Walking the Beat with Charlie Company August 26, 2006
Walking the Beat with Charlie Company
August 26, 2006
For the past several weeks, I have spent Friday or Saturday with the 101st Airborne Division’s Charlie Company, 2nd Battalion. Charlie Company has had a busy year. More raids, more sniper attacks, more shoot-outs have occurred in Charlie Company’s sector than in any other sector of the city of Kirkuk. With the end of their deployment drawing near, it would be understandable for the soldiers of Charlie Company to play it safe and stay in their trucks, but they are better than that. They continue to walk the beat, and that means I do too. Great.
Dismounted foot patrols in 120 plus degree heat are not much fun. Add heavy body armor, chilly stares, streams of sewage and garbage, and the only question that remains is why? Why endure so many levels of discomfort? While this does just seem to be part of the job description of a soldier, a foot patrol does have a purpose. Soldiers talk to local residents and shopkeepers and give them a chance to voice their concerns. They do not often seize this opportunity, however. Sometimes they complain—usually about the fuel shortage— but most of the time they tell the soldiers everything is fine. The soldiers know better. They know having raided countless houses, including some in the neighborhoods we walk, that there is trouble brewing behind many of the gates that line these streets. Having witnessed several raids, I know the targets our soldiers are after look no different than the people who give us the silent treatment during these patrols.
Is it possible to break the silence? After almost a year, it seems if people wanted to talk they would have by now. Maybe by saying everything is fine, they hope to make it so. Or maybe locals have resigned themselves to accepting certain realities that we would consider unacceptable. For instance, there is no city-wide waste removal system, so most residents simply throw their garbage into the nearest vacant lot or anywhere outside the walls of their property. There is no city-wide sewage system, so streams of human waste run from houses into channels in the street. Add these together and the smell can be difficult to endure and equally difficult to escape. But, because this is how it has always been, it is probably hard to imagine any other way.
Acts of violence, both targeted and random, have also become an accepted reality for many, or so it would seem. An innocent man may live next door to a terrorist, and know it, but consider it safer to remain silent than to share this information with soldiers. And though our soldiers want to make Kirkuk safe and secure, the residents of the city do not know these men who arrive in convoys of armored Humvees and always carry weapons. For this reason, many patrols are conducted jointly with Iraqi Police, but again the residents do not necessarily trust the police, so they stick to their story. Everything is fine.
If the soldiers could spend more time with the Iraqis they meet briefly while on patrol, it is likely they would win these people over. I have walked with many decent and affable soldiers from Charlie Company: John Vickery, Nathan Ryan, Donald Tarver, Josh Orban, Matt Somma, Daren Garis and Chris Miller, and the list goes on. They are easy to like. But just as the Iraqis feel it would be dangerous to let their guard down, so do the soldiers. They cannot leave their weapons and body armor in the trucks. They cannot stay in one place for too long. In some areas where there is limited cover from an attack, or where an attack is more likely to occur, they take extra precautions. A traffic circle was filled with a cloud of yellow smoke to obscure the soldiers from view. An open field was no place to linger.
War is generally thought of as a series of attacks and counterattacks, active and ever-changing, but here in Kirkuk it is sometimes anything but. Sometimes it is simply more of the same. The soldiers know the streets of the city better than they will ever know the people who live on them, and maybe this is how it has to be in a time of war. But maybe the Iraqis are watching even if they are not talking. Maybe they see the effort the soldiers are making to improve the situation in Kirkuk, and maybe they will try to do their part to help when they are ready to accept that everything is not fine. shelbymonroe@gmail.com
August 26, 2006
For the past several weeks, I have spent Friday or Saturday with the 101st Airborne Division’s Charlie Company, 2nd Battalion. Charlie Company has had a busy year. More raids, more sniper attacks, more shoot-outs have occurred in Charlie Company’s sector than in any other sector of the city of Kirkuk. With the end of their deployment drawing near, it would be understandable for the soldiers of Charlie Company to play it safe and stay in their trucks, but they are better than that. They continue to walk the beat, and that means I do too. Great.
Dismounted foot patrols in 120 plus degree heat are not much fun. Add heavy body armor, chilly stares, streams of sewage and garbage, and the only question that remains is why? Why endure so many levels of discomfort? While this does just seem to be part of the job description of a soldier, a foot patrol does have a purpose. Soldiers talk to local residents and shopkeepers and give them a chance to voice their concerns. They do not often seize this opportunity, however. Sometimes they complain—usually about the fuel shortage— but most of the time they tell the soldiers everything is fine. The soldiers know better. They know having raided countless houses, including some in the neighborhoods we walk, that there is trouble brewing behind many of the gates that line these streets. Having witnessed several raids, I know the targets our soldiers are after look no different than the people who give us the silent treatment during these patrols.
Is it possible to break the silence? After almost a year, it seems if people wanted to talk they would have by now. Maybe by saying everything is fine, they hope to make it so. Or maybe locals have resigned themselves to accepting certain realities that we would consider unacceptable. For instance, there is no city-wide waste removal system, so most residents simply throw their garbage into the nearest vacant lot or anywhere outside the walls of their property. There is no city-wide sewage system, so streams of human waste run from houses into channels in the street. Add these together and the smell can be difficult to endure and equally difficult to escape. But, because this is how it has always been, it is probably hard to imagine any other way.
Acts of violence, both targeted and random, have also become an accepted reality for many, or so it would seem. An innocent man may live next door to a terrorist, and know it, but consider it safer to remain silent than to share this information with soldiers. And though our soldiers want to make Kirkuk safe and secure, the residents of the city do not know these men who arrive in convoys of armored Humvees and always carry weapons. For this reason, many patrols are conducted jointly with Iraqi Police, but again the residents do not necessarily trust the police, so they stick to their story. Everything is fine.
If the soldiers could spend more time with the Iraqis they meet briefly while on patrol, it is likely they would win these people over. I have walked with many decent and affable soldiers from Charlie Company: John Vickery, Nathan Ryan, Donald Tarver, Josh Orban, Matt Somma, Daren Garis and Chris Miller, and the list goes on. They are easy to like. But just as the Iraqis feel it would be dangerous to let their guard down, so do the soldiers. They cannot leave their weapons and body armor in the trucks. They cannot stay in one place for too long. In some areas where there is limited cover from an attack, or where an attack is more likely to occur, they take extra precautions. A traffic circle was filled with a cloud of yellow smoke to obscure the soldiers from view. An open field was no place to linger.
War is generally thought of as a series of attacks and counterattacks, active and ever-changing, but here in Kirkuk it is sometimes anything but. Sometimes it is simply more of the same. The soldiers know the streets of the city better than they will ever know the people who live on them, and maybe this is how it has to be in a time of war. But maybe the Iraqis are watching even if they are not talking. Maybe they see the effort the soldiers are making to improve the situation in Kirkuk, and maybe they will try to do their part to help when they are ready to accept that everything is not fine. shelbymonroe@gmail.com
posted by Shelby Monroe at 11:40 PM
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