As the Aircraft Maintenance Officer for Marine Light Attack Helicopter Squadron (HMLA) 367, it has been my intention to write on this subject for almost six months now. As our time in Iraq draws to a close I guess it’s time to put the idea on paper. In our squadron of approximately 345 Marines and Sailors, 260 of which work directly for me, there are 17 proud serving Oregonians. It’s not my intent with this to be self-serving in any way. I will always have my own personal memories of the time that we spent in Iraq and that is all I will ever want. This is written is to bring to your attention, the quality of young men and women that the state of Oregon has produced and what some of them have accomplished.
Our deployment to Iraq started back in August when we departed from our home base, at Camp Pendleton, California. For the past seven months we have been living and conducting flight operations out of Al Taqaddum Airfield in central Iraq. Al Taqaddum is located in the lower, western corner of the Sunni Triangle between Ar Ramadi and Al Fallujah.
During our time here, both the “Battle of Fallujah” and the Iraqi national elections were conducted. To say the least, our time here has not been without excitement. For the majority of us that time has been hours and hours of pure boredom broken up by moments of sheer terror. Some of us are lucky enough to be pilots or aircrew on the AH-1Ws and UH-1Ns that the squadron flies. We have seen the Euphrates River Valley and the green fields that run along it. We have flown to places like An Najaf and Baghdad. We were the lucky ones.
The majority will spend the whole of their seven plus months within the confines of Al Taqaddum Airfield. This entails a six-minute walk each way from the living area to the hangar where they turn wrenches, bend metal, chase trons, repair weapons or load ordnance on helicopters. Most have seen the map on the wall showing the Euphrates River one mile to the north and Habbaniyah Lake one mile to the south and west, but as neither of these are visible, they have no concept of what lies beyond the main camp.
For most of the Marines in this squadron, Iraq is a pile of sand and dirt with a runway down the middle and some hangars and tents. It’s sort of like being at camp for seven months. There is a very small exchange that is adequate for most living items, a chow hall, whose quality rises and falls like a sine wave, a tent with a bunch of donated books (thank you American public) and a gym with a strange assortment of both commercial and homemade weights and machines. Overall, pretty good for a deployed Marine base.
The biggest difference between this and a bad summer camp is that here, the tents have standing water inside every time it rains, the dust storms restrict visibility to less than 100 yards, and rockets and mortars occasionally fall on the base. During the build-up to the Fallujah battle the number of rocket and mortar rounds that impacted the base rose until we were getting hit every day. I believe that on the worst day there were 21 impacts and they all came within the space of about two minutes. Nothing worse than being in a chow hall with 100 other people who are trying to crawl under the table; unless it’s walking out in the open on the parking ramp with no cover anywhere.
Once the Fallujah battle was over that number fell significantly until we only received incoming about once every two weeks. We experienced a small buildup again leading up to the elections, but since then, our little piece of the theatre seems to have calmed down a bit. I hope it continues to stabilize.
Do I think that the Marines in this unit have had it hard? No. They all signed up for this and I think will all be better for it. As a pilot, I have been in direct support of those Marines whose pictures you have seen on the magazine covers and I know very well that they have had a much harder time then we ever did. It’s like life; there’s always someone who has it easier and always someone who has it harder.
The Marines in this unit spent their time keeping aircraft in the air in order to support the Marines in the thick of the battle on the ground. At the peak of the Fallujah battle most of them were working 14-hour days at a minimum. They had total focus and dedication for the task at hand. This squadron has flown over 1000 hours per month for the past six months. To put that in perspective, most HMLA squadrons fly in the neighborhood of 650 hours per month during peacetime operations.
These young Americans, and a couple who aren’t, have persevered in an austere environment month after month and of the complaints I have received, none have been about the job that we must do here. Some are of the opinion that the military is a place for those who had some sort of problem trying to go to college or get a real job, but I would tell you that is the thought process of a generation that was raised with a military of the draft.
An all-volunteer force is a wondrous thing. The people who are here want to be here. They are a cross section of the rest of you. They just happen to wear their country’s uniform to work every day. They are no different than the young men and women with whom I attended college, with the exception of the rules and regulations that they are required to live under. They have come to a war zone and performed admirably.
I am proud to be a Marine and I am proud to serve with each and every individual in this unit. But I am extremely proud to be one of the Marines that claim Oregon as their home. Some of these Marines, maybe all of them, will return to Oregon one day and continue to contribute as they have done here. If those contributions are equal to the level of performance I have witnessed here, Oregon’s future is bright indeed. Be proud of these young people and if you happen to have the good fortune to run into one of them on the street in the next couple of months, please welcome them home.
