1st Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division Public Affairs

Story by Spc. Mike MacLeod

AL ASAD AIRBASE, Iraq – It was the Desert Fox himself, Field Marshall Erwin Rommel, who said, "Battles are decided by the quartermasters before the first shot is fired."

Few would argue that military logisticians are the grand enablers of military might, be it for the greatest Army in the world or one that army is helping to stand back on its feet. One Soldier who feels that from his eye teeth to the skin of his soles is Capt. Kyle Brown, officer in charge of Team Partner, an assembly of the best mechanics, medics, and logisticians from the support battalion of the U.S. Army's advise and assist brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division now covering Iraq's largest province.

Al Anbar's desert can be especially cruel to the efforts of support troops. Extreme convective heat is merciless on rubberized items such as tires, gaskets and seals. Chalky sand invades every crack and seam, making abrasive sandpaper of anything it touches. Barren expanses are tracked by limited and sometimes difficult supply routes that only add to the difficulty of obtaining medical supplies and vehicle parts.

Even so, the greatest challenge facing the Soldiers of the 307th Brigade Support Battalion, 1st Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division (Advise and Assist Brigade), is not what is, but what is left. Top-down leadership, long a feature of the Arab landscape, is an enduring legacy of the hyper-despotic Saddam regime. What is left is an authoritarian bureaucracy – even in the pragmatic pit of a mechanic's bay or aid-station ward – that advise and assist Soldiers like Brown must learn to navigate.

Today's agenda is a meeting with Lt. Col. Khamis, the commander of Maintenance Company, Motor Transport Regiment, 7th Iraqi Army Division, in his office just off one of the regiment's busy maintenance bays.

Khamis is a man of responsibility, but muscular workingman hands belie his blue-collar tinkering. He grew up fixing cars in Baghdad. It is his hobby and his career, he says, twenty-three years in the service.

Brown is a late-comer to the Army. He left a career in finance after friends died in the Twin Towers. He grew up surfing the California coast. The two could not be more different.

Only 25 of 110 5-ton trucks are operational, the Iraqi commander tells him. The trucks are breaking faster than they can get replacement parts, and it is only a matter of time before they will be forced to significantly reduce their operations tempo.

"What's slowing down the spare parts?" Brown asks. "I have seen the warehouses at the Taji National Depot. They are full of spare parts."

"That might be so," replies Khamis, exasperated, "but they might be parts that are not needed."

The American knows it is not the case. He presses on to unravel the riddle of the Iraqi supply chain.

"Where do you take your old tires and batteries?"

Khamis patiently explains they are taken to Habanniyah, where they are inspected and stamped as unserviceable. The colonel did this several months ago. He shows Brown the binder of completed IA Form 101s.

Brown sits back. "We need to travel to the warehouses in Taji together," he says.

Khamis replies that he will need his commander's approval for such a trip.

When Brown was a senior in high school in Los Angeles living above his parents' garage, he woke up at 4 a.m. one morning to the 6.6-magnitude Northridge earthquake. He looked out the window and saw the shockwave rippling through the land as if it were an ocean. He tossed his acceptance letters to California universities in the trash. He'd had enough of potential calamity.

Then one Tuesday morning, calamity found him. A few weeks earlier, he was playing golf with friends visiting from New York City; now, Sept. 11, 2001, his friends had disappeared in a cloud of poisonous dust and twisted steel.

Brown joined the Army. "I wanted to get mine," he said.

Since then, he has learned that no revenge will bring back his friends, he said, and here in Anbar, he has come to love the Iraqi people.

"I love how family-oriented they are," he said.

In the maintenance bays, American and Iraqi mechanics work side by side. Brown points out Spc. John Tate from Ventura, Calif., Spc. Ryan Calzada from Fresno, and Sgt. Cameron Channell.

"The rest of our mechanics regard these three as geniuses," he says.

Tate says the Iraqis are masters of improvisation with wrench and bolt and the detailed Arabic-language service manuals and guidance they are receiving from the Americans are having an immediate impact on the serviceability of their fleet.

"They apply the lessons almost immediately," says Calzada.

As the captain considers how he will approach Khamis' boss to get permission for the trip to Taji, he walks to the nearby Camp Mejid Medical Clinic to see how training is progressing. Along the way, a young Iraqi lieutenant who works in communications stops him. He remembers the captain from the recent partnership soccer game.

"We need tools," he says.

The captain replies, "We can no longer give you ..."

Brown stops the interpreter and tries again. "I will be happy to help you order tools through your system," he says. It is a new era in partnership, and tough love rules the day. Advise and assist forces are committed to enabling Iraqis and their institutions for long-term success. Supplying all their material needs only hampers their autonomy.

Lt. Ghanam is at first put off, but conversation gradually returns to soccer.

"We will have soccer goals next time," says Brown. "Our welders are going to teach your welders to make them, and then we will play again."

At the medical clinic, the situation repeats itself. The officer in charge, Capt. Hayder, requests a blood-typing machine and posters on swine flu.

