Americans happy to sleep with bugs
Published 02 October, 2008, 11:49
Ukrainian military officer and journalist Dmitri Timchuk spent more then a year in Iraq with the Ukrainian troops stationed there. RT is the first to publish his observations of daily life in the Middle Eastern country in English. (Part III)
Not the right desert (Part II)
Our first sally beyond the fence goes together with a flight safety patrol. It takes care of cargo flights that have been arriving from Ukraine for nearly a month, delivering personnel and equipment of the 6th Motorized Infantry and taking the guys from the 7th Infantry back home. Leaving the Delta camp is not simple: except for emergency cases, name-by-name lists are drawn up and signed by the Brigade Commander the night before. No individual, let alone a vehicle, can leave or enter the camp unauthorised.
Children
This rule does not apply to Americans, who move freely across the entire territory of Iraq, including others’ responsibility zones, without any prolonged arrangements. Just as freely, they enter and leave the Delta camp, where an American special force squad is stationed. They are not asked any questions at the checkpoints. By the way, there is a strict rule in the coalition forces: any camp, be it American or Ukrainian, always has spare room to accommodate several thousand people. This means that even fairly large units en route across ‘hostile’ territory can always expect accommodation and food in any camp.
Another detail: to the opposite of many stereotypes regarding the Americans’ love for comfort, there is little proof of that in the battle zone. They can easily spend a night in portable beds or straight on the ground, among some of the ‘funniest’ species of the local fauna. They know that this is war, although this type of accommodation might be stipulated in their contracts.
Coca Cola as military cargo
My place is the commander APC of Major Igor Semenov, commander of the 3rd company, 61st Battalion. The major is pretty uptight at first, and so are his crew: machine gunners Andrei Shtefan and Alexander Kovtun, driver operator Igor Kashchenko and medic Alexandr Stepenko. An hour later, the uptightness is gone. For the guys, such patrol missions are routine. Of course, flights don’t come in every day, yet the peacekeepers go on patrol missions very often. It is their main objective to demonstrate their presence in the area, both in urban and rural locations.
Their task is to drive around the area along predetermined routes. By showing up regularly, our guys supposedly scare off militants. Besides everything else, the thing is the key instigators of guerrilla warfare in the Wasit province are incoming Arab mercenaries. Some of them come in from Iran, and the number of such ‘immigrants’ has been growing recently. That’s alarming. When a teenager with a rifle fires a burst in the direction of a convoy and runs away is one thing; when an expert sapper skilfully plants an explosive device on a road is quite different.
Towns and villages are mostly patrolled by our military policemen (our contingent also includes a unit of the Military Law
Iraqi children
However, all Ukrainians have a ‘distinguishing feature’ that the Americans don’t have. All combat vehicles leaving Delta carry special cargo not mentioned in mission briefings: cans of Coke and Sprite, packs of candies, or at least bottles of water and field rations – all these are for the locals, first of all, for children. And local kids know for sure that none of those who run to meet the rattling war machines with gun barrels sticking out of every gap will go away without a present. It is hard to imagine any Ukrainian patrol driving into a settlement not being met with groups of kids running forward and yelling, “Mister, cola!”
There are no special orders for that. Inherently kind-hearted, the Ukrainians easily stop near any group of kids to give out drinks and sweets. The only downside is that all the presents, even the field rations, are of American origin, although it’s the Ukrainians who distribute them. By the way, Arabs willingly take the field rations, but immediately throw away the main course. Who knows, what if there’s pork in it?
You're nobody without a Kalashnikov assault rifle in Iraq
As for the Americans, Arabs are scared of them because of their unfriendliness and most of all for their habit to fire at everything they don’t like. If a Ukrainian soldier needs little short of a permit from the General Staff in Kyiv to open fire (unless he is under fire), an American machine gunner is quick to pull the trigger if he even thinks he saw anything suspicious. During the opening of a school for girls in Al Kut, I saw the following. An attending general from the Baghdad headquarters (almost all social programmes in today’s Iraq are financed by the USA), posing for photographers and video cameras, held a hand out for a boy among many kids standing nearby. The group of boys vanished immediately, scattering like cockroaches every which way. I don’t know if they differentiate us by our field uniforms or by any other signs, but a Ukrainian is unlike to encounter such a reaction.
Story and photos courtesy of Dmitri Timchuk
Not the right desert (Part II)
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