War and Peace

NYT reported At War in Bomb Field, at Peace in Field of Dreams - After a seven-hour mission inside an armored Humvee so hot its metal would burn exposed skin, Staff Sgt. Dawayne Harterson crawled out the passenger door, exhausted, and walked directly to his tent. He quickly exchanged his uniform for an Army-issued gray T-shirt and black shorts. A few minutes later, he was standing on a grassless expanse, ready for the next task of his yearlong deployment in Iraq: softball season. "C'mon, dawg! Where is everybody?" he said to his coach, Sgt. Ronnie Mays, when they realized the team was a player short. "Man, I'm gonna lose my mind if we don't play today."

I thank God that our troups have a diversion they can fall back on in their off-time, but why could the NYT not focus on the diversions that many of our troups use, helping to rebuild a school, or collecting school supplies, or otherwise helping local Iraqis.

Their Army Reserve unit, Company A of the 467th Engineer Battalion based in Memphis, has one of the most harrowing jobs on this base. As many as two or three times a day, often on only a few hours' sleep, the engineers of the 467th leave the relative safety of Warhorse's walls and travel down highways at 20 miles an hour in search of the No. 1 killer of American soldiers in Iraq: roadside bombs, known as improvised explosive devices, or I.E.D.'s. [Six more American soldiers were killed Thursday by roadside bombs, four by a blast in the northern Iraqi city of Samarra and two others in Afghanistan, the military said. Pages A4 and A9.] "One minute we're trying to catch a fly ball; the next minute, we're praying not to get blown into a million pieces," said Sergeant Harterson, 35, from Jacksonville, N.C., as Black Hawk medevac helicopters flew over Warhorse and Bradley fighting vehicles kicked up dust in the distance. "That's how messed up our life has been. But man, we still need sports, because we need to have that escape."

And I am glad you have it.

So a sergeant in the 467th lifts weights to help fight nervousness after a car bomb exploded and burned him. Two young brothers compete in basketball and volleyball and in the eight-team softball league to release tension. Two best friends play marathon games of Monopoly to combat boredom and fear. "We need to trick our minds that we're somewhere else," Sergeant Harterson said. "Otherwise, we wouldn't be able to go on, knowing today might be our last." The 122 soldiers in the 467th, from places like Tennessee, Mississippi and Puerto Rico, came together this year in Baquba, a city 35 miles northeast of Baghdad. They range in age from 19 to 58, and at home, they have jobs like FedEx package handler, prison guard, Kellogg's waffle inspector and horseshoer. About one-third came from the inactive ready reserve, soldiers who do not have to train but can be called to active duty at a moment's notice.

Clearly the NYT does not like the fact that reservists are serving in this war, but would they prefer that we maintain a much larger Active Duty force when we are not at war, just so we wont have to call up the Guard and Reserve when we need them?

"The only reason we got this nasty job chasing roadside bombs is because we are expendable," said Staff Sgt. Jeff Rayner from Nashville. "They need bodies, and we provide them. We clear the roads, but we're still treated like dirt here."

Staff Sgt Rayner, I will assure you that you are not expendable. The IUDs need to be cleared, and someone needs to do it, but they certainly are not expendable.

Soon after they arrived, the soldiers were moved from containerized housing units, aluminum shipping containers that hold two or three soldiers, to tents, the most primitive housing on the base. They bonded on convoys down the treacherous roads and turned to sports to boost sagging morale.

Should we have built permanent housing when we were not going to have a permanent base there?

On one afternoon last week, when the air finally cooled to a tolerable 100 degrees, the engineers emerged from their curved-top tents, which sleep 12, and hung out under a patio covered by camouflage netting and blue and tan tarps. They smoked cigarettes, traded stories about their missions that day or tried to relax on a bizarre collection of stained bucket seats from a car, ripped floral futons, and vinyl and velour back seats torn from vans.

"So, are you a virgin?" one sergeant asked another, taking a long drag on his Marlboro. "Oh no," the sergeant answered. "I've been hit by an I.E.D. already. Yep, got the first one out of the way awhile ago." On every mission, the engineers search for signs of bombs by looking for discolorations in the sand, wires sticking from the ground or anything else that seems out of place. They also use a large armored vehicle called the Buffalo, which has a long hydraulic arm to search for I.E.D.'s inside things like garbage piles, traffic pylons and even dead dogs. When one explodes, "the sound is so loud, it could make your heart stop beating," said Sergeant Harterson, who works as a crash investigator at a Navy aviation depot back home.

Thank you for the good job you are doing.