Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
New York Times
April 2, 2007
Pg. 1
By Richard A. Oppel Jr.
BAQUBA, Iraq, March 31 — In the last moments of his life, Sgt. First Class Benjamin L. Sebban saw the flatbed truck speed into the concertina wire guarding his small Army patrol base near Baquba.
“Everybody get down! Get down!” he screamed. Soldiers dropped to the ground.
A combination of the strong wire and muddy gravel stopped the bomber, who then detonated explosives packed into the truck bed. A 50-foot-wide fireball enveloped the base, an L-shaped school that weeks earlier had served as an insurgent hide-out. Soldiers were slammed into walls and windows, they later recalled, battered by pieces of brick and glass turned into shrapnel.
Unaware of a deep wound beneath his body armor, Sergeant Sebban, a 29-year-old medic, shook off the blast and staggered to his first-aid station to treat casualties, other soldiers recalled. “Let’s get ready!” he shouted, one soldier said. Then he collapsed. He bled to death even before the evacuation helicopter arrived to carry him away, 17 minutes after the 6 p.m. attack.
At almost precisely the same time another helicopter landed in Baquba. It carried Col. David Sutherland, commander of the American combat brigade in Diyala Province. He was returning from the large military base in Balad, where he had visited wounded soldiers and gone to the morgue, where he saluted and then prayed as he placed his hands on a long black body bag containing the body of a military policeman killed that day by a sniper in Baquba.
It had been a long day for Colonel Sutherland and his brigade chaplain, Maj. Charlie Fenton, who have taken it on themselves to visit every dead and badly wounded soldier in the 5,000-strong unit, the Third Brigade Combat Team of the First Cavalry Division.
But it was still not over. After arriving in Baquba, Major Fenton walked into the brigade headquarters and heard Colonel Sutherland on a loudspeaker informing officers that a soldier from another brigade had committed suicide in Muqdadiya. Then he was handed a list of nine new casualties, the dead and the wounded. At the top was Sergeant Sebban. Four hours later, he and Colonel Sutherland climbed into another helicopter, bound once again for Balad. “We’ve never had to see this many at once,” Major Fenton said as he walked in darkness in helmet and body armor to the landing pad just after 11 p.m., trailed by soldiers grasping stacks of Purple Hearts in navy blue leather cases.
The two officers have made the round trip to Balad more than 70 times since arriving in October. But on that day, March 17, the brigade suffered its highest daily toll, with two dead and 14 wounded.
Altogether, the unit has seen 39 soldiers die in five months, more in that brief span than the number killed in any brigade that preceded it in yearlong deployments here. Names of the dead are written on a piece of metal affixed to a tall concrete barrier on Forward Operating Base Warhorse, near Baquba. With the death of Sergeant Sebban, the barrier ran out of space. A new barrier was just erected next to it.
A Vicious Battleground
Once described by the American military as comparatively stable, Diyala, which is roughly the size of Maryland, has been transformed into a fierce battleground as vicious in many places as the most dangerous parts of Anbar Province, the volatile Sunni area in western Iraq. It has been besieged by Sunni militants and extremists trying to eradicate Shiites and establish a Taliban-like sanctuary, and by Shiite militias, who have allies in the provincial government and security forces that are Shiite-dominated even though Sunnis make up a majority of the population.
More than a year ago the American military decided to cut back drastically the number of troops in Diyala. But that plan is now in reverse, as new troops move back into Baquba, the provincial capital, trying to quell the bitter fighting as part of the plan to put more troops in Iraq.
The casualties are taking a tremendous emotional toll on the brigade. Major Fenton, 48, recently sought treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder. He likes to say a unique psalm or Bible verse when he visits each dead soldier, but he says he has almost run out of suitable Scripture.
The troops ache and rage over the loss of friends. After Sergeant Sebban was killed, “I was just mad,” said Sgt. Roy Mitchell, who was wounded slightly in the attack. “I had in my mind, the first person I saw, I was going to shoot them.”
