thedrifter
05-19-03, 06:45 AM
Army Reserve Troops Bridge Tigris River for Marines
By Sgt. Frank N. Pellegrini
U.S. Army Reserve Public Affairs
BAGHDAD, IRAQ -- It had been almost three weeks since we gave up on the Army Reserve's 459th Multi-Role Bridging Company ever building a bridge. We were a four-man team of Army Reserve journalists after the stories of fellow reservists supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom in all the ways reservists do, from fuel to mail to psychological operations to civil affairs and beyond.
The Bridgeport, West. Va.-based 459th Army reservists included teachers, students, construction workers, pharmaceutical salesmen and many other type workers. From Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania, their job in Iraq was to build a bridge for war fighters to cross on their march north. We’d been with them when they “crossed the berm” from Kuwait into Iraq March 21st and began hauling their 89-vehicle convoy up north into the war.
We were with them as they followed Marine escorts though a blazing gauntlet in An Nasariyah and the string of firefights and ambushes that followed. We were with them each time a bridge over troubled water was “secured” by advancing U.S. troops. Along the way, the soldiers of the 459th waited patiently for the chance to prove themselves in what they’d been trained to do, packed up their gear, shook off their unemployment blues and moved north again.
On April 4, the Army Reserve soldiers of the 459th were camped just south of al Kut, living out of their foxholes and using the “flash-to-bang” method every night to guess how close the Iraqi artillery was getting--Still waiting on their first bridging mission that was always just a day or two away. They’d been haulers, they’d been infantrymen, they’d seen their share of death and they hadn’t showered in a very long time. But they still hadn’t built a bridge, and nobody could say for sure if they ever would.
So we cut bait on our biggest war story. We went on about our business, tracking down Army Reserve troops at the Enemy Prisoner of War camp near Umm Qasr, at the personnel offices in Camp Arifjan, at the helicopter pads and the hospitals and the postal center. When the war ended, we made our way to Baghdad to chronicle some civil affairs units helping to rebuild the city’s airport, its police and fire stations, its sense of security.
And then, on the sunny afternoon of April 23, as a sergeant from the 422nd Civil Affairs Battalion was giving me a tour of one of Baghdad’s ritziest neighborhoods, a comparative paradise filled with winding canals, lush greenery and stately Ba’ath Party mansions, I ran into the 459th again. A handful of the unit’s officers and their drivers, were sitting on the grass in the shade of someone else’s military vehicle, looking as dirty and tired as ever. But also, well, prouder than before. Capt. Timothy Vandeborne, the 459th’s commander, told me the news before I’d had the chance to ask.
“You missed it,” he said. “We bridged right after you guys left. And it was hot the whole time.”
A rush of claims followed – they had been the first U.S. bridgers to build under fire since the crossing of the Rhine in WWII, the entire Marine Corps had crossed their bridge west into Baghdad, President Bush had mentioned them by name, the whole thing had been on CNN – not all of which I have been able to verify.
The Marines, it turned out, had crossed two regiments and some 3,000 troops into Baghdad, which is still a lot for bridges designed to hold only one tank at a time. As for Korea, Vietnam, the first Gulf War and all the conflicts in between, it does seem safe to say that the place in history of Spec. Tomie Kovacick, perky West Virginia college student, is secure as the first female bridger to do her job while the bullets flew.
What did it matter anyway? For three hours of the morning of April 7, the 459th had had their moment, spanning a tributary of the Tigris amid the rounds and the bombs bursting in air. They had all survived. And more importantly, at least for me, they were all just a few miles down the road, just on the edge of town. Still manning their bridge. I told Vandeborne we’d be there in the morning.
The 459th was manning three bridges, actually – one of hard steel that the Marines had borrowed to patch a hole in an existing bridge, which now was bearing civilian traffic in and out of the city. A second “float” bridge of hollow aluminum that the 459th had built down-river, just around the bend. But the first float bridge, the one that made the history, was right there, visible from the highway, gleaming greenly in the sun. We drove across – in the opposite direction the Marines had – and got the late scoop.
“ There I was, all alone, no one to help me build the son-of-a-…”
1st Sgt. Frederick Bell is kidding – a variation of his old “nipple-deep in hand grenade pins” tough-guy shtick he used to employ after An Nasariyah, where Bell made the 459th’s first confirmed kill of the war. Then he pulled out his tape recorder – “for documentation,” he says -- and presses ‘play.’
The tape sounds full of static until I realize it is the sounds of gunfire and shelling behind Bell’s voice. “Sgt. Maxey was down by the river site, and an artillery shell hit about six feet away from him, picked him up off the ground and threw him down in the mud. He’s OK, though, no shrapnel…Sgt. Maxey, how you doing?”
“Scared.”“ Copy that…” Bell stops the tape, and explains about the unit’s first Purple Heart.
“ Maxey continued on for two days until he got so dizzy he couldn’t stand up,” he said. “Last we heard he was on the U.S.S. Comfort with a hematoma, swelling of the brain, but he’s doing OK. We’re putting him in for a Silver Star.”
Bell starts the tape again, which was evidently turned off while he was too busy for documentation. The static sound is back – a muffled ‘rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat’ – and there is the occasional whistle of artillery shells.
continued....
