO of Alpha Company, told his men after Lt. Childers' death. The order is that unless an approaching vehicle is showing clear signs of surrender or non-hostile intent, it will be stopped – by any means necessary. So when the speeding civilian truck refuses to stop, the Marines open up, first with a grenade launcher, then with rifle fire. The truck is riddled, the windshield starred with multiple bullet holes, before the cry of "Cease fire! Cease fire!" goes up. Three Iraqi men inside the truck are dead. But a cautious search of the vehicle turns up no weapons, no explosives – just a few bags of rice. No one understands why the men in the truck didn't stop or show a white flag. Most of these young Marines aren't hardened to war yet; many are shaken by the seemingly needless deaths. "I don't know why they (the Iraqis in the truck) did that," Lance Cpl. Jeff Guthrie, 33, of San Clemente says afterward. "I feel sorry for those guys. Everybody feels sorry for them." 'I HATED SEEING THAT' Some of the Marines worry that people back home will hear about things like this and not understand what it's like out here, how danger can come from any quarter. It's not like back home; different rules apply. "Out here, it's a whole other situation," says Corpsman Shelton Tap ley, 32. Still, says Corpsman Noah Glanville, 24, of Orange, "I hated seeing that. It shouldn't have happened." But it did. The Marines bury the dead men and prepare to move on, northward. There are some diversions today. A herd of camels is one, about a hundred of them, being driven across the desert by an Iraqi herder. In a land that many young Marines mistakenly believed is powered almost exclusively by camels, these are the first camels the Marines have seen in the two months since they arrived in Kuwait before the war. They think it's exotic, and some snap photos. But most of the day is the familiar grind of pushing northward with the column, slowly, slowly, crammed inside the tracks. And then, in the early afternoon, the dust storm begins. It's a monster, like nothing these Marines have seen before, even during their weeks of waiting in Kuwait. The wind howls at 40 mph, and the fine, powdery dust turns the afternoon sky a dark, eerie shade of orange. Visibility drops to a few hundred feet, and the column slows to a crawl. The wind and sand play tricks with sounds, and when a nearby artillery battery opens up against distant Iraqi positions with 155 mm shells, the "whump!""whump!" "whump!" of outgoing rounds sounds for all the world like incoming mortars - close ones. "Button up! Button up!" the Marines in Alpha Company's command track shout, and there's a flurry of excitement and fear as they struggle to close the open hatches to the track. Then the word comes over the radio net that it's our artillery - "arty," the Marines call it - not enemy mortars, and the Marines relax. "I was sure I was going to get a mortar in my lap," Lt. Jason Angell, 30, of Brea says with a try at a laugh - but there's not really much laughter in his voice. The sandstorm gets worse, and finally the column has to stop. The Marines fall out of the vehicles and try to sleep beside the road, their faces covered with towels and scarves against the blowing sand; larger pieces of grit blown by the wind make their Kevlar helmets rattle like snare drums. No one believes the weather could be any more mis erable. And then, unbelievably, it becomes more miserable. In the middle of the sandstorm, it starts to rain: big, heavy drops that mottle the Marines' uniforms and helmets with tiny mud pies. The drops slack off, then start again, harder, until at dusk it is a full downpour of rain and sand at the same time. It is the worst of two worlds. "I hate this country," says PFC Brian Petrovich, 21, probably speaking for most of the Marines here. "It's the worst place I've ever seen." As darkness falls the rain continues unabated, and the temperature drops into the 40s. Even for Marines, it is hard living. Finally they get to sleep outside the track, in the wind and rain and cold. And in the morning, they wake up in the mud.
Sgt. Jerry Lawrence with the rest of his squad of Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 5th Marines as they prepare to head north aboard their armored track vehicle.
http://www.jenmartinez.com
"We have the right to be smart. We have the right to be stupid.
But it's not right at certain times to protest a war and our President
when it encourages our enemy, and I think we are at that point now."
Jennifer Martinez, yotanka@carolina.rr.com on 03/26/2003
Proud member of The Patton Society
From Gunny G.
Link to Picture <http://herald-sun.com/tools/slideshows/slideshow.cfm?showID=333618&pageID=14&imageseq=25>
Cpl. Adrian Beck of White Haven, Pa, with the 15th Marine Expeditionary Units, Echo Company, washes himself at a makeshift shower in Nasiriyah,
southern Iraq on Saturday, April 5, 2003.