Albuquerque Journal (New Mexico) November 09, 2003
Soldier Shares What He Saw During War in Iraq
By Joseph Ditzler
* 19-year-old veteran returns from battle with tales of combat
Sgt. 1st Class Paul R. Smith stood out in the eyes of guys like Pfc. Daniel Richardson.
"I didn't know him very well, but he always had sort of like an aura about him," Richardson said during a weeklong September visit to his parents' home in Santa Fe. "Everybody looked up to him because he was sharp and smart and knew what he was talking about, you know."
Smith, 33, originally of Tampa, Fla., died in a firefight April 4 in Iraq. Richardson, who related the experience in a letter home April 22, was there.
"That battle was the fiercest firefight we've been in and hopefully the last," he wrote.
Just 18 years old at the time, Richardson and his unit, B Company of the 11th Engineer Battalion, 1st Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division, found themselves under mortar and rocket-propelled grenade fire from Iraqis defending the Baghdad airport, formerly Saddam Hussein International.
A mortar round struck an armored personnel carrier, wounding three, according to an account by Sgt. Craig Zentkovich in the June 6 edition of The Liberator, a 3rd Division magazine. At that moment, Smith "made a selfless decision," wrote Zentkovich.
Manning a .50-caliber machine gun from an exposed position, Smith, drawing enemy fire, held 100 or more Iraqis at bay while B Company safely regrouped.
"I got to the wall and there was Sgt. Smith on the .50-cal in the choke point laying down suppressive fire, yelling for help but no one was going, so, I don't know why, I ... ran out to help him," Richardson wrote in his letter home. "Let me tell you, bullets were flying everywhere."
Suddenly, Smith's machine gun fell silent.
"I ran around to open the door and there he was lying in a pool of blood ... The second I saw him, I knew he was dead," Richardson wrote.
Five months later, the Richardsons' living room on Camino Cielo Vista is a world away from the shootout on a Baghdad highway. Pfc. Richardson, who was on leave from Fort Stuart, Ga., is just another young man at ease on the family sofa, his girlfriend, Adrea Moya of Santa Fe, also 19 and also a soldier, seated next to him, her hand in his.
"I see him a lot different," she offers. "He wanted to just go out there and have fun and blow stuff up ... And now he has a really different understanding. He's changed a lot; he's a lot more mature."
Richardson graduated from the SER/Career Academy in Santa Fe, an alternative, self-paced public high school. Principal Nancy Olivares remembered him. He came to the school with academic problems, but "turned his life around," she said.
After graduation, he studied "a month or so" at Santa Fe Community College and then decided to enlist.
Small-town life did not appeal to Richardson, who saw an unappetizing future working at fast-food restaurants. A career in the military appealed to him and the U.S. Army recruiter who promptly returned Richardson's phone calls found a sympathetic ear.
"I was, 'What jobs y'all have that are pretty down and dirty?' " Richardson recalled. "And ... he said they have one spot for a combat engineer. I was like, What's that?' "
" 'You get to blow stuff up.' "
"I was like, 'Cool.' "
In the Iraq war, Richardson's job entailed clearing obstacles to the advancing infantry. Grapple man was his exact job title. The grapple man tosses a large grappling hook with a line attached across the obstacle -- mine field or concertina wire -- then pulls the hook across the obstacle, moving it or detonating the mines.
"We didn't run into as many obstacles as we thought we were," he said.
Richardson described being among the first U.S. troops across the Kuwait-Iraq border on March 20, when the American advance began.
"My squad's (job) was to be the first to actually cross into Iraq and put cones to mark lanes; they put cones into a funnel shape to guide all the tanks," he explained. "Big orange traffic cones. You're pretty much running full steam with all your gear having to throw these cones down, and throw chemlights inside of them so they could see them at night."
From there, the 3rd Infantry Division plied the main road to Baghdad through desert that Richardson recalled as "almost like driving through New Mexico."
Infantry in Bradley fighting vehicles and tanks led the way, followed by the engineers in their personnel carriers and behind them their specialized vehicles, such as earthmovers, followed by the support units, ammo trucks and refuelers.
"The line going back was miles long," Richardson remembered. "You could look behind you at night and see lines of lights going back as far as the eye could see."
Richardson and seven other soldiers in "full battle rattle" (flak vest, weapons, ammunition and gear) rode packed in an armored personnel carrier.
"You live in it pretty much. When it's moving, you're trying to sleep in it. When it's not moving, you're out forming security around it," he recalled.
They lived on Meals Ready to Eat and spent more than a month unwashed, except for the occasional baby wipe bath.
