Clearing the Fog of War

A scary ride on a bridge to forever war

The commander of Fort Hood and III Corps, Lt. Gen. Mark Milley, is headed to Afghanistan along with 500 soldiers from the post. They “cased” the colors today and will unfurl them again when they arrive in Kabul.

These ceremonies used to be big news. Now, they’re something of a ho-hum affair for the public, though not to the families who see loved ones head off for war once again and wonder when the revolving door will stop.

The 10th anniversary of the war in Iraq gives me cause to think a lot about all this. I was there, and on this week in 2003 wrote a diary entry that captured the nuts and bolts of a battle but missed a much bigger war.

“Euphrates Bridge River Battle,” I called it on the first page of a weathered reporter’s notebook that is dotted by smudges of Iraqi sand on every page.

It was early morning, 4:50 a.m. Thursday, April 3. We had crossed that bridge 12 hours before in a Humvee that had plastic doors and jelly windows, Iraqis fighting as troops from the 1st Brigade rolled onward.

The Iraqis fell where they stood. One fighter we passed lay dead with his AK-47 in his arms, a black scorpion scrambling past him as the span shook.

“More enemy advances toward our position just a few miles east of the Euphrates,” the early morning entry continues. “We’re south of Baghdad.”

I went off to Kuwait as the deployments began at Fort Hood after 9/11, and recall boarding the bus that took hundreds of soldiers in their desert uniforms and body armor to a jumbo jet at Robert Gray Army Airfield.

That was the beginning of the war in Iraq, a time when two brigades carved out camps in Kuwait’s northern desert, a miserable place at any time of year, but especially summer, when temperatures hit 115 degrees or more.

San Antonio Express-News’ photographer Bahram Mark Sobhani and I spent 10 days in Kuwait a couple of months or so after the terrorist attacks, living in small trailers on a built-up base and traveling out to the desert each day, interviewing troops and going on patrols. We watched Camps Pennsylvania, New York and Virginia go up, and knew then we’d be back. And indeed, we were there a week before the March 20, 2003, invasion.

This week 10 years ago, the Iraqis mounted a furious counterattack against a lightly held U.S. position on the east side of the 900-foot-long bridge, a crucial turning point in the war. There actually were two battles, the first occurring the day before and the second starting early the next morning.

There was nothing to stop the 3rd Infantry Division from taking Baghdad if its men held the bridge and a nearby T-intersection defended by maybe 120 GIs, four M1 tanks and five Bradley armored personnel carriers.

At least 5,000 Iraqis rushed toward the American position, where the 3rd ID’s soldiers were starting to run low on bullets, artillery and tank rounds.

“Good impacts,” Senior Airman Dan Housley said.

Housley and his boss, Capt. Shad Magann, called in the airstrikes that wasted Iraqi T-72 ranks and Russian-made armored personnel carriers.  Stacks of planes dropped Joint Direct Atttack Munitions, or JDAMs, on hapless enemy troops who had no night-fighting capabilities.

The Americans, of course, preferred to fight at night.

“It’s sort of what everybody puts in their mind as what a battle is supposed to look like based on the movies, but it is much more vivid when you’re there in person and you see the incredible amount of concentrated fire in a relatively small place that we were able to bring to bear,” said Maj. Gen. Will Grimsley, who led the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade at the time.

Tanks led by Lt. Col. Ernest “Rock” Marcone, commander of the 3-69th armored battalion, fired high explosive rounds from great distances.

Artillery rained on the Iraqis as they closed on the intersection.

So, too, did the JDAMs.

Magann told one tank commander to fire a single high-explosive round at a T-72 after it rounded a bend in the road, and said his airplanes would cake care of the armored truck behind it. Suddenly, there was a bright flash followed by huge secondary explosion, the flames rising hundreds of feet.

The tank was gone, and soon the trucks behind it were obliterated as well.

“What kind of fuse do you have in your JDAMs?” Magann, now a major in the Air Force Reserve flying A-10 Warthogs. asked one of the pilots.

“Instantanous,” the pilot replied.

Magann sat in a Humvee working a laptop while talking to the pilots above our position. Bathed in the computer’s bright light, he made a perfect target for a sniper but kept reading the grid on his screen, calling in airstrikes.

“Twenty-vehicle convoy,” he reported.

