Springfield State Journal Register October 20, 2003 A1 Guard members make the best of a bad situation By Marcus Stern Copley News Service BAGHDAD, Iraq - When the 233rd Military Police Company out of Springfield moved into its four-acre compound here in April, a few key buildings had been reduced to blackened rubble courtesy of U.S. cruise missiles. Others remained untouched. Like much of Baghdad, there was no electricity or running water. For toilets, members of the 233rd sawed off 55-gallon drums and put toilet seats on them. When the drums were full, they carted them off and burned them. Today, the five platoons of the 233rd reside in buildings untouched by the precision-guided missiles. They're jammed eight and nine to a room, but they have showers, DVD players, an Internet cafe, two billiards tables and even a pool. Their lives have been disrupted, and they are constantly at risk. But day by day, amid the destruction that surrounds them, they are using their skills and ingenuity to reshape their primitive new world into a tolerable facsimile of the life they knew back home. It's all about making the best of a bad situation, they'll tell you. Spc. Lucas Jockisch last Friday afternoon was hanging his Hanes underwear out to dry on the roof of the building they call the castle, which is home to the first and fourth platoons. They're nicknamed the Reapers and Crusaders, respectively. Shortly after arriving last spring, Jockisch washed his clothes with an old-fashioned washboard his grandmother sent him. Today, he uses one of two washing machines the soldiers purchased in a Baghdad market. But still they have no dryers. For that, they rely on Mother Nature. "You really appreciate the stuff you had back home," said Jockisch, 21, who lives in Concord and works for Robert's Seafood in Springfield."Like privacy," he added. "Granted, you have to share a room with seven other people, but we all get along." The compound the 233rd occupies used to belong to Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri, a trusted aide and confidant to Saddam Hussein. Today, Ibrahim is sixth on the coalition's most-wanted listed, the king of clubs in its deck of cards and a man on the run. His daughter briefly was married to Saddam's deceased oldest son, Odai. The compound lies in the heart of Baghdad, near Iraq's Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and Baghdad's famous gigantic crossed sabers - similar in shape but not scale to St. Louis' Arch. Also nearby is the National Baath Party Museum and the grand palace that was Saddam's official residence until he was toppled in early April. The 233rd's new Baghdad surroundings had been the equivalent of the National Mall in Washington, D.C., or the Tuileries in Paris. Today, this sprawling historic section of central Baghdad is effectively a huge U.S. military base. Like the compound being used by the 233rd, many of the tony homes of Saddam's lackeys have been converted to American military barracks, mess halls and tactical operational command centers. Ibrahim had been one of Saddam's top enforcers. The Iraqi dictator had assigned him to defend the northern part of the country before the war began. It is the same part of Iraq Ibrahim helped attack in 1988 with chemical weapons, killing thousands of Kurds. In 1991, Ibrahim reportedly threatened to gas the north again if the Kurds launched an uprising when coalition forces began their successful effort to evict Iraqi troops from occupied Kuwait. To some Iraqis, he is known without affection as "The Lizard." The compound that once was his but is occupied by the 233rd is roughly a four-acre rectangle. Two- and three-story buildings are arrayed around a large, central courtyard surrounded by date palms. When the 233rd first rolled onto the premises in late April, it found the streets cluttered with bomb debris. The courtyard was sown with grain and decorated with shrubs. Today, the streets are clean and neat, and the compound is teeming with troops, with batons and shields, repeatedly training to deal with civil disturbances. But the palm fronds are browning from a lack of water, and the grain and shrubs are long gone. In their place is a giant sandy parking lot where the 233rd parks its Humvees. A formal photograph of Ibrahim still hangs on a wall in a room occupied by some of the troops of the 233rd. Racy pinups surround it. The two-story building the Reapers and Crusaders occupy is believed to have been a guesthouse. Now each room is filled wall-to-wall with Army cots. The wall above each cot is devoted either to family photos, pinups, irreverent humor or reminders of home. The building also has two playrooms. Saturday afternoon, in one of two second-floor playrooms, two soldiers were playing football on TV with the help of a PlayStation 2. A few