Part 3
An hour later, the men returned to Forward Operating Base Summerall, a sandy expanse behind concrete barricades and concertina wire a few miles outside town. They followed U.S. military protocol: Each soldier dismounted from the vehicle and cleared his weapon. Zwayid stayed in the truck, handed his gun to a friend and asked him to clear it.
"Get down and clear your own weapon!" Cpl. William Kozlowski shouted to Zwayid in English.
Zwayid answered in Arabic. "That's my weapon," he explained, pointing to his friend.
"Corporal, you're a leader!" Kozlowski shouted back. "Take charge!"
Zwayid smiled at him. "What's he saying to me?" he whispered.
Searching for respect
Charlie Company collapsed at 9:15 a.m. on Dec. 5. A gray Chevrolet Caprice packed with explosives detonated among a crowd of Iraqi soldiers during a shift change. Among the five dead was Capt. Mohammed Jassim Rumayidh, the company commander. His death prompted all but 30 of the company's 250 soldiers to quit; many took their weapons with them.
The bombing coincided with the arrival of a battalion of the Pennsylvania Army National Guard. The unit began rebuilding the Iraqi company from scratch. The Americans initially sent a small group of soldiers to work with the Iraqis. That changed after the Jan. 30 elections. Cato said the unit received a flurry of orders from commanders to make the training of Iraqi security forces "our main effort."
The battalion dispatched McGovern's platoon, about 35 soldiers, to work exclusively with the Iraqis. But the effort was immediately beset by problems. Dozens of Iraqi soldiers went without pay for three months. Many lacked proper uniforms, body armor and weapons. To meet the shortfall, U.S. forces gave the Iraqis rifles and ammunition confiscated during raids in Baiji. Of six interpreters assigned to the company, two quit and two others said they were preparing to.
"They've come a long way in a short period of time," Cato, the Alpha Company executive officer, said of the Iraqi soldiers. "When we first got here, soldiers were going to sleep on the objective. Soldiers were selling their weapons when they went out on patrol. I was on missions when soldiers would get tired, and they would just start dragging their weapons or using them as walking sticks."
The men are housed at what they call simply "the base," a place as sparse as the name. Most of the Iraqis sleep in two tents and a shed with a concrete floor and corrugated tin roof that is bereft of walls. Some have cots; others sleep on cardboard or pieces of plywood stacked with tattered and torn blankets. The air conditioners are broken. There is no electricity.
Drinking water comes from a sun-soaked camouflage tanker whose meager faucet also provides water for bathing.
"This is the shower of the National Guard, Baiji Division," said Tala Izba, 23, a corporal, as others laughed.
"Mines, car bombs and our duties, and then we have to come back to this?" said another soldier, Kamil Khalaf.
Pvt. Aziz Nawaf, 23, shook his head. "At night, I'm so hot I feel like my skin is going to peel off," he said.
Almost to a man, the soldiers said they joined for the money -- a relatively lucrative $300 to $400 a month. The military and police forces offer some of the few job opportunities in town. Even then, the soldiers were irate: They wanted more time off, air-conditioned quarters like their American counterparts and, most important, respect. Most frustrating, they said, was the two or three hours they had to wait at the base's gate, waiting to be searched by U.S. soldiers as they returned from leave.
The soldiers said 17 colleagues had quit in the past few days.
"In 15 days, we're all going to leave," Nawaf declared.
The two-dozen soldiers gathered nodded their heads.
"All of us," Khalaf said. "We'll live by God, but we'll have our respect."
But the Americans said the Iraqis hadn't earned respect. "As Arab men, they want for us to think that they're just the same as us as soldiers, that they're just as brave," Cato said. "But they show cowardice. They'll say to me, 'I wasn't afraid.' But if you're running, then you were obviously not just afraid, you were running away."
CONTINUED |
