# Active/Guard Troops in Iraq



## tomahawk6 (16 Mar 2005)

This is a subscriber article from armytimes.

March 21, 2005

A home in the hell of war
Active and Guard troops and Iraqis live, learn and bring one another to top of their game

By Gina Cavallaro
Times staff writer


BAQUBAH, Iraq â â€ The war stories begin on the roof of this two-story police station in the heart of the city. It's peppered with the blast holes and pockmarks of hostile fire. 

The mortar wounds that dot the rooftop are patched with concrete and scrawled with the names of the soldiers who saw them hit. 

The soldiers' stories begin on the lower floors of this provincial police station, where an oddball mix of military police and National Guard artillerymen have learned to live and fight together.

The New Hampshire National Guard artillerymen of 2nd Battalion, 197th Field Artillery, who served here were trained in just 11 days to be military police. They worked with a platoon of active-duty MPs from the 3rd Infantry Division's 293rd MP Company, soldiers seemingly young enough to be their children. 

The soldiers' mission, which began in February, was to protect the station from being overrun by insurgents, train a police force and be the first on the scene of spectacular attacks. The 115 U.S. soldiers did that and more, providing the firepower that enabled more than 100 Iraqi police to live and work on the first floor. 

â Å“I don't think the mission would have gone as smoothly without the combinationâ ? of active duty and Guard, said Spc. Jesse Green, 20, of Crystal River, Fla., of the 293rd MP Company shortly before the MPs and Guard members concluded their assignment here. 

Green and others in the 293rd said the experience of the guardsmen and the skills they brought from their civilian jobs helped improve quality of life, and made it hard for the active-duty guys to stick to initial impressions that they were underequipped, poorly trained weekend warriors.

â Å“It seemed like a test to a lot of us. I think we actually fooled them. I think they thought we were going to fail,â ? said Guard Staff Sgt. Jim Chesnis, 39, a team leader and â Å“cable guyâ ? from Ashland, N.H. â Å“I was in basic training when a lot of these guys were born. A lot of friends were made.â ? Like a machine gun on full automatic, the younger soldiers here rattled off tales of surviving lethal attacks. They were as enthusiastic as students recounting their follies on spring break. They're proud of the way they cheated death, kidding one another about who got wounded, how they were hit and where the scars are.

The hits just keep on comin'

Leading the pack was Capt. Christian Solinsky, 35, of the 1st ID's 1st Battalion, 6th Field Artillery Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, a fast-moving, pistol-packing former Black Hawk crew chief whose call sign became â Å“Sheriff.â ? His aggressive, take-charge style fit the bill.

â Å“I needed a bulldog, someone who wouldn't take 'no' for an answer. He was that person,â ? Col. Dana Pittard, 3rd BCT commander, said of Solinsky, who commanded training, security and detention operations at the police station and conducted offensive operations and intelligence gathering for brigade units headquartered outside the city.

Having armed the roof â â€ including an M14 sniper rifle, MK19, .50-caliber and 240 B machine guns and AT4s â â€ at observation posts on four corners, Solinsky said his soldiers came to know the slightest movements of the locals. â Å“They know when the wrong car is in the wrong spot at the wrong time of day. They don't miss a thing. We've seen people literally closing up shop at 1300 and people moving out and there's bad [action] coming down,â ? Solinsky said. 

At the city's center, the â Å“green zoneâ ? where the station, government center and civil military operations center are within a half-mile of one another, the soldiers witnessed three major car bombs, including one July 28 that killed 80 people and injured 100. 

â Å“I've seen a lot of bad stuff here, but when I saw all those bodies, even I was like, I mean I was just stunned,â ? Solinsky said, describing the quick response by his soldiers, some of whom, at age 18, later had trouble dealing with the indelible image.

Still, Pittard called the station the â Å“bastion of the Baqubah green zoneâ ? and credited the presence of his troops with giving the embattled police some security at a building that would have otherwise been overrun by insurgents.

â Å“There were 200 soldiers in the center of Baqubah. It gave the enemy a dilemma,â ? he said.

The enemy never stopped testing them, scoring at least 90 direct and indirect hits on the building, said MPs who kept a loose count.

Solinsky sought guidelines from 1-6 commander Lt. Col. Steve Bullimore on a possible withdrawal plan, should the incoming fire become particularly heavy. 

â Å“I said, 'You don't have one. You may be standing on a pile of burning ashes, but you'll be standing on them. We'll come to you,'â ? Bullimore recalls telling Solinsky, reassuring him that a quick reaction force would respond to any catastrophic events. 

Nestled into their bunker, the soldiers took turns manning the roof, performing hundreds of escort and offensive missions and living in what, at first, were squalid conditions. Slowly, showers and toilets were made operational, recreational equipment was brought in and the food improved.

The soldiers liked being downtown, in the action, away from the larger forward operating bases where, they said, soldiers enjoyed such mundane things as â Å“salsa nightâ ? and a 9-to-5 schedule.

â Å“Out of all the deployments you'll ever go on in your life, you'll never get another one like this,â ? said Spc. Brooks Fisher, 20, of Oak Hall, Va. â Å“If you didn't leave the wire, you didn't see Iraq.â ?

Fisher, the guardsmen and the other MPs thrived at working with the Iraqi police. â Å“I've got privates here who know more about their culture than those [Arabic specialists] we get classes from before we came over here,â ? Solinsky said.

