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Reserve engineer unit gets 'eye-opener' in Iraq

Al NASIRIYAH, Iraq (Army News Service, April 3, 2003) - Members of an Army Reserve unit prepared to build bridges in Iraq found themselves in combat along the road to Baghdad -- still waiting to build that bridge.

"All River Rat elements. All River Rat elements: direct your attention to the road."

Everyone in the 459th Multi-Role Bridge Company, out of West Virginia, knew what that meant. Within moments, dozens of weapons were aimed at the perceived threat. Three buses, a small van and a taxicab had stopped on the nearby road, and human silhouettes were barely visible through the dark windows.

In another place, in another war, the sight might not have sparked such alarm. But this has been no ordinary fight. More than a few times on the road north toward Baghdad, these same Army reservists had watched similar scenes turn into fiery shootouts.

"We've seen it before," said 1st Lt. Wayne L. Toler. "A bus or a van full of what look like civilians will stop and pull in front of the convoy. They'll all get out with their hands up. Then the people in the front will drop, and one of them will pull out an RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) or a rifle and start firing. Those are just the tactics they're using out here. You have to assume everything is a threat."

The 459th reservists were relieved when this encounter with civilians on the battlefield ended without shots being fired.

"As they filed out of the bus, I could see they were all grown men - they didn't look like refugees," said Wheeling, W. Va., native Sgt. Ronald Harrison, a section leader in the company's 2nd platoon. "But you have to give them every chance. I'd learned a little Arabic before I came out here, so I started shouting 'A la thufl! A la thufl' - get on the ground. And they listened."

The passengers lay on the ground, and the 459th soldiers watched through the sights on their weapons. An Arab translator traveling with the Marines, who were escorting the reservists, approached the lead bus and spoke with one of the drivers.

These were genuine non-combatants, already captured, disarmed, and sent down the road to be processed by an enemy-prisoner-of-war unit with the means to hold and care for them.

"Stand down! Stand down!" Toler yelled to his men. Barrels were lowered. Safety switches were clicked back into place. Heartbeats slowed. The buses moved on.

"One shot gets fired, and everybody starts firing," 459th commander Capt. Timothy Vandeborne said afterward. "That's a fact of life in a situation like that - tensions are high, you don't know if it's incoming or outgoing, and everyone on those buses would have been killed."

"They responded like soldiers - like Marines," said Marine Capt. Chris Downs, who has been working closely with the 459th as the two branches protect each other along this dangerous road. "Because they kept their heads, no one lost their lives. The Army should be proud of them. I know the Marine Corps is."

The 459th MRB, based in Bridgeport, W. Va., is a collection of men and women from all over the Ohio River Valley, from Pittsburgh, Wheeling and Akron to small towns like Fairview, W. Va., and Punxsutawney, Pa. They're Army reservists who spend the vast majority of their time as teachers and roofers and students and salesmen, living normal civilian lives with wives and children, donning their speckled greens for - you've seen the commercials - one weekend a month, two weeks a year. But when America got ready to go to war, the phones rang at home, and now the unit's 172 members find themselves in Iraq to do what they've long trained to do - build bridges.

Unconventional War brings unforgettable memories In a war that's been different, and more difficult, than what many of the soldiers expected, they have traveled a long road to Baghdad - ambushes, burned-out vehicles and dead bodies by the side of the road. In short -- war -- and everything that comes with it

"I sure don't feel like a reservist, or a bridger, these days," Harrison said. "When we got called up, we thought we'd just build a bridge for the combat units to cross and sit on it. But we're doing everything a combat unit does. We pull security in foxholes all night. We've fired rounds at people who are firing at us. We've seen war - this is the first time I've seen a dead body outside of a funeral home. It's really opened our eyes."

The turning point was in Al Nasiriyah. Until then, the worst of the trip north had been the predictable perils of life in any 89-vehicle convoy of boat carriers, bridge trucks, bulldozers and supply trailers making its way across the desert. Then there are also the breakdowns, lack of sleep, the occasional tipped trailer when the road at night gets dusty and dark.

The Iraqis had left most of its southern territory undefended, and there wasn't much to complain about but boredom and flies. But when the 459th convoy and its Marine escort began winding through the small towns and cities that dot the center of Iraq - an information-deprived region whose people, translators say, have been told by their leader that U.S. forces are here not to liberate but slaughter and enslave them - resistance stiffened, and the road got, as soldiers say, "hot."

