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By Bill Nemitz Wednesday, April 18, 2007

CAMP NAVISTAR, Kuwait - Sgt. Michael Harrington knows how to look at the bright side.

For the past nine months, Harrington, 30, of Randolph, has been stationed here on the border of Iraq -- braving dust storms, temperatures that can soar as high as 140 and an army of insurgents to the north, lying in wait for him and his comrades from the Maine Army National Guard.

Yet here, Harrington sat in his state-of-the-art armored security vehicle late Monday evening, talking about how good he has it.

"Can I tell you a little bit about my gunner?" said Harrington, the truck commander, motioning toward Spc. Bill Greeley, 20, of Livermore Falls. "You're looking at a guy who's a perfect shot, which is unheard of. Ninety-six for 96 on the range. Didn't miss once."

Turning toward his driver, Spc. Arthur Churchill III, also 20, of South Gardiner, Harrington continued, "And my driver is actually into mud running back home. So they fit perfectly into my vehicle. He was made to drive, and he was made to shoot."

Both of which, in these parts, are very good things. In less than two hours, the three-man gun truck and two others carrying Mainers from Alpha Company, 1-121 Field Artillery Battalion, would escort a 28-truck convoy into the teeth of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

One might think that a battalion based in Kuwait would have it relatively easy, that soldiers who come to this relatively tiny camp have little to fear from the danger that lies across the border just a few hundred yards away.

One would be wrong.

"Convoy security is the second-most-dangerous job in Iraq (after foot patrol)," said Churchill, who looks as though he still could be in high school. What's worse, it's a danger these soldiers cannot see. Anywhere along the hundreds of miles of Iraqi highway they travel each day and night, improvised explosive devices -- roadside bombs that grow more sophisticated with each passing month -- could go off at any time.

"The worst part of all is you're just heading down the road, waiting for it to happen," Churchill said over the low roar of his idling gun truck. "They're getting good at hiding these things."

Like so many Army National Guard battalions now deployed in Iraq, the 1-121 Field Artillery is a patchwork of soldiers from all over the United States. Roughly half of the battalion's 623 members come from Wisconsin. The rest come from Maine, Nevada and Arizona, along with a physician's assistant from Alaska.

Maine's 77-man unit comprises roughly half of Alpha Company -- one of three "line companies" that spend almost as much time in Iraq as they do here. The soldiers' mission: Protect the serpentine processions of tractor-trailer rigs, many driven by civilians who speak no English, that are the equipment-and-supply lifeline to U.S. forces serving all over Iraq.

They travel mostly by night in heavily armed, thickly plated Humvees or the newer, V-bottomed armored support vehicles. While immensely safer than the thin-skinned vehicles Maine Guard units were forced to use in Iraq a few years ago, the 1-121 Field Artillery's fleet is not impervious. IEDs can and do inflict damage.

Still, the battalion has fared relatively well since arriving here last July. Only one solider, a young man from Wisconsin, has died in an attack. Six others, none of whom are from Maine, have suffered wounds severe enough to be sent home.

In all, 27 solders from the 1-121 Field Artillery have received Purple Hearts -- including one Mainer, Spc. Derek Freeman of Wiscasset, who suffered shrapnel wounds in an IED attack last fall.

First Lt. John Gates of Topsham, who is Alpha Company's acting commander while Capt. Kent Cousins of Limestone is on leave, said the injuries usually come from isolated IEDs triggered by some type of remote control.

"The insurgents don't want to stand and fight with us, because they know they'll lose," Gates said.

Nevertheless, he said, the danger arises the moment the convoys -- some total as many as 45 tractor-trailers and can stretch for several miles -- cross over into the small Iraqi border town of Safwan. From there, they travel north some 360 miles to Baghdad, 470 miles to Tikrit or 800 miles to Mosul, to name but a few of their far-flung destinations.

Logistically, it's a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week nightmare.

"At the current pace we're going on, Alpha Company should exceed 1.6 million (vehicle) miles before we head home in July," said Master Sgt. James Tash of Hodgdon, the company's operations officer. "And we will exceed way over 1,200 missions. For the month of March, we ran 140,000 miles."