The A Team

For the first couple of months here at Baqubah's own version of Fort Apache, however, the static caused by the units' cultural clash of active and Guard troops threatened to thwart the teamwork needed to accomplish the mission. Solinsky molded that discord into harmony by taking advantage of the diversity in the ranks.

â Å“I needed the active-duty guys with the technical training to do house raids. The Guard guys didn't know how to do a lot of that stuff,â ? said Solinsky, of Blackfoot, Idaho. 

He found, however, that he had a wealth of talent in the Guard guys, especially those in law enforcement jobs at home. They helped build a criminal investigations division, structured the station's administration and training, and coached the Iraqis into a system of standards for the station's jail.

â Å“Active guys don't have a lot of life experience. We have a boatload of guys who have over 20 years' experience,â ? said Sgt. Steven Calderwood, 37, of Wentworth, N.H., who is the chief of police in Orford, N.H.

He and Staff Sgt. Stephen Robbins, 39, of Woodsville, N.H., a captain and emergency medical technician at the Lancaster, N.H., fire department, taught former Saddam regime police officers basic police work, such as how to run the station, make and process arrests and interrogate suspects.

â Å“In the old days, police were the lowest on the law-and-order food chain. They had nothing. They used to take taxis to answer calls,â ? Solinsky said of the 800 police now on duty in Baqubah. There are 4,500 police in the Diyala province, who get vetted at the Baqubah station and then train at academies in Jordan or Iraq.

One of the key training areas the Guard members have provided for the Iraq police is the treatment of prisoners. 

The Iraqis â Å“were more or less beating them and whacking them with sticks and stuff. We showed them the way of giving privileges and taking privileges away,â ? said Sgt. Robert McKay, 33, of Gilmington, N.H., who is an officer at the New Hampshire Department of Corrections. 

The mix for Bullimore was just what was needed: Eight of the 2-197 members were cops back home. Among the guardsmen there were also carpenters, plumbers, electricians and emergency medical technicians. That talent notwithstanding, Solinsky used the 293rd MPs for the tactical, kick-the-door-down type of ops exclusively at the beginning because the Guard guys â Å“just weren't trained to clear a room.â ?

â Å“After a while, they picked it up. They trained and trained at the police station and eventually went out and they did a fantastic job,â ? Solinsky said.

The day they merged was April 9, when soldiers from both units were changing shifts on the roof and the sky opened up with a shower of direct and indirect fire, one of several attacks across the country that day and in the following weeks. The soldiers fought side by side. Six were hurt and soon returned to duty. Solinsky, caught in the stairs when a rocket-propelled grenade exploded six feet over his head, was one of the injured, as more 20 RPGs struck the building.

â Å“That's when everything changed,â ? Solinsky said.The sound of rockets hitting the building was deafening,â ? he recalled. â Å“When that was over and the dust settled, everybody was walking around a little taller. Everybody became part of the A Team.â ?

In mid-February, the MPs redeployed to Fort Stewart about a week ahead of the National Guardsmen and a ceremony was held in the recreation room.

â Å“It is phenomenal what this unit has done here,â ? Bullimore told the MPs. When he was asked by other commanders how the National Guard unit was performing, he told them, â Å“this is what I say: Every active-duty task force should have a National Guard company attached to it.â ?

The MPs roughhoused with their National Guard buddies and admitted they'd miss working with them. Staff Sgt. Melvin Maiden, 34, of Clarksdale, Miss., teased his newest close friend from New Hampshire, Staff Sgt. Don Smialek, 39, of Campton.

The two soldiers were wounded during combat on the roof â â€ Maiden took shrapnel in his buttocks and Smialek in the groin â â€ and laugh about it together now.

â Å“This cat here, he kept coming to my room [when I got injured],â ? Smialek recounted after the April 9 battle. â Å“I was like 'Hey, who's minding the store [on the roof]. I'm fine, get back to the troops.'â ? 

â Å“As much as we want to go home to our families, it's going to be tough to leave these guys. They've been our family for the past year,â ? Robbins said.


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## winchable (16 Mar 2005)

No matter how many of these accounts I read one thing still stands out to me and thats the young age that some of these guys are.
18!
At 18 I was..well I wasn't doing that.

Primary sources articles are great, if you have any more, post them!


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## pbi (16 Mar 2005)

From what I saw in Afghanistan, both in CJTF76 and in TF PHOENIX, I am convinced that the ARNG will be a force changed very much for the better after OIF/OEF. As well, I think that the Active/ARNG gap will be much smaller than it traditionally has been.

Cheers


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## Spr.Earl (17 Mar 2005)

So true pbi,enlistment in the Guard and Reserves in the States has dropped of dramatically,one must remember that over 40% of the Forces in Iraq are Guard and Reserve Troops and the word is out.

The CBC had a documentary about a Guard Eng. Unit from Arkansas,they followed the Unit from Call up to about 1 or 2 months in country.
One part that was heart wrenching was a father and son in the same Unit,while in Ft.Hood Tx. the son's Med.Doc.'s caught up with him and he was RTU'd while the father went on.
The father was wounded in a mortar attack on the Camp where 4 killed and 3 wounded.
The father was hit by shrapnel in the lower jaw and shoulder but survived and they showed the reuniting at the Air Port and the quit time at home.
This was a lower income family living in a house trailer etc.

It was an eye opener Military wise as their Vehicles were our old 5 Ton diesel's and old 2 1/2 ton multi fuelers!!

Then there was the civie side of it of how the families were struggling while the Men are away in Iraq.


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