Posted on: Saturday, November 27, 2004

Isle Guard unit's colleagues allege mistreatment by Army

By Scott Gold
Los Angeles Times

DONA ANA ARMY CAMP, N.M. — Soldiers with a California battalion preparing for deployment to Iraq with the Hawai'i Army National Guard's 29th Separate Infantry Brigade said this week that they are under strict lockdown and being treated like prisoners rather than soldiers by commanders at the remote desert camp where they are training.

Even more troubling, a number of the National Guard troops said, is that the training they have received is so poor and equipment shortages so prevalent, they fear their casualty rate will be needlessly high when they arrive in Iraq early next year.

"We are going to pay for this in blood," one soldier said.

They said they believe that their that treatment and training reflect an institutional bias against National Guard troops by commanders in the Regular Army, an allegation that Army commanders denied.

The 680 members of the 1st Battalion of the 184th Infantry Regiment were activated in August and are preparing for deployment at Dona Ana, a former World War II prisoner-of-war camp 25 miles from its large parent base, Fort Bliss, Texas.

'I feel like an inmate'

Approximately 2,000 Hawai'i Guard soldiers and about 700 reservists from the 100th Battalion, 442nd Infantry, in Hawai'i, Guam, American Samoa and Saipan are headed to Iraq in February and March with units like California's 1-184th, which is part of the 29th Brigade.

Members of the California battalion said in two-dozen interviews that they are allowed no visitors or travel passes, that they have scant contact with their families and that morale is terrible.

"I feel like an inmate with a weapon," said Cpl. Jajuane Smith, 31, a six-year Guard member from Fresno, Calif., who works for an armored transport company when not on active duty.

Several soldiers have fled Dona Ana by vaulting over rolls of barbed wire that surround the small camp, the Guard troops interviewed said. Others, they said, had been contemplating going AWOL, at least temporarily, to reunite with their families for Thanksgiving.

Army commanders said the concerns were an inevitable result of the military's decision to shore up its strained forces by turning "citizen-soldiers" into fully-integrated, front-line combat troops. About 40 percent of the troops in Iraq are either Reserve or National Guard members.

Lt. Col. Michael Hubbard, of Fort Bliss, said the military must confine the soldiers largely to Dona Ana to ensure that their training is complete before they are sent to Iraq.

"A lot of these individuals are used to doing this two days a month and then going home," Hubbard said. "Now the job is 24/7. And they experience culture shock."

Hubbard said conditions at Dona Ana are designed to mirror the harsh and often thankless assignments the soldiers will take on in Iraq.

That was an initiative launched by Brig. Gen. Joseph Chaves, commander of the 29th Brigade. The program has resulted in everything from an alcohol ban to armed guards at the entrance to Dona Ana, Hubbard said.

"Are conditions spartan? Of course," Maj. Chuck Anthony, a Hawai'i National Guard spokesman said yesterday. "They are very similar to what they are going to experience when they get to Iraq."

But many of the soldiers interviewed said the problems they cite go much deeper than culture shock. And military analysts agree that tensions between Regular Army soldiers and National Guard troops have been exacerbated as the war in Iraq has required dangerous and long-term deployments from both.

The concerns of the guardsmen at Dona Ana represent the latest in a series of incidents involving allegations that a two-tier system has shortchanged Reserve and National Guard units compared with their Regular Army counterparts.

Series of incidents

In September, a National Guard battalion undergoing accelerated training at Fort Dix, N.J., was confined to barracks for two weeks after 13 soldiers reportedly went AWOL to see family before shipping out for Iraq. Last month, an Army National Guard platoon at Camp Shelby, Miss., refused its orders after voicing concerns about training conditions and poor leadership.

In the most highly publicized incident, more than two dozen Army Reserve members in Iraq refused in October to drive a fuel convoy to a town north of Baghdad because the trucks they had been given were not armored.

At Dona Ana, one of several bases where pre-deployment training is taking place, soldiers have questioned their commanders about conditions at the camp, occasionally breaking the protocol of formation drills to do so. They said they have been told repeatedly that they cannot be trusted because they are not Regular Army soldiers — though many of them are former active-duty soldiers now in their 30s and 40s.

"I'm a cop. I've got a career, a house, a family, a college degree," said one sergeant, who lives in Southern California and spoke, like most of the soldiers, on condition of anonymity.

"I came back to the National Guard specifically to go to Baghdad, because I believed in it, believed in the mission. But I have regretted every day of it. This is demoralizing, demeaning, degrading."

Concerns 'troubling'

The Guard and Reserve soldiers with the 29th are scheduled to train into December, get about two weeks off around Christmas, head to the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, La., for combat certification in January, and deploy to the Balad area north of Baghdad in February and March.

Military analysts questioned whether the Dona Ana soldiers' concerns could be attributed entirely to the military's attempt to mirror conditions in Iraq. For example, the military's ammunition shortage has meant that the soldiers often have conducted operations firing blanks — among the concerns they have voiced.

"The Bush administration had over a year of planning before going to war in Iraq," said Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor who has acted as a defense lawyer in military courts and has recently written a lengthy study of the evolution of the military.

"An ammunition shortage is not an exercise in tough love. It is simply an example of incompetence."

Turley said that in every military since Alexander the Great there have been "gripes from grunts" but "the complaints raised by these National Guardsmen raise some significant and troubling concerns."

The soldiers in New Mexico said they want more sophisticated training and better equipment.

They also said most of their training has been basic, such as first aid and rifle work, and not "theater-specific" to Iraq. They are supposed to be able to use night-vision goggles, for instance, because many patrols in Iraq take place under cover of darkness. But one group of 200 soldiers trained for just an hour with 30 pairs of goggles, which they had to pass around quickly, soldiers said.

Anthony said the night-vision goggle issue sounds like an early training glitch.

"It's November. We've got December and January (still to train)," he said. "Everyone's going to have night-vision goggles when they get to Iraq."

Anthony said he has not been informed of any brigade combat team soldiers abandoning their posts to flee training.

One Hawai'i soldier said he didn't understand why his unit had to train "nonstop ... without weekends and rarely church services" with six months of activation and training before they even get to Iraq.

Anthony said Thanksgiving Day and yesterday have been the brigade's only two days off. A few "white days" have been allowed during which soldiers say they clean weapons and then can "hang out."

"They are being driven hard, there's no question about it. But (commanders) want to get them trained up so they don't have problems in Iraq," Anthony said. "You've heard the statement, it's better to sweat at the home station than to bleed in Iraq."

Advertiser Military Writer William Cole contributed to this report. He can be reached at wcole@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-5459.