Golden Dragons

Spc. Craig Vandermaden: Why I fight

I'm U.S. Military And This's What I Fight For #One 03'23'08

By AmericasNewsToday.Org staff

U.S. Army Spc. Craig Vandermaden looks at a student's lesson book at a school in the Meshahadah province of Iraq, March 16, 2008. Vandermaden is assigned to the 25th Infantry Division's Company C,1st Battalion, 14th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team.

Picture provided by the U.S. Department of Defense.
DoD photo by Tech. Sgt. William Greer, USAF.

“The Chicken Coop.”

Chickens fly the coop, and U.S. troops move in   

By James Warden, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Saturday, March 22, 2008

TARMIYAH, IRAQ — Most soldiers call this growing patrol base simply “The Chicken Coop.”

That’s not just colorful military lingo. About a week ago, the base was exactly that. Soldiers from 1st Battalion, 14th Infantry Regiment arrived here to find feathers, feeding troughs and other chicken waste.

Rough as The Chicken Coop is, it’s an important part of the battalion’s expansion into the rural areas northeast of Taji, said 1st Lt. Calvin Kline, the battalion’s information and operations officer. This area is a longtime refuge for insurgents “dubbed the arms room of al-Qaida.” Prior units saw fierce fighting here. The insurgents even managed to shoot down an Apache helicopter in 2005.

The fighting and roadside bombs were so bad that the area’s main east-west road was mostly off-limits to coalition forces. Just as bad, attackers were chasing “Sons of Iraq” guards from their stations, putting a dent in American security initiatives.

Sgt. Erik Helms, a 1-14 Stryker commander, was stationed south of Taji in 2005. The road’s reputation made it tense the couple of times he had to drive it during that deployment. It had gaping holes, including one large enough to hide a coffin, that made perfect places to hide the roadside bombs Americans feared so much.

“It wasn’t a good road back then,” he said. “We felt real vulnerable, I guess you could say.”

Succeeding units managed to tamp down the violence and gradually started to weed out al-Qaida from the general population. But when a roadside bomb took out a U.S. vehicle, 1-14 leaders decided to reclaim the route for good.

On the first few nights at the base, set up not far from that bomb site, soldiers had to pull security at night without the reassuring presence of walls or concertina wire, said Spc. James Ebert, a 23-year- old from Carmel, Ind.

That changed quickly, though. Contractors ringed most of the base with concrete walls within days and placed towers on the perimeter.

Now The Chicken Coop allows the Americans to maintain a constant presence midway between Taji and Tarmiyah. They patrol the area around the base several times a day, and American convoys regularly drive the road.

U.S. soldiers share the base with an Iraqi army unit, to whom 1-14 leaders plan to hand over the base. With one Iraqi soldier for every American, the 1-14 soldiers have more ability to work with them and hasten the handover. The Iraqi platoons usually approach the Americans when they want to do a patrol or reinforce one of the checkpoints.

Feathers notwithstanding, the progress is something for the 1-14 soldiers to crow about.

“We actually love this,” said Staff Sgt. Efren Nila, a 26-year-old squad leader from Manassas, Va. “We are actually out here doing patrols, not just sitting around.”

(click on the link for pictures of Dragons at the Chicken Coop)

(H/T Maj Jim Craig, XO, 1-14 IN,Camp Taji Iraq)

Dragon videos

Click on the links below to see videos of our Dragons at work in Iraq.

Dragons work with Iraqi Soldiers to hand out humanitarian aid bags to displaced families. More here

Package made from "Joint Security Station Mushada" about Company C, 1st Battalion, 14th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team "Warrior" Soldiers providing security at Joint Security Station Mushada in Iraq. Produced by Spc. Elliot Valdez. Longer video here.

