Army Sergeant Troy Mowery has been twice to the war in Iraq. The Pickens native's first battle tour involved six months near Iraq’s coast, he said.
His second time in, Mowery served a half year at Mahmudiyah in the killing Sunni Triangle, followed by a half year at Scania. He scouted for the Third Army Cavalry Regiment, the 3D ACR. He described his scout's job at the Progress office, Monday, August 6th.
“We're the eyes and ears of the unit,” he said. “We're the eyes and ears of the Army.”
The 3D ACR, "the last self-sustaining unit in the United State Army," Mowery said, includes the specialized sub-units needed for most any military operation. The regiment includes air support (both fixed-wing and helicopter) tanks, artillery, infantry, combat engineers, even an EOD unit (those guys who blow up enemy bombs).
As scouts, Mowery's platoon worked in front of the regiment from Humvees or, more often, from Bradley fighting vehicles, high-tech tanks.
"I'm a gunner on a Bradley," Mowery told me. "My job on a Bradley is to seek out all the bad guys."
In the left turret seat beside the tank commander (another sergeant), Mowery manned the FLIR system and controlled the Bradley's weapons. FLIR is heat-reading technology that shows human combatants on a video screen by detecting heat radiating from their bodies. And it doesn't miss much.
"If you're putting out heat, you're dead, man," Mowery said.
Mowery rode the Bradley with his face close against a FLIR video screen, viewing the battlefield in odd colors like a video game. On a separate screen, the tank commander saw the battlefield in real-image video, and non-video optical periscopes ringed the Bradley, Mowery said.
As targets emerged, the tank commander could instantly rotate the turret to sight them. It is "the world's fastest turret," Mowery said. A machine gun, cannon or wire-guided missile dispatched identified targets.
Mowery said his biggest concern in the desert war zone was drowning. He lost three friends when they missed a road curve on a dark scouting patrol, and their Humvee overturned in a canal.
"There are canals everywhere," Mowery said. A Bradley turret upside down, bottomed on its top hatches and rotated from its crew-loading position, is sealed, he said. No exit.
Mowery said the 3D ACR believes in training. "They train us a a lot––so much I have great confidence in the people I work with," he said. "The actual soldiers I work with, I feel very confident about them."
He indicated less confidence in faceless decisions handed down from up the chain of command.
"The higher-ups can't always see what the Joes go through," Mowery explained. "I have no problem with training, but you have to give Joes time with their families. They make us stay in the field too much. We're about to go away for 15 months. Let the Joes be at home with their family as much as they can.
"These guys know the weapons systems. They don't need more time at the range. The command needs to let them be at home more. And that's all I'm gonna say about that."
Mowery has two sons, 12 and 10. "In almost a three-year period, I've only seen my kids eight months," Mowery said. "That's the hard part. I don't regret joining the Army. I love the Army. I love the military. I wouldn't do anything else. But missing my kids is something I do regret."
Mostly upbeat, Mowery listed advantages to overseas service. "Out of the U.S., we don't pay any taxes," he said. If a drivers license expires, it is automatically renewed. "Your credit cards have the interest rate lowered to six percent under the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Relief Act," he said.
Mowery outlined life on the FOB, a forward operating base in Iraq. "Given the situation and where it is, it's not that bad," he said. Similar to life in a small town, when you make a mistake, the whole place knows about it, he said. "It's a good brotherhood. It really is," Mowery said.
His base included a small female presence––out of 2,000 soldiers, about 50 females.
"Usually the women are medics," Mowery said. "One or two are mechanics. The rest are admin. people." The presence of females has a civilizing impact, he said. "Just talking to them, they boost morale," he said. "I actually think females are essential to the accomplishment of the mission."
Keeping the men mentally connected to life as they knew it stateside is the thing. Females do that and "letters from home," Mowery said. "I gotta stress that."
Soldiers don't obsess on personal danger, he said. "They're not really scared of the bombs," Mowery said. "They're not really scared of being shot. That's what they joined for. But the one thing that they are scared of is being forgotten. And that's why letters from home are so, so important.
"We go through an emotional roller coaster overseas, because we see so much good and so much bad every day. So letters from home are crucial."
"There are a lot of good Iraqis," Mowery said. "You go over there and see the kids playing soccer, and you can't help but like them. One girl, we called her Smiley."
Soldiers use nicknames for Iraqis because they find most given names unpronounceable, Mowery explained.
