CAMP PATRIOT, Kuwait -- It sounded easy enough. Seven Soldiers had seven months to rebuild 17 boats in a borrowed tent. The boats were going to be sent up north and had to be outfitted with gunner's platforms and get repaired and repainted until they were up to the task of patrolling the waterways of Iraq.
And so Sgt. 1st Class Dennis T. Brown and his team from the 10th Logistics Task Force's Harbor Master Detachment went to work. With little experience on this type of mission, the self proclaimed "boaties" still managed to complete their work on time and on budget.
"We don't normally work on these outboard engines," said Brown. "Usually we work on the larger vessels."
First came the Fast Attack Boats, relics from the Iraqi navy.
"We went on a convoy to Iraq to pick up the boats," said Brown. Even though it's not common place to send boaties on land missions, an exception was made to ensure that the boats were properly tied down and secured for the long journey to Kuwait.
"The boats were in various states of disrepair," said Brown. They couldn't order new parts for the foreign-made vessels and instead relied on repairing and salvaging to make them sea and combat ready. Once completed, the newly refurbished fast attack boats were loaded on trucks for the journey back to Iraq.
Next, the boaties received 11 commercial fishing boats from the United States. They had been sitting around in storage for years and were better suited for a weekend fishing trip than for patrols of the rivers crisscrossing Iraq. The crew attended to every aspect of repairing and refurbishing including attaching weapon stands and protective plates to sanding and painting the vessels.
"We didn't have any painting equipment, so we had to paint them by hand," said Brown.
Before sending the boats to Iraq, Sgt. 1st Class Glenn E. Wilson and Brown used them to train the infantry Soldiers who would be the primary operators up North.
"I taught them maintenance, service and repairs of the boats," said Brown, a watercraft engineer by trade.
"None of them had any experience," said Wilson, whose job is as a watercraft operator. "Most of them said they had never been on a boat before."
Wilson's basic boating operations class included embarkation, debarkation, towing, knot tying, boat seamanship, boarding procedures and drown proofing. He also set up a waterborne marksmanship training range in the water near his base.
"We set out a row of barrels and we would ride by and shoot," said Wilson.
After the training was complete and the boats had been tested, it was time for the Harbor Master Detachment to send their completed projects off to be put to use by the U.S. Soldiers who had trained on them under Wilson's watchful eye. The six Iraqi fast attack boats were given back to the Iraqi's and replaced by the new converted commercial fishing boats.
When the boaties left in August, ending their 15-month deployment, they did so with the confidence that their efforts had truly made a difference. Their out-of-the ordinary mission means the Soldiers -- both American and Iraqi -- patrolling Iraq's rivers, can now do so with the proper equipment and training.
"They took a stab in the dark giving us this mission," said Brown. "And now we have changed the shape of the war effort in Iraq's waters."