“There were some pretty good southeast convoy explosions,” Housley, now a C-130 pilot with the Georgia Air National Guard, told Magann.

An hour passed and first light was near, but the attackers kept coming – and so did the JDAMs, tank rounds and artillery.

“It was just a mishmash and they dismounted all those guys, all the infantrymen, and that’s unfortunately where most of the killing was, was the Iraqi (army) infantry, Republican Guard infantry as well as the special forces guys. They were moving almost like you used to think the old Soviets would do, in line-formation waves,” Grimsley recently recalled.

We had taken a scary ride on a bridge to what appeared to be a lopsided victory but was, as it would turn out, an early chapter to forever war.

In the margin of my notes I listed the subject of that day’s story: “Anatomy of an airstrike,” and I know why I saw it that way. Hundreds of Iraqis died in both bridge battles, while the Americans lost two killed and two wounded.

Magann was on the radio, updating the combatants, and even if the ground forces had run out of ammunition those planes would have kept coming.

“Be advised we got the enemy halted and off of the road,” he said.

The Iraqis had been stopped for the moment. But they would be back.

Original story linked here: http://blog.mysanantonio.com/military/2013/04/a-scary-ride-on-a-bridge-to-forever-war/

A victory lost to history

Ten years ago this week the 3rd Infantry Division was closing on Baghdad in what may be the most lopsided offensive in our history.

The division, led by Maj. Gen Buford C. Blount III, had 20,000 soldiers, 275 tanks, 350 armored personnel carriers and thousands of Humvees.

Now retired in Hattiesburg, Miss., he thinks of writing a book about the invasion because its success was overshadowed by an insurgency that transformed the fortunes of America, and Iraq, only a few months later.

“I was in Israel last week and gave a desert warfare presentation to the IDF, and as I go over it I’m amazed at how well the 3rd Infantry Division soldiers fought and what all they accomplished,” Blount said in a recent interview. “A lot of that’s been kind of overshadowed because of the insurgency and all the things that happened after we got to Baghdad.”

That’s true. But to have seen the 3rd Infantry Division at war was also to know that it reflected its commander. An Austin native whose father was an Air Force pilot, Blount would have happily followed in his dad’s footsteps if not for bad eyesight. But he loved tanks, and so the Army was an easy second choice.

In command of the division, he was shrewd but low-key, the kind of leader who gave his subordinates the latitude to make decisions and do their jobs without micromanagement – something no one in Iraq’s Republican Guard could do and a failing that ultimately sealed Saddam Hussein’s fate.

But more on that later, and more on other issues that arose after the lightning victory, the decision to disband the Iraqi army chief among them. One of Blount’s brigade commanders, Will Grimsley, neatly summed up the working relationship between the boss and his lieutenants.

Now a two-star general who is chief of staff of the U.S. Strategic Command at Offut AFB, Neb., Grimsley said he and his contemporaries had trust in their superiors, trust in each other and trust from the top down as well.

As an example, he knew and trusted his fellow brigade commanders so well that he never worried about his flanks as the 1st Brigade, the unit that photographer Mark Sobhani and I were embedded with, charged toward Baghdad, conquering the country in only 21 days.

‘We knew that we were going to be able to do this because we all trusted each other,” Grimsley said, adding that Blount gave them a great deal of freedom to command. “We were never interfered with by the division. We were enabled by the division.”

Good working relationships are the cornerstone of any success story, and you will hear more about them in the coming days.

But one story sums up Blount well for me. I was interviewing him as the occupation began and, as always, he offered a realistic assessment of where things stood. He clearly knew that Baghdad had a world of problems and that neither he nor anyone else could wave a magic wand to fix them. Still, Blount was relaxed. His men were on the streets doing patrols and trying to fix a tattered city that symbolized a broken nation.

There were rumors about Saddam coming out of hiding to lead a rebellion against the American forces in Iraq, and as I mentioned that, he chuckled.

“I hope so,” he said.

You could tell he would really have welcomed that attack, and that was the essence of Buford Blount. He never boasted but never lacked for confidence. And that attitude could be found everywhere down the line, from Grimsley to the youngest platoon leader in the division. It was something to behold, and I recall thinking before the invasion that it was arrogance.

It wasn’t. As the western actor Walter Brennan liked to say in a 1960s-era TV series, “No brag, just fact.”