Interviewed:

• Sgt. 1st Class Steve Purvis (Lexington, NC, US), Platoon Sergeant
• Sgt. Matthew Vecchione (Brooklyn, NY, US)
• Spc. James Ebert (Indianapolis, IN, US)

Junkyard Dragons

Baghdad Troops Sweep Junkyard for Potential Munitions

By Sgt. Jerome Bishop
2nd Striker Brigade Combat Team Public Affairs,
25th Infantry Division,
Multi-National Division - Baghdad

CAMP TAJI, Iraq – Soldiers from 4th Platoon, Company B, 1st Battalion, 14th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, “Warrior,” 25th Infantry Division, Multi-National Division – Baghdad, along with members of the Iraqi army, began a five-day operation, March 11, near a vital route to secure all possible improvised-explosive device parts from a junkyard.

The goal is to remove munitions available to enemy forces.

“The bad guys tend to go to the junk yard and take a lot of empty rounds along with them,” said Staff Sgt. Ralph Haney, a native of Syracuse, N.Y., who serves as a squad leader for 4th Pltn., Co B. “It makes it easy for them to grab a couple, take them back to their houses, pack them full of explosives and put them back on the road.”

Because of the danger that the empty canisters pose, it is the job of the MND-B and IA soldier to “grab the majority of the ones that are easily accessible so it makes it more difficult for them,” Haney said.

Along with the IA, the Soldiers of 4th Pltn. took off into the junkyard, along with Explosive Ordinance Disposal technicians and K-9 teams, to locate, sort and remove the mostly empty munitions from the dump. While the majority of the rounds found didn't contain any explosives, they still present a danger to MND-B Soldiers and Iraqi security forces.

It was probably 95 percent empty rounds, said 1st Lt. Samuel Adam Miller, a Cameron Park, Calif., native who serves as the platoon leader for 4th Pltn., Co. B.

“A lot of it is empty stuff, but there's still some live stuff in there. The main goal of this is to get this empty stuff so they can't take it and pack it full of explosives and use it against us,” he added.

What set this mission apart from similar missions, where raids and searches produce weapons caches, wasn't the amount but the content of what was found.

“This is much more significant than a cache find because this junkyard has a lot of ordinance that's been produced but not filled,” said Miller. “It's mass quantities of empty ordinance, whereas in a cache, you'll find much smaller numbers of rounds full of high explosives.”

In the junkyard, he explained, there are a lot of empty rounds that were produced and just dumped out. However, some of the munitions were dumped with full rounds as well.

While the mission marked the first day, it is expected to last to the end of the week. The Soldiers of 4th Platoon said they are confident of the impact their actions will have in helping save lives in the future.

“Our battalion has done a great job of locking down the roads so they can't hit us with IEDs, but we're in a lull right now in terms of (al-Qaida in Iraq's) actions. Right now, while they're being passive, we can start taking away their resources so if they become more active, we've taken away a big chunk of stuff they could use against us.”

Miller called the first day of the mission a success.

“Overall, we've located the big dumps of ordnance, which was one of our main goals today. Find out where most of the stuff is at, and then we can start pulling it out on day two, day three and day four. I call it a success,” said Miller. “We've located all the major stuff and we've taken a little piece of it away with us today as well.”

At the close of the first day, the Soldiers of 4th Platoon left with a little more than they arrived with. They took more than just a haul of empty, rusted munitions, they also took with them a resource used by those who would use them to disrupt the growing security in Iraq.

The Enemy of My Enemy

Following on the heels of Riding to Tarmiya, the Columbia Journalism Review, publishes another piece by Paul McLeary featuring the 1/14th in Iraq

Captain Christopher Loftis, commanding officer of C company, 2/25 in Tarmiya, was trying to feel out a group of Iraqi men who hoped to join the Sons of Iraq movement. The men were standing around a checkpoint that flew the yellow flag of the Anbar Awakening movement at an intersection a few miles outside of town, and he was asking them how things were going.

The response was the same each time: “more weapons” to fight the insurgents. Loftis would smile, shake the man’s hand, and move on. It was the usual request, always denied, but given that these men weren’t even under contract to provide security, the plea was a little premature. The captain had come out to this checkpoint in front of a former Saddam-era uranium processing plant not just to meet these men, but the men who organized them, along with about six hundred others who wanted a contract with the American Army to provide security.

