Capt. Mohandas Martin talked about a higher power protecting his soldiers when he addressed them at Friday's homecoming ceremony, and he wasn't talking about the Marines.
In the captain's memory, the first two weeks of the war are a dark time, marked by fear, doubt, exhaustion and intense prayer.
The truck-driving soldiers he commanded for the 319th Transportation Company were running mission after mission into central Iraq, dropping fuel just short of the front lines as Marines pushed northward on a bloody trail to Baghdad.
Capt. Martin hung back at Camp Viper south of An Nasiriyah, waiting for convoys to return and often skipping meals. Much to his chagrin, the Marine commanders told the captain to stay at headquarters to coordinate ever-changing convoy plans.
By the start of April, a convoy had been ambushed, and later wound up in the midst of a Marine firefight. On another convoy, two trucks had crashed in the dark, injuring three soldiers, who were flown away on medical helicopters.
The prospect of losing someone was real, and it tortured Capt. Martin.
"One, that's someone's husband and wife, someone's sister and brother, someone's relative," he said. "Two, it was the unknown, not knowing what was out there - lurking."
But Capt. Martin's soldiers trudged on, and it paid off for the American war effort. During its deployment, the unit suffered only four casualties, all minor injuries.
Marine Col. Dave Reist, who commanded the transportation component that included the 319th, said that if the Augusta reservists had failed, the Marines' ability to quickly close in on Baghdad would have been "seriously degraded."
The Marines had their own fuel-hauling trucks, but not enough to move the massive amounts the 319th's fleet could. The unit was responsible for getting millions of gallons to the front lines. In all, the 319th hauled 6.3 million gallons for the Marines.
|
Click on the graphic for a larger version.
STAFF
|
"They met our needs," Col. Reist said. "They stepped up to the plate and hit base hits when we needed them, and in some cases home runs."
MONTHS BEFORE the war, when Capt. Martin stood in front of his soldiers and their families at a going-away ceremony held on a cold morning outside the Wrightsboro Road Army Reserve center, he'd talked about taking care of one another and everyone coming home together.
At the time, he hadn't counted on the 319th working for the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force.
Capt. Martin said he was given the news by an Army colonel at Camp Arifjan on March 3, and said he still doesn't know how the 319th got chosen. He recalls pondering - seriously, for the first time - that he might not be taking everyone home.
Five days later, the unit and their equipment moved north to Camp Coyote, a Marine camp set up about 35 miles from the Iraq border, and began pre-positioning fuel at bladder farms in the Kuwaiti desert.
The United States launched the war March 20. During the first day and night of combat, the Iraqis fired missiles into Kuwait, causing the soldiers to take cover in the stuffy bunkers dug into the sand, sometimes wearing their chemical masks. One missile hit close to the camp.
In the day, the bunkers would be filled with laughter as soldiers allayed their fears with horseplay. When the alarm whistles blew at night, barely awake soldiers lumbered into the bunkers, whispering curses, then went back to their beds until the next alert.
On March 23, a Sunday, the 319th moved into Iraq. Some trucks went straight to Camp Viper while others went farther north for a fuel drop.
Early the next day, most of the fleet left the camp to make a delivery at Refueling Point Anderson, a resupply point in central Iraq. That convoy got stuck in a sandstorm, got shot at in an ambush attempt and landed in the midst of a firefight at Anderson. Their heavily armed Marine escorts handled the shooting, although some 319th soldiers fired their weapons into the dark, not knowing what they were aiming at.
Truckers on convoys lived out of their vehicles, sometimes borrowing pre-packaged meals from Marines when they ran out. They slept in their cabs or on cots outside, hearing the eerie wails of wild dogs in the surrounding brush.
Sometimes, they suspected the wails were Iraqis communicating in code.
CAPT. MARTIN arrived at Camp Viper later that week. The camp was set up over the ruins of an Iraqi air base called Jalibah, which was destroyed by American forces during the first Persian Gulf War. Deteriorating plane parts lay about, half-buried in the sand.
In some areas of Viper, the concrete walls of smashed buildings stood in places in the sand where no one would tread for fear of land mines. Crater-filled runways were used as helicopter pads.
On March 29, a convoy in central Iraq was halted after two 319th trucks crashed while driving at night. One truck drove headfirst into a ravine; the other ran off the road and toppled on its side.
While the injured were flown out by helicopter, on the ground 319th members blamed Marines for leading them too fast. Marines ridiculed the soldiers for not being trained to drive with night-vision goggles.
Back at Viper, Capt. Martin clung to his faith. Living in the land of ancient Babylonia, he found comfort in Scripture. In the margins of his Bible on the page of Psalms 91, he wrote, "Lord I trust you. Protect the 319th. Lord help me to never doubt you again."
Sitting on a stack of sandbags one day outside his tent, he wondered why America's leaders had chosen to invade Iraq. What was their motivation for this, and why were his men and women being made to risk their lives?
"I'm still trying to get an answer to that question - why us?" Capt. Martin said at the time. "Why not an active-duty unit? When did we volunteer for this?
"But then you've got to pull back and say, 'Why not us?"'
One of the soldiers attached to the 319th from the Palatka, Fla.-based 228th Transportation Company, Pfc. John Michael Brown, 21, summed up the 319th's fortunes while driving his truck back to Viper from Anderson.
"A lot of us have said there's something supernatural about this unit," Pfc. Brown said. "For all its little problems and the things that go wrong, we've still delivered massive amounts of fuel, and it gets to the people who need it."
AS SOLDIERS DO after all wars, members of the 319th came home with a lot of bad memories.
For Sgt. Jeffery Key, 38, of Augusta, it's the 12-hour sandstorm spent at Camp Viper in the cab of a broken-down 5-ton truck, which rocked as hurricane-force winds blew sheets of sand that seeped through crevices into the truck.
For Pfc. John Strang, 19, of Wagener, it's being in the firefight at Refueling Point Anderson, hearing gunfire and the whiz of bullets on a night so pitch black that he couldn't see his own hand.
For Staff Sgt. Bobbie Farrell, 32, of Augusta, it's seeing the bodies of dead Iraqis the next morning, some wearing shorts and sandals, making her think they'd been forced to become soldiers.
Staff Sgt. Michael Ghant, 37, of Louisville, Ga., said the 319th survived the war "because of God." Having a preacher for a leader probably helped also, he said.
"A long of people in this unit are religiously inclined," Staff Sgt. Ghant said.
Two weeks ago, Capt. Martin, 34, returned to Fort Stewart from Kuwait, appearing even thinner than he'd been before. He reunited with his wife, Barbara, 38; daughter, Olivia, 6; and son, Destin, 4.
Capt. Martin said he's come to terms with the war. Seeing the living conditions of the Iraqis under Saddam Hussein - the shabby mud huts and the emaciated children begging for food - then seeing the country liberated reminds him of Proverbs 22:10: "Cast out the scorner, and contention shall go out; yea, strife and reproach shall cease."
Capt. Martin plans to return to Southgate Christian School, where he teaches English and history, and return to preaching for Christian City of Praise, a small church that meets at Glenn Hills High School.
He said he hopes that having led a military unit during Gulf War II will make him better at both.
"I think it's going to make me stronger in my faith, and in my teachings, more authentic," Capt. Martin said. "I was a part of history, history that changed the world."
Reach Johnny Edwards at (706) 823-3225 or johnny.edwards@augustachronicle.com.
