Georgia Based Troops Pepare For Unprecedented Third Tour

Georgia based troops who led Iraq invasion prepare for unprecedented third tour
by Russ Bynum

FORT STEWART, Ga. With two combat tours under his belt and an unprecedented third fast approaching, Army Sgt. Steve Butcher gets a lot of questions about Iraq from his 6-year-old daughter, Molly.

Do men use guns? Yes.

Do people get killed? Yes.

Daddy, that’s stupid, she told him when he returned from his second deployment about a year ago.

Recruits in Butcher’s infantry unit have questions as well. Why are U.S. troops still in Iraq? Should they be going back?

Butcher, 27, sees the war in terms of simple economics: time, money and effort spend by terrorists fighting American forces in Iraq leaves them with fewer resources to plot another Sept. 11 back home.

That’s really all the justification I need, says Butcher, a squad leader from Rochester, N.Y. I don’t really worry about the politics of it. I can’t do anything about that anyway.  (continued…)

While U.S. policymakers weigh bleak assessments of Iraq’s future and Americans question the war’s slow progress, the Fort Stewart-based 3rd Infantry Division will begin deploying in January for its third tour.

With its latest deployment orders, the 3rd Infantry has been called to duty in Iraq more than any division in the Army. Its tanks and armored Bradley vehicles were among the first to rumble into Baghdad in the 2003 invasion.

The Fort Stewart-based troops have either been at war or training for it ever since. They deployed a second time in 2005 as Iraq elected its first democratic government. Now, a year after soldiers came home to their families, they’ll be saying goodbye again.

That’s not what Staff Sgt. Julius Moton expected after he deployed to topple Saddam Hussein’s regime nearly four years ago. He’ll be among the first wave of more than 4,000 troops with the division’s 1st Brigade to depart next month.

I thought that was it, said Moton, 27, of Cleveland, recalling the end of his first tour. Now this time, it’s almost less than a year from the last time. It’s pretty stressful.

Most troops expected after returning from their second rotation that they would have to go back to Iraq, said Lt. Paul Fleming, a platoon leader in the 1st Brigade. They know the cycle will likely continue, he said, until the fledgling Iraqi military can defend the country on its own.

They see the big picture, said Fleming, 26, of Killeen, Texas. They know when these guys can take control themselves, we don’t have to go over there anymore.

Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, the division commander, estimates about 60 percent of his soldiers have served at least one tour in Iraq.

It used to be you’d walk into a formation and see one or two guys wearing a combat patch, and those were Vietnam veterans, Lynch said. Now you see almost no one who doesn’t have that right shoulder patch.

That experience has come at price 147 soldiers from the 3rd Infantry died in its first two deployments to Iraq, more than two-thirds of them during the division’s second tour.

Having served in Iraq twice already with the 3rd Infantry, Staff Sgt. Robert Dove knows the stakes. Framed photographs of eight soldiers killed in 2005 from his unit the 3rd Battalion, 69th Armor Regiment hang on the wall outside the office of Dove’s battalion commander.

Despite the pace of violence lately, Dove insists the war isn’t a lost cause. He recalled arriving in the city of Samarra last year shortly after elections were held for Iraq’s preliminary government. Turnout had been poor because residents feared violence at the polls.

Months later, when parliamentary elections were held, troops saw voters swamp the polls in Samarra.

In some places they had to send voters to other sectors of the city because they ran out of ballots, said Dove, 28, of Blacksburg, Va. There’s progress being made. You saw the transition there in the city from when we first went in to the end.

Butcher said he still feels obligated to finish the job in Iraq.

Were they to just give up, it would’ve been a complete waste of a lot of time, effort and people’s lives and three years of mine, he said. Whether we should’ve gone or not is irrelevant at this point. There’s no other honorable thing to do except to finish it out.

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