The Sons of Iraq program, begun in the spring of 2007 and funded by U.S. taxpayers to the tune thus far of $123 million and counting, is basically a private militia—80,000 strong at this point—hired by the American military to help fight the insurgency. Not surprisingly, the success of the SOI has produced conflict with the Iraqi government. At a meeting the day before with the local Iraqi police commander, the police complained that two people had been kidnapped and released by an “illegal checkpoint” manned by the SOI the night before, and that some of the men at these new checkpoints were wearing masks. The police commander wanted to make some arrests, which brought the American civil affairs officer assigned to Tarmiya, Major Guidry, to the edge of his seat. “Just get their names and give them to us,” Guidry warned. “We don’t want to put you in a position where you’re in conflict with Abna al-Iraq [Arabic for Sons of Iraq],” The police colonel frowned, but agreed not to do anything drastic.

Read the whole thing

Dragons host GoI Representatives

Lt. Col. Thomas Boccardi, a Colorado Springs, Colo., native, shakes hands with Sheik Sa'id Jassem, a local leader, outside a Tarmiya meeting hall, March 10, before the start of a meeting between local leaders, government of Iraq representatives and Multi-National Division - Baghdad Provincial Reconstruction Team members. Boccardi serves as the commander of the 1st Battalion, 14th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team “Warrior,” 25th Infantry Division, Multi-National Division – Baghdad.

GoI Representatives Visit Tarmiya

By Sgt. Jerome Bishop
2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division

CAMP TAJI, Iraq – Members of the government of Iraq, along with members from the Multi-National Division – Baghdad Provincial Reconstruction Team, took the first steps in reuniting the people of Tarmiya with the government sworn to serve them, March 10, at a meeting hosted by a leading sheik at a meeting hall in Tarmiya.

Sobei Mashabani, the head of the rural services committee for the GoI, made the first visit by a government official to Tarmiya in more than eight months to attend a meeting of sheiks, hosted by Sheik Sa'id Jassem, to discuss issues such as security, reconciliation and essential services.

"Part of this was a reception hosted by Sa'id Jassem, the leading tribal leader here in the Tarmiya area," said Col. Richard Welch, a McConnelsville, Ohio, native who serves as chief of the reconciliation program for MND-B.

"They hosted a meeting here to talk about the needs and the issues in Tarmiya. Sheik Jassem invited all of the tribal leaders and various government officials to talk to the provincial council about what they need," he added.

Jassem and Mashabani took to the floor several times during the course of the meeting to address the audience, which consisted of more than 50 sheiks from the Tarmiyah area, to discuss issues of importance to local leaders.

"(Mr.) Mashabani was pleading to the people about how important it is to bring security," Welch said. "He said all this sectarian violence and personal hatred that ripped Iraq apart in 2006 has to stop, and it has to stop with us – the people in the community.”

Mashabani’s speech was one of hope. He said he hopes the Iraqi people can go back to their homes and be safe. He wants the neighborhoods back together.

While nothing was directly agreed on during the meeting, the foundation was laid to begin holding future meetings where concerns can be addressed more directly and yield results, said Welch.

The return of members of the GoI was in part due to the efforts of MND-B soldiers from the 1st Battalion, 14th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team “Warrior,” 25th Infantry Division, and their predecessors.

"It's been attributed to the security. Tarmiya was not an area you could come to," said Lt. Col. Thomas Boccardi, a Colorado Springs, Colo., native who serves as the battalion commander for the 1-14 Inf. Regt. "It was an (al-Qaida in Iraq) stronghold. It was a known 'arms room,’ as what it's been referred to, and it was an area where AQI was projecting attacks into Baghdad.”

Since removing AQI forces from Tarmiya and the surrounding areas, the resulting increase in security not only led to the reopening of markets, schools and business, but the safe environment also allowed Mashabani and other key figures in the reconstruction effort to visit.

"Twenty years ago, Tarmiya was a thriving river-side town. It was a beautiful place where people went to go on vacation. It had great big markets and great new infrastructure. Since the war, it has completely deteriorated," Boccardi said.

