BACK TO IRAQ: Building bonds

BAGHDAD — They miss back home and aren’t happy about being in Iraq, but patrolling with Fort Carson troops north of Iraq’s capital shows how they’ve adjusted to war.

Rituals here have replaced stateside routines, and soldiers say their families on the other side of the world are replaced by the people they live with in a war zone. The old joke among soldiers here is that Colorado Springs has become a place they visit, not where they live.

“I see these guys more often than I see my family,” said Capt. Enardo Collazo as he led a platoon of soldiers outside the fences of Camp Taji to survey a riverside village to the south.

In massive bomb-proof rigs and smaller Humvees, Collazo’s soldiers scan the roadside for bombs as machine gunners sway in their turrets to spot ambushes or snipers. But the mood is light as the soldiers joke about women, passing cars or anything else that could get a chuckle.

Their main targets for the humor are one another during the rough ride on what has been Iraq’s most dangerous highway since the war began.

“We pick one person a day and make fun of then,” jokes Staff Sgt. Joshua Leath, a three-time Iraq veteran.

Leath’s platoon eats, sleeps and laughs together even as they face danger, he said. They have the highest re-enlistment rate in the brigade. Commanders say they’re always together, even when they’re at Fort Carson.

“We’re a family,” Leath said seriously, before turning it into a joke. “Sgt. 1st Class (Anthony) Lawrence calls me his Iraq wife.”

The close-knit nature of the brigade was born in Iraq. Eight out of 10 soldiers from its ranks were here in 2006 with the brigade. Hundreds in that group were also on the brigade’s first missions in Iraq shortly after the 2003 invasion.

In the brigade’s makeshift headquarters inside a warehouse at Camp Taji, chaplain Maj. Chip Nicholas said loners are few in the brigade as soldiers lean on their comrades to make their 15 months pass swiftly.

The jokes and even the griping act like a pressure release valve on a boiler, allowing soldiers to vent nervousness, loneliness and anger in small doses, he said.

“They figure out what helps them cope on a day-by-day basis,” Nicholas said.

It also helps them focus when they travel to the place soldiers simply call “outside the wire,” the chaplain said.

Soldiers are alert and watchful as they survey the streets of a village where Collazo is visiting a school and a medical clinic. The brigade’s soldiers arrived in Iraq last month and are still figuring out the neighborhood. Today, they wanted to know how to help local institutions.

Collazo surveyed the buildings and talked to the locals, fielding requests for medicine, generators and a copier for the elementary school principal. The visit lasts hours as Lawrence and Collazo go from room to room in two schools.

The pair even visited a barber shop in the neighborhood, which is near the ruins of an amusement park called Baghdad Island.

Outside, gunfire crackled in the distance. A few short bursts could be heard clearly.

Eyeing the dusty road and Iraqis from the hamlet who milled nearby, Staff Sgt. Cain Schuler and other watchful soldiers didn’t flinch at the sounds.

“They’re in contact somewhere over there,” he said, gesturing to the land past a date palm grove. “Why it doesn’t bother me is it’s my third time here.”

There’s good reason to be nervous: The Army says the area is a likely hideout for insurgents. But the sergeant keeps those around him calm.

“This is my first time out,” said Pfc. Andrea Reed, a medic who accompanied the platoon to help them deal with Iraqi women. “But it doesn’t bother me.”

Collazo said he feels safe around these soldiers because their ability to read each other on missions almost seems telepathic.

“When I’m out there I have no doubts in my mind,” he said.

The captain said a soldier in the platoon who got in trouble with the law explained to it to him once. Collazo wanted to straighten the kid out, maybe call his parents.

“He said he had no family. He didn’t know his mom or dad. He’d bounced around foster homes,” Collazo said.

But the soldier knew he was no longer alone in the world.

“He said, ‘Captain, this is my family.’”

— Reporter Tom Roeder can be reached by e-mail in Iraq at tom.roeder@gazette.com