Photo By Spc. Leith Edgar | Nashville, Mich., native Spc. Chase Walden, a team leader with 1st Platoon, Company...... read more read more
Subscribe
By Spc. L.B. Edgar,
7th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment
BAGHDAD, Iraq – Thoughts of home fill the minds of the two Soldiers perched on the building like birds of prey alert for threats from the wild below. In lieu of lethal talons and a razor-sharp beak, the Soldiers clutch the pistol grips of their M-4 rifles, vigilantly scan their sector and wait. And wait. And wait. And wait.
Four times every 24 hours Pewaukee, Wis., native Sgt. Josh Smyth and Nashville, Mich., native Spc. Chase Walden share the sand-bagged room dubbed "the crow's nest" at the Hurriyah Joint Security Station in the Kadamiyah District of the Iraqi capital.
Each tour of guard duty brings the same mission: protecting their fellow Soldiers. The task involves a multitude of responsibilities, from denying insurgents the ability to emplace improvised explosive devices to stopping suicide bombers from detonating and spotting snipers before they can strike.
Standing in the crow's nest can be quite monotonous and most Soldiers prefer the excitement dismounted patrols provide, Walden said.
However, ensuring the safety of fellow Soldiers is a necessity. Consequently, Walden and Smyth stand for hours and maintain an eagle's eye on the unpredictable, if not volatile streets of Baghdad.
To kill time Walden and Smyth chew the fat, sharing random stories of times seemingly long ago, before deploying to a foreign land most Americans only see on the nightly news. Most of the tales involve humor so as to lighten the mood.
"Everyone has hilarious things that have happened to them. If you can tell it halfway decent, then everyone is going to laugh," said Smyth, a team leader with 1st Platoon, Company Alpha, 1st Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division.
Separation, but no isolation
Humor is often a godsend since the most grueling battle rages inside the heads of Soldiers with time, not enemies, to kill. In this respect, guard duty is an arduous task. Soldiers have time to think of kin left behind.
"The hardest part is trying not to think of how much you miss your family. When you're in solitude in the middle of the night and you're tired, you start thinking about your family a lot. That's why you start telling jokes, I guess," said Walden, also a team leader with 1st Platoon.
According to Walden, whose wife is a military police officer in the Army, sometimes laughing is the only cure for the heartache of being separated from loved ones.
"We've been married two-and-a-half years and probably spent four months out of it together. It's pretty hard, but we're working through it," said the 20 year-old Walden. "I've lived with these guys more than I've lived with my wife."
Excitement builds to almost epic proportions while deployed and reunions become increasingly anticipated , Walden said.
"You always make all these incredibly intricate, ornate plans. 'This is going to be so amazing. I'm going to go home and have candlelight dinners with my wife.' Then you go home, you get a T.V. dinner and you play Nintendo until you fall asleep. It's kind of unfortunate, but that's what happens," said the 25-year-old Smyth.
The absence of significant others and family members, as well as the danger of soldiering as a chosen profession, causes a greater appreciation of loved ones.
"When you're back home you kind of take your family for granted. That's the only good thing about being away. Once you're back, especially right after a deployment every waking second you get to spend with them," Walden said.
Coping with losses
Unfortunately for Soldiers being deployed, it is more than just having to spend more than 12 months away from friends and family. The reality is Soldiers may be injured, killed or witness harm to fellow Soldiers. When the worst does come to pass, no one is ever prepared.
"You never think about it until it happens," Walden explained. "At first it's just unreal because you just talked to the guy minutes or hours ago, not thinking anything, then he is gone."
It is an understatement to say dealing with the loss of a brother in arms is never easy. Yet Soldiers find a way to cope with the loss and continue on with their missions.
"Everybody has their way of coping. Some guys are going to cry. Some guys are not going to cry. It's tough on everybody, even the guys who are not close to the guy who died. Everybody feels it," Smyth said. "You don't really see yourselves as the 'band of brothers' until, it's sad to say, someone gets hurt or killed."
During times of grief, leaders often cope by reaching out to their subordinates, he said.
"You kind of cope by taking care of your guys and wondering how they're feeling. You push your thoughts aside for a while," Walden said.
With four Purple Hearts in their squad, Walden and Smyth, know what it is to see their comrades in arms hurt on the battlefield.