While the meeting may not have resulted in anything clearly definitive, it fostered a promise of hope, in which every resident of the town and surrounding areas will be able to enjoy.

Riding to Tarmiya

Today, in the Columbia Journalism Review, is a piece by Paul McLeary reporting from Iraq

... This rotation back to the big bases was how I got out to JSS Tarmiya, about thirty kilometers north of Baghdad. From Liberty, I caught a short helicopter ride north to Camp Taji, where I spent a night near an artillery battery (the 2nd Battalion, 11th Field Artillery Regiment, 2nd SBCT, 25th Infantry Division) firing illumination flares that rattled the walls of my room.

The next morning I was placed in the hands of 1st Lieutenant Matt Ives, who was taking his platoon from Taji back to Tarmiya—home of the 1st Battalion, 14th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division. There was a bit of excitement before I left Taji however. While waiting to leave the dining area one afternoon, word started trickling back that someone had—just minutes before—lobbed two rockets at the base, and they landed about fifty meters away from the DFAC near the PX. One round hit the trailer containing the beauty salon, leaving a hole in the side of the structure, while the other landed nearby. One soldier got a few scrapes, but other than that, no one was seriously wounded. It was another example of how, even at the big bases, the war is never far.

The ride from Taji to Tarmiya should take about thirty minutes, but ended up taking almost two hours due to route-clearance issues. Along one particularly dangerous stretch of road that was known for having IEDs placed along the route, a few soldiers had to dismount from the Strykers and walk the sides of the road, looking for the telltale wires.

When the ramp finally dropped inside the base at Tarmiya, I found myself in a very different place than when I got in the vehicle. Here, as at other combat outposts, high concrete blast walls ring the base, but unlike Courage and IBA, which are out in the countryside, Tarmiya sits smack in the middle of the Sunni town of Tarmiya, which up until a few months ago was being described as “a mini-Mogadishu…Al Qaeda has the run of the place. They just live there, in the houses, armed to the teeth…”

Buildings rise above the blast walls on three sides of the JSS, while palm trees grace the fourth side. Like in all of Iraq, things are much quieter in Tarmiya than they were just a few months ago, but it is almost a different country than it was a year ago. Last February, two American soldiers were killed and seventeen wounded when the base was attacked by a multiple car bomb assault, followed by a ground assault with small arms fire, which the Americans beat back. More grotesquely, in May 2007, al Qaeda actually rigged a newly-built girls school in the town with explosives—building artillery shells into the ceiling and floors—but American forces prevented tragedy when they discovered the plot before the school opened...

Read the whole thing...

Dragons deliver hoard to Tarmiya

Warrior Soldiers work with Iraqi Soldiers to distribute Humanitarian Aid bags

2nd SBCT PAO, 25th Inf. Div., MND-B

BAGHDAD - A Story and 'B-roll Package' of Multi-National Division - Baghdad Soldiers from 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division working with soldiers from the Iraqi Army to distribute Humanitarian Aid bags to displaced families in Tarmiya is now available.

For the broadcast quality version of this video, please contact the Media Relations Staff with DVIDS at 678-421-6612 or e-mail [email protected].

Today the Iraqi Army and Abna Al Iraq, or Sons of Iraq, are reaching out to displaced families in Tarmiya. They hand out humanitarian Aid bags filled with much needed items for survival as Multi National Division Baghdad Soldiers of the 1st Battalion 14th Infantry Regiment, 25th Infantry Division help pull security in the area and interact with the people they meet.

Dragons love children

U.S. Army Pfc. William Felton talks with local children during a halted patrol in Tarmiya, Iraq, Feb. 17, 2008. Felton is assigned to the 25th Infantry Division's 14th Infantry Regiment. U.S. Air Force photo by Tech. Sgt. William Greer.

Dragons Visit 'Forgotten' Village of Abayachi

MND-B Troops Visit 'Forgotten' Village of Abayachi

By Sgt. Jerome Bishop

2nd SBCT PAO, 25th Inf. Div., MND-B

CAMP TAJI, Iraq - For the first time since the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom, villagers in the town of Abayachi watched as Soldiers from several Multi-National Division - Baghdad units convoyed through their streets in Strykers and up-armored humvees Feb. 28.

