War-torn: Troops facing another tour try to focus their mixed feelings

This time around, they seem neither eager nor reluctant.

More numb than anything, even as they drill with precision in the mock Iraqi cities set up on the grounds of Fort Carson.

Soldiers from the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, are again preparing for war. Although they’re not ignorant of the politics dividing the nation, most say they’re trying to stay out of such arguments.

Some are just too tired to care.

It’s the latest emotional evolution for the 3,600-soldier brigade, which in December heads to Iraq for the third time.

In 2003, they were itching to fight. Those returning to war in late 2005 were more subdued, but still talked hopefully of ending the war so they wouldn’t have to go back again.

Now most say going back to Iraq is the right thing to do, but don’t ask them to stand up and cheer. It’s a level of resignation that Sgt. 1st Class David Gonzalez said he notices but doesn’t worry about.

Overseeing a dusty urban assault training range Thursday, Gonzalez said morale was great, but admitted that many of his comrades are getting tired.

“It’s hard,” said Gonzalez, who is headed to Iraq for the third time. “But 15 months away is hard on anyone.”

Familiar drills in mock Iraqi cities were run with a crispness commanders said they have come to expect from a unit that has spent two difficult years in Iraq’s fractious Diyala province.

This time the brigade is heading to Baghdad, where they will be responsible for a fractious urban landscape more complicated than what they have faced before.

“It will be more complex,” said the brigade’s top enlisted soldier, Command Sgt. Maj. Dan Dailey. “Soldiers are doing a lot of urban training.”

Commanders are trying to teach soldiers about the complexity of Baghdad, a city of warring factions.

“We’re trying to cover the gamut,” said Maj. Brian Horine as he observed a platoon working in a mock city.

Sunset didn’t stop the drills. As clouds obscured the moon, M-2 Bradley Fighting Vehicle crews fired across the night sky with their 25mm cannons.

Command Sgt. Maj. Jerome Thanheiser said he wasn’t surprised by the proficiency shown on the mock battlefields of Fort Carson.

“Soldiers just like to be soldiers,” he said.

Spc. Natalie Therrien said that although she likes being a soldier just fine, she didn’t expect to be in uniform this long.

Therrien has been married just over a week to a fellow 3rd Brigade soldier. That’s enough to keep her motivated for another Iraq tour.

“I’m getting out after I come back,” she said.

She said she and her fellow soldiers being held in the Army under stop-loss rules that involuntarily extend enlistments are dealing with the predicament.

But they aren’t happy.

“There’s a lot of that,” she said.

Don’t confuse the personal unhappiness with political views.

Although the 3rd Brigade will be in Iraq during the 2008 presidential election, soldiers say they really aren’t thinking about who should get elected.

Capt. Matthew Jensen said that’s an all-but-taboo topic on the post, where soldiers work for the president but are barred by law from campaigning.

“To be honest with you, it’s not something that we talk about,” Jensen said.

Thanheiser said that by the end of the next deployment, his troops will likely have stronger opinions, but they won’t be reflected in Gallup polls.

“They’ll either become the most dedicated generation of citizens,” he predicted, “or they will disengage.”

Staff Sgt. Mark Peck, standing in a darkened field and watching Bradley Fighting Vehicles launch tracer rounds into the darkness, said he’s ready for his third deployment, no matter who occupies the White House.

He said he doesn’t want to leave a marriage that began in August, but he first went to war in Afghanistan not long after the 9/11 attacks, and deployments and combat now come naturally.

Maybe that explains the blank faces that have replaced earlier eagerness.

“It’s become routine,” Peck said.

CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0240 or tom.roeder@gazette.com