Strange goodbye

March 07, 2005

My last full day in Baghdad was the kookiest day I’ve had here.

It seems fitting, in a way.

I zipped down to Camp Gunslinger with 3rd Battalion Commander Lt. Col. Kirk VanPelt and his Bravo Company to rescue six refrigeration trailers and a small truck left there when the battalion moved out last week. Now that the Iraq Ministry of the Interior took over the facility, the U.S. Army wanted its trailers back.

They were civilian trailers but leased to the U.S. Army, and had held our food supplies there over the last year.

We didn’t know what we’d find at Gunslinger, didn’t know what would be left since the facility had been turned over to Iraqi control.

It was an ugly departure one week ago.

The battalion moved out earlier than planned when Iraqi forces arrived and began looting. There was a skeleton crew of soldiers left at Gunslinger at the time, helping move the last of the equipment out of the facility and preparing to hand it over to the new owners.

Looting began as soon as the Iraqis arrived. They blew through the buildings one by one. When they arrived at headquarters building, the only building still containing American soldiers, there was a stand-off.

Weapons were locked and loaded and pointed.

The Iraqis wanted everything. The Americans just wanted to get their stuff and go. And that’s what they did, in a hurry.

So no one knew what to expect today. The only thing left down there were these refrigeration trailers that someone high in Army command insisted be recovered.
No one was too worried, it seemed.

The ride down was light, with discussions on how this was the last of the last. Tomorrow we’d be leaving Baghdad.

“We’re a lot better off now than we were when we got here,” said Spc. Colin Moore of McCrory as he drove our humvee south. “We’ve got a better outlook on life now.”

Lt. Logan Langmaid laughed and said, “This year has brought me a whole lot closer to retirement. I have one year, five months and 11 days left, not that I’m counting.”

A string of Abrams tanks moved past us heading north and Lt. Kevin Irvin of North Little Rock pointed at them.

“Look! Clankity Clanks,” he said.

That’s what he calls them because of the sound their tracks make on pavement. Smaller track vehicles like Bradleys are referred to as Clickity Clanks.

We walked into Gunslinger about 15 minutes later and found it completely empty, except for the sign on the door that said, “Keep this door closed.”

It had been there for months.

Iraqis armed with AK-47 rifles walked through the empty building. They filled the guard towers that just one week ago were manned by Arkansas’ 3rd Battalion.

Gunslinger is now operated by the Iraqi government.

Inside the main building, former 3rd Battalion headquarters, VanPelt met with the head honcho of the facility. As VanPelt pulled up a chair in the empty room, the Iraqi lit up a cigarette.

It was weird to see someone smoke in there. It wasn’t allowed a week ago. The Iraqi facility director finished his cigarette and smashed it on the floor with the toe of his shoe.

VanPelt explained he was there to retrieve the refrigeration trucks.

“I have to take the list to the Ministry of the Interior to be approved,” the facility director said. “And as soon as it is approved, it will be turned back to you.”

He figured it would be noon the next day.

VanPelt was leading his soldiers out of Iraq the next day.

VanPelt spent the next several hours explaining to the man through an interpreter that the refrigeration trucks belonged to the Army, not Iraq. And the paperwork had already been completed to bring them back.

Men with loaded AK-47s crowded around the two men; I figure they were the security force.

“Now I know how they felt when they visited us,” said Irvin, part of VanPelt’s security team.

The conversation moved to small talk.

“How is life in [Camp] Taji?” the Iraqi leader asked.

“I like it here at Gunslinger better,” VanPelt said. “It’s too big there.”

The Iraqi pulled out a pack of cigarettes, took one, and offered one to VanPelt.
“I don’t smoke,” the Maumelle resident said.

“I thought you did,” the Iraqi said.

“I did a long time ago,” VanPelt said. “Military life makes you want to smoke.”

“Especially in Iraq,” the Iraqi added.

VanPelt finally stood up and said he was going to work on getting the trailers out of the camp.

Most of the trailers had sunk into the sandy soil over the last year, seemingly stuck. More than one of them bore the scars of mortar attacks, with broken brake lines and metal skins sliced open by shrapnel.

Soldiers with Bravo Company, Support Battalion, began digging out the trailers. Truck drivers pulled around to tow the trailers away.

Spoiled bags of Army food lay on the ground behind one of the trailers. It had been scavenged by the Iraqis over the last week. What they didn’t want was thrown onto the ground. Pork sausage, broccoli, scrambled eggs, various melons, all lay behind a trailer no more than 20 feet from a large trash bin.

As the first trailer was pulled out, it rolled over the mess. Bags of eggs exploded, spraying a green and yellow mess everywhere.

The smell? Wow, it was bad.

But we all laughed because exploding bags of eggs are funny. Especially the day before you leave a warzone.

Hours went by as each trailer was fixed enough to move and slowly towed to the gate.

Pop, pow! More egg and broccoli bags exploded.

Underneath one of the trucks, soldiers with Bravo Support worked on a brake line that was pierced months ago by shrapnel. That trailer couldn’t move until it was fixed.

The solution?

“The air hose was broken, so we took rubber hose and duct tape,” said Spc. James Mack III of Bee Branch. “Duct tape fixes everything.”

A little while later, the mechanics moved their truck closer to a small refrigerator truck and prepared to tow it away. Four Army duffel bags were strapped to the top of the mechanic’s truck. They were heading south in a day, too.

The six refrigeration trailers we were there to pick up were pulled by tractors.

This little refrigeration truck was truck and trailer combined.

The keys had been lost long ago and it had not worked since a mortar attack last fall. But everything had to go.

Soldiers went to work trying to break the steering lock so the vehicle could be towed. It was a small, seemingly flimsy truck. But that steering lock proved stubborn.

Sgt. 1st Class Dennis Lemonds of Heber Springs swung a sledge hammer at a crow bar held by Mack and the steering column was slowly chipped away, one metal fragment at a time.

We huddled around and watched. VanPelt and Spc. Brad Vogeltanz of Searcy wiped clear spots in the dirty windshield to look through from in front of the truck. The rest of us watched from the doors.

Clang, clang, clang.

“Yep, it will be dark before we get out of here,” VanPelt said.

The steering lock gave way when there was little more left than the metal steering column.

Attention turned to the last trailer, where a tractor had just backed up. The tractor had a flat tire, blown earlier in the day when the driver backed over tire spikes at Gunslinger’s front gate.

He didn’t want to pull the trailer; he said his rig couldn’t.

Irvin offered the Iraqi driver and his friend $25 each to pull the empty trailer back to Camp Taji. They couldn’t come back for it; there simply wasn’t time.
The tractor owner agreed, but said his friend would drive.

VanPelt agreed to the deal and dug some money out of his wallet.

As the rigs were lined up near the gate, Midnight, a mangy stray dog who’d made Gunslinger her home for the year, woke up from her nap on a pile of sand.

She was horribly skinny, but absolutely ecstatic to see soldiers.

I doubt she’d eaten since the soldiers left. Quite frankly, I was amazed to see she was still alive. Iraqis don’t like dogs. They kick them and kill them with gunshots or strangling garrotes.

She jumped and ran next to the humvees. I tossed as much beef jerky as I could find on the ground for her. She gobbled it up.

As we rolled out the gate, she ran alongside the humvees, yipping and jumping.
I last saw her about a mile down the road, when she ran out of steam and stopped running. She was standing there watching us pass by.

Goodbye, Midnight.

Posted by Amy at March 7, 2005 10:27 PM