For some, grief is compounded because they feel no one back home grasps the perils they endure. “We’ve just got a lot of guys dying,” said one combat soldier who did not want his name published. “This country is not getting any better. Nobody really understands what’s going on.”
At a cramped and dark outpost in southern Baquba, Pvt. Jason Myers said that with friends shot by snipers or blown up by mortars and roadside bombs there was little time to mourn, until the deployment was over. “I’m going to go home, get really drunk, and cry a lot,” he said.
Colonel Sutherland, 45, broke down after the 20th brigade soldier was killed earlier this year. “I went into a deep sorrow,” he said. “I was wallowing about in self-pity, worrying about the dead, worrying about those who have no worries. I was overwhelmed. At no point did I doubt our mission, but I couldn’t sleep that night.”
After talking to his wife and his commanding general, he said, he steeled himself with the realization that it was those whom the dead leave behind who need to be cared for.
“It was an epiphany,” he said. “I needed this brigade to go on, and these soldiers needed to go on, for the living. Our reactions need to be for the people here, who need me and my soldiers to make the right decisions.”
Laying his hands on the bodies of dead soldiers before they are flown out of Iraq is a crucial part of saying goodbye, he said, a way to tell friends and families he was with them. “I put my hands on every one of them,” he said.
Of the hundreds of thousands of American troops who have deployed to Iraq in four years of war, more than 3,200 have been killed. But those numbers understate the mortal risk faced by those in dangerous regions like Diyala. The primary combat unit in Baquba since November, the 1-12 Combined Arms Battalion, has seen 21 soldiers killed in five months, out of close to 1,000. An additional 93 have been wounded. The battalion’s deployment is less than half over.
“Crying doesn’t make me any less of a man,” said the 1-12 commander, Lt. Col. Morris Goins, who tears up as he recounts how one of his soldiers drowned in a canal, trapped in his Bradley fighting vehicle. “To not show emotion, you’re an idiot, or you’re living a pipe dream. If someone were to tell me not to show emotion, I’d hit them in the lip.”
Settling Into a Nightmare
Sergeant Sebban was in charge of the first-aid station for Charlie Troop, of the Fifth Squadron of the 73rd Cavalry Regiment. Handpicked from a large battalion of airborne troops, the squadron’s 300 highly conditioned soldiers spend most of their time in small patrol bases or on long foot patrols. The unit is small, and its soldiers have been together for years. The bonds are tight.
Last month, most of the squadron moved from its base in Kirkush near the Iranian border to small bases around the eastern edge of Baquba. Charlie Troop set up a base in As Sadah, a bleak, rural village four miles northeast of Baquba, where the residents were being killed and terrorized by Sunni extremists and Shiite militias, as well as by the Iraqi Army soldiers who were supposed to be protecting them.
One Iraqi Army officer, a Shiite, had been ridding the area of Sunnis, telling them, “If you don’t leave this area, we’ll come back and kill you,” said the most senior enlisted man in Charlie Troop, First Sgt. John Coomer. Troops said many Sunnis in the area had turned to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia to protect them from Shiite soldiers.
In turn, Sunni fighters had begun attacking Iraqi soldiers, fueling more attacks on Sunnis. Iraqi soldiers stationed at a checkpoint on the main road between As Sadah and Baquba tried to kill Sunni villagers as they dashed to Baquba to get food or medical treatment, American troops said.
In response, Capt. Jesse Stewart, commander of Charlie Troop, put his own soldiers on the checkpoint for two hours each morning and two hours each afternoon so villagers could come and go without fear of being killed. The first morning 450 villagers fled, Captain Stewart said, but only about 50 came back.
It was into this nightmarish situation that Sergeant Sebban and the rest of his troops settled, establishing a base in a schoolhouse that had previously been a staging area for Al Qaeda operations in northern Baquba.
As the troops began to go out on wearying foot patrols, Sergeant Sebban resumed one of his obsessions: caring for soldiers’ feet, a crucial task for a unit that conducts such long missions. He was especially concerned about trench foot, in which skin peels off wet feet in cold temperatures, as well as stress fractures and rashes.