At thirteen years old, Smiley helped on the American base at civilian sick call when the Army admitted local Iraqis to a medical aid station. Good with English, she became an interpreter, Mowery said. She even warned Americans of untrustworthy Iraqis on base. Mowery learned the young woman had been raped by Iraqi soldiers at some time before she came to work at the base.
"If she said someone was bad, we treated them as a hostile," he said. "I don't care what uniform they were wearing." Smiley is both good and gifted, Mowery said. "She's smart. She could be a doctor," he said. But she is destined for an arranged marriage instead, he said.
"There are Iraqi people that are so nice to you and will help you out," Mowery said. "Unfortunately, it's the few bad guys that try to blow us up every day that give Iraq a bad persona. Most Iraqis like Americans. They're good and kind people. But the bad people blow you up."
On the lighter side of base life was Scout mascot, Hero. "He was a true American dog," Mowery said. "He was born in Iraq, but he loved American soldiers." Hero barked at Iraqis and hung with the GI's. "Hero was awesome," Mowery said and made life in Iraq seem more normal.
Another positive of base life was the Haji mart, Mowery said. As “Joe” is the generic term for an American GI, "Haji" is soldier slang for an Iraqi national.
"Haji" is the Iraqi word for stranger, Mowery said. "But when you think about it, who's the durn stranger?" he smiled.
The Haji mart was great, Mowery said. "It's almost like the black market," he explained. An open-air bazaar with stalls set up outside the American base, the mart was a place where Iraqi merchants could get you about anything you wanted.
"Movies, DVD's, electronics, watches, souvenirs, everything," Mowery said. "Almost anything you can think of at a cheap, cheap price."
Mowery went looking for a DVD boxed set of the television series, That ‘70s Show. A merchant asked him to spell the title on a piece of paper.
"You come back one week, I get you this," Mowery remembers the man saying. The merchant delivered on his promise.
"I don't know how," Mowery said. Often soldiers in Iraq see American movies before their folks back home get access to them, he said.
In an odd way, the Haji mart brought peace to Scania, Mowery said. "Working was no problem down in Scania," he told me and unfolded the story of why. "Our colonel witnessed it, and I know it's true," he said.
A while back, the American base at Scania was mortared by insurgents. This angered the colonel in charge, Mowery said, "so he went out and shut the Haji mart down. 'Until we find out who mortared this place, we're shutting it down,'" Mowery quoted the colonel.
"We bring you guy," the merchants promised.
"Haji likes his money," Mowery explained.
Two days later came banging on the south gate. "We have bad guy," the merchants reported. "You open Haji mart." They presented a basket, Mowery said. It contained the mortar man's head and feet.
The Americans made plain they did not condone the killing, Mowery said. "If he were alive, we could have back-tracked it," Mowery said, to the attacker's insurgent network.
"The colonel had to be very politically correct," Mowery said, "letting them know we couldn't tolerate their actions––but Haji mart was opened, and everybody was happy."
And happy is a good thing. "I'm the comical sergeant," Mowery said. "I'm always making people laugh."
When interviewed, he was just from the training range with his unit; two weeks of hot, tired, dirty and sick to death of cold, prepackaged meals.
"Everybody hates MRE's [meals ready to eat]," Mowery stated. In the midst of this glory, Sergeant Mowery posed a question to one of his troops, a Private Bill Turner: "This is good stuff ain't it, Turner?"
Mowery saw the young private flash a broad smile. "Sergeant, I wouldn't do anything else," came the comeback.
"He's just one of my Joes that loves it," Mowery said. "He volunteered."
Asked if a renewed draft might offer some relief for American soldiers returned for multiple tours in harm's way, Mowery was not enthused with the idea.
“We all volunteered,” he said of his comrades. “We all raised our right hand to protect the Constitution. No one wants to go to Iraq. No one wants to go to war.” He paused. “I don't even want to go to work with somebody that doesn't want to be there.”
“I'm proud of what I'm doing,” Mowery said. “What I'm doing is not for the money––never has been, never will be. My dad was a Marine. My grandfather was a commander in the Navy. They both know we all do it for that patch that's on your right shoulder, which is the American flag.”
The 3D ACR is scheduled to return to Iraq in late October, but Mowery will probably miss this trip.
“I'm supposed to be getting attached with an EOD team for training, which will take up to a year and a half,” Mowery said. He will change his Army job from scouting to explosive ordinance disposal. Mowery is joining the bomb squad. If the war in Iraq continues, he expects to return there after training. |
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| Armed and serious––Army Sergeant Troy Mowery. |
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