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Chattanooga Times Free Press September 23, 2007

Area soldiers on duty at Iraq prisoner-of-war facility

By Mary Fortune

At a vast prisoner-of-war camp housing more than 15,000 detainees in southern Iraq, hundreds of Chattanooga-based Tennessee National Guard soldiers are working in jobs that range from searching for escape tunnels and contraband to providing medical care.

"We have found two tunnels in two days," wrote Capt. Greg Arnold in an e-mail message from Camp Bucca. "The outgoing unit is jealous because they only found one in six months."

The last of more than 350 soldiers with the 1/181st Field Artillery Battalion arrived last week at Camp Bucca, the largest of two Theater Internment Facilities operated by Multi-National Forces Iraq.

Jennifer Jones, a Fayetteville, Tenn., resident, said her husband, Pfc. Calvin Jones, is working as a medic at Camp Bucca, providing daily medical care for detainees and working at the hospital on the base when he has time.

The camp is pretty quiet right now because most of the prisoners are fasting and praying during Ramadan, the Muslim holy days that began Sept. 13 and end Oct. 12, she said. But her husband has been told that once Ramadan ends, the prison often is a rough place, Mrs. Jones said.

"In October, he said, it should get pretty interesting," said Mrs. Jones, who married her husband just a week before he left in June for training at Fort Bliss, Texas.

Detainees at Camp Bucca are those who have been "determined to be threats to coalition forces, Iraqi Security Forces and to the stability of Iraq," according to a news release from Navy Newsstand.

The prison held 5,000 detainees as of January 2005, according to GlobalSecurity.org, but the number of prisoners has swelled and the camp expanded as U.S. troop numbers in Iraq have increased. About 7,000 troops are assigned to detainee operations in Iraq, according to a Navy Newsstand release.

In June, six detainees were killed and more than 50 others injured during an indirect fire attack on the prison camp, according to a report from Multi-National Forces Iraq. The prison camp also was the site of a riot in 2005 that left four Iraqi prisoners dead and six wounded, according to globalsecurity.org.

Melody Cooley, whose husband, Sgt. Randy Cooley, is stationed at Camp Bucca with the 1/181st, said she is glad the soldiers are in southern Iraq -- a relatively safe region of the country -- but she is anxious about her husband working where so many detainees are being held.

"He assures me they're not in direct contact with them, that precautions are taken, so ... I just try not to worry about it," said Mrs. Cooley, of Cleveland, Tenn. "Obviously, some of them have to be in direct contact with them at some point in time."

The soldiers are living in tents without air conditioning or fans until housing units become available, and they are working 12-hour shifts at the prison, Mrs. Cooley said.

"They're really worn out," she said. "But for the most part everybody's just glad to be there and finally doing their jobs."

The heat and wind at the desert facility are relentless, and water for bathing is limited, wrote Capt. Arnold, a Cleveland resident. But the camp includes amenities from restaurants and Internet cafes to a gym.

"There are about nine different nationalities that work here doing different jobs such as cooking, building, repairing, etc.," he wrote.

The 1/181st soldiers left Chattanooga in June for two months of training at Fort Bliss and then left during the last days of August for the yearlong deployment.