DISPATCHES FROM IRAQ
Task Force 1-21 quietly enters Iraq
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| The 1st Battalion 21st Infantry Regiment convoy made its way through the Iraqi desert. Although little trouble was expected initially, soldiers placed loaded magazines in their weapons as the alert level rose.
Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser |
By William Cole
Advertiser Military Writer
WITH TASK FORCE 1-21, Southern Iraq — For the Hawai'i soldiers of Task Force 1-21 rolling through the desert by convoy, the 600-mile trip to northern Iraq began in Kuwait with an historic send-off and a night spent under the stars only hundreds of yards from the no-man's land that marks the border.
Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser
So far, it's been a largely uneventful travelogue of Iraqi life on the arid and sparsely populated southern plain viewed from Humvee window and frigidly cold open-air gun turret.
Members of the 1st Battalion, 21st Infantry, took a few moments to pray, before leaving the relative safety of Kuwait and entering Iraq. Soldiers trained in Hawai'i for months before embarking on what is to be a year-long deployment.
Camels wandered in the low-mounded sand, and Iraqis in head scarves and tunics stopped and stared at the soldiers as much as the soldiers stared back.
After training for months in Hawai'i for the year-long deployment and spending more than a week in Kuwait, Pfc. Jason Frank, 22, couldn't believe he was actually in Iraq.
"I've always watched it on TV for 10 years (since the Gulf War), and now I'm here," said Frank, a driver for an anti-tank team.
"When you go past the highway signs and see a city in Iraq and it's a dangerous area, it stands your hair up on end," said the New Yorker, who's with Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 1st Battalion, 21st Infantry.
The 600 soldiers in the task force — one of several from the 25th Infantry Division (Light) heading by convoy to northern Iraq — placed loaded magazines in their weapons for the first time since crossing into Iraq. The alert level was upgraded.
Military officials said there were no attacks on the convoy.
'I saw a lot of hungry kids'
Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser
Some Iraqis walking along the roadway — where vast stretches of desert made it difficult to determine where they were going or where they had come from — smiled and waved as the convoy passed. Children gave thumbs up and pointed to their mouths and stomachs, hoping for a handout.
Lt.Col. Mark Dewhurst, commander of 2189 1st Battalion 21st Infantry Regiment, addressed his troops. Dewhurst recalled how underarmed battalion soldiers were rushed into Korea in 1950, only to fall back — a mistake, he said, that will not occur again.
Iraqis watched, as the 1-21 convoy passed.
Pfc. Luke Lebrun of C Company, 1st Battalion 21st Infantry Regiment maintained control of his M249 Squad Automatic Weapon as the convoy crossed the Kuwaiti border and entered Iraq.
The Schofield Barracks soldiers, many of them in their late teens or early 20s, kept their weapons at the ready and cautiously waved back.
Before leaving, the soldiers had been told Bedouins likely would be spotted carrying AK-47s but have not been a threat.
Although some soldiers saw weapons, others came away with a different impression.
"I saw a lot of hungry kids," said Spc. Adam Hughes, 25, a Tennessean with 1-21 Headquarters and Headquarters Company as he later cleaned his Humvee-mounted M-249 Squad Automatic Weapon. "We're going to help the people. That's all we're here to do."
Capt. Bill Venable, who commands Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 21st Infantry, and whose soldiers were chosen to provide security for the 1-21 task force convoy, said little resistance was expected in the south.
"Most of the threat that we were expecting we thought would occur in the Sunni Triangle," Venable said, referring to the area north and west of Baghdad where attacks on U.S. troops have been frequent.
Schofield Barracks officials talked about the convoy because insurgents are less likely to attack groups as large and heavily armed as those from the 25th Infantry Division (Light).
When the 4,000 Schofield Barracks soldiers take up duty in northern Iraq, it will be the first time since the Vietnam War that a brigade-sized unit of the 25th Infantry Division (Light) has gone into a combat zone.
Lt. Col. Mark Dewhurst, the 1-21 commander, drew on the battalion's history as the soldiers prepared to leave Camp Virginia in Kuwait.
Glad to be out of Kuwait
About 400 soldiers with the battalion were rushed from Japan to Korea in 1950 when the North attacked. They held off a North Korean division for eight hours before falling back.
"Now we look at ourselves in 2004. We will never make that mistake again. We'll never be underarmed," Dewhurst said from the top of a Humvee as the Task Force 1-21 soldiers gathered on the Kuwaiti sand.
The soldiers' last night in Kuwait was spent on the border with Iraq in sight of a one-mile demilitarized zone between the two countries, an area marked by a 20-foot-high sand berm and a checkpoint guarded by multinational forces.
The soldiers rolled out sleeping bags on the dirt next to their Humvees and 5-ton and 2 1/2-ton trucks, and woke in the cold morning darkness for the next leg of their trip north.
Like other soldiers, Hughes said he was glad to be out of Kuwait, and in Iraq.
"Oh, yeah, finally," he said. "I want to just get started with what we have to do."
