BACK TO IRAQ: A swift education on the war

BAGHDAD — It takes a couple of weeks for soldiers here to learn names, so most in this group are still called “New Guy.”

With spotless uniforms and hair cropped so closely that it’s just a thin sheen on their scalp, they have flowed into the ranks of Fort Carson’s 3rd Brigade Combat Team by the dozens in recent weeks. New Guy is rounding out the duty rosters of units that left Colorado for war up to 10 percent under projected strength levels.

They’re greeted as comrades — and an ample portion of tough love. In combat, the trials of inexperience get soldiers killed, so they are indoctrinated to war at a furious pace.

“Once they see what war really is, they lose that innocence and their senses are heightened,” said 1st Sgt. Richard Weldon, who has taken eight new soldiers under his wing so they’ll fit into his troop from the 4th Squadron, 10th Cavalry Regiment.

The new soldiers were trained at Fort Carson for Iraq duty. When they arrive in the war zone, training continues, but the enemies here use real bullets.

“Normally you would have time to adjust to your surroundings,” Weldon tells new soldiers. “With the environment we’re in now, you don’t have that ability. If we get attacked now, you have to perform.”

It sounds intimidating, but the new recruits are an eager bunch who joined the Army knowing they would see combat.

“It’s kind of that big game feeling,” said Pvt. Mark Ingbretson, one of Weldon’s charges who went from being a high school football standout in Lake Geneva, Wisc., last year to his job here as cavalry scout.

“It’s pretty much what I expected,” said Ingbretson, 19.

Fitting into their new tribe is a challenge for the recruits. Eighty percent of the soldiers in the brigade are on at least their second tour of duty in Iraq. Hundreds of them have gone to war with the 3,600-soldier unit three times in five years.

There’s a process, both formalized in training checklists and carried on in informal traditions to welcome new members of the brigade family.

The greetings at first are warm. Soldiers are picked up from the airport here and taken to a phone to call home to let loved ones know they made it to Iraq safely.

Sergeants drill them on the intricacies of combat in the days that follow.

“They take care of you and make sure you’re on top of your game because you are going with them outside the wire,” said Pfc. Michael DeAngelo of Louisville, Ky., a 19-year-old who joined his Fort Carson cavalry troop in Iraq last month.

Infantry troops get marksmanship training. Medics are hauled to the aid station where more senior troops show them the ropes.

“We don’t throw them out there before it’s time,” said Sgt. Timothys Patrick, the top enlisted soldier in the cavalry squadron’s medical platoon.

The informal indoctrination comes from war stories — and a few pranks.

Pfc. Joshua Gibson, a medic who arrived in Iraq two weeks ago was recently handed a hammer and told to perform preventive maintenance on an armored troop carrier.

“They told me to look for soft spots in the armor,” said the 21-year-old private from Falls Church, Va., who dutifully banged away until someone let him off the hook.

Before his first combat mission, Ingbretson was asked by his comrades to take off his clothes.

“They told me it was a pre-combat physical inspection,” he said with a laugh.

The jokes and the training are aimed at getting the newest troops in the brigade ready for what awaits them on patrols.

Six soldiers from the unit have died since it left for war in December, including five killed last month in a Mosul bombing.

But the new guys are undaunted.

“I’m kind of excited to go outside the wire,” Gibson said. “I feel that if I’m here I might as well be in the place where I can do the most good and I think that place is outside the wire.”

CONTACT THE WRITER: tom.roeder@gazette.com