The following day, Soldiers from Company B, 1st Battalion, 14th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team "Warrior," 25th Infantry Division, as well as elements from Company C, 432nd Civil Affairs Battalion; the 312th Psychological Operational Company; the 411th Military Police Company, 716th MP Battalion, 18th MP Brigade; and the brigade's embedded Provincial Reconstruction Team, set out to assess the village's infrastructure.

Their visit also afforded them the opportunity to ask local residents a series questions, as well as provide them some answers, as they inquired about the possible future for the village.

"This is the first time anyone from the (Coalition Forces) have been here (in Abayachi) in sometime, so this is really a new opportunity, a new mission and brand new territory," said Col. Mike Bridges, an Anchorage, Alaska, native, who serves as the deputy team leader and the governance advisor for the embedded Provincial Reconstruction Team working with the 2nd SBCT, 25th Inf. Div.

      The village of Abayachi is located several hours north of Baghdad. At one time, it housed former members of the Baath party. Since the beginning of combat operations in Iraq in 2003, it has been relatively untouched, explained Bridges.

The village assessment took place over the course of three days and focused on the people's needs as opposed to combat operations.

"This mission specifically is very exploratory in nature," said Bridges. "The company has come out from the battalion to assess the conditions at Abayachi, and I'm looking at the Nahia and the essential services for our team to see where we can apply the resources of our team to rebuild the community."

While the patrol is composed of specialized assessment teams working toward a common goal, the different components each had their own missions to accomplish.

One team set out to gather atmospherics on possible concerns related to security and the local economy. It also gathered information to get a feel for their perceptions of Coalition Forces, the Iraqi Police, the Iraqi Army and the Iraqi and local governments, said Staff Sgt. Alex Francis, a Lawrenceville, Ga., native, who serves as a Psychological Operations team leader with the 312th PYSOP Company, attached to 1st Bn., 14th Inf. Regt.

"This particular town hasn't had much Coalition presence, so there's a lot of points that we wanted to make like (improvised-explosive device) threats and see if the people have them, " said Francis. "This is one where I hope to come back to because this is relatively un-touched ground.

There have been few engagements by Americans, he added. As such, it is basically an untainted territory, which provides the MND-B Soldiers an opportunity to "start from scratch."

During the visit, Francis spoke with a local resident at a gas station and explained to him some of the reasons the MND-B Soldiers were visiting the area.

"I was explaining why the Americans were here because we're kind of a spectacle coming in here because we had so many convoys coming in and helicopters in the air the whole time," he explained.

Francis said he also spoke with the man about the benefits of the Sons of Iraq (Abna al-Iraq) and the value they add to the security of the area.

"He had some interesting things to say," said Francis, adding that the man was very open and friendly.

"We even joked about farming, so it was a very good engagement."

Overall, a common consensus among several of the teams reflected a sense of promise for the village. However, they also said they realized there was a lot of work ahead of them.

"It needs some assistance," said Bridges, adding that the team's main goal is to assist the area by helping identify those needs the Government of Iraq and Coalition Forces can focus their efforts.

"The visit today was incredibly positive; we just basically got out in the community and talked to people," he said. "Some of us spent some money in the shops to buy some candy and pencils and handed them out to the kids.

"There were only a few guys gritting their teeth ... but it was a very positive perception. The kids and adults wanted to talk to us and shake hands."

Despite the multitude of various tasks taking place within a single patrol, the desired end result of the mission for each team was linked together by a common goal.

"(This mission) was all part of a greater scheme, looking at the governance and basic infrastructure of Abayachi, but they were all looking at different things, " said 1st Lt. Matthew B. Schardt, a native of Littleton, Colo., who serves as a platoon leader for 1st Platoon, Co. B, 1st Bn., 14th Inf. Regt.

"Some were looking at law enforcement, some were looking at it a culture perspective, and others were looking at it from a basic government perspective. The mission today went extremely well. We accomplished the mission. We saturated Abayachi some follow-up projects to work on.