Publication:Chattanooga Times Free Press
Date:Wednesday, December 15, 2004
Section:Front Page; Page:1

By Edward Lee Pitts Military Affairs

"For this operation, cooks are becoming extinct," said Capt. Trever Jones, 32, of Athens, Tenn. "It isn’t traditional U.S. forces going against another force. It’s a different enemy now. It could be tankers, infantry, cooks or truck drivers who see the action and respond to hot spots."

The U.S. Army is pushing cooks out of the kitchen and replacing them with private contractors such as the ones who provided the meals for the 278th both in the United States and in the Middle East. Soldiers with the 278th, a Tennessee-based National Guard unit, began arriving in Iraq from Kuwait last weekend on several convoys spread over six days. The regiment will spend the next year at three military bases in the country’s eastern Diyala region near the Iranian border.

While in training in California and Mississippi, with Capt. Jones as their platoon leader, the cooks learned how to conduct combat patrols, guard a base, clear a building, take prisoners and man a road checkpoint — all missions they might be asked to do in the Middle East.

"It is scary, because we only had four months of training, while the infantry has years of training," said Spc. Mike Coyne, 28, of Cleveland, Tenn., one of 16 cooks in 1st Squadron. "A lot of guys said, ‘You’re just a bunch of cooks, you are not going to make it.’"

The cooks took it as a challenge to prove themselves to foot soldiers accustomed to seeing the chefs ladling out food inside the friendly confines of a mess tent.

"We don’t get much glory," Sgt. 1st Class Terry Huskey, 43, the senior food service sergeant, said. "It is always about bullets and stuff like that. A cook is about the lowest thing you can be in the Army. It’s a job no one wants."

But Spc. Mickey Scroggins, 23, of Cleveland, Tenn., said the cooks didn’t take a back seat to any unit during training, making it a point to be one of the first groups to tackle an exercise.

"For a bunch of cooks, we have done very well," Spc. Scroggins said. "We’ve always been told our first job is being a soldier and being a cook is secondary."

Capt. Jones said the skills needed to cook a meal are similar to the ones a soldier needs to succeed in battle.

"You can take any task, whether it is clearing a trench or making Thanksgiving dinner, and you have to have a good, decisive plan to make it happen," he said. "I never really thought of them as cooks. I thought of them as a bunch of soldiers."

Combat tactics are not new to this batch of chefs. Sgt. John Guthrie, 38, of Dayton, Tenn., a cook who will be a gunner on convoys, spent 17 years on tanks. Sgt. Lonnie Murray, 39, of Cleveland, Tenn., served four years in a mortar platoon before switching to cooking.

"I knew this was coming," Sgt. Murray said about facing combat here in the Middle East. "I was expecting it when the (World Trade Center) towers went down."

While soldiers such as Sgt. Murray believed the 278th would see action soon after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks because of the regiment’s combat specialty, many of the cooks’ wives were surprised their husbands may have to fight.

"She thought I’d be safe in the kitchen," said Sgt. Guthrie about his wife, Lisa. "She gets upset and worries more now."

Sgt. Huskey said as regular soldiers the cooks now have shorter hours and more free time. No longer do they have to rise at 3 a.m. to have breakfast ready by 5 a.m. — just the first of three meals.

"A lot of times cooks are still working when the rest of the soldiers have bedded down for the night," he said.

During training, the cooks did not turn down chances to fix meals. They hosted cookouts, baked deserts and even cooked a steak dinner during the regiment’s final week at the National Training Center in California this fall.

Now that the 278th is in Iraq, some of the cooks may be assigned to supervise the civilian workers at the mess hall. But most will be out on missions.

Still, if they are not too busy guarding the base, patrolling the roads or locating snipers, Sgt. Huskey said the cooks will find their way back into the kitchen to whip up some morale during the next 12 months.

"To me it doesn’t matter what kind of day a soldier has," Sgt. Huskey said. "If he eats a good meal, it’s been a good day. Cooks are the public relations people for the Army."

E-mail Lee Pitts at lpitts@timesfreepress.com

Contributed Photo - Spc. Mickey Scroggins, left, and Sgt. Lonnie Murray, both cooks with the 278th Regimental Combat Team, bolt armor plating on a truck.

Story Copyright to Chattanooga Times Free press