Engineers Helping to Defend the Iraqi Border – Constructing One combat outpost, at a Time

Courtesy Photo | Before - The "Swimming Pool" at Combat Outpost Amarah  

IRAQ

03.15.2009

Courtesy Story

555th Engineer Brigade

By 1st Lt. Susan Nagal
555th Engineer Brigade

Imagine that you are tasked to help construct a home, a combat outpost, for 20 – 30 soldiers who are responsible for training and mentoring an Iraqi Border Patrol Brigade.

Now imagine that when you arrive at the location, you discover that the site for that home has a mud filled, two feet deep, football field sized water hole right in the middle of it. Don't forget about security during construction because this COP is going to be next to Amarah, a city that is known for having small arms fire, mortars, and rocket attacks. To top it off, the Iraqi Border Patrol Brigade's Headquarters are right next to where you are going to work so on average you will have ten to twenty high ranking Iraqi officials stopping by to check out your progress every day. It was with these circumstances that 2nd Platoon, "Dig Deep," from the 610th Engineer Support Company, 14th Engineer Battalion, 555th Engineer Brigade was confronted upon arrival at their mission site. Despite these challenging conditions 2nd Platoon, alongside airmen from "Det Ten," an Air Force construction detachment that works with the 14th Engineer Battalion, completed construction and turned over COP Amarah to an eagerly awaiting Border Patrol Transition Team.

The first thing 2nd platoon researched before conducting their mission was some information about their customer. Border Patrol Transition Teams, or BTTs, are primarily composed of officers and senior NCOs with various backgrounds. The BTT at COP Amarah is focused on training up the Iraqi Border Patrol Brigade which controls almost all of the border patrol units operating on the Iranian border. The construction of the COP allows the BTT to live and work with the Iraqi Brigade and enables them to better determine what they need to do to improve how the Iraqis oversee their border patrol units. Once 2nd Platoon had a good idea of who they were working for, they had to determine how they were going to deal with the water hole.

The water hole was a big problem. Water had pooled after a heavy December rainfall and had never fully evaporated leaving a very large muddy area. Removing the water, affectionately referred to as "the swimming pool," was the first step of several needed to make the ground solid enough to set up the BTT's living areas. It took a little ingenuity but with the help of a small submersible water pump the platoon was able to extract enough water from the site to start pushing dirt.

Throughout construction, 2nd Platoon's Soldiers moved several thousand cubic meters of earth and gravel onto the site to bring the ground up high enough so that it didn't turn into another swimming pool. Normally this wouldn't be very complicated but something at COP Amarah made this a little tricky: puppies. Stray dogs are commonplace in Iraq and the project site was no exception. A dog had given birth to a litter of four female puppies at the site weeks before our arrival and the puppies had decided that it was their home. They felt no reason to leave because the Iraqis working at the Brigade Headquarters had provided scraps of food for the animals and had treated them well.

The 2nd Platoon Soldiers were in the middle of their 10th month of a 15 month deployment, and with home always on their minds, interacting with this small band of puppies brought up their morale and reminded many of them of the pets they left at home. It wasn't long before the puppies had adopted the soldiers into their family and it wasn't unusual to see a soldier working on the site with a puppy or two trailing behind him anxiously watching what he was doing.

After almost three weeks of 12 -16 hour workdays, the soldiers of 2nd platoon and airmen of Det Ten took COP Amarah from being a huge muddy water hole and turned it into a livable combat outpost, complete with tents, latrines, and showers for the Border Patrol Transition Team. Reflecting on their accomplishments, Pfc. Tyler Crista, originally of Seward, Alaska, said, "The amount of work was great and the conditions weren't the best, but we pushed through and got the mission accomplished."

The soldiers left Amarah knowing that they had made another positive impact on the future stability of Iraq.

• Date Taken: 03.15.2009
• Date Posted: 03.15.2009 07:18
• Story ID: 31129
• Location: IQ