April 2, 2007
Pg. 1
By Richard A. Oppel Jr.
BAQUBA, Iraq, March 31 — In the last moments of his life, Sgt. First Class Benjamin L. Sebban saw the flatbed truck speed into the concertina wire guarding his small Army patrol base near Baquba.
“Everybody get down! Get down!” he screamed. Soldiers dropped to the ground.
A combination of the strong wire and muddy gravel stopped the bomber, who then detonated explosives packed into the truck bed. A 50-foot-wide fireball enveloped the base, an L-shaped school that weeks earlier had served as an insurgent hide-out. Soldiers were slammed into walls and windows, they later recalled, battered by pieces of brick and glass turned into shrapnel.
Unaware of a deep wound beneath his body armor, Sergeant Sebban, a 29-year-old medic, shook off the blast and staggered to his first-aid station to treat casualties, other soldiers recalled. “Let’s get ready!” he shouted, one soldier said. Then he collapsed. He bled to death even before the evacuation helicopter arrived to carry him away, 17 minutes after the 6 p.m. attack.
At almost precisely the same time another helicopter landed in Baquba. It carried Col. David Sutherland, commander of the American combat brigade in Diyala Province. He was returning from the large military base in Balad, where he had visited wounded soldiers and gone to the morgue, where he saluted and then prayed as he placed his hands on a long black body bag containing the body of a military policeman killed that day by a sniper in Baquba.
It had been a long day for Colonel Sutherland and his brigade chaplain, Maj. Charlie Fenton, who have taken it on themselves to visit every dead and badly wounded soldier in the 5,000-strong unit, the Third Brigade Combat Team of the First Cavalry Division.
But it was still not over. After arriving in Baquba, Major Fenton walked into the brigade headquarters and heard Colonel Sutherland on a loudspeaker informing officers that a soldier from another brigade had committed suicide in Muqdadiya. Then he was handed a list of nine new casualties, the dead and the wounded. At the top was Sergeant Sebban. Four hours later, he and Colonel Sutherland climbed into another helicopter, bound once again for Balad. “We’ve never had to see this many at once,” Major Fenton said as he walked in darkness in helmet and body armor to the landing pad just after 11 p.m., trailed by soldiers grasping stacks of Purple Hearts in navy blue leather cases.
The two officers have made the round trip to Balad more than 70 times since arriving in October. But on that day, March 17, the brigade suffered its highest daily toll, with two dead and 14 wounded.
Altogether, the unit has seen 39 soldiers die in five months, more in that brief span than the number killed in any brigade that preceded it in yearlong deployments here. Names of the dead are written on a piece of metal affixed to a tall concrete barrier on Forward Operating Base Warhorse, near Baquba. With the death of Sergeant Sebban, the barrier ran out of space. A new barrier was just erected next to it.
A Vicious Battleground
Once described by the American military as comparatively stable, Diyala, which is roughly the size of Maryland, has been transformed into a fierce battleground as vicious in many places as the most dangerous parts of Anbar Province, the volatile Sunni area in western Iraq. It has been besieged by Sunni militants and extremists trying to eradicate Shiites and establish a Taliban-like sanctuary, and by Shiite militias, who have allies in the provincial government and security forces that are Shiite-dominated even though Sunnis make up a majority of the population.
More than a year ago the American military decided to cut back drastically the number of troops in Diyala. But that plan is now in reverse, as new troops move back into Baquba, the provincial capital, trying to quell the bitter fighting as part of the plan to put more troops in Iraq.
The casualties are taking a tremendous emotional toll on the brigade. Major Fenton, 48, recently sought treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder. He likes to say a unique psalm or Bible verse when he visits each dead soldier, but he says he has almost run out of suitable Scripture.
The troops ache and rage over the loss of friends. After Sergeant Sebban was killed, “I was just mad,” said Sgt. Roy Mitchell, who was wounded slightly in the attack. “I had in my mind, the first person I saw, I was going to shoot them.”