But so many years later, what 3rd ID and the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force did in those three weeks of combat has been obscured by the great sandstorm of stalemate born in the insurgency. And you can see why Blount would like to make sure that what they did isn’t lost to history.

Original link is here: http://blog.mysanantonio.com/military/2013/03/a-victory-lost-to-history/

Iraq war spurred advances in military medicine

Burned over 35 percent of his body and missing his ears, both pinkie fingers and his left index finger, Shilo Harris, 38, is alive, thanks, ironically, to a long war in Iraq that has driven a revolution in military medicine.

Six months into his second tour of Iraq, Harris and his team were hit by an improvised explosive device south of Baghdad on Feb. 19, 2007. Three of his crew were killed, and another GI was injured. Their armored Humvee was torn into pieces.

“I remember my friend coming over and checking on me,” Harris said. “He was standing over me and was looking at me in sheer terror.”

He was treated quickly in the field and flown to a military hospital in Germany.

Placed in a drug-induced coma, Harris was put on continuous renal replacement therapy, a form of artificial kidney support used in only a few intensive care units around the country at the beginning of the war.

It is common today.

Medical advances have helped save nine in every 10 of the worst-wounded GIs, even those with severe burns and multiple limb amputations. In Vietnam, about three in every four patients lived.

The war also has spurred transformations in technology, as well as the development of a sophisticated military research and clinical care network that has grown exponentially here.

It has pumped millions of dollars into the San Antonio-area economy, helped spur the creation of joint medic training and improved care for 240,000 military health beneficiaries as well as civilian emergency patients in this region.

“Had we been in this war for one or two years, we might not have had this sustained focus on combat casualty care research, but I've been to Afghanistan three times and Iraq twice, and because of the duration, we've had the opportunity,” said Air Force Col. Todd Rasmussen, a vascular and trauma surgeon and deputy commander of the U.S. Army Institute of Surgical Research in San Antonio.

“That's the strange silver lining of war,” he added.

Read more: http://www.mysanantonio.com/default/article/Iraq-war-spurred-advancements-in-military-medicine-4381062.php

A look back at decade of Iraq

The war in Iraq had been under way for two weeks when the invading 3rd Infantry Division reached a critical bridge crossing the Euphrates River, where U.S. troops expected fierce resistance. (See story, "A look back at decade of Iraq, here.)

Capt. Shad Magann, commander of two close air support teams directing aerial attacks at the front of the invasion, had to decide how to cross the 900-foot span. As the armored column idled, he gave the order: make a mad dash in his lightly armored Humvee.

The sprint across the bridge at Objective Peach the afternoon of April 2, 2003, looked so suicidal that Magann's radio operator and driver, Senior Airman Dan Housley, questioned the order and then said a prayer — and so began the first of two battles that sealed the invasion of Iraq, though not the long and bitter war to come.

“Obstacle-wise, that was our last major hurdle to get over,” said retired Army Maj. Gen. Buford Blount III, who commanded the 3rd Infantry Division during the invasion and occupation.

“We knew we still had a Republican Guard division to fight through, but we knew we could defeat them, and then once we got to Baghdad we'd have the Special Republican Guard to fight,” he said, adding that victory was inevitable. “That was really the choke point where they could have put up substantial resistance and hindered our progress.”

Hundreds, if not thousands, of Iraqis died in a pair of major battles at the bridge, with two Americans killed and two others injured.

But the path was cleared, and the fall of Baghdad a week later ended the “shock and awe” phase of the campaign to remove dictator Saddam Hussein from power and give the country a chance to build a democracy.

Last week marked the 10th anniversary of the invasion, which sparked an insurgency that drew American and coalition forces into a costly and prolonged conflict that cost the lives of 4,800 coalition troops and untold Iraqis, wounded tens of thousands and drew heated debate over whether the war was necessary.

It also launched an era of asymmetrical war and the use of increasingly sophisticated roadside bombs that have taken a huge toll on troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The first American wounded in Iraq came from San Antonio.

Read more: http://www.mysanantonio.com/default/article/A-look-back-at-decade-of-Iraq-4379845.php

Airstrike controllers' school due at Lackland

The Air Force said Wednesday it plans to move its training hub for airmen who direct airstrikes in combat to San Antonio.

The Tactical Air Control Party and the Air Liaison Officer training school are expected to begin operations at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland late next year.

Lackland was considered the more economical choice after the Air Force looked for a place that could graduate more airmen in a career field that long has been stressed by two wars.

