PHOTOS: Soldiers of Iowa Guard's 133rd gear up for Afghanistan

About 2,800 Iowa National Guard members are training here this month as if their lives depend on it.

“It does have a heightened sense of urgency when you know you're going to a combat zone,” said 1st Sgt. David Crowley, the senior enlisted man in Iowa City-based Company B of the 133rd Iowa Infantry's First Battalion, a unit known as the Ironman Battalion long before its Iraq “super tour” finally ended in 2007, 16 months after it started.

Many of the 94 members of B Company, in which Gazette photographer Jim Slosiarek and I embedded for 24 hours, were already stirring at 5 a.m. Friday when Crowley ordered them to arise from the cots arrayed in rows in a massive tent. We were at a forward operating base somewhere in the middle of this table-flat, 53,000-acre central Minnesota training ground.

“They like to hear my voice first thing in the morning,” said Crowley, 45, of Iowa City, looking forward to the 2nd Brigade Combat Team's late October deployment to Afghanistan.

Crowley, who's anticipating his fourth deployment in his 24 years in the Guard, said thorough, comprehensive training will help him extend his perfect record for bringing home all his troops alive.

“The training is more intense this year. They're trying to make it as realistic as possible,” said Sgt. Josh Cormical, 28, of Palo, preparing for his first combat zone deployment with Company B.

Company B's commander, Capt. Michael Seale, 44, of Ankeny, describes his unit as an all-male line infantry company whose overall objective will be counter-insurgency - separating and protecting the civilians from the enemy.

Because “telling friends from enemies will be one of our biggest challenges,” Seale said he's especially pleased that the June training has been geared toward that objective.

Women, who make up 15 percent of the Iowa Guard's 7,300 members, will have a less prominent role in the upcoming deployment because of its tilt toward combat-oriented infantry, cavalry and artillery units, said Col. Greg Hapgood, the Iowa Guard's public affairs officer. About 250 of the 2,800 deployed troops will be women, he said.

Like most other members of Company B, Spec. Travis Anderson, 20, of Marion, said he is excited and nervous about the upcoming deployment - Anderson's first and the Iowa Guard's largest since World War II. As he prepares for it, Anderson said he concentrates on the training and relies heavily upon the experience and leadership of his unit's many veterans.

The importance of the training was underscored by the near-constant presence of the Guard's top brass.

“It's a time to practice and rehearse, to learn what we will be doing when we get there,” said the Iowa Guard's adjutant general, Brig. Gen. Tim Orr.

As a full-spectrum brigade, the Iowa soldiers' duties will likely include everything from combat operations against the Taliban to humanitarian aid to civilians, said Orr, who would be indistinguishable from his troops without the single star on his combat fatigues.

The weapons training, a major part of the Guard's three-week stint at Ripley, will instill confidence, so “all the soldiers in the brigade know they can hit what they're shooting at,” said Col. Ben Corell, who earlier this month replaced Col. Tom Staton as commander of the 2nd Brigade Combat Team.

Corell, a 48-year-old Strawberry Point native, was promoted to brigade commander after Staton was disciplined for a breach of an Army regulation that was not publicly disclosed.

“The leadership change sends a strong message to all 2,800 soldiers preparing for deployment that we are going to follow the rules,” Hapgood said.

In a departure from past practices, the Iowa Guard this year invited more than 60 journalists to embed themselves with the troops as they undergo their Ripley training.

“It's important that Iowans hear the soldiers' stories with no sugarcoating,” Orr said.

On Thursday and Friday, more than 20 Eastern Iowa journalists spent 24 consecutive hours with the troops, eating and sleeping with them, observing their nearly round-the-clock training and talking with them when time permitted.

Central Iowa journalists, joined by Gov. Chet Culver, took our place today and Monday, and western Iowa journalists were to spend parts of Monday and Tuesday with the troops.

Noting that Afghanistan's culture and terrain differ markedly from Iraq's, Orr said the training has been tailored to prepare the Iowa soldiers for their Afghanistan duties.

To emphasize the soldiers' anticipated difficulty in discerning friends from enemies and to prepare them for the confusion that often attends such situations, many combat scenarios incorporate Afghan expatriates dressed in native garb and speaking their native language.

“We help soldiers understand the Afghan culture and the importance it attaches to respect for women, elders and the mosques,” said Siddiga Azizi of Orange County, Calif., an employee of Lexicon, a company that contracts with the military to perform in training scenarios.

Azizi, a United States resident for 26 years, said she believes U.S. troops can help restore peace to her troubled homeland.

“The Russians (who tried unsuccessfully to conquer Afghanistan in the 1980s) were harsh and cruel, with no feelings for the people,” Azizi said. The American troops, she said, are much more sympathetic and spiritual.

Corell, a recent Army War College graduate who commanded the 1-133rd during its marathon Iraq deployment, said the specialized training is intended to instill “courageous restraint.”

“Winning the hearts and minds of the Afghan people is a key part of our strategy, but we have to be able to protect ourselves while determining who our friends and enemies are,” he said.

Movielike special effects, such as simulated bomb explosions, also heighten the sense of realism in the training scenarios.

“It is absolutely the most realistic training I have experienced,” said Sgt. Jeremy Hoyt of Cedar Rapids, an 18-year Guard veteran who is at Ripley to observe and control training exercises.

“Honestly, I'm excited. I can't wait to go. I love it. It's what I'm training for, what I live for,” said Spec. Brandon Berry, 21, of Tipton, a B company member.

Berry, whose fiance is expecting their third child in February, said he expects to have little time today to consider what he's missing by spending Father's Day away from his kids.

Nor will a pair of relative rookies in the battalion's Alpha Company.

Spec. Doug Hundt, 44, of McGregor, said he won't have time to think about Father's Day, even though one of his three sons, 19-year-old Joshua, is also at Camp Ripley, preparing for deployment with another Iowa Guard unit. “We have a lot of work left to do,” said Hundt, who joined the Guard at age 40.

For that same reason, Pvt. Terry Scott, 18, of Edgewood, said he'll try not to think about his 4-month-old daughter, Isabella Marie. “I need to pay full attention to my training,” he said.

For me, a Vietnam-era Navy veteran, it had been nearly 40 years since I'd regularly slept in a barracks and eaten in a mess hall, and both were better than I remembered.

Though I could not wait to shed the cumbersome armored vests and headache-inducing helmets that the soldiers take for granted, I would probably never tire of hearing young adults call me “sir” - a word I heard addressed to me more times Thursday and Friday than in the rest of my life combined.

Briefed no doubt by their superiors on the importance of getting their story out to Iowans, the soldiers could not have been friendlier or more open with me and the 20 other journalists who tasted the flavor of their life last week.

From the rides in the Ch-47 Chinook helicopter that took us journalists to and from the base, to the weapons proficiency testing and combat scenarios that we observed, it was hard not to share the adrenaline buzz that energized the soldiers during their 16-hour-plus training days.

They are straight shooters with short haircuts, the one in 100 of us in this era of a volunteer military who are not content to let others defend Americans' freedom.

Ask them how they came to be in that elite 1 percent, and they will fumble for an answer. Prompt them a little - could it be that you care for your neighbors and want to guard their way of life? - and they will grudgingly reply: “Roger that, sir.”

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