Three Soldiers Share Experiences From Iraq

Three Soldiers Share Experiences From Iraq

by Lee Zion
Daily News-Record
04/16/2004

When they fought in Iraq, they saw a city where children came out to play soccer with American soldiers. A home where the host welcomed 50 soldiers for a feast of lamb and rice. A site where the ancient ruins were perfect for a morning jog.

Three students at James Madison University, who returned to the school after a tour in Iraq, spoke about their experiences at a campus forum Thursday night. The stories they shared depicted a country very different from the violence seen in nightly broadcasts.

Sgt. Andrew Carnahan, a pre-med major who serves in the U.S. Army Reserve, said the frequency of the danger is exaggerated.

"You only hear on the news when something bad happens, when there’s an attack or a bomb goes off," he said. "Soldiers going out, shaking hands, taking pictures with Iraqis, and saying hi to the kids and giving them candy, doesn’t make a headline or a story, but that’s happening a lot more than people firing on us."

Matthew Mills, a chemistry major who serves as a corporal in the Marine Corps Reserve, echoed Carnahan’s sentiments.

"When we were first going into towns, they really hadn’t seen Americans before," he said. "We go in, and there’s people running alongside the streets and saying, ‘Yes, mistah-mistah. Yes, mistah-mistah.’"

Southern Iraq Was Peaceful

Sgt. Corrie Baier, an accounting major who serves as in the U.S. Army Reserve, said most of the media were stationed in Baghdad, and their perceptions of Iraq were colored by the day-to-day disruptions there. But southern Iraq, where she was stationed, was peaceful.

Baier described going to a school to meet some of the women who taught there. All the students were curious to see the visiting women from America, she said.

"I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many heads poking out of windows … 3,000 kids all trying to lean their head out of a window to see us," she said. "It was just really neat."

Baier was able to deliver supplies to schools, many of which had no textbooks. She also delivered supplies to Iraqi hospitals and orphanages, she said.

Mills, meanwhile, got to meet the Iraqi people. Since he was in a small town, his unit was safer than the ones deployed to large cities.

"It was pretty peaceful, so we were allowed to walk around the marketplace and stuff. We still had all of our gear on, so we were like very well-armed tourists," he said. "I got to swim in the Tigris [River]; not many people can say that."

Pleasant Memories

"The kids just wanted to touch you; they wanted to talk to you," Baier said. "Any English that they could use, they’d run it all in one sentence. They were incredible. They wanted to be around us; they wanted to play soccer with the guys. You’d see that all the time."

Carnahan, meanwhile, recalled a friendly round of arm-wrestling with a former member of Saddam Hussein’s elite Republican Guard.

"He let me win. He was about 6-foot-5; he could have beat me."

Mills described passing through a village that was predominantly Shiite — a minority who were oppressed by Hussein. The people showed their gratitude to the Americans by cooking a huge feast.

"There was probably 40 or 50 of us there," he said. "There’s a big old pile of rice and some lamb on top. … And they’re all showing us how to eat, because they don’t use forks."

Baier, meanwhile, got a chance to see a very different side of Iraq from the image presented on television.

"I was in Babylon for most of the time, and I would run through the ruins every morning. There was a huge amphitheater there, and I’d run stairs," she said.

Near Brush With Death

Mills had a near brush with death while in Iraq. But the Iraqis weren’t to blame; instead, he had planned to play a practical joke on a friend by rigging up a homemade bomb that would make a loud pop.

But Mills’ buddy saw him sneaking around at night, wearing a woolen cap that in the dark resembled a turban.

"I’m yelling his name. He has his headphones on, so he can’t hear me. He … [has] his rifle and points it right at me, and I’m like, ‘Oh, God, don’t shoot, don’t shoot!’ Luckily, he had a night-vision scope on, so he could see that it was me," he recalled.

The Future Of Iraq

The students also speculated on the future of Iraq. Carnahan noted that the citizens did not have a tradition of democracy, so it would take a long time before they catch on to the concept of self-rule.

This will make it difficult to turn over the country to local leadership and pull out on schedule, he said.

"We had a lot of people crying when we left. They were heartbroken; they thought we were going to stay," Baier said. "We said, ‘No, we have to go back home. We’re just trying to give it back to you guys.’ "

That, Carnahan added, was "a hard thing to try to communicate to people sometimes. ‘We’re here, but this isn’t our country. We’re tying to give this country to you. It’s yours; you live here.’ "

But Baier added the Iraqi people are looking forward to the future.

"The women would talk about what they wanted the kids to do, and how much hope they had for the children, and how happy they were," she said. "There’s incredible hope in the women there. … They’re a peace-loving people; they want to just raise their families in peace."