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October 4, 2004
[Have an opinion about the issues discussed in this article?
Sound
off in our Discussion Boards.]
By Steve Liewer,
Stars and Stripes European Edition
Editor’s Note: This is the first installment of a three-part
series.
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| Staff Sgt. Michael Broner,
31, of the 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment, knew he was
still alive after a suicide truck bomber rammed his barracks
room in Samarra, Iraq, July 8, because he felt pain when another
soldier stepped on his leg. (Steve Liewer / S&S) |
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| On July 8, Spc. Matthew Campbell,
21, of the 1st Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment walked out
of his barracks room in Samarra, Iraq, to shave three minutes
before a suicide bomber rammed a truck into the building, killing
five 1-26 Infantry. (Steve Liewer / S&S) |
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Cpl. Owen Fulsome sat on the edge of his bunk, munching a blueberry
muffin and clearing the sleep from his brain.
Minutes earlier his buddy, Spc. Damon Le, 19, had jostled the cot
of the dark-haired 21-year-old Fulsome, his mortar platoon team
leader, to wake him for his 11 a.m. shift monitoring the radio.
Fulsome and a dozen or so mortarmen from the 1st Infantry Division’s
1st Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment lazed around their barracks
room in shorts and T-shirts. Some slept, others ate, and a few just
zoned out, capturing a few minutes of air-conditioned refuge from
the searing July 8 morning at the Iraqi National Guard compound
near the city of Samarra, a restless rebel stronghold 60 miles north
of Baghdad.
Suddenly Fulsome heard a scream through the front door of the barracks.
Sgt. Matthew Shepherd raced through the room, cursing and shouting,
“It’s a bomb! It’s a bomb!”
Fulsome jumped up behind him, heading toward the safety of the
back room of the two-room barracks, where troops from Company A
slept. He had run six or seven steps when the truck slammed into
the front wall a few feet from his bunk. He turned to look and saw
its headlights glaring at him through the room’s open front door.
He stood frozen.
“I was just staring at it,” Fulsome recalled weeks later, sitting
on another bunk back home in Schweinfurt, Germany. “I thought, ‘Isn’t
that supposed to blow up?’”
Then it did.
Ready for war
On Sept. 11, 2001, Fulsome was shooting marksmanship drills in
basic training.
“I thought it was going to be four years of something easy,” said
Fulsome, who grew up in the Phoenix suburb of Mesa, “but it turned
out to be a lot different.”
Sent to the 1-26 Infantry in Germany, he landed in the 2nd Squad
of the unit’s mortar platoon, which would be led by Staff Sgt. Michael
Broner, 31, of Charlotte, N.C.
When Broner signed up in 1998, he planned to serve only three years.
Instead he found he loved it. By the time he reached Schweinfurt
in December 2000, he’d decided to make the military a career.
“I developed a passion, a burning desire,” Broner said. “The patriotic
side of me took over.”
When the Blue Spaders of the 1-26 Infantry — along with the rest
of 1st Infantry Division’s 2nd Brigade Combat Team — returned from
a peacekeeping tour in Kosovo in November 2002, they awaited a war.
Within two months, rumors were confirmed with orders: The 2nd Brigade
would head to Turkey to support the possible invasion of Iraq.
It packed up and waited. Not until after Baghdad fell did they learn
for certain they had missed the war.
“I was kind of pissed,” said Spc. Kevin A. Terry, 22, a 1-26 Infantry
mortarman in the 3rd Squad. “They had us all boosted up for training,
and then we didn’t go.”
But with the Army stretched thin, the Blue Spaders knew they’d
head to Iraq soon enough. In July 2003, the Pentagon announced the
Big Red One would take over the 4th Infantry Division’s zone — including
much of the “Sunni Triangle,” the restive area north of Baghdad
— the following spring. About 11,000 of the 1st ID’s 12,000 Germany-based
troops would make up the bulk of the force, beefed up by forces
from the Hawaii-based 25th Infantry Division, and several National
Guard and Reserve units.
Soldiers in Germany spent much of the fall at training areas in
Hohenfels and Grafenwöhr, readying for a mission they were told
would be a little war and lot of peacekeeping. Most held mixed views
on their belated Iraq deployment:
sad to leave behind wives, husbands, kids and sweethearts, but glad
to join the fight they’d been cheated out of a year earlier.
They got their fight, with a vengeance.
Long, hard spring
By March, Task Force 1-26 landed at Forward Operating Base Brassfield-Mora,
near Samarra. It was barren and rundown.
“The FOB was probably the worst one in Iraq,” Terry said. “The
chow hall was bad.”
But the phones and Internet hookup worked, if sporadically and
slowly. Hot chow arrived via dangerous daily convoys from Tikrit.
Trash-strewn Samarra, home to 300,000 — mostly Sunni Muslims allied
with Saddam
Hussein — had troubled the Americans since the beginning of
the occupation. A roundup last December had netted 70 suspects.
Deadly roadside bombs still killed and injured soldiers from time
to time, and every so often a few mortar rounds would be lobbed
at the base.
“Everything changes [with] the first mortar or rocket or bullet
that’s fired at you,” Broner said. “The reality kicks in that people
are trying to kill you.”
Things heated up in mid-April after a rebel attack on a checkpoint,
which soldiers said escalated into a 24-hour firefight pitting the
insurgents against the newly minted Iraqi National Guard troops.
Fulsome and Terry said many hadn’t yet received basic training,
and some of the Iraqis were as young as 15.
For the next three months, occasional mortar and homemade-bomb
attacks punctuated an uneasy calm as the Blue Spaders grew accustomed
to combat patrols around Samarra, but generally avoided the still-rebellious
city.
As spring turned to summer, Task Force 1-26 troops supported the
slowly rebuilding force at the Iraqi National Guard headquarters
on the Tigris River, just across a bridge from the city.
“It was good for us,” Fulsome said. “Had we been in the city, we
probably would have been shot at a lot more.”
At the request of city officials, U.S. and Iraqi patrols stayed
out of the city, essentially turning it over to guerrilla forces.
From guard posts, Fulsome said, it was easy to see rebels carrying
grenade launchers on the streets of Samarra. Iraqi soldiers who
lived in the area wore ski masks even on the hottest days, Fulsome
said, for fear of revenge attacks on themselves or their families
if they were recognized.
Last week, the U.S. military launched a major offensive to regain
control of the city, attacking insurgent positions and searching
homes after going months without a U.S. presence in the city.
In early June a warning reached the National Guard camp that someone
might try to drive a truck bomb onto the base. The guards searched
vehicles carefully but never spotted any explosives.
“When they first heard about it, everybody was on alert looking
for it,” Fulsome said. “But it kind of faded away.”
U.S. soldiers said they warned the Iraqi soldiers guarding the
base’s concertina-wire gate: Never open it for any vehicle until
you’ve checked the driver’s identification.
If only they’d listened.
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