The loss of Pfc. Justin Driese was one such case. Soldiers who knew him continue to honor him by posting on his MySpace page, a sort of living memorial, now maintained by his parents, Walden explained.
"You try to respect that person and remember them in a positive light. Of course, we sit around and tell funny stories about that guy. That's always good. Then you can remember him and laugh," Smyth said.
Since casualties in the Global War on Terrorism are relatively lower than in any other conflict, Soldiers are less accustomed to dealing with loss, he said.
"I think our generation overall, takes life for granted. We have a high standard of living. We enjoy it and then we come over here to actually be grounded; brought back to earth; brought back to the whole world's reality where people die every single day. That's something that kind of snaps the whole world back into you," Smyth said.
Life before and after combat
Now veterans of combat in the 21st century, Walden and Smyth, like many Soldiers, have found a new appreciation for life in general.
On returning home from combat Soldiers are no longer the person they departed as. Often they are unconcerned with the seemingly petty issues of everyday life after experiencing the realities of war, Walden said.
The transformation of Walden began when he enlisted after 9-11 having grown up wanting to be a Soldier, he said.
"I just wanted to serve my country. The benefits are good, but it wasn't really about that. I just wanted to make a difference," he said.
Despite serving on his third deployment, Walden has finished two-and-a-half years of a bachelor's degree in American history from American Military University, he said.
"Now that the Army has told me to do so many things and I have no option, I've definitely made decisions on what I want to do with my life. It gets your priorities straight. Before, all I worried about was money, cars and now as long as I spend time with my wife I'm happy," Walden explained.
Upon the completion of his enlistment, Walden intends to return to his family in Michigan and use the Montgomery GI Bill to earn a master's degree in history from Michigan State University before teaching high school history, he said.
In the case of Smyth, college came before the military.
"You go to college. There are girls there. There's a lot of beer. Then you don't care about your classes somehow," Smyth explained. "All those good times were a little too good sometimes; kind of felt like I was lacking direction."
After two years at Purdue University, Smyth enlisted in the Army to become disciplined and find some direction in life, he said.
"You got to take your life somewhere. I didn't want to be 30 and still be single working at TGIFridays. Who wants to do that?" Smyth said. "The Army definitely helped me realize that I can do something with my life on the outside."
Once his enlistment is complete, Smyth plans on finishing his studies in computer information systems at Purdue and then move on as a professional in the field.
"(I will) hopefully get a job making three or four times what I make here, in a climate-controlled environment, never get shot at and then call it a day," Smyth said.
Life as a Soldier
Far from resenting the adversity of a precarious life downrange, Soldiers often embrace the adversity. Many live the motto: "Whatever doesn't kill me, can only make me stronger."
Walden and Smyth are no exceptions. Their adopted philosophy is: "It could always be worse."
"You always have a benchmark. I've suffered more. I've been in worse situations than this," Smyth said.
This type of thinking is nearly endemic of combat-arms Soldiers.
"There's always somebody there to go, 'at least we're not in Iraq'," Smyth said referring to complaints in the ranks.
Having people understand what Soldiers on the ground have been through is no small task.
According to Smyth the mindset of a Soldier is so fundamentally opposed to the priorities of civilians, it's no wonder there is such a disconnect between the two.
"Half the IED training is our guys getting blown up – watching Humvees that we're going to be in later annihilated by (Explosively Formed Projectiles) ... You can never understand that stress in the civilian world," Smyth said.
Often warped by portrayals of war on television and cinema, civilians don't see the countless hours spent on patrol or understand what it means to know one Soldier in the unit who will never step foot on American soil again. Smyth knows there are two wars: the war seen from a far and the war experienced on the ground.
"They don't realize it's not a Chuck Norris movie. You don't run into a house to clear it and dudes pop out dressed all in black with AK(47)s and they stop and wait for us to shoot them," Smyth said.
Without someone to talk to and laugh with about life downrange, the totality of it all could be unbearable. Fortunately for Soldiers, like Walden and Smyth, they have one another, time to kill and a place to do it - the crow's nest.
| Date Taken: | 06.24.2007 |
| Date Posted: | 06.25.2007 11:10 |
| Story ID: | 10954 |
| Location: | BAGHDAD, IQ |
| Web Views: | 621 |
| Downloads: | 464 |
This work, Life in the 'Crow's Nest', by SPC Leith Edgar, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
No keywords found.