Throughout the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, officers who command the close air-support teams have been in short supply and forced to

repeatedly deploy — one reason why the service wants to shift training to San Antonio, where graduates will rise by a third.

Now at Hurlburt Field in Fort Walton Beach, Fla., the 19-week TACP apprentice training course produces about 270 graduates a year, but the Air Force wants to increase that number by 100, said Collen McGee, Lackland spokeswoman.

The school also will have 65 instructors permanently assigned to the base.

The Air Force gave three reasons for moving the school. It said Lackland is preferred over Keesler AFB in Biloxi, Miss., because it has fewer “black flag” days, when training operations are suspended due to heat and humidity.

“There are shorter commute times to the training location here and the estimated bed-down costs are approximately $1 million less expensive,” McGee added.

An environmental assessment must be done before the action is final.

Col. Mark Camerer, commander of Lackland's 37th Training Wing, said Air Force leaders would hand down a final decision after the review is completed this fall.

Read more: http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/military/article/Airstrike-controllers-school-due-at-Lackland-4180974.php#ixzz2HnIrBwC0

San Antonio singer gives tearful apology over war stories

A tearful Timothy Michael Poe apologized Friday for outrage over disputed accounts he gave on a TV talent show over his war service, including claims that he was shot in Iraq.

Poe's fiancee, Carrie Morris, told the San Antonio Express-News that he's had memory problems since a 2005 training accident and that he incorrectly believed he had served in Iraq. She said Poe had not “gotten the proper help.”

Poe, meanwhile, told WOAI-AM's “Joe Pags Show” he had set an appointment with a VA psychiatrist to “find out what's going on in my head.”

In a tearful interview, he apologized to “anyone I have offended in any way. I never intended to hurt anyone. I just wanted to put out there that, look, there's life after accidents. I love what the soldiers do for this country and I did my best for my country, and I apparently need help, and I want to say to everyone God bless you.”

Poe performed Monday on NBC's “America's Got Talent.” Occasionally stuttering, he told the judges and a national audience about suffering back and head injuries in a 2009 firefight in Afghanistan.

Morris wouldn't say if he would be in the contest's next round.

It also wasn't clear what he was apologizing for in the brief radio interview. Morris wouldn't let him talk but said he was sorry “for everything's that's been going on.”

Read more: http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/military/article/S-A-singer-gives-tearful-apology-over-war-stories-3621131.php#ixzz1ylm4yVsW

 

San Antonio singer did not go to Iraq, officer claims

Timothy Poe, a country crooner from San Antonio accused of lying on national television about being badly wounded in Afghanistan, was challenged Thursday over claims that he was shot in one leg while in Iraq.

The Minnesota National Guard charged that the story, told last month to a Dallas television station, wasn't true, saying its records showed that Poe, 35, reported to training at Camp Shelby, Miss., in 2005 but didn't go to Iraq because of a “medical condition” that officials didn't identify.

“There is no official record that Mr. Poe deployed to Iraq and sustained injuries in combat,” said Lt. Col. Kevin Olson, a Minnesota Guard spokesman.

Poe became an overnight sensation Monday when he was featured in a segment of NBC's “America's Got Talent.” He told the judges and the national television audience at an Austin audition of suffering back and head injuries in a 2009 firefight in Afghanistan.

The Guard said Poe went home with an ear problem after just more than a month in the war zone, and others who said they served with him called his story an outright lie.

Poe could not be reached despite multiple calls during the past two days. The Express-News asked him to allow San Antonio Military Medical Center, where he was treated from September 2009 until his medical discharge in May 2011, to release information about his treatment. So many messages had been left on the phone that its storage capacity was full.

SAMMC has yet to release any documents, but the Minnesota National Guard provided records that in some cases appeared to support parts of Poe's story and undermine other claims he has made.

The Guard said Poe gave the records to the media. After examining them, Olson said, “He appears to lack the required justification to conclusively prove his injuries are combat-related. Absent this lack of supporting justification, it's impossible to prove Mr. Poe's injuries resulted from combat action.”

Read more: http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/military/article/S-A-singer-did-not-go-to-Iraq-officer-claims-3617018.php#ixzz1ylkdK3TS

 

'Talent' singer's injuries in war disputed

A San Antonio singer who told viewers of “America's Got Talent” on Monday that he was flown out of Afghanistan after being badly injured in a grenade blast was actually evacuated for an ear problem, according to the National Guard.

