This article is provided courtesy of Stars & Stripes, which got its start as a newspaper for Union troops during the Civil War, and has been published continuously since 1942 in Europe and 1945 in the Pacific. Stripes reporters have been in the field with American soldiers, sailors and airmen in World War II, Korea, the Cold War, Vietnam, the Gulf War, Bosnia and Kosovo, and are now on assignment in the Middle East.
Stars and Stripes has one of the widest distribution ranges of any newspaper in the world. Between the Pacific and European editions, Stars & Stripes services over 50 countries where there are bases, posts, service members, ships, or embassies.
Related Links:
Current Archive
Stars & Stripes Website
Sound off in our Discussion Boards
Have an opinion on the issues discussed in this article? Sound off.
Get Breaking Military News Alerts
|
|
|
|
|
Your Two Cents
Submit your stories, news items, or a benefits update -- and help Military.com bring the best, most important stories to your fellow servicemembers, veterans, and family members. Contribute here |
|
|
October 11 , 2005
[Have an opinion about the issues discussed in this article?
Sound
off in our Discussion Boards.]
By Erik Slavin
Stars and Stripes Mideast edition
TIKRIT, Iraq — When fewer than 100 troops showed up at Forward Operating Base Danger in February to relieve more than 300 military police from the 1st Infantry Division, the departing soldiers said they would wait for more help to arrive before beginning orientations.
Some of the incoming police laughed.
There weren’t any more coming.
“I just remember the 1st ID guys telling us, ‘You guys are going to be working your [tails] off,’ ” said Sgt. Benjamin Joress, of Framingham, Mass., a member of the 42nd Military Police Company, which will be going home soon.
Because their specialty is so understaffed, military police have seen some of their roles delegated to other units in Iraq. But their traditional law-enforcement roles also have been expanded into a jack-of-all-trades profession, keeping in step with the insurgency’s adaptations.
“We do a little bit of everything,” said Sgt. Daniel Spera, 28, of Medford, Mass. “MPs are such a limited resource right now, you see field artillerymen running control points.”
Besides setting up control checkpoints, MPs patrol cities and gather intelligence in support of combat operations. They also enforce law on base and set up customs desks for soldiers entering and leaving Iraq.
During its rotation, the 42nd military police also ran the jail at FOB Danger and transported detainees to prisons such as Abu Ghraib. Scrutiny on military police running detention centers rose 100-fold after the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal, Spera said.
“What happened there was a black eye for all MPs, especially the National Guard,” he said. “There were a lot of surprise inspections on us. It added stress.”
The majority of the 1st platoon soldiers are under the age of 25, Joress said. A few had corrections experience, but most had to learn on the job.
“It was a hard mission for me,” Joress said. “I was a 20-year-old kid working in a foreign prison. I’ve grown up a lot during this deployment … a lot of the guys here have.”
The company will be going home soon, as the 42nd Infantry Division continues to relinquish command to the 101st Airborne Division in this north-central Iraq area of operations. When they do, they could be replaced by an even smaller military police company, said commander Lt. Col. Joe Richiazzi, 41, of Buffalo, N.Y.
Even as the guardsmen anticipate their homecoming, they realize this may not be their last foreign deployment.
“The Army has downsized since the Cold War,” Spera said. “We’re needed more. It’s not like 10 or 15 years ago, where you trained two weeks in the summer. Now we’re needed on missions all around the world.”
 Email
this page to friends RSS feed
©2005 Stars & Stripes. All opinions
expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily
reflect those of Military.com.
|