By Sgt. Frank N. Pellegrini
U.S. Army Reserve Public Affairs
BAGHDAD, IRAQ -- It had been almost three weeks since we gave up on the Army Reserve's 459th Multi-Role Bridging Company ever building a bridge. We were a four-man team of Army Reserve journalists after the stories of fellow reservists supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom in all the ways reservists do, from fuel to mail to psychological operations to civil affairs and beyond.
The Bridgeport, West. Va.-based 459th Army reservists included teachers, students, construction workers, pharmaceutical salesmen and many other type workers. From Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania, their job in Iraq was to build a bridge for war fighters to cross on their march north. We’d been with them when they “crossed the berm” from Kuwait into Iraq March 21st and began hauling their 89-vehicle convoy up north into the war.
We were with them as they followed Marine escorts though a blazing gauntlet in An Nasariyah and the string of firefights and ambushes that followed. We were with them each time a bridge over troubled water was “secured” by advancing U.S. troops. Along the way, the soldiers of the 459th waited patiently for the chance to prove themselves in what they’d been trained to do, packed up their gear, shook off their unemployment blues and moved north again.
On April 4, the Army Reserve soldiers of the 459th were camped just south of al Kut, living out of their foxholes and using the “flash-to-bang” method every night to guess how close the Iraqi artillery was getting--Still waiting on their first bridging mission that was always just a day or two away. They’d been haulers, they’d been infantrymen, they’d seen their share of death and they hadn’t showered in a very long time. But they still hadn’t built a bridge, and nobody could say for sure if they ever would.
So we cut bait on our biggest war story. We went on about our business, tracking down Army Reserve troops at the Enemy Prisoner of War camp near Umm Qasr, at the personnel offices in Camp Arifjan, at the helicopter pads and the hospitals and the postal center. When the war ended, we made our way to Baghdad to chronicle some civil affairs units helping to rebuild the city’s airport, its police and fire stations, its sense of security.
And then, on the sunny afternoon of April 23, as a sergeant from the 422nd Civil Affairs Battalion was giving me a tour of one of Baghdad’s ritziest neighborhoods, a comparative paradise filled with winding canals, lush greenery and stately Ba’ath Party mansions, I ran into the 459th again. A handful of the unit’s officers and their drivers, were sitting on the grass in the shade of someone else’s military vehicle, looking as dirty and tired as ever. But also, well, prouder than before. Capt. Timothy Vandeborne, the 459th’s commander, told me the news before I’d had the chance to ask.
“You missed it,” he said. “We bridged right after you guys left. And it was hot the whole time.”
A rush of claims followed – they had been the first U.S. bridgers to build under fire since the crossing of the Rhine in WWII, the entire Marine Corps had crossed their bridge west into Baghdad, President Bush had mentioned them by name, the whole thing had been on CNN – not all of which I have been able to verify.
The Marines, it turned out, had crossed two regiments and some 3,000 troops into Baghdad, which is still a lot for bridges designed to hold only one tank at a time. As for Korea, Vietnam, the first Gulf War and all the conflicts in between, it does seem safe to say that the place in history of Spec. Tomie Kovacick, perky West Virginia college student, is secure as the first female bridger to do her job while the bullets flew.
What did it matter anyway? For three hours of the morning of April 7, the 459th had had their moment, spanning a tributary of the Tigris amid the rounds and the bombs bursting in air. They had all survived. And more importantly, at least for me, they were all just a few miles down the road, just on the edge of town. Still manning their bridge. I told Vandeborne we’d be there in the morning.
The 459th was manning three bridges, actually – one of hard steel that the Marines had borrowed to patch a hole in an existing bridge, which now was bearing civilian traffic in and out of the city. A second “float” bridge of hollow aluminum that the 459th had built down-river, just around the bend. But the first float bridge, the one that made the history, was right there, visible from the highway, gleaming greenly in the sun. We drove across – in the opposite direction the Marines had – and got the late scoop.
“ There I was, all alone, no one to help me build the son-of-a-…”
1st Sgt. Frederick Bell is kidding – a variation of his old “nipple-deep in hand grenade pins” tough-guy shtick he used to employ after An Nasariyah, where Bell made the 459th’s first confirmed kill of the war. Then he pulled out his tape recorder – “for documentation,” he says -- and presses ‘play.’
The tape sounds full of static until I realize it is the sounds of gunfire and shelling behind Bell’s voice. “Sgt. Maxey was down by the river site, and an artillery shell hit about six feet away from him, picked him up off the ground and threw him down in the mud. He’s OK, though, no shrapnel…Sgt. Maxey, how you doing?”
“Scared.”“ Copy that…” Bell stops the tape, and explains about the unit’s first Purple Heart.
“ Maxey continued on for two days until he got so dizzy he couldn’t stand up,” he said. “Last we heard he was on the U.S.S. Comfort with a hematoma, swelling of the brain, but he’s doing OK. We’re putting him in for a Silver Star.”
Bell starts the tape again, which was evidently turned off while he was too busy for documentation. The static sound is back – a muffled ‘rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat’ – and there is the occasional whistle of artillery shells.
continued....