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And I thought we had it bad..
http://www.sftt.org/cgi-bin/csNews/csNews.cgi?database=Special%20Reports.db&command=viewone&op=t&id=70&rnd=480.7794403837068
http://www.sftt.org/cgi-bin/csNews/csNews.cgi?database=Special%20Reports.db&command=viewone&op=t&id=70&rnd=480.7794403837068
Subject: Reserves in Iraq
Sir,
I‘m fairly new to the Reserves, but what I‘ve seen so far is disgusting. I spent 5 years on active duty, and it wasn‘t much better there.
We were mobilized last December for OIF. As soon as we were mobilized our IMPAC card was shut off. The 88th RSC decided we were no longer their property, so we shouldn‘t be allowed to spend their money (as if we ever were). The real problems began when 3rd Army and CENTCOM began fighting over our unit. They both wanted our personnel, but no one wanted to subsidize us. What kind of unit could inspire such fighting? Ours, sir, is a Public Affairs HQ.
We are lucky. Most of us work in journalism or related fields as civilians. Our job skills didn‘t need polishing, but soldier skills were nearly nonexistent. I was a Specialist and the only soldier with any real tactical experience. Our replacement SGM had never deployed she replaced a SGM who heard rumors of the deployment and pulled strings until he got himself transferred. He‘s never deployed either.
After we were mobilized several soldiers went to Minnesota to pick up our Humvees and other MTOE items. Our vehicles had been used by the RSC, apparently for parts. Nothing major. Just door handles, mirrors, doors, antennas, etc. The usual things you expect to get stolen if you can‘t guard your own vehicles. (I suppose this hasn‘t changed since your time.) Anyway, being new to the Reserve experience, I was appalled to discover that our MTOE provided for one SINCGARS radio. ONE! No OE-254, no base station, no portable radios (not even a manpack). We were, however, blessed with 8 humvees no way to communicate between them, but I ask for too much, perhaps.
Drivers‘ training consisted of one road test, conducted by a junior soldier one month out of AIT. The student drivers drove around the block and were duly licensed.
So, it continued: our chemical detection equipment was 10 years out of date, as were the test kits. We had approximately 115 9mm clips, but only 20 30-round magazines for our M-16‘s. In my unit we have fewer than ten 9mm pistols, more than 30 rifles. (Incidentally, I never once was able to carry a full combat load. Nor was anyone ever issued personal magazines. Each time we went out, before, during and after the war, most soldiers were able to take only three magazines, which came from a common box.)
All our PV2‘s were promoted to PFC. All on waivers.
At last we reached Ft. Benning. We spent 47 days there. Not enough time, apparently, to qualify with our weapons, or to learn convoy operations, dismounted movement training, additional drivers‘ training, or even practice submitting a SALUTE report. Not to even mention medical care. No Reservists were allowed to see a dentist or a doctor for routine care. Not even a tooth cleaning or a physical. Nothing. We did work at the newspaper.
Radio training was conducted all theory. We didn‘t have batteries. Or a handset.
PLGR training was also theory. No batteries. No maps.
I taught two Staff Sergeants how to use the TAS-C to get training aids. I obtained materials covering DU, UXO, and mine awareness, among other subjects. I offered to teach classes on these topics as well as others I‘d learned on active duty. I was told the schedule didn‘t allow it we were committed to working for Ft. Benning‘s PAO.
No new equipment arrived.
We deployed. If you want to call it that. Our unit was sent to live near the civilian journalists in the Kuwait Hilton. Not too bad. We went out daily, escorting journalists to newsworthy sites. During the war, we sent convoys into Iraq. Mercifully, no one died.
We used cell phones to communicate inside Kuwait, luck in Iraq.
We begged office supplies from the journalists we were accrediting and escorting.
We begged equipment from the US Embassy representative or from the Kuwaitis.
We relied on the Kuwaiti military for our security, since CENTCOM forces were tied up down in Qatar at the million dollar briefing room and nearly empty press center.
We received nothing from CENTCOM, our parent unit.
ORHA (CPA) arrived. They went swimming. All of them. They had office space they took much of ours but it seemed like they all spent most of their days on the beach. (By comparison, I was at the hotel for a month before I knew how to get to the pool. I didn‘t have time to use it for six weeks, which was well after the UK troops started coming for R&R.)
Anyway, our living conditions were never anything to complain about. Even after we moved north, we lived in the CPA palace in the ballroom (described by our temporary boss, Madeline Albright, as horrendous living conditions.). Far better than the bombed-out buildings and empty lots that many units called home.
We made do, as soldiers have for centuries. We scrounged furniture from Iraqi barracks nearby. We got small Humvee parts from the active duty MP unit that lived across the way. And from our new bosses, I began asking for the things we needed in order to safely operate our daily convoys around Baghdad, specifically maps and radios.
My husband, from his duty station in Germany, sent me a street map of Baghdad he‘d bought on the internet. It was the only map of Baghdad we ever got.
The radios I requested in May arrived in July, just as we were leaving. I tried to pick them up for our replacements, only to be told I couldn‘t have them. Why not? They were set to frequencies which were illegal in the middle east they had come from the US. Besides, I was told, if they were issued, they‘d be going to the Iraqis CPA had just hired to help secure the convention center.
The supply thing is a real sore point for me. We wanted the radios and maps to ensure the safety of our soldiers. The infantrymen (from the Florida National Guard) securing our building and the convention center were still using field phones that looked like they were straight out of Vietnam. Our intentions were to issue half the radios to them, and half to our convoys. Apparently, though, the CPA thought it was more important to spend money on filling and refilling the palace pool four times and buying personal refrigerators for every office and trailer.
Most of the people who were Washington‘s first string, the ones who spent their days by the pool in Kuwait, left within a month. After the big names left, all the Ambassadors and former Generals, the rest of the rats couldn‘t get out of there fast enough. Two months in, we were working for an entirely new group. By the time we left, in July, the third string was already rolling in.
In the meantime, the CPA people were also making regular trips back to the Kuwait Hilton for R&R.
I could go on, but this is making me ill. The reason Iraq and the Reserves are a mess is because perfumed princes beget perfumed princes. Military and civilian alike.
AN UNHAPPY CAMPER
