News Article

2nd Squadron Guardsmen Forge Strong Ties With Iraqis


By: By GRAHAM LEONARD, Ph.D./Special to The Greeneville Sun
Source: The Greeneville Sun
03-25-2005

Editor’s Note: Graham Leonard, Ph.D., a 79-year-old retired educator with extensive experience in the Middle East, is embedded with the 2nd Squadron of the 278th Regimental Combat Team near Kirkuk, Iraq. A 2004 Democratic candidate for Congress in the First District, he describes himself as being "anti-Iraq War."

Dr. Leonard wrote this report on the activities of the Squadron earlier this month, before the death of Spc. Paul W. Thomason III in a roadside bombing in Iraq. Spc. Thomason was an East Tennessean who had been a member of Greeneville-based Troop G of the Tennessee Army National Guard.

Many other members of the 2nd Squadron are also either from Greeneville, from other parts of this county, or from other areas of Northeast Tennessee.

TUZ, Iraq – The 2nd Squadron of the Tennessee Army National Guard’s 278th Armored Cavalry Regiment (2/278th) from Northeastern Tennessee controls a key area in the eastern part of Iraq, just south of oil-rich Kirkuk.

As an "embedded" journalist, I am living with them for a month, going where they go and observing how they do their daily work as Tennessee Peacemakers.

I have seen the men of the 2/278th when they were still civilians and now 10 months later as they do a wonderful job in an area of equally numbered ethnic groups — Kurds, Arabs and Turkomen.

In a series of articles I will try to do justice to these men (and a few women) by describing what they do and how they live. It is a story of adventure as men achieve what more than they ever imagined, and become finer than they even dared believe they could be!

An Offer Accepted

In the spring of 2004, I learned that the (Kingsport-based) 2nd Squadron of the 278th was being activated to serve in Iraq. The 2nd Squadron are from Northeast Tennessee, where my roots lie. They would be going to my other world — the Arab Middle East.

It seemed an opportunity to share with people of my home area my experience of 35 years as an educator in the Middle East and another 10 studying about Islam, Arabic and the Arabs.

It turns out that the motto of the 278th — the only armored cavalry regiment in the National Guard — is "I Volunteer, Sir."

The officers accepted my offer.

Six hours of lectures were arranged for each unit of the 2nd Squadron: Kingsport, Bristol, Rogersville, Erwin, Greeneville and Newport plus the Howitzer Battery in Pigeon Forge — and also for the 190th Engineers in Morristown.

Notes were prepared and copied for those talks, with many more for the officers who might be called on to negotiate with local Arab tribal, village or city leaders. Far more personal and impressionistic, those notes supplemented the factual manual on Iraq issued by the army.

Actually, what the men (and 2nd Squadron had almost no females) most wanted was to have their questions answered about the unknown people, religion and land where they were headed.

There was little time to get to know the 278th, but they seemed like a regular cross-section of our area. On average, they were far older than I expected.

Before they left for intensive training at Camp Shelby, Miss., and a month in the California desert, the executive officer, Major Miles Smith invited me to help them orient themselves once they arrived in Iraq. Again "I volunteered," uncertain how that could be fitted into Army regulations and bureaucracy.

The Army has "embedded" me as a journalist for a month; hence this and future articles.

Ethnically Diverse Area

As the 278th left Tennessee, the Army thought the 278th would be deployed in the Sunni Triangle — which is very dangerous — or to Mosul in the north — also quite contested — or to the Syrian border — hot, dry, very dull and bedeviled by sandstorms.

It looked in early summer 2004 as though the 278th might be heavily involved fighting entrenched insurgents with all the dangers that entailed. We thought the attacks against the Coalition forces would intensify after July when the Provisional Iraqi Authority replaced Ambassador Paul Bremer’s regime.

After November, or about the time the 278th deployed by air to Kuwait to meet up with their tanks, Bradley Fighting Vehicles, trucks, humvees and other equipment shipped by sea, we expected the Iraqi insurgents would concentrate more on fighting . . . in the lead-up to the Jan. 30th elections.

Those predictions turned out to be about what happened. In August, Major Smith emailed me that the 2/278th would be stationed in Tuz Kharumato, Iraq.

I replied that either someone was pulling his leg or the name was Turkish or Kurdish. For in Arabic, Tuz is a mildly dirty word. It means a loud explosion of body gas — to put it politely. Men of the 2/278th and their families laughed heartily that they were going to "fart," Iraq!

In Turkish, tuz means salt and Kharumato a mine. The 2/278th were headed for a salt mine in the eastern part of north central Iraq!

Outside the southwestern edge of the Kurdish autonomous region, Tuz’s population once was nearly all Turkomen, whose ancestors came to the area a millennium ago from central Asia.

Kurds who had lived in nearby villages and increasingly in Tuz before Saddam’s "ethnic cleansing" have now moved back there. Saddam had tried to displace the Kurds of the oil-rich Kirkuk area with his own secular Sunni Arab supporters.

The 2/278th would be going into an area about equally divided between Shi'a Turkomen, Sunni Kurds and more secular Sunni Arabs.

Though in the Tuz area all have gone to school in Arabic, [their] ethnic identity as Turkomen, Kurds or Arab would prove far more significant than Shi’a or Sunni religious loyalties.

By Thanksgiving the 278th had flown to Kuwait to meet up with their equipment. Starting last Dec. 12, the 278th moved their equipment northward over 500 miles from Kuwait, circling eastward around Baghdad.

