Too bad things like this do not get MAJOR coverage;
More From The Oregonian | Subscribe To The Oregonian
Under the radar, an army of one
People may see a mailman, but Kengo Duffy, a Green Beret decorated for duty in Iraq, relishes his service
Sunday, October 31, 2004
RICHARD READ
Mail carrier Kengo Duffy darted into a Portland lawyer's office and plunked a stack of letters on a broad wooden desk. "You recovered from camping?" Duffy called toward an inner office.
Advertisement
"Barely," replied its occupant, attorney Chris P. Davis. Duffy laughed and wished the lawyer a good day.
Like other customers on Duffy's downtown route, Davis had a vague idea that the trim, cheery postal worker went to the Persian Gulf before the start of the Iraq war. Some knew Duffy took time off occasionally for National Guard duty. A handful knew he spoke fluent Japanese.
But no one knew that Duffy was a Special Forces commando who had just won a Bronze Star for his work in Iraq. The award nomination praised the senior weapons sergeant for winning the respect of neighborhood sheiks in Abu Ghraib, the Baghdad-area town that includes the notorious prison of the same name.
A year before the Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse scandal broke, Duffy and his team helped form a local government, providing a tantalizing glimpse of what the U.S. occupation might have become before the disheartening litany of roadside ambushes, mounting casualties and grisly executions.
Duffy, a wiry man at 57 with a tidy mustache and white sideburns, acknowledges that his job as a postman and his harrowing duties as a Green Beret seem poles apart. But he uses the mail job to hone his abilities, saying both roles involve quick thinking, physical exertion and communication.
"People dream about what I do -- jumping on planes and parachuting, and getting paid on top of it," he said, flicking letters into boxes in a Southwest Portland apartment building. "But no matter what you do in life, the concept is still there: accuracy, and get the mission done on time."
Like the Special Forces, a commonly misunderstood branch of the military sometimes snubbed by conventional forces, Duffy has been an outsider much of his life. He was shunned occasionally as a boy in Japan for being half Western, with hazel eyes. Moving to the United States, he was sent to the back of the bus in Georgia for being half Asian.
And he was insulted by demonstrators on return to the United States from Vietnam, where he earned a Purple Heart and an Army commendation. He now sticks out as the oldest member of his Green Beret unit.
Delivering mail, awaiting mission
Duffy has reached his apex as an unconventional fighter just as the reinvigorated Special Forces -- nearly disbanded after Vietnam -- grow more crucial in an era of terrorism and guerrilla warfare. While Duffy delivers mail and awaits his next mission, the Army's 10,000 Green Berets appear headed for heavier deployment worldwide.
Abu Ghraib -- the town and the prison -- contrasts the best of the Special Forces with the worst of the conventional military. Duffy said the photos of U.S. troops humiliating naked Iraqis broke his heart.
"What our team accomplished," he said in a rare dark moment, "that incident erased. It's unspeakable."
A day after the highest-ranking soldier charged in that scandal pleaded guilty, Duffy continued on his mail route. He left Davis' office and wheeled his cart to a dental clinic and an accounting firm, where a receptionist glanced up. "There she is," Duffy said brightly. "How're you doing today?"
Duffy's gift for gab stems from his international roots. His father, an Irish American U.S. Marine who survived withering World War II combat in Okinawa, met his Japanese mother in Manchuria, the region of China occupied by Japan. His parents lost each other in the chaos of Japan's withdrawal.
Joined Special Forces at 37
Duffy was 30 before he tracked down his father and 37 when he joined the Special Forces. Growing up in Japan, he had shined shoes for U.S. troops, regarding the outsize soldiers with awe. As a U.S. paratrooper in Vietnam, where he took Tet offensive shrapnel in his head and neck, he again felt the ambivalence of people confronted by outside forces.
"If Americans were oppressed by someone like Saddam, we'd be happy to be free," Duffy said. "Then we'd have mixed emotions, because we'd feel this is our country, and these guys are occupying it."
Duffy ducked into the offices of a food-trading company, engaging in Japanese conversation with a woman. Done with the office building, the 10-year postal worker drove to an apartment complex.
He described how the Washington Army National Guard had pulled him from his route in August 2002 and sent him to Kuwait. His team spent almost three months living in the desert during the run-up to the war.
"We met Bedouins and got to know their names," said Duffy, who used the time to learn Arabic words and ways. "We ate dates and had tea and cookies with them. They're human, just like us, but so much more . . ." he searched for a word ". . . honest."
The team helped cut the fence on the Iraqi border to let waves of conventional U.S. forces into the country. Then Duffy and Master Sgt. Floyd Holcom of Astoria flew to Baghdad, heavily armed, with $60,000 in cash. Joined by other team members, they occupied an Abu Ghraib palace built for Saddam Hussein.
The Green Berets fanned out, destroying anti-aircraft guns, missiles and weapons caches. In the abandoned Abu Ghraib prison Duffy got chills when he and Holcom discovered heavy batteries, spikes on a ceiling and blood spots on the floor.
Building relationships
The soldiers worked as Special Forces have done since the branch's founding in 1952. They built relationships, collected intelligence and organized locals to help with security and reconstruction.
They used some of their cash to start a payroll, hiring civilians and former military officers to provide security. They accepted invitations to eat in homes, got a firetruck repaired and treated wounded children. They wore baseball caps, not helmets, and faded jackets, not body armor.
On April 21, 2003, the commandos invited 14 of the Arab family chiefs to meet. The sheiks chose city fathers and elected a leader, a foreign notion in Iraq.
"We wish from the coalition forces to be more peaceful," the leaders wrote in a joint statement. The U.S. soldiers followed up by buying paint for men to redo a school. They rounded up teachers.
"Here we are in the midst of all this chaos," Duffy said, "and we create a government. What's sad is, nobody higher up saw it and asked, 'How'd you do it?' "
Duffy lugged his mail cart upstairs into the apartment building's lobby. He opened a rack of 84 letter boxes. He stuffed slots rapidly, going by memorized names instead of numbers.
The major who nominated Duffy and Holcom for honors praised the two for befriending Iraqis, collecting intelligence, and launching the village government and the school. The work fit a pattern Duffy had applied everywhere from Malaysia to Thailand to Vanuatu to a host of places that he can't discuss.
Several relatives in the service
Holcom accepted his Bronze Star at a ceremony this month in Buckley, Wash. Duffy was busy. He was trying to get information on his nephew Eric Karlon, a U.S. Army military police officer who had been wounded in Iraq by an improvised explosive device. Karlon, who continues to recover from a head injury, is one of several relatives in the military; four of Duffy's brothers graduated from West Point.
"When we were there," Duffy said of Iraq, "sure, it was dangerous. But there were good things, too. Smiles on kids' faces. We gave people jobs, got them involved. That's what you do after you invade, start working on people's minds and hearts."
He supports the decision to attack Iraq, believing Saddam Hussein might otherwise have gotten nuclear weapons. He declines to second-guess commanders.
He says Special Forces have a large role to play in the post-9/11 world. "It's critical to expand the Special Forces," Duffy said, "especially with the type of warfare we're having now."
Duffy stuffed the last banks of apartment boxes. The names were as multicultural as his own, ranging from Azizi to Yeomans and from Asai to Yevstigneyev.
Duffy may have to retire from the Special Forces at 60, but he hopes the requirement can be waived. He works out almost daily to keep up with younger teammates.
"Oh, yeah, I'd go back" to Iraq, Duffy said before loading his cart in the van. "If I'm still wearing a uniform, that's it, I go." |
