18 April 2008

At the beginning of November of last year all of our equipment arrived at the Port of Olympia by ship from Kuwait. Our Strykers, 18-ton armored vehicles, and the shipping containers that held all of our personal and military equipment, were unloaded over a couple of days. As soon as news of this got out, a series of demonstrations protesting the Army’s use of the port began. The protests were fairly large and usually entailed the protesters attempting to block the movement of military equipment out of the port, forming barricades using people and trash, once even blocking a portion of the I-5 Freeway. The Olympia Police used riot police, pepper spray and mass arrests to keep the port open.

I was only in Iraq for a very brief period, essentially a long summer, before I redeployed with my unit. There was some very intense fighting in Baqubah, a city about 30 miles north of Baghdad, especially before I arrived, but I didn’t experience any truly traumatic events that often cause soldiers to have problems readjusting to life at home. I led a platoon through a wide variety of missions, securing vital routes, raiding suspected insurgents, systematically clearing large parts of the city and conducting humanitarian aid missions. We spent most of our time moving on foot through the city, spending nights in Iraqi houses, periodically returning to a Forward Operating Base to rest and resupply. In the city we were constantly on guard, scanning everything around us for threats.

I returned to Fort Lewis, just south of Seattle, in October and quickly resumed my old life. One night the week our equipment arrived in Olympia, much of my Battalion moved by busses down to the port drive our Strykers the 15 miles to Fort Lewis. The atmosphere was chaotic, the entrance to the port blocked by more than 200 protesters, held at bay by a very significant Police presence. We prepared our vehicles to move, but had to wait several hours for the Police disperse the crowd. More than sixty people were arrested that night. By one in the morning we finally pushed out the gate with a heavy Police escort. It is a strange thing to see an 18-ton armored combat vehicle being escorted by a Police cruiser.

I was toward the front of a large convoy of Strykers, standing in the commanders hatch of my Stryker, the same place I had stood for countless movements in Iraq, wearing much of the same protective equipment, working with the same vehicle crew I had for months in combat. As we pushed through Olympia, protesters moved along our route in small groups looking for a gap in the police protection, trying to split and block the convoy. I naturally and continuously scanned the buildings, streets and roofs as we moved through the city. Obviously I knew that the protesters posed me no physical threat – I wasn’t even scanning for them. It had become ingrained. I was driving in a Stryker through an urban environment, strikingly similar to Baqubah, and the only natural response was to do what I had done for months – constantly look for the threat.

Once we reached the freeway the feeling of familiarity, of hyper-awareness, faded. I haven’t had any similar experiences since, and I doubt I will. I wasn’t scared or uncomfortable at the time, or now looking back on it. It simply was.

posted by Interested Soldier @ 10:30