National Guard road warriors preparing: 'You call, we haul'

By DENNIS ANDERSON
Valley Press Editor

While the Marines and the Screaming Eagles of the 101st Airborne Division draw an iron circle around Iraq, the truckers of the 1498th Transportation Company have been getting their wheels up and running to haul big M-1 Abrams tanks to the front or to bring them back.

The mission of the 1498th is to get the armor in position to go or to bring the armor and the crews to the rear in the event they are hit or disabled.

Nearly 50 of the troops from the company of 300 or so Guard soldiers of the 1498th hail from the Antelope Valley. The transporters of the 1498th are from Palmdale and Lancaster, from Tehachapi and Quartz Hill. Also from San Bernardino, Riverside, Long Beach, Victorville and Bakersfield. The citizen soldiers are friends and neighbors of people across a wide swath of California, leaving their lives as civilians to recover and protect the regulars forming the tip of the spear of a renewed duel in the desert.

"You call, we haul," said Command Sgt. Maj. Robert Liles of Tehachapi, whose battalion is providing support for the 1498th transportation unit while it camps at Camp Roberts. "We bring tracks out, and we go out and bring them back."

The sergeant major's son, Bobby, turned 21 at Camp Roberts a couple of weeks ago. It's a splendid misery to be known as "Sgt. Major Jr.," Bobby Liles said. "They also call me "Baby Liles.''"

But like the others, "Baby Liles" is as determined to win a war as he was to win football games at Tehachapi High School.

"We won't lose," he promised.

The trucks the transport troops drive are so huge they look like they escaped from a "Mad Max" movie. Staff Sgt. Scott Olson loves his heavy equipment transporter system, a 27-ton monster truck with 48 tires that can haul a 70-ton Abrams tank, whether it is running or combat-damaged. The mighty big truck looks like something Mel Gibson would drive like a demon across a post-apocalypse landscape.

"Mad Max rules," Olson said. "I love my big truck, and if we go to war, I'll bloody well go in my big truck."

The mighty big truck rescues tanks.

A track is a tank or any other armored vehicle.

Unless they are flying or walking, the Army and Marine forces massed around Iraq move on wheels and tracks. In other words, wheeled vehicles and tanks.

The company spent recent weeks training in the rainy cold of the woods at Fort Lewis, Wash., where they went through an infantry-style boot camp to prepare them for the rigors of duty overseas.

The passage through the wet woods of Washington prepped the soldiers, in typical military fashion, for the hazards and high heat of the Middle East. The dividend is knowing how to live with misery, whether in heat or cold.

"We have to train like we fight, and fight like we train," said Capt. Bob Morisette, the company commander and a veteran of Desert Storm. "We have to be ready to take our people through what may lie ahead."

Returned from the challenge of Washington's rigorous and rainy training, many of the soldiers coughed, hacked and wheezed, their bodies fighting off flu-like symptoms and the effects of multiple inoculations. Their arms were sore from shots ranging from hepatitis to anthrax series, but many of them said they generally felt better to be back in California's drier clime.

"Our fighting holes in Washington were filled with water, and people didn't want to get down in them, but it was grunt training, so we did," said Spc. 4th Class Anthony Herrera, a former Marine from Lancaster who wants to join the police force.

Herrera, 38, said he knew additional military service would likely help fulfill his dream of joining the LAPD. So, he took the oath as a National Guard soldier at Edwards Air Force Base on Sept. 10, 2001.

"I was surprised. I heard about the attacks on my way to work at Burbank Airport.

"So, I thought, what are the odds that I'll be called up — probably work homeland defense. Well, a year went by, and here I am. My wife, Mary, said, "What did you do?" But I'm glad to be here. Guard soldiers are older, more mature a lot of the time, and they have initiative."

The Washington training was tough, but necessary. Company 1st Sgt. Jim Norris of Bakersfield told troops at evening formation that they are getting ready for anything they might be called upon to deal with in a war to disarm Saddam Hussein.