Contrary to dire expectations, some 5,000 men with all their equipment managed to reach their Iraqi posts safely. The 278th are spread out on a north-south axis from just below Kirkuk through the eastern tip of Sallah ad Din Province to most of Dayala Province northeast of Baghdad.

They relieved the 30th Infantry Brigade from North Carolina, who, after two weeks of hand-over, departed for home on the day after Christmas.

Base Described

The 2/278 occupy a former Iraqi air force base, now inactive, with an earthen perimeter berm across the runway.

Their Forward Operating Base (FOB) has been named Bernstein for an American soldier killed in Iraq in October 2003. It is 10 miles west of Tuz, far from everything on a pancake-flat plateau.

The soil is gray clay — dust in heat, and mud when wet. Only a few scraggly eucalyptus trees grow around the bunker-type buildings on the FOB. A few clumps of trees at a poultry farm can be seen half-way to Tuz. Aesthetically worst of all for Northeast Tennesseans, the only hills are a low barren ridge beyond Tuz.

'Tennessee Peacemakers'

Almost immediately upon arrival the 2/278th found itself intimately working with the people of the Tuz [region] in preparation for the Jan. 30th elections. This would involve most of the men in personal contact with local people, not just a few officers. None of the Tuz areas had insurgents effectively holding positions in villages or urban neighborhoods.

It would only be necessary for the 2/278th to mount irregular patrols. Our 2/278th “Tennessee Peacemakers” would be doing exactly that — convincing the Iraqis that they are in the Tuz area to promote peace!

Make no mistake, individual and small-group insurgents operate in the Tuz area. The 2/278th has to provide security while both policing and pacifying the area.

They would have to prepare for safe elections while also trying to promote the development of an area badly neglected by the Saddam regime and severely deprived of infrastructure repairs and civic — especially medical — services under the United Nations sanctions.

Kurds had been "ethnically cleansed," forcibly moved out of the area, and were now returning to demand their homes and lands. The Turkomen suffered because they were non-Arab, Shi’a and hostile to Saddam.

Still, many individuals, groups and even whole villages resent Coalition occupation as "foreign and hostile to their religion and proud culture."

'Absolutely Amazing Job!'

Men we thought quite ordinary citizens in Northeast Tennessee have taken on the thankless job of enforcing security, law and order, while achieving outstanding results with peaceful, fair and well-participated-in elections. At the same time they are recruiting and training a growing Iraqi army unit on an adjacent base.

The 2/278th are also training Iraqi police for the Tuz district, an area of ethnic diversity and incipient rivalry.

Simultaneously this same group of our "ordinary Northeast Tennesseans" is making friends, especially with the children, while they support the schools, provide badly needed supplies to hospitals, encourage local government, and promote development of the Tuz area.

If I had not seen this myself [in recent days] as an "embedded journalist" living with our Tennessee Peacemakers, I would not have believed it possible! The 2/278th are doing an absolutely amazing job despite still having only a smattering of Arabic, Kurdish or Turkoman languages.

Yet they go about their work as if it were the most usual job in the world. At some empathetic human level, the officers and men of the 2/278th understand the culture, the individual local leaders and all the machinations and intrigues of Middle Eastern cultures better than people I have known who spent lifetimes in this area! At some deep level beyond conscious thinking, the leaders of Tuz area respond to our Tennessee Peacemakers, almost intuitively character to character. The best in our men call up the best in the Iraqis!

"Closer Than Brothers"

What happened to the rather casual bunch of individuals I knew in Northeast Tennessee? Instead, I find here a very tight-knit group, bound together in mutual trust and interdependence.

Individuals lead convoys on dangerous missions where they protect each other diligently — not only with their loaded guns but by disarming those guns once back inside the base.

Sharing danger has bonded them closer than brothers. But that does not explain the willingness of these men to do any job and work long hours nor their plain native ingenuity to do well all sorts of things they never dreamed of a few months ago!

The native goodness in these men of the 2/278th comes out especially in their deep concern for the people of the Tuz area — already referred to as "our people."

Our Tennessee Peacemakers seem happiest and most "together" when they visit schools, and tell me how they want to come back to Iraq to help make a better future for these people, especially the children.

They have fallen in love with the dark eyes and smiling faces of the children — so much less privileged than their own children and grandchildren.

Older Soldiers

The remarkable men (and a few women) of the 2/278th aren’t the usual 18-to-24 -year-olds of most wars or even most units of this war. The average age must be over 40, including five father-son pairs and even a couple of grandfather-grandson pairs.

Combined, they had greatly varied civilian experiences, but that alone cannot account for the extraordinary flexibility and wide variety of tasks these men of the 2/278th carry out 10 to 12 hours a day, seven days a week in this very different environment from our beautiful Northeast Tennessee hills, lakes and widely dispersed homes.

Something quite remarkable has transformed our "down home" boys into very extraordinary men of the world — a very dangerous and challenging world.

Our Tennessee Peacemakers, so far with only one casualty (a bomb de-fuser) and one attacking enemy dead (during the handover period of shared responsibility), are performing near-miracles that no one even dreamed possible 10 months ago, least of all from a gang of "civilians." Note: This article was written before the loss of Paul Thomason and the injuries to the other three 278th Soldiers.

I can hardly recognize but warmly salute these outstanding men who do not even seem aware of how truly marvelous they are!


U.S. Army Photo by SSG Russell Lee Klika - An unidentified soldier from the Kingsport-based 2nd Squadron of the 278th Regimental Combat Team prepares to place “wanted posters” in an Iraqi village earlier this year as Iraqi children watch. The posters offered rewards for information leading to the arrest of Iraqi insurgents.

Story Copyright to The Greeneville Sun

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