"Let me check and see if we have any posters," replies Brown. He explains that blood typing is done at a lab.

In the adjacent classroom, Pfc. Mohammed Shaker, an Arab-speaking American paratrooper and medic from St. Petersburg, Fla., is teaching a dozen Iraqi medics how to prepare a patient record using SOAP: the patient's subjective account, the medic's objective measurements, his assessment and plan of care. The students are bantering, lively and fascinated. Though most of the Iraqi line medics have been working here more than three years, they've had only 35 hours of official training.

They welcome the American advisors.

The 7th IA does not have standard procedures for their medical assets, tracking, care, or treatment, says Staff Sgt. Tiari Ventura, noncommissioned officer in charge of the medical training team. Team Partner is helping IA medics develop their own.

"Patients tend to roll in when we come around," says Ventura. "We're trying to wean them off of American care."

Before the partnership began, Ventura reviewed the clinic's records and discovered that 90 percent of their cases were diagnosed as influenza regardless of the symptoms. Nearly all of their patients were given antibiotics.

"They are learning that every fever and stomach ache isn't the flu," she says.

Course content is determined by the requests of the Iraqis; class handouts are in Arabic. Although trauma is important, 98 percent of their healthcare demands are for common conditions such as colds and minor injuries.

The Iraqis first request classes on treating diabetes and hypertension.

"They're already really good at treating trauma," says Ventura.

Brown walks back to the mechanics bay, still hoping for a meeting with Khasim's boss, Lt. Col. Hazin. Tate, Calzada and Channell are advising Iraqi mechanics as they drop the transmission and clutch from a Russian-made 10-ton truck. Hazin's office is just across the street, but propriety must be observed. As a captain, Brown cannot simply walk into a regimental commander's office. He would like to, though.

"You'd be surprised how far a few Coke's and a box of muffins will get you," he jokes.

Shortly, Khamis approaches and says that he has arranged a meeting with Hazin, now. Brown doesn't need to be told twice.

Brown holds an MBA and has many years of business experience, and in Hazin's office, he is in his element. He is polite, but like a salmon hell-bent on finding the home stream. Trip to Taji? approved. Combat-lifesaver training for non-medical personnel? approved. His mechanics want to tow one of two broken Russian jeeps back to the American compound to see if they can fix it.

"You will bring the 'Waz' back or keep it?" asks Hazin.

"We'll fix it and bring it back, but we'll borrow it every once in a while because it's a very cool vehicle," says Brown. To cruise around town or run up the dunes, he means.
The joke is lost in translation.

Just let the sergeant in charge of the vehicle know, Hazin says.

Finally, Brown says that many of the colonel's broken-down vehicles have badly-deteriorated fuel filters, creating significantly higher maintenance requirements and reduced engine life. The cause: contaminated diesel fuel due to their fuel storage facilities not circulating or filtering the fuel on a regular basis.

"Dirty fuel is a problem country-wide."

Brown points out that the new Location Command Mejid Pumping Station just a stone's throw away has a capacity of 4.4 million liters, with new filters to clean any contamination.

Hazin, of course, already knows about the pumping station. It is the newest, most modern facility on Camp Mejid.

Back at the bay, Brown tells the Iraqi noncommissioned officer in charge, Muhammad Karim, that he will be back at the end of the day to tow the Waz.

Karim is from Nasiriyah. He has been in the army since 2006. Though his rank is equivalent to a Marine lance corporal, Karim is in charge of 68 soldiers and all the medical, mechanical, and petroleum pumping training as well as retrieving damaged vehicles.

Karim adds to the refrain for parts. "When the Americans pull out, we will be ready to operate on our own, but our lack of parts is delaying the process."

Brown is more determined than ever to solve the supply problem. During his last deployment, he was the supply officer for another unit in the brigade, 3rd Squadron, 73rd Cavalry Regiment. He spent 14 months dealing with materials issues from Iraqi contractors at Convoy Support Center Scania. He will crack this code too.

The wind has picked up, blowing rippled clouds across the sky. The genius mechanics have the Waz strapped to a Humvee, ready to tow the short mile or two to their motor pool. It is difficult to tell who is more excited, the Americans with their "patient," or the Iraqi mechanics who are already anticipating their turn at the second Waz. After all, an American solution is not a permanent solution. They want an Iraqi one.

But first the Americans need permission from an Iraqi sergeant.

Brown tracks down the sergeant, but he says that only his lieutenant can grant permission.

Brown tracks down the lieutenant, but he refers him to a major, and the major is on leave. So the lieutenant takes Brown to Lt. Col. Hazin, the regimental commander to get permission, but is referred back to getting permission from the major.

Outside the lieutenant colonel's office, he asks the Iraqi interpreter the word for wind.

"Howa," the interpreter says, looking up at the sky. The autumn rains are coming to the deserts of Anbar.

"How?"

"No, howa."

"Howa," the captain says. He likes the ring of it. He repeats it, "howa."

The interpreter nods.

"We'll be back to get the Waz," the captain says.

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