From enemy fire to outpost life, Liberty soldier has his hands full

By NATHAN S. WEBSTER

A paratrooper from Liberty Township estimated his vehicle hit roadside bombs at least seven times.

SALMAN PAK, Iraq — The local Iraqi Army’s battalion headquarters sits behind cracked gray walls, adjacent to a busy two-lane road.

Violence has dropped in this area, but the U.S. soldiers deployed here try to always plan ahead, especially in a fairly open area not hidden from passing traffic.

Specialist Shawn Bonnema, a 22-year-old paratrooper from Liberty Township, takes a knee in front of an open doorway into a building behind him. Inside, his company commander meets with Iraqi soldiers, trying to schedule the next day’s mission.

One of Bonnema’s junior team members, Pfc. Matthew Burgett, takes a pull off his canteen’s water tube.

“[Stuff] starts popping, I’m getting behind this little concrete barrier,” Burgett says.

“No, you’re not,” Bonnema replies. “Starts popping, I’m going to put you downhill towards that wall. I don’t care where the fire’s at. I’ll be, ‘Hey. Wall. Go.’”

Bonnema’s not criticizing the 20-year-old Burgett’s first inclination, just making sure the younger soldier knows the plan, in the unlikely event they do start taking gunfire.

“Good thing about being a ‘Joe,’ though,” Bonnema says to Burgett, using the catch-all word that describes the junior enlisted paratroopers of Charlie Company, 1st/505th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division. “You never really have to think. [Stuff] hits the fan, as soon as the pop goes off, I know exactly where to put you. All you got to do is lay down fire, run around a little bit, get down and secure yourself. I like it, though, being in charge.”

No enemy action has been directed toward Charlie Company in three months in Salman Pak, a rural farming city along the Tigris River. Before that, the soldiers were assigned to the Dora district of Baghdad. It was quiet there also — but after Charlie Company’s departure, several bombs have targeted the market there, killing many civilians and several U.S. soldiers assigned to the unit that replaced the 82nd Airborne.

Attacks here have targeted Iraqi security forces, and an Iraqi Army captain and a local “Sons of Iraq” leader have been killed in ambushes. But many enemy forces have stayed away from the U.S. soldiers.

“I feel no threat. I hate to feel complacent sometimes,” Bonnema said. “Haven’t raided one house. Haven’t seen one IED. Heard them go off, but haven’t seen them.”

But Bonnema, a 2004 graduate of Liberty High School, knows all about what threats do look like.

During 2006-07, he was a new soldier, assigned with the 1st Cavalry Division in Rustimayah, patrolling “Route Predators,” “the most dangerous in Baghdad, at the time.” It was an extra-long 15-month deployment, part of the “surge” that put U.S. soldiers in small outposts across the country.

His battalion, he said, “pretty much encountered 800 roadside bombs, and 400 explosively formed penetrators. I can’t give you the numbers on how many we actually hit. Mostly, we got hit, and that’s how we found them.

During that deployment, “we were always making contact,” fighting the Shiite-aligned Mahdi Army. When al-Qaida tried moving into the area: “We pushed them out just as quick. They came in, saw us and left. Who wants to mess with a 25mm cannon?”

He estimated his vehicle hit roadside bombs “at least” seven times, but he laughed because he didn’t even know for sure — five times in a Bradley Fighting Vehicle, he thinks, and twice in a humvee.

“Eardrums got rung a little bit. Being in a Bradley’s not too bad. Get a headache for about three days, then it goes away,” he said. “Literally, I didn’t get a scratch. All I got was a little blood in my ears.”

It’s a questionable distinction, whether bleeding ears means not a scratch; Bonnema probably qualified for a Purple Heart – an award for a combat injury he has no interest in.

“Purple Heart’s bad luck. You get one, then you get another.”

He came through that deployment OK, but is perfectly happy with the “quiet” nature of this second trip to Iraq. Other soldiers would have preferred a mission to Afghanistan, but he said: “That last deployment, it took a toll on me. Part of me wants to be more high speed, but then right now, I’d rather not.

“But I’m really, really happy with what we did, and the changes that we made,” he said. “Obviously, it shows now; that was when stuff started to get better, with the surge. Now we see the results. We pretty much wrapped it up, put the cherry on top.”

Bonnema and Burgett provide security while through the open doorway of the rough-and-tumble concrete building, Capt. Michael Thompson coordinates tomorrow’s mission with the Iraqi soldiers. As part of the overall Status of Forces Agreement, Thompson arranges patrols and missions to ensure a 50-50 division between Iraqi and U.S. soldiers.

While not as complete a hand-over as that taking place in Baghdad 20 miles to the north, the days of unilateral U.S. patrols will hopefully end as Iraqi security forces can do more work on their own. But it’s not easy.

Normally, Charlie Company would send a minimum of 20 soldiers packed into four heavily-armored MRAP – Mine Resistant Ambush Protected — trucks on any mission outside the wire of nearby Combat Outpost Cahill. The Iraqi battalion here can barely manage sending 12 to 15 men, because most of their soldiers are committed to checkpoint duty along the roads. It means, Thompson says, that U.S. soldiers must work with a bare-bones three trucks, and 12 men. That’s the absolute minimum – less than that, and Thompson won’t send his men on a mission at all. But more men than that, and Iraqis can’t meet the number. Either scenario means canceled missions, and a general sense of frustration.

All the same, that’s what the hoped-for drawdown looks like, in the days around the June 30 hand-over from U.S. to Iraqi control in the large cities.

The restrictions on U.S. movement and missions aren’t as stringent as they’ll now be in Baghdad, but it requires this careful coordination all the same.

It will be a long haul. Thompson said the Iraqi Army unit here, while it has moderately good leadership, is only slowly achieving an ability to operate on its own terms. The U.S. soldiers are enthusiastically cynical about Iraq’s future prospects; but like everyone, they all hope for the best.

“Truth is,” Burgett says, “one day, we could be good allies with this country.”

“Truth is, though,” Bonnema replies, “you can’t know for sure. You can never predict the future.”