- (AP) -- Regular Army soldiers in Iraq sleep in fortified
accommodations while National Guard troops are in unprotected tents and
using filthy showers, according to e-mail messages from several North Carolina
soldiers.
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- Staff Sgt. Roosevelt McPherson of Raeford said in a series
of e-mail messages from Forward Operating Base McKenzie near Samarra that
the National Guard soldiers have nowhere to seek shelter from almost daily
mortar attacks, The News & Observer reported Wednesday.
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- McPherson serves in the Monroe-based B Battery of the
1-113th Field Artillery.
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- "The regular Army troops have bunkers, hangars or
fortified connexes," he wrote. "It is only by the grace and mercy
of God that no one has been injured or even worse."
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- Army officials said Tuesday that the base is not attacked
as often as McPherson claims but that they are working to provide safer
accommodations for the Guard troops.
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- "No conscious decision has been made in this unit
to put the interests of Active Duty Soldiers ahead of National Guard soldiers'
lives," said an e-mail message from Capt. Ian Palmer, public affairs
officer for the 1st Squadron, 4th U.S. Cavalry, the unit to which B Battery
is attached.
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- "We are as eager to get those soldiers out of tents
as they are, and action is being taken every day towards that goal."
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- Palmer also challenged the idea that the base is attacked
often, saying it had been shelled by mortars once and "rocket attacks
are less than once a week."
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- National Guard members are citizen soldiers who usually
drill one weekend a month and spend two weeks training a year. Unlike the
reserves, which are part of the regular Army, Guard units report to state
governors but can be activated by the federal government.
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- With U.S. armed forces stretched thin, many Guard and
reserve units have been called to active duty and about 40 percent of the
estimated 138,000 U.S. troops in Iraq are Guard and reservists.
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- Battery B is one unit of the N.C. Guard's 30th Heavy
Separate Brigade. Most of the brigade's almost 5,000 soldiers are attached
to the regular Army's 1st Infantry Division in the Diyala province northeast
of Baghdad.
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- McPherson said his unit arrived at McKenzie about 70
miles north of Baghdad around March 15 and was told the unit would be out
of tents in a month.
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- There are 25 tents, and when the unit first arrived,
only four or five had board floors, McPherson said. The rest had small
rocks as a flooring to help keep the dust down. McPherson said if a round
hit inside a tent area, with rocks as a foundation throughout, the rocks
would join the shrapnel from the explosion.
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- McPherson called living conditions "filthy"
and said E. coli bacteria was discovered in one of the three showers in
April.
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- John Grosvenor of Concord received an e-mail message
last weekend from his brother, Sgt. 1st Class Ronald Grosvenor, who is
also in B Battery. John Grosvenor said his brother noted "that the
real Army were in better shelters and they were in tents."
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- "The military knows that they have more people over
there than they thought they were going to have, so somebody has got to
get the short end of the stick," John Grosvenor said.
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- Lt. Col. Mark Strong, the 1-113th's commander, said in
an e-mail message that his soldiers "don't have it great, but they
also are not in extreme danger."
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- - Information from: The News & Observer
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- All material ©2004 Star-News
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- http://www.wilmingtonstar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/
20040526/APN/405260687&cachetime=5
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