By the time the 459th got the go-ahead to roll through, Al Nasiriyah was, in military terms, "secure." In real life, that assessment meant something a bit different. Shots rang out from alleys, windows, Toyota pickup trucks and minivans. Marines, who lined up on both sides of the road, were firing constantly, their squad leaders ordering and halting fire through the gaps of the 459th's convoy as it gas and braked its way across the bridge at the center of town.

Overhead, a Marine Cobra helicopter swooped low and fired a stream of bullets and missiles into a van bristling with enemy RPGs, raining shells down on the trucks' roofs. And in the back of the convoy - a particularly enticing target for the dashing, darting enemy - the nerve-rattling trip was more than a spectator sport.

"We were passing this alley," said company 1st Sgt. Frederick Bell, "and one of them popped out at us and started shooting. So I fired. I got him, and we all ended up getting through alive."

In the next town, Spc. Willard Harmon fired his Squad Assault Weapon for the first time since Basic Training.

"The Marines were lined up on the side of the road, exchanging fire with this group that kept trying to rush their position and then pulling back behind the building," Harmon said. "I was pulling security with them, and I had a different angle. Their commander came down the line and told me, 'if they come out again, light 'em up.' So when they tried to rush again, I fired."

Harmon doesn't know if he hit anyone. "All I know is that they didn't come back out after that - I guess at the very least, they realized that they weren't going to be able to get where they wanted to go. And we were able to get through the town OK after that."

OK - but not the same. Some soldiers counted the dead they'd seen into the hundreds, and wondered what they'd tell their wives when they got home, whether they wanted to share what they'd seen with anyone who hadn't had to see it. Spc. James Wylie took pictures so that he'd never forget what war looked like - and then realized he didn't need them. "I see them every time I go to sleep," he said.

On the way out of the town, bulldozer operator Spc. Anthony Shaffer was called upon to clear the road of a dead body. "It didn't seem right to me somehow," he said. "I didn't want to do it. But you have to do what you have to do to keep the convoy moving."

Sgt. David Wiles was in the first Gulf War, and has seen some of this before. "I was in a field artillery unit in the first Gulf War, and after we fired we'd travel through our own impact zone," he said. "We saw a lot of the same stuff - the bodies, the destruction, the death. It's not as much of a shock for me, the second time around, but for someone seeing this stuff for the first time, well, it can be tough."

"That first night after Al Nasiriyah, a lot of the soldiers, especially some of the young guys, needed someone to talk to. You can see it in their eyes," said Sgt. Harrison, who put a post-graduate program in community counseling on hold to come to war. "I try to find them, just let them know that we're all feeling the same, to one degree or another. Everybody's dealing with it in their own way."

"It's just the way it is," said Pittsburgh native Sgt. Paul T. Abernathy. "We all signed up knowing that we might have to go do this, and now that we're here - you just keep in mind that this is our job as soldiers, to win this war. And this is the way wars are won - not just by building a bridge, but by getting to where the bridge has to be built, any way you have to."

Sgt. Gregory Cox is the 459th's Unit Administrator, and his wife runs the company's Family Support Group back home. As the group's unofficial mother hen, he has it boiled down. "When you have to kill to defend yourself or your fellow soldiers, and continue the mission, you do it," he said. "When you don't have to - like when those EPWs came through - you're glad you didn't pull the trigger. But in the end, all you can do is try to come home with your pride and your ass."

A week after Al Nasiriyah, everyone in the 459th is still OK. They haven't built a bridge yet - maybe further north, maybe not -- but as they fill in their foxholes and get ready to get back on the road to Baghdad, things like that don't matter as much as they used to. Every night they pull security, taking turns sleeping and watching the road and each others' backs.

Every day they clean their weapons and gas masks, keep their vehicles in working order, grab a meal and add another mark to the tally since their last shower - and pull security some more. Every now and then they take a minute to be thankful that they're soldiers, serving their country the best they can and that their new full-time job hasn't yet cost any of this company their lives.

Staff Sgt. Ryan Culhane, said he plans to re-enlist in the Reserve on the first bridge the 459th puts across a river, whether it's under fire or not.

"Just the other day the sergeants got together and decided that God had dispatched a whole battalion of angels to watch over us," Abernathy said. "We've had accidents, we've taken fire, we've been through a lot. But we're all still here."