For some, grief is compounded because they feel no one back home grasps the perils they endure. “We’ve just got a lot of guys dying,” said one combat soldier who did not want his name published. “This country is not getting any better. Nobody really understands what’s going on.”
At a cramped and dark outpost in southern Baquba, Pvt. Jason Myers said that with friends shot by snipers or blown up by mortars and roadside bombs there was little time to mourn, until the deployment was over. “I’m going to go home, get really drunk, and cry a lot,” he said.
Colonel Sutherland, 45, broke down after the 20th brigade soldier was killed earlier this year. “I went into a deep sorrow,” he said. “I was wallowing about in self-pity, worrying about the dead, worrying about those who have no worries. I was overwhelmed. At no point did I doubt our mission, but I couldn’t sleep that night.”
After talking to his wife and his commanding general, he said, he steeled himself with the realization that it was those whom the dead leave behind who need to be cared for.
“It was an epiphany,” he said. “I needed this brigade to go on, and these soldiers needed to go on, for the living. Our reactions need to be for the people here, who need me and my soldiers to make the right decisions.”
Laying his hands on the bodies of dead soldiers before they are flown out of Iraq is a crucial part of saying goodbye, he said, a way to tell friends and families he was with them. “I put my hands on every one of them,” he said.
Of the hundreds of thousands of American troops who have deployed to Iraq in four years of war, more than 3,200 have been killed. But those numbers understate the mortal risk faced by those in dangerous regions like Diyala. The primary combat unit in Baquba since November, the 1-12 Combined Arms Battalion, has seen 21 soldiers killed in five months, out of close to 1,000. An additional 93 have been wounded. The battalion’s deployment is less than half over.
“Crying doesn’t make me any less of a man,” said the 1-12 commander, Lt. Col. Morris Goins, who tears up as he recounts how one of his soldiers drowned in a canal, trapped in his Bradley fighting vehicle. “To not show emotion, you’re an idiot, or you’re living a pipe dream. If someone were to tell me not to show emotion, I’d hit them in the lip.”
Settling Into a Nightmare
Sergeant Sebban was in charge of the first-aid station for Charlie Troop, of the Fifth Squadron of the 73rd Cavalry Regiment. Handpicked from a large battalion of airborne troops, the squadron’s 300 highly conditioned soldiers spend most of their time in small patrol bases or on long foot patrols. The unit is small, and its soldiers have been together for years. The bonds are tight.
Last month, most of the squadron moved from its base in Kirkush near the Iranian border to small bases around the eastern edge of Baquba. Charlie Troop set up a base in As Sadah, a bleak, rural village four miles northeast of Baquba, where the residents were being killed and terrorized by Sunni extremists and Shiite militias, as well as by the Iraqi Army soldiers who were supposed to be protecting them.
One Iraqi Army officer, a Shiite, had been ridding the area of Sunnis, telling them, “If you don’t leave this area, we’ll come back and kill you,” said the most senior enlisted man in Charlie Troop, First Sgt. John Coomer. Troops said many Sunnis in the area had turned to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia to protect them from Shiite soldiers.
In turn, Sunni fighters had begun attacking Iraqi soldiers, fueling more attacks on Sunnis. Iraqi soldiers stationed at a checkpoint on the main road between As Sadah and Baquba tried to kill Sunni villagers as they dashed to Baquba to get food or medical treatment, American troops said.
In response, Capt. Jesse Stewart, commander of Charlie Troop, put his own soldiers on the checkpoint for two hours each morning and two hours each afternoon so villagers could come and go without fear of being killed. The first morning 450 villagers fled, Captain Stewart said, but only about 50 came back.
It was into this nightmarish situation that Sergeant Sebban and the rest of his troops settled, establishing a base in a schoolhouse that had previously been a staging area for Al Qaeda operations in northern Baquba.
As the troops began to go out on wearying foot patrols, Sergeant Sebban resumed one of his obsessions: caring for soldiers’ feet, a crucial task for a unit that conducts such long missions. He was especially concerned about trench foot, in which skin peels off wet feet in cold temperatures, as well as stress fractures and rashes.