Papillion Times April 14, 2004
Weekly returns from second tour of duty
By Mitch Beaumont
Times News Editor
James Weekly has twice been able to achieve what hundreds of American soldiers have died trying to do: return from home alive from the Middle East.
The Papillion resident was one of 130 U.S. Army Reserve soldiers who returned a week and a half ago from active duty in Iraq, but it wasn't his first tour of duty in the Middle East.
Weekly, now a member of the 530th Military Police Battalion, was an active duty member of the U.S. Marines for a dozen years. During the Gulf War in the early 1990s, he spent a year in Bahrain, an island country east of Saudi Arabia and north of Qatar in the Gulf of Bahrain, which is part of the Persian Gulf.
His recent tour of duty, though, was far different from his first, Weekly said last week from his parent's home in Papillion.
"This time was a lot worse," he said. "In Bahrain, they were a lot more civilized. The conditions were a lot better in Bahrain. In Desert Storm, when we got to our base it was all set up for us. But this time everywhere we went we had to set up our tents and set up our showers."
Weekly's unit spent part of its deployment in Umm Qasr, in the furthest southwest corner of Iraq-a two day drive to Baghdad, he said.
The other part of his tour, Weekly said was spent at Camp Ashraf, about 35 miles east of Baghdad.
"We were guarding Iranians there," he said. "The Iranians we were guarding had been working for Saddam Hussein. They were like his puppets and they were all over Iraq.
"They turned themselves in and we kept them in one place so we could keep an eye on them. That's where Saddam trained his Republican Guard-at Camp Ashraf. I never really trusted the Iranians. We didn't know what to do with them, because if they go back home they would be killed and no other country wants them."
In 2003, American forces were working toward a cease-fire with the MEK, which stands for Mujahedin-e-Khalq, an Iranian organization deemed to be a terrorist group by Washington, according to the Web site, globalsecurity.org. In June last year, forces were able to detain the Iranians occupying the base and they were examined for any connections to known terrorists.
When his unit had a chance to see Camp Victory, the former palace of Ouday, one Saddam's sons, Weekly said he was surprised at what he saw.
"Their riches is about buying cheap things," he said.
"Once you get in there it was so cheaply made. Everything like the windows, she could knock out a window by pushing on it," Weekly said pointing to his 6-year-old daughter Briana.
His unit had a hard time staying healthy, Weekly said.
"About 90 percent of us got sick. One guy was sick for eight days," he said. "They put three IVs in me. I couldn't keep water in me. Some guys came down with it the night we got there and it spread through our camp after that."
And the conditions left a lot to be desired.
"You think flies are bad here," he said. "You got used to having 10 to 20 flies on you all the time. You slept with them and ate with them."
The average temperature from June to August, Weekly said, was about 140 degrees in the sun and about 180 in the tents.
"It was so hot in those tents, but you had to get some sleep," he said.
The conveniences of home seemed a bit odd when he returned home, Weekly said.
"You miss the little things," he said. "All we ate with was plastic silverware. When we got home it was odd to use real silverware, regular showers and bathrooms. Basically it was all the little things that you missed the most."
There wasn't anything he missed more than his daughters, Emilie and Briana, Weekly said.
"Being away from my daughters for such a long time was the hardest part of being gone," he said.
Emilie, 13, said that during the nearly yearlong stint without her dad, "I was afraid of him getting hurt," she said.
The unknown factors of the war, said his parents, Jim and Mary Weekly, were the hardest part for them this time around.
"It was very, very hard this time, because of the situation where he was at. Not knowing exactly when he moved was the hardest," Mary said.
Weekly has less than a year left of his Army Reserves commitment and when that expires he said he will retire from military service.
© Copyright 2004, Papillion Times
