Soldiers’ camaraderie spans cramped spaces, grinding mission

(left to right- Sgt. Ballman, Spc. Greener and Sgt. Dearing in their quarters at Camp Speicher)

Tikrit, Iraq-

Sweating inside a dirty Humvee. The air-conditioning tepid. Left knee throbbing. Helmet, ear phones, eye protection, vest- an armored oven.

“One minute ‘til detonation,” comes the announcement through the static of our headsets.

Another convoy had found what they believed to be a buried improvised explosive along the road ahead of us. They’ve been waiting two hours for the bomb team to come to dispose of it.

It’s a long minute. We wait behind a gaggle of tractor-trailers driven by foreign nationals. This is our convoy. In the Humvee are a driver, gunner and truck commander from HHC company of the 1st/151st Infantry Battalion from Jasper, IN.

Convoy security is their mission. They go out on these roads more than three times a week to make sure the military’s beans and bullets reach their destination in theater. Without them the bases wouldn’t run. Nothing would.

Murphy’s Law rules on the dusty highways of Northern Iraq littered with broken down tanker trucks and Iraqi Army checkpoints, some manned, some not.

There are traffic clogs, convoy break downs, small arms fire, and the cleverness of an insurgent bent on planting an explosive device where the soldiers won’t look or be able to react soon enough.

(A member of the U.S.-allied Sons of Iraq, nicknamed, "P.T. bandits" for the Physical Training belts they wear at checkpoints.)

Specialist Joshua Greener, 19, of Birdseye IN, is the youngest of the three and he sits quietly perched on a seat slung from his turret. He’s been on four or five missions already, and although he’s the youngest, Greener acts like it’s old hat. He doesn’t listen much to the banter of the two sergeants in front.

Sergeant Christopher Dearing, 27, of Princeton, IN is the talker of the group. “One time in Afghanistan,” began Dearing in his slightly Southern drawl, “we were on a dismounted foot patrol, a bunch of kids were following us around, and one guy steps in a big pile of cow s---. The kids starts pointing, ‘Landmine'”.

We all laugh. It kind of takes the edge off.

“They did not find any IEDs,” comes the announcement from Staff Sergeant Zach Fromme, 26, of Dale, IN. Slowly the convoy starts to roll forward again. But there are other delays looming. A sand storm has swept in by the time we reach our destination base. A big enough storm will halt any convoy because rescue choppers cannot operate in them.

Our driver, Sergeant Richard Ballman, 44, of St. Meinrad, IN, shakes his head and shifts the Humvee into drive. “Up this end, they said a guy got hit (by an IED) four times straight. And after that he refused to leave the wire.”

“Heck, I don’t blame him,” Sgt. Dearing says, “seems like God had it out for him.”

It’s hard to tell whether these stories are legends passed on about specific missions, or mere exaggerations. Indiana’s 1st/151st Infantry Battalion just arrived at Camp Speicher. They will be in Iraq for more than nine months. They need stories to pass the time when a truck breaks down in front of them. They need humor to thwart the constant warnings of the lead scout who calls out any suspicious objects in their path.

Sgt. Ballman has been here before. “Last deployment, in (Iraq) 2003, I was living in a camo net,” Ballman said. “All we had was cots. I have no problems living here,” although Ballman added that he’s not used to Spc. Greener, only a few years older than his two sons, living on a bunk above him.

(The convoy stretches ahead of us.)

On the road, Iraqis generally stay out of their way. Civilian vehicles pull over when they see a U.S. convoy coming. “It’s almost like a gigantic funeral procession,” Dearing said.

After eating a hurried lunch out of Styrofoam boxes, the Hoosiers from Staff Sergeant Fromme’s platoon scurry back into their up-armored Humvees to guide another group of motley tractor-trailers back to the base they set out from five hours before.

Sgt. Dearing said his truck team of Greener, Ballman and himself, didn’t have to room together at Speicher, but they decided to anyways. “We’re all laid back guys who keep to ourselves.”

“I’m so used to you guys mumbling back and forth, I don’t pay attention,” Spc. Greener says into his microphone.

“He’s like Nostradamus,” Dearing says of Greener being able to know where to scan with his .50 cal machine gun before Dearing tells him to. They’ve been training together since December. So hasn’t all of Indiana’s 76th Brigade Combat Team, over 3,200 soldiers in Iraq, who now represents Indiana’s largest troop deployment since World War II.

(Children begging for food and water outside of a U.S base.)

They focus between scanning the road for potential threats, and avoiding children who come begging with hands to their mouth. The soldiers wave but don’t give them anything. They believe if they do, it will only cause more to come.

They try to concentrate on the road and not on their normal bodily functions. There are no bathroom breaks along this dangerous stretch, and with all the other broken down trucks, it’s easy to lose one of their escorts. On the way back they almost do.

(A trucker waits for traffic to clear.)

A tanker breaks down and the whole convoy almost passes them before Sgt. Dearing realizes it was one of theirs. “His buddies passed him,” Dearing said incredulously. Sgt. Dearing radios ahead to Staff Sgt. Fromme. We stop again. Eventually an Indiana vehicle peels off with a tow bar, escorting a tractor-trailer to tow the downed tanker.

Our whole convoy slows its speed significantly. Darkness has set in on the road. We will miss evening chow back at Speicher, but at least we haven’t been halted for the night by the sand storm.

Tomorrow the HHC platoon of 1/151 will have a day of rest. The next day will be preparation for the following day’s mission. For now, it’s a serious scrub down and some space to relax their legs. Maybe contact family back home.

Spc. Greener, said his mom worries about him constantly. “There’s probably not a minute that goes by that she’s not worried,” he said. “I tell her it’s not as bad as what the press says.”

Sgt. Ballman’s family is more used to him being deployed. “My boys probably get along great now than they don’t have someone yelling at them,” Ballman said half-kidding.

Sgt. Dearing was married on the last deployment. Now he’s divorced. With his current girlfriend, “I did a better job explaining to her how the deployment was going to go,” he said. But when talking about what he’s doing, Dearing said, “sometimes it’s good not to be real descriptive.”