Soldiers settle into their Iraq mission

September 24, 2009

The New Mexico National Guard 515th Combat Sustainment Support Battalion, stationed in Iraq, is beginning to settle into its mission, after arriving in Mosul from Belen more than a month ago.

“We have successfully assumed the mission here in Iraq,” said Lt. Colonel Kenneth Nava, who leads the battalion in Iraq. “Of course there are things we are finding on a daily basis that need additional attention, but if everything was perfect, we wouldn’t be here.”

The soldiers arrived in Iraq in mid-August. Since then, they’ve settled into their 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week mission.

“They’re long days. It’s a lot of work,” said Captain Jason Peete, who’s still in Belen and communicates regularly with soldiers. “They’re on for six days and get one day off.”

The soldiers are living out of what Peete called “mud huts,” similar to adobe, on their forward operating base. He said the soldiers have good dining facilities and an exercise gym with a basketball court.

The soldiers spend most of their time on the base, but when they go off the base, or what Peete called “outside the wire, into the combat zone,” they’ve found the sand and storms much different than New Mexico’s.

“Traveling around Iraq is very challenging,” Nava said. “The dust storms have a big impact on all modes of transportation. It is not uncommon for a one- or two-day trip to turn into six or seven days. Because of restrictions about when and where we can travel, trips that would take less than an hour back home, take four to five hours here.”

Nava said the temperatures are in the mid-80s to low 90s, and they’ve even gotten some rain.

“For just a few minutes after the rain, you could smell nothing but the sweet fresh air that God intended for us to breathe,” he said. “Then, after those few wonderful minutes withered away, the smell of burning garbage and dust and chemical latrines and whatever else is over here returned.”

The soldiers are keeping active on base, having time for workouts, with some soldiers slimming down by 20, 25 and even 60 pounds. Nava has been encouraging soldiers to get fit.

The soldiers will soon begin building a Bataan memorial park near their headquarters in Mosul. They’re debating whether or not they should plant grass. Nava said he’s got the grass seed.

“I’m not sure if it will grow or not, but we’re going to try,” he said. “The doctors at the local combat support hospital have grass in their yard, so I think it’s doable.”

In one of the lighter moments since arriving in Iraq, the soldiers have begun tracking the number of times they’ve been hit by bird poo, on what they call the “515th Bird Turd tracking list.”

“The rainy season is approaching,” Nava said. “The Eucalyptus trees around our buildings already have a bunch of birds in them. They say that when the rain hits, however, the bird population grows incredibly. We’ll see what that means in the next month or so.”

Nava has been hit by poo once. The high-scoring soldiers are at four hits each.

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