Among those on his team were Richardson's roommate and friend, Pfc. Adam Johnson, 21, of Oregon. The two buddied up after going through basic, advanced infantry and airborne training together. They are also sport skydivers and had hopes of serving with the 82nd Airborne Division. Instead, they received orders to Fort Stuart, home of the 3rd Infantry Division, in time for the war.
"When we came in, we were both brand new. So, we're the two newest guys; we're always the ones questioning why things have to be done this way," Richardson said.
As two of only three airborne-qualified troops in their unit, Johnson and Richardson were ribbed by their comrades.
"Dumb and dumber is what they call us," Richardson explained.
Halfway to Baghdad
The 3rd Infantry took two weeks to reach Baghdad, not meeting resistance until approximately halfway there, where the army reached the first town along the way, Richardson said.
Radio chatter indicated an attack up front, a mile or less ahead, he said. The convoy halted and troops exited their vehicles and formed a defensive perimeter until the column moved once more. Two or three of these engagements occurred on the way to Baghdad, Richardson explained.
That experience, coupled with lack of sleep, constant travel, especially at night, and always being on guard added to the soldiers' sense of anticipation, he said.
"We were all kinda anxious," he added.
The toughest fight lay ahead.
The 3rd Infantry Division, approaching Baghdad from the southwest, began an attack April 2 on the city airport. American tanks broke through a defensive perimeter set up by Iraqi Republican Guards the next day, according to the Web site GlobalSecurity.org.
April 4, a large force of Iraqi Special Republican Guard struck back as the 1st Brigade Combat Team wrapped up capture of the airport. The battle lasted 12 hours and left 250 Iraqi troops dead.
Northeast of the airport, B Company was pinned down on Highway 8, according to The Liberator.
"The first time something happens, you know, it's funny at first. Everybody's running to the front wanting to see some action, wanting to shoot somebody or whatever," Richardson recalled. "And then they see what's really going on, and they get all scared. I guess I was the same way.
"You know, I signed up wanting to see the action, combat and all that other stuff. And then once you actually see it, it's not as cool as you thought it was gonna be."
Combat meant confusion, chaos and things happening so fast they left little or no time to think.
"I wasn't really scared," Richardson said. "It was more like I was wantin' to get up there and do something, see what I could do to help."
Only afterward does the gravity of what happened settle in.
"That's when you have time to sit and reflect on everything. 'Man, I could have died today, or should have died.' Or, 'I can't believe so-and-so is gone,' " he said.
Sgt. 1st Class Smith was gone that day, replaced by another sergeant who also became a casualty. Richardson did not serve in Smith's platoon but remembered him as a man concerned for the training and well being of his troops.
"He was a really good guy. I remember sometimes, you know, being new you're always arguing with somebody about something. ... And you know, when anyone else was not helping, he was the one with 'It's all right, keep your head up.' "
He recalled Smith helping him perfect his grapple training, for example, and giving extra attention to troops on the rifle range as they learned to fire their weapons.
Smith's company commander has nominated him for a posthumous Medal of Honor for his actions that day, said Spec. Jimmy D. Lane Jr. of Fort Stuart public affairs.
The process that results in a Medal of Honor award takes time and requires, in addition to Army forms, witness statements and official records such as maps and photographs, if any, that support the nomination. Recommendations must also come from commanders up the chain of command.
'Same old Dan'
When Richardson returned home, his parents said he had changed little, if any. He and Moya behaved like 19-year-olds, hanging out, going to movies, visiting family.
His parents believe he's "still the same old Dan," as his mother, Rita Richardson, said. She said he confessed to feeling emotionally flat but otherwise normal. She talked to him about post-traumatic stress.
"He was rather matter of fact about the whole thing. This is how soldiers have to be. They have to steel themselves," his mother said. "He knows he's fortunate to be a survivor, with a sense of obligation to go on with his life."
Daniel seemed hesitant to talk about his combat experience, his father said.
It was the topic that went obviously unaddressed at the dinner table.
"We saw a thing on CNN a couple weeks ago in the evening, the subject was 'prepared to kill,' " Jerry Richardson said. "They said that only one in four people (involved in combat in Iraq) actually shot somebody that they could see him die. I hope Daniel wasn't one of them."
Daniel said he took life in Iraq. It's not something he talks about in detail.
Friends ask him, though, and like many other Iraq veterans, he shuns the question.
"I don't think about it much," he said. "You don't do it because you like to, you do it because you have to, you do it because your life depends on it.
"And, yeah, it changed me. I've learned to appreciate life a lot more."
© Copyright 2003, Albuquerque Journal
