‘Another day in the office’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Tal Afar, Iraq — Every soldier sitting in the right rear passenger’s seat on the patrol takes a card. One will draw death.
The ritual that 2nd platoon of Hotel Company goes through before it heads out to the Syrian border is all in jest — a moment of black infantry humor. Only once has the holder of the death card — the highest drawn — actually been wounded.
AUDIO SLIDESLOW: • See and hear soldiers on patrol
Today, the high card is the ace of hearts, and it belongs not to Hotel Company but a soldier riding in a fuel truck the platoon is escorting. The unlucky lad draws a roar of laughter.
Then everyone gets down to serious business. The Georgia men help each other put on their battle rattle — pounds and pounds of body armor, protective shoulder and arm shields, helmet, ammunition rounds.
They don’t forget the game face.
“Another day in the office,” they yell.
“It’s go time, ladies!”
The terrain in northern Iraq around the Sinjar Mountains is without vegetation, without undulation. It is without pity for the weak under summer’s searing sun and in the chill of night in winter.
Many of the soldiers prefer to wear the old-style Army desert camouflage rather than the new digital green uniforms. In this sea of sand, they don’t want to be seen. That is doctrinally what a long range surveillance company does: hide.
They burrow into dirt holes — and here, at border forts — surveying the land before them. The naked eye sees nothing but tan earth meeting blue sky on the horizon.
However, the soldiers of Company H, 121st Infantry (ABN)(LRS) have sophisticated equipment like a LRASSS, a Long Range Advanced Scout Surveillance System mounted on a Humvee that enables soldiers to see miles ahead.
At Forward Operating Base Sykes, Company H headquarters consists of a simple plywood structure but it is anything but shoddy inside. A large flat video screen is posted on one wall to watch black and white aerial images transmitted back from planes. They see people on the move — in cars, on mules and on foot.
On the opposite side of the room sits a bank of radios. Without communication, information is useless and Company H has an entire platoon dedicated to “commo.”
The Army has only five such specialized units — Fort Gillem-based Company H of the Georgia Army National Guard is one of them. They aren’t exactly James Bonds of the desert but their task is to look across the sand berms that separate Iraq from Syria and pick up any activity. They often work in tandem with the Iraqi Border Police.
President Bush has blamed the 400 miles of porous borders here for infiltration of armaments and foreign insurgents into Iraq.
“You can call this the wild, wild West out here,” says Maj. Thomas Burket, commander of Task Force Specter, which includes Company H as well as a private Florida firm that provides the aerial scanning and a small element of Army intelligence experts.
It’s wild because of unforgiving terrain and insurgent activity and because every Iraqi household is entitled to an AK-47 assault rifle. Burket leads prayer for the 40 Company H men going out on patrol.
“Lord, protect us during our mission today. … Just get us out there and back safe.”
The area here is by no means as violent as Baghdad or Ramadi, but just a few days ago Company H soldiers were hit by a makeshift bomb, known as an improvised explosive device.
In their traditional surveillance role, the Georgia soldiers, many of them airborne and elite Ranger school graduates, would consider their mission a failure if they were seen and got caught in a firefight.
During World War II, soldiers like these went in behind enemy lines by land, air and sea to gather information. On D-Day, they placed radio beacons and lights on the ground so that allied planes knew where to drop soldiers.
But Iraq is not conventional warfare.
Second platoon’s mission is to follow up on intelligence reports about planned movement tonight. First Lt. Shiloh Crane and his men have orders to catch the border-crossers from Syria. Just as weather has a say in how a battle will be fought, so does the enemy, says Burket. Meteorologists predict weather. Long range surveillance companies help predict enemy patterns.
Some day, unmanned aerial vehicles capable of doing surveillance without endangering human life could be all that the Army uses to keep watch on enemy lines, Burket says. For now in Iraq, soldiers from Georgia are kissing the sands near Syria.
As the men of Company H roll out of the base in a parade of heavily armored military vehicles, their commander Capt. Kenneth Hutnick salutes and bids adieu. Hutnick will be there, too, when his men return — all 40 of them.