| Issue #40, January 12, 2007 |
Iraq Report
Dan’s War Correspondent Returns After 10 Days With the Troops
By Dan Rattiner
I recently debriefed Marvin Scott, the Channel 11 Newscaster and Unofficial Foreign War Correspondent for Dan’s Papers, who returned from Iraq four days before the New Year. He had been there for ten days, just as he had been there ten days two years ago at Christmas time, embedded with the US Army 301st Area Support Group in Camp Anaconda, forty miles north of Baghdad. This time, he was at the same base, attached to the 411th Engineer Brigade. Both units provide logistical support for the main fighting troops. He and his cameraman were there both times to bring cheer to New York units fighting in Iraq.
I was curious how this trip, two years later, compared to his earlier one.
“There is more of a gravity to the situation than there was two years ago. There are more Americans being killed every day than two years ago. Christmas was subdued this time. There was the choir, the Chanukah candle lightings, the gifts. But there was not as much of it, and it didn’t seem to uplift the soldiers’ spirits as much as it had the last time.
“The troops were particularly disturbed about the President saying we are not winning. He’s their Commander-In-Chief. They say we have accomplished much of the mission. We have removed the tyrant. We have given Iraq an opportunity. We are rebuilding Iraq. They say that this is not being appreciated. One time in the base hospital, I met with a Marine who had been seriously injured in a non-combat accident. He was being sent home. And when I talked to him he began to cry. ‘I don’t want to leave my men,’ he said. And yet, the most important Christmas gift of all would have been if they could go home to the families they love. On the troop level, this is very complicated, as you can see.”
“Anything else?”
“Well, on a more practical level, there was more bureaucracy this time for some reason. I can’t say what that reason was, but it made it a more difficult trip. We also found ourselves in the line of fire. We were in an armored vehicle that hit an IED — a roadside bomb — so I feel lucky we are here. Nearly half the combat casualties result from roadside bombs. We flew over Baghdad one night in a helicopter, very low for safety and we flew past a refinery on fire. There were more Blackhawk helicopters coming into the hospital at Camp Anaconda, where we spent most of our time, carrying casualties. Any time you’d see two of them flying in tandem coming overhead you knew what it was. There are many red alerts at Camp Anaconda. They signify incoming fire from outside the camp. It is usually a mortar shell or the like fired in blindly over the fence. They average about nine a week but do not often cause any damage. There is a belief in camp that Iraqis living in the towns surrounding the camp are paid $50 or $100 to create incoming fire. The camp now has a nickname. Mortaritaville.”
“Tell me about the IED encounter.”
“We had flown from New York to Kuwait on the 13th. Then we went by C130 to Baghdad Airport and Camp Victory there. We were then supposed to go the Green Zone twelve miles away by helicopter to get credentialed. But we had too much luggage for the helicopter. So we went by Rhino, which is a big armored vehicle, on this 12-mile trip along what is known as Route Irish. It is a dangerous one. Along the way, my cameraman, Dave Kimmel, and I felt a thud from under the vehicle, after which Dave saw a puff of smoke. The driver picked up speed and raced on. And when we got to where we were going, he said we had hit a small device designed to partially disable the vehicle, which it had not done. He said many of the IEDs are remote controlled and some of them appear to be from Iran. He crossed himself. ‘I pray to the Lord whenever I drive this route. Today He did His job.’”
“Could you describe life in Camp Anaconda?”
“They call Camp Anaconda a camp rather than a base, because a base suggests a permanent situation and we intend to be there only temporarily. The camp is 15 square miles in size and has a huge base hospital that serves not only our troops but foreign troops, civilians and Iraqis of all stripes — even enemy combatants. There are 22,000 personnel at the base, 1,000 of whom are women. And there are lots of amenities. The meals are good — we had Cornish hens, crab legs and such — and there is a Burger King, a Pizza Hut, a barbershop and a place to get a manicure. When we were there, so were the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders and Al Franken on a USO Tour.”
“Tell me about the mission you were on.”
“My mission — the mission given me by Channel 11 and by the Armed Services — was to uplift the spirits of the troops, particularly those from New York. To that end, we arrived there with our television cameras, our equipment and luggage, and all sorts of good New York gifts for the soldiers. We had with us H & H Bagels, Nathan’s Hot Dogs and Junior’s Cheesecakes, as well as all sorts of other things from home. J & R provided us with one-time cameras, AT&T gave us all sorts of phone cards, and we also had been given DVD players by the Daniel Alvarez Foundation. The troops were so happy to see us. Probably the most important gift we could give them was visual contact with their families at home. We had permission to set up a video link for them on my morning broadcast during the Channel 11 morning news, and the Evening News at 10. All together, we were on the air about four hours a day for a week and three days. And much of the time we had the individual soldiers talking to their families at home.”
“That must have been a very emotional experience.”
“I remember a two year old girl in Brooklyn, talking to her mother, sitting on her grandmother’s lap, and turning to her grandmother and asking — why are you crying, Grandma?”
“Would you go again next year or the year after if we are still there?”
“I would go anytime I’m asked. I found this whole experience very moving. Everyone appreciated what we had done coming there. I have emails from many of the people I’ve met. They say ‘thank you so much for coming. Thanks for everything, you touched us all, this was so special.’ Yet the present they’d treasure the most would be to come home to their loved ones. I’m proud to have gone. I think we have accomplished something for the holidays for our troops.”
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