FORT STEWART, Ga. - The past two weeks have been a bit like summer camp for members of the Army Reserve's 319th Transportation Company.
They sleep side by side in long, gray-brick barracks. When they aren't training, they lounge on their bunks with headphones, iron their uniforms, read, shine their boots, play poker or nap.
They wake before dawn in subfreezing temperatures and ride buses to a dining hall, where the line for breakfast stretches out the door. The community latrine doesn't have stalls for the showers or the commodes.
Weekend warriors no more, the 143 men and women mobilized at Fort Stewart expect to be deployed to Kuwait in a matter of days to support infantry troops in a possible war with Iraq.
They aren't gone yet, though. They are separated from their families, but only by a three-hour drive for the Augusta members, or a call on a cell phone.
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Spc. Stanley Rocque of Augusta takes a snooze during some down time in the barracks of the 319th Transportation Company at Fort Stewart. The unit is waiting to be deployed to Kuwait.
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"Right now, it just feels like a drill," said company chaplain Sgt. Milbert Gorham, 37, of Jackson. "I think when we're in the plane, it'll really sink in."
By the end of next month, U.S. forces in the Middle East likely will surpass 150,000. About 19,000 have been deployed from the 3rd Infantry Division at Fort Stewart since the buildup began.
More than 94,000 reservists and National Guard members across the country have been mobilized. Not all have been sent overseas.
THE 319TH IS taking up seven buildings at Fort Stewart's National Guard Training Center, including an administrative building and the latrine. Outside the front door of the women's barracks is a large oak tree covered in Spanish moss, and all around are pine trees with moss hanging from the lower limbs.
Inside the barracks, cell phone chargers are plugged into outlets behind bunks, but the phones will have to be mailed home when the order comes to deploy.
Spc. Kesha Brown, 26, said she is nervous about going to the Middle East. She is worried about nerve agents and chemical warfare. Until she gets there, though, her biggest worry is her 6-year-old daughter, Jeriani Jordan, whom she calls every morning before school and every night before Jeriani goes to bed.
The girl is staying with her grandmother in Graniteville and hasn't been handling the separation well.
"She's been having a hard time. She's been crying a lot," said Spc. Brown, a single mom and a dialysis technician at the Medical College of Georgia who joined the Army Reserve to help pay her college tuition. "Mama says every time she hears a car, she thinks it's me pulling up in the yard."
Barbara Brown said that when her granddaughter gets the most upset, she tells her to write her mom a letter. She said she is concerned about how Jeriani will fare when she can communicate with her mother only by mail.
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Spc. Ronald Reaves (left), of Augusta, spars with Sgt. Nick Domico, of the 1,469th Prevention Medicine Company, as Spc. Harp keeps time in the Newman Fitness Center at Fort Stewart.
ANDREW DAVIS TUCKER/STAFF |
"She's only 6 years old, but she sits down and watches the news and says, 'Somebody got killed over there in Kuwait,"' the grandmother said. "I say, 'Baby, that's not your mama."'
FAMILY MEMBERS are allowed to visit, but last weekend fewer than half the unit's members received relatives.
Sgt. Ciaphus Rouse, 32, of Hephzibah, had his wife bring him running shoes and a "CARE package." She returned home with some boots and extra clothing he doesn't want to take overseas.
Most soldiers don't want to relive the painful departure they went through Jan. 19, when the unit left the reserve center on Wrightsboro Road, said Sgt. Gorham, who is married and has three teenage children.
"We don't want them driving back with tears in their eyes," he said.
He and others might change their minds this weekend, which could well be their last before deployment to Kuwait. Spc. Brown's mother plans to stay in a Hinesville hotel tonight so Jeriani can deliver her letters.
For some 319th members, home is farther away than Augusta. The unit has absorbed 46 soldiers from transportation companies based in Vicksburg, Miss.; Palatka, Fla.; Mobile, Ala.; and Charlotte, N.C., who will deploy with the 319th.
Sgt. Richard Long, 24, from the 227th Transportation Company in Charlotte, said getting used to being away from home has been harder than getting used to the Augusta crowd.
"These guys have made us feel right at home," said Staff Sgt. Robert Russell, 47, also from the 227th.
Reach Johnny Edwards at (706) 823-3225 or johnny.edwards@augustachronicle.com.
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