Put more simply, Tash said, Alpha Company's gun trucks are on the road -- manned by a never-ending rotation of three-man crews -- more than 90 percent of the time.

Some trips, such as the escorts for trucks carrying bitumen to an asphalt plant in southern Iraq, take only a day. Others, ferrying equipment to and from military bases around Baghdad and beyond, can take one, two or even three weeks, depending on what happens along the way.

Long haul or short hop, it's a grueling life for the soldiers. They must remain in camp for a minimum of eight hours after completing a mission, but it's not uncommon for them to be back on the road with only a 12- or 14-hour break.

"Call home or e-mail home, shower, do laundry," said Churchill, who thinks nothing of driving, nonstop, through an entire night. "You try to slip all of that into those 12 hours."

Not to mention eating and sleeping.

"Every once in awhile, we'll get a couple days off," said Greeley. "But then there's weeks on end where we get ... well, nothing."

Even when a mission goes smoothly, the trips are an exercise in endurance. Soldiers, many of them muscle-bound from hours in the camp's gymnasium, can remain in hot, cramped seats or gun turrets for 12 hours or more -- constantly sucking down water, Gatorade or Rip It (essentially liquid caffeine) and relieving themselves when necessary into empty bottles.

"We don't like to stop," Churchill explained.

And with good reason: The longer a convoy remains stalled by a breakdown, a flat tire from the metal spikes insurgents plant in the roadway, or an all-out IED attack, the more vulnerable they are to a "complex attack" by organized insurgent units. So far, luck has been on the Mainers' side. Most have seen IEDs go off, but from a safe distance.

"We've driven past an IED (that doesn't explode) and then, right behind us, the next convoy gets hit," Harrington said. "And we'll just be like, 'Wow.'" Echoed Churchill, "We're like, 'Man, that was close.'"

As they spoke Monday evening, the soldiers wiped headlights and windshields clean with moist rags, filled coolers with beverages and ice and stowed their gear for what would probably be a four- or five-day equipment-and-supplies run to a depot near Baghdad.

Just outside the Camp Navistar perimeter, the drivers of 28 tractor-trailers -- some from an Air Force unit, others civilians who work for Department of Defense contractor KBR -- stood outside their trucks, waiting for their all-Maine escort.

"I do this for my family," said Lorenzo Vismonte, 46, who lives in the Philippines and has been driving trucks here for the past three years. "I have four kids, all in school, so I need money to send them to school."

The drivers come from all over the world -- in addition to the Philippines, home countries on this night included India, Pakistan, Indonesia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. That few speak English is largely irrelevant; civilian drivers carry no radios in their unarmored trucks and say they simply do what the truck in front of them does.

Vismonte said he's been hit once by an IED, but it took out his trailer, not his cab. He still drives.

Does it scare him?

"Yes, sir," he replied, nodding his head vigorously. "I'm scared. I'm nervous."

So is Gates, the acting company commander and a former Topsham police officer who watched with arms crossed Monday as yet another detail prepared to leave the deceptive tranquility of Camp Navistar.

"Think about bowling," Gates said. "You're standing there, you're winding up and you just threw the ball down the alley. You're either going to have a strike or you're going to have a gutter ball. The ball's already rolling. What are you going to do?"

As he spoke, young gunner Greeley playfully rode piggyback on the strapping shoulders of Spc. Nate Williams, 21, who, like Churchill, lives in South Gardiner and would ride in another of the Maine trucks this night.

Gates continued, "All you can do is say, 'Hey, they've got all that training they've gone through.' As a leader, that's my job -- to have as many tools as possible in their tool box so they can have the best chances of survival on this mission."

A short distance away, truck commander Harrington -- the man with the marksman in his turret and the driver who can plow through anything -- prepared for another night's work along the most dangerous truck route anywhere on Earth.

What goes through his mind at times like this?

"We have, like, three months left to go," Harrington replied. "We're like, 'OK, let's keep our heads down and low-pro (low profile) for the rest of this duration and be safe."

He paused, searching hard for words to live by.

"Get it done," he finally said. "Let's just get it done."

Staff Columist Bill Nemitz can be contacted at: