Soldiers work together for Iraqi future

by Spc. Michael J. MacLeod
1st BCT, 82nd Abn. Div. PAO

Spc. Michael J. MacLeod/1st BCT, 82nd Abn. Div. PAO Iraqi tow-truck driver, Nashwan Nori Jasim Muhammad, describes his need for a new fuel filter to Capt. Kyle Brown, leader of Team Partner, made up of mechanics, medics and logisticians of 307th Brigade Support Battalion, 1st Brigade, 82nd Airborne Division (Advise and Assist Brigade) at Camp Mejid, Iraq. Contaminated fuel pumped from Saddam-era bunkers appears to be damaging many of the 7th Iraqi Division, Motor Transport Regiment’s vehicles.

AL ASAD AIRBASE, Iraq — It was the Desert Fox himself, Field Marshall Erwin Rommel, who said, “Battles are decided by the quartermasters before the first shot is fired.”

One Soldier who understands this quote all to well is Capt. Kyle Brown. He is the officer in charge of Team Partner, which is an assembly of the best mechanics, medics and logisticians from the 307th Brigade Support Battalion, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division (Advise and Assist Brigade). The unit is now covering Iraq’s largest province, Al Anbar.

Al Anbar’s desert can be especially cruel to the efforts of support troops. Extreme convective heat is merciless on rubberized items such as tires, gaskets and seals. Chalky sand invades every crack and seam, making abrasive sandpaper of anything it touches. Barren expanses are tracked by limited and sometimes difficult supply routes that only add to the difficulty of obtaining medical supplies and vehicle parts.

Even so, the greatest challenge facing the Soldiers of the 307th BSB is not what is, but what is left. Top-down leadership, long a feature of the Arab landscape, is an enduring legacy of the hyper-despotic Saddam regime. What is left is an authoritarian bureaucracy, even in the pragmatic pit of a mechanic’s bay or aid-station ward, that Soldiers like Brown must learn to navigate.

Today’s agenda is a meeting with Lt. Col. Khamis, commander of Maintenance Company, Motor Transport Regiment, 7th Iraqi Army Division.

Khamis is a man of responsibility, with muscular workingman hands that are a testament to blue-collar tinkering. He grew up fixing cars in Baghdad. It is his hobby and his career, he said, after 23 years in the service.

Brown is a late-comer to the Army. He left a career in finance after friends died in the Twin Towers. He grew up surfing the California coast. The two could not be more different.
Only 25 of 110, 5-ton trucks are operational, the Iraqi commander tells him. The trucks are breaking faster than they can get replacement parts, and it is only a matter of time before they will be forced to significantly reduce their operations tempo.

“What’s slowing down the spare parts?” Brown asked. “I have seen the warehouses at the Taji National Depot. They are full of spare parts.”

“That might be so,” replied Khamis, exasperated, “but they might be parts that are not needed.”
The American knows it is not the case. He presses on to unravel the riddle of the Iraqi supply chain. 

“Where do you take your old tires and batteries?”

Khamis patiently explains they are taken to Habanniyah, where they are inspected and stamped as unserviceable. The colonel did this several months ago. He shows Brown the binder of completed IA Form 101s.

Brown sits back. “We need to travel to the warehouses in Taji together,” he said.

Khamis replies that he will need his commander’s approval for such a trip.

When Brown was a senior in high school in Los Angeles living above his parents’ garage, he woke up at 4 a.m. one morning to the 6.6-magnitude Northridge earthquake. He looked out the window and saw the shockwave rippling through the land as if it were an ocean. He tossed his acceptance letters to California universities in the trash. He’d had enough of potential calamity.

Then one Tuesday morning, calamity found him. A few weeks earlier, he was playing golf with friends visiting from New York City; now, Sept. 11, 2001, his friends had disappeared in a cloud of poisonous dust and twisted steel.

Brown joined the Army. “I wanted to get mine,” he said.

Since then, he has learned that no revenge will bring back his friends, he said, and here in Anbar, he has come to love the Iraqi people.

“I love how family-oriented they are,” he said.

In the maintenance bays, American and Iraqi mechanics work side by side. Brown points out Spc. John Tate, from Ventura, Calif., Spc. Ryan Calzada from Fresno, Calif., and Sgt. Cameron Channell.

“The rest of our mechanics regard these three as geniuses,” he said.

Tate said the Iraqis are masters of improvisation with wrench and bolt and the detailed Arabic-language service manuals and guidance they are receiving from the Americans are having an immediate impact on the serviceability of their fleet.

“They apply the lessons almost immediately,” said Calzada.

Brown walks the mechanics bay, hoping for a meeting with Khamis’ boss, Lt. Col. Hazin. Tate, Calzada and Channell are advising Iraqi mechanics as they drop the transmission and clutch from a Russian-made 10-ton truck. Hazin’s office is just across the street, but propriety must be observed.

Khamis approaches and says that he has arranged a meeting with Hazin, now. Brown doesn’t need to be told twice.

Brown has many years of business experience, and in Hazin’s office, he is in his element. He is polite, but like a salmon hell-bent on finding the home stream. Trip to Taji? Approved.

His mechanics want to tow one of two broken Russian jeeps back to the American compound to see if they can fix it.

“You will bring the ‘Waz’ back or keep it?” asked Hazin.

“We’ll fix it and bring it back, but we’ll borrow it every once in a while because it’s a very cool vehicle,” said Brown. To cruise around town or run up the dunes, he meant.
The joke is lost in translation.

Just let the sergeant in charge of the vehicle know, Hazin said.

Brown said that many of the colonel’s broken-down vehicles have badly-deteriorated fuel filters, creating significantly higher maintenance requirements and reduced engine life. The cause: contaminated diesel fuel due to their fuel storage facilities not circulating or filtering the fuel on a regular basis.

“Dirty fuel is a problem country-wide,” explained Brown.

Brown points out that the new Location Command Mejid Pumping Station is just a stone’s throw away. It has a capacity of 4.4 million liters, with new filters to clean any contamination.

Hazin, of course, already knows about the pumping station. It is the newest, most modern facility on Camp Mejid.

Back at the bay, Brown told the Iraqi noncommissioned officer in charge, Muhammad Karim, that he will be back at the end of the day to tow the Waz.

Karim is from Nasiriyah. He has been in the army since 2006. Karim is in charge of 68 soldiers and all the medical, mechanical and petroleum pumping training. He is also responsible for retrieving damaged vehicles.

Karim added to the refrain for parts. “When the Americans pull out, we will be ready to operate on our own, but our lack of parts is delaying the process.”

Brown is more determined than ever to solve the supply problem. During his last deployment, he was the supply officer for another unit in the brigade, 3rd Squadron, 73rd Cavalry Regiment. He spent 14 months dealing with materials issues from Iraqi contractors at Convoy Support Center Scania. He will crack this code, too.