Dealing with change

February 26, 2005

The warm sunshine is balanced with a gentle breeze here on the back porch of Charlie Company’s building at Camp Gunslinger. The fly perched on the top of my computer screen appears to be sunbathing.

I’m on the edge of the gravel motor pool, where the crunch of soldiers’ boots and rumble of humvee engines is constant. Actually, there are a lot more boots stomping across the gravel lot these days. 1st Battalion, 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, is here. They’re the replacements for 3rd Battalion.

They laugh and play in the hallways with the 3rd Battalion boys. I was almost whacked by a rubber ball when I came out of my room a bit ago as some of the new guys played dodge ball.

Upstairs, company leaders work on a pile of paperwork, transferring everything from computers to guns and humvees from one unit to the next.

Soon, Arkansas’ 39th Infantry Brigade will have nothing more than duffel bags and bodies to worry about. And they’ll turn their attention from catching insurgents to catching the next airplane out of here.

It’s more peaceful out here on the porch, not a lot of bustle. Guys come out here to smoke and visit. They come out here carrying their machine guns to or from their trucks.

The boys who train the Iraqi army for the battalion just rolled in.

Spc. Adam Prince of Little Rock climbed out of the turret, pulled off his helmet, placed it on the tip of the barrel of his 240B machine gun and ran his hands over his closely cropped hair.

“Nice day?” Prince yelled at me.

I told him from my lawn chair that if I had a beer in the drink holder, it would be just like home. We laughed.

“A lawn chair in the sun and a cold beer. That’s all I need to make me happy,” he said with a smile.

Then, just as quickly as they arrived, they headed back out.

“Long day!” Prince yelled as his truck backed up and left.

Everyone is working with the incoming unit, showing them the area and demonstrating how they operate. It won’t be long and the 39th will hand it over to the new guys altogether.

They’ll leave Gunslinger and all its drainage problems. They’ll leave Midnight, the skinny dog that wanders in from the field every now and then to rummage through the garbage. She’s the laziest dog in the world, sleeping in the gravel next to me in the shade of a humvee with a flea collar hung around her neck.

Her head is resting on a sandbag.

Over to my right, one of the incoming soldiers is sitting on a well-worn plastic chair, smoking a cigarette. His sergeant just yelled for him from the building.

He looked at his cigarette, shook his head and carefully balanced the rest of the Marlboro on the handle of a nearby mop bucket. A thin string of smoke curls into the breeze.

I guess he figures he’ll be back.

From inside, I hear a sergeant yelling. Now I hear a soldier counting out push-ups as he does them. I’m afraid the cigarette’s going to have to wait.

If I was a betting girl, I’d say it was an American-made cigarette. I’m not a smoker, but I’ve learned a bit about it over here.

The other day, a couple of Bravo Company boys were hanging out by their humvees, waiting for orders. One of them has been a little blue. The other one came up to him and held out a crumpled cigarette and offered it to him.

He shook his head no.

“It’s American. It’s Marlboro. I bummed it from a new guy just for you,” he told his sad friend.

A smile erupted almost immediately. The soldier straightened the cigarette as much as possible and tossed it between his lips.

As I’ve said, it’s the little things.

Hey, one of Charlie Company’s platoons just came outside with their replacements to talk about the mission.

“All right, who’s the cherries. Who’s never seen combat before?” said Cpl. Christian Newton of Charlie Company. “Some of my guys better raise their hands, too.”

Questions were slow to come, but they did.

First, what if the convoy is attacked.

“Lay down a huge amount of fire, dismount and chase them down,” Newton said.

Then the stories started. Some of the new guys have been to Afghanistan. Some have been to Iraq before.

They talk about how the hair stands up on the back of your neck when things don’t feel right, when things are too quiet, when all hell is about to break loose.

There’s a lot of cussing, a lot of talk about what to look for.

It’s a year’s worth of knowledge being exchanged between soldiers sitting on Hesco barriers — the dirt-filled canvas barriers made to stop shrapnel from mortar rounds.

Birds are singing. It’s spring, just like when we arrived.

The talk going on behind me is just like one I heard about a year ago.

Only this time, the Arkansas boys are the ones giving advice.

They’re the ones going home.

Posted by Amy at February 26, 2005 06:10 PM