Timothy Michael Poe, a sergeant who delivered supplies, had been in Afghanistan for just over a month in summer 2009, Master Sgt. Daniel Ewer, a Minnesota National Guard spokesman, said Wednesday.

“There's a medical issue with his ears,” he said, adding he had no additional information.

A news release issued by the guard countered Poe's claim of having been injured in Afghanistan, sparking a flurry of stories, blogs and comments on the Internet accusing him of manufacturing the tale.

Neither Poe nor two family members returned phone messages.

Poe was treated at San Antonio Military Medical Center, but spokesman Dewey Mitchell said he could not reveal the content of medical records without Poe's permission.

Mitchell said Poe was assigned to Fort Sam Houston's Warrior Transition Battalion and was there from September 2009 until he was medically retired in May 2011.

U.S. Army North spokesman Don Manuszewski confirmed that Poe used the Warrior and Family Support Center. The director of the facility, Judith Markelz, said she vaguely remembered him.

The San Antonio Express-News left a message on Poe's phone asking him to give SAMMC permission to release his records.

Another Minnesota Guard spokesman, Lt. Col. Kevin Olson, said Wednesday that Poe told him in a message that “he would like to discuss with me his case and provide more information.”

“I returned his call and he did not pick up and he did not return my call,” Olson said.

Read more: http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/military/article/Talent-singer-s-injuries-in-war-disputed-3614673.php#ixzz1yliMGUz3

 

Mental problems top illness for GIs

More active-duty troops were hospitalized for mental illnesses last year than any other major malady, a new military report says.

The Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center said 21,735 troops from the services were admitted to hospitals because of mental problems, up dramatically from previous years.

Most were men, with mental disorders the leading cause of hospitalizations for soldiers and Marines — the services that have carried the greatest burden in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Hospitalization rates for all causes among active-duty troops were up during the past decade, with one in every 15 troops treated, but mental-illness admissions grew 50 percent over the past five years.

“It is not surprising to see the increase in hospitalizations for mental-health disorders among service members,” Army Col. Robert Lipnick, a spokesman for the Silver Spring, Md.-based center, said Friday, noting that the Pentagon has encouraged GIs to seek help.

“In addition, there has been increased screening for and emphasis placed on detection of mental-health disorders,” he added. “Also, the effects of repeated deployments and prolonged exposures can't be overemphasized.”

Mental disorders long have been a byproduct of war, as have injuries and back, shoulder and knee problems. But the center reported a steep rise in the number of days soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen have been hospitalized because of mental disorders since 2005.

That coincides with the explosion of an insurgency in Iraq that claimed the lives of 3,422 U.S. troops from 2004-2007, the majority of those who died during the war. The report, which did not include reservists who've played major combat roles, also hinted at the toll mental illness has taken on the military and its hospitals.

Read more: http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/military/article/Mental-problems-top-illness-for-GIs-3570289.php#ixzz1ylZmeP2f

 

Veterans' car crashes rise after return home

Navy Chief Petty Officer Ron Charles Verdoza didn't spend much time driving in Afghanistan and for good reason — Disney Drive, the main drag on Bagram Air Base, often is clogged with traffic.

“I think the speed limit was 5 or 10 miles per hour,” he said.

Back home after that tour in 2008, he took out a chunk of his garage while backing his car out. It wasn't his first fender-bender after a deployment, and statistics show it was no surprise.

A USAA report released Monday said troops back from overseas duty tours are more likely to have car accidents in the six months after their return than in the six months before deploying. The study, “Returning Warriors,” said troops of all ranks and ages had 13 percent more at-fault accidents.

The San Antonio insurance firm for military families based its study on the private passenger vehicle driving experiences of USAA members. It found that 22 percent of enlistees through E-4 had at-fault accidents. Ten percent of NCOs through E-9 had at-fault accidents after returning, while 3.5 percent of officers did.

Soldiers and Marines had far higher crash rates than sailors and airmen. Drivers with three or more deployments had 36 percent more at-fault accidents, while such incidents rose 27 percent for those with two deployments. Drivers with one deployment had a 12 percent increase.

Read more: http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/military/article/Veterans-car-crashes-rise-after-return-home-3504401.php#ixzz1ylKTI711