"Every time they raise the bar, we just climb a little higher," Norris said. "Every time they make the knothole a little bit smaller, we just poke on through."

The troops gathered at evening formation chorused back with the Army gung-ho shout: "Hooah!"

The transporters are encamped at Roberts, a sprawling 42,000-acre base that straddles the Monterey and San Luis Obispo county lines. The rolling hills are perfect tanker country, ideal for training infantry and occasionally play host to special operations units such as the Navy SEALS and Green Berets.

A difference between Guard troops and many regulars is that many of the Guard soldiers have a deep well of prior military and, oftentimes combat, experience.

Morisette, of Huntington Beach, wears the right shoulder patch of a combat soldier from Desert Storm, the 3rd Army patch that Gen. George S. Patton Jr. made famous.

"I got to go to the desert the first time, and I got the T-shirt, and now, I'm going back again," the captain said, his tone upbeat and cheerful amid myriad details of moving his soldiers from state to state, and from barracks to barracks.

The soldiers of the 1498th arrived to slightly chaotic feeding arrangements and schedules, and returned to wooden barracks that have housed GIs since 1940. A half-million troops trained at Camp Roberts during World War II, and thousands of Guard troops from the state's 40th Infantry Division cycled through the camp during the Korean War.

The 40th Infantry Division fought at Pork Chop Hill and Heartbreak Ridge. This current movement is the largest since the Korean War.

Somehow, the soldiers" life at a camp built during the youth of those news anchor Tom Brokaw described as "The Greatest Generation" hasn't changed much. Soldiers still ache for their loved ones. They still grumble, more or less cheerfully, about late chow and endless field rations served fresh from the box. And they still display flashes of ironic Army humor.

One young sergeant, holding a newspaper in the morning, gave his buddies his own version of the news.

"Donald Rumsfeld holds news conference," the sergeant said, his tone portentous. "Everything's OK now, we've called it off, everybody goes home — ."

"Really?" one credulous trooper said.

Snort. Chuckle. The barracks humor not only makes life bearable; it's one of the attractions of service life.

Spc. 4th Class Johney Ehn of Lancaster shared and traded crackers from his meal ready to eat with his buddies, and proudly told a pal about getting his kids enrolled in Desert Christian School.

"It's a good school," Ehn said.

Like all the soldiers, Ehn has been training, eating MREs, waiting on definite news and hoping for some family time before a probable move overseas.

"The family day is important," said Capt. Paul Schellbach of Victorville, a chaplain in the Eastern Orthodox Church.

Lt. Col. David B. Nickels, a superintendent and battalion commander at Camp Roberts, said all the commanders understand the importance of family meetings and family support. But, he said, that can only come when the preparations are complete.

"The training has to be finished first," he told the chaplain. "The family meetings are important, but they have to happen after the training is complete."

Many seemed to understand. The unit arrived from its round of intense training in Washington state, only to plunge into more training the next day.

"The bad news is that we aren't getting a little down time," said Lt. Brian Holste of Long Beach. "The good news is that everything we are learning will enable us to survive."

Holste shared an Army phrase book with Arabic phrases such as "Ar-mee si-lah-sek Aa-l-al-ardh," which means "Put your weapon down."

Morisette said he knows he has a few troops who would rather avoid this call to duty, but he added, "Most of the people on this deployment are volunteers."

Walter Brady of Palmdale was one of the volunteers.

"I was out of the Army a long time," said Brady, a Metropolitan Transportation Authority bus driver. "I'm glad to be back. The Army stays the same, and that's good."

Brady, 48, took the oath as a Guard soldier a day after the Sept. 11 attacks. Now, he's driving troops all over Camp Roberts in a bus that hauls them up to the big consolidated mess hall at the top of the hill.

"I am losing hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of dollars a month in income, but I am glad to be doing this, because this is what life is about — protecting your fellow citizens."

© 2010 Antelope Valley Press, Palmdale, California (661) 273-2700