feet to their left was an old-fashioned barber's chair they believe Saddam had used. Sitting in an easy chair behind them, Sgt. Phillip Holt, 23, of Springfield was reading "The Lord of the Rings." "Before I came here, reading wasn't my thing," said Holt, who works for UPS and U.S. Electric Co. in Springfield. In the past six months, though, he's read an 11-book religious series and all of the Harry Potter books, including the recently issued fifth book. "I don't have a GameBoy I can use to get in my own world, and I don't have a lot of CDs," he said. "So reading is something I can do to relax and forget about all this." Holt grew up in a family of six children and two parents. "Alone time is awesome," he said. His main challenge here: a lack of "alone time." "There's always somebody there," Holt said. On the wall by his cot is a 2-foot-by- 3-foot collage of his son, who just turned 2. His wife made the collage the height of his son so Holt could see how much the boy had grown since Holt was activated in February. By the time he sees his son again, he likely will have missed 15 months of his child's growth. Holt is a self-described comic book fanatic. Among the many comic book items his wife has sent him is the full Batman action set, including accessories. One of the accessories is the boomerang-shaped Bat-a-Ring. He's worn his Bat-a-Ring while patrolling Baghdad's streets, he said. "You never know," he quipped. "If I run out of bullets, I might need it." Besides, he added, some of the Iraqi children he runs into on patrol recognize the Bat-a-Ring for what it is and get a big kick out of seeing it. The Guardsmen here learned recently that their duty was being extended to a full year on the ground, which for them means through April. "We got the news a month ago," said Spc. Brad Clark, 23, of Springfield. "That hurt morale a lot. But now we're getting used to the idea and we're focusing on that April mark and focusing on our mission." Clark, a corrections officer at the Sangamon County Jail, said, "I miss everything about Springfield." Especially fishing. Back home, he fished in Sangchris Lake. "I'm a catfisherman," he said. "I love catfish." He got a chance one day to fish in a lake near Baghdad's international airport, where he caught something sort of like the catfish. Not exactly, but close enough, he said, smiling. On the roof of the castle, Sgt. Eric Bertoni was lifting weights Saturday to the aggressive songs of Kid Rock. The soldiers had traded old air conditioners in the building to some local Iraqis for barbells and free weights. The weight equipment is in a corner of the roof underneath camouflage netting that protects them from the sun while they work out. "We're trying to get some more (weight-lifting) stuff," said Bertoni, who grew up in Springfield and lives in Chatham. Meanwhile, he passes a lot of downtime watching the Armed Forces Network on television. When asked what else he does to relax, Bertoni said, "Animals are a big stress releaser." The 233rd has four pets. A mongrel wandered into the compound one day and has never left. The dog, which they believe was abused, initially was quite skittish. It first opened up to the company's communications officer, so they call the dog Commo. The other pets are three young kittens only a few weeks old. Staff Sgt. Roman Waldron set in motion the chain of events that led to the adoption. Waldron, 32, a law enforcement officer in Springfield who says he can't discuss his homeland security duties, persuaded some of his fellow First Platoon Reapers to help get a school ready for the reopening of classes earlier this month. Just before the war began, the Iraqi military had taken over the school for 1,200 students as a base for troops and equipment. After the war, looters ransacked the school. Waldron and the Reapers helped clear out the debris so classes could begin. In the process, they came across the three abandoned kittens and brought them back to the compound, where they have been feeding the cats tuna and Vienna sausages since. A steady stream of soldiers passes by the kittens' pen to play with them. Now the Reapers are trying, with a small amount of success, to get businesses back home in Springfield to send badly needed supplies for the combined primary-secondary school they adopted, including pens, pencils, chalk and sports equipment, especially soccer balls. It was Saturday night at the compound the 233rd probably will call home until April. Back home, it would be prime party time. But this isn't back home. Just two nights earlier they got a reminder of that, when four exploding rounds were fired at them from the other side of the Tigris River. Two exploded nearby. So this Saturday night 18 soldiers walked to Building Q and gathered in a small room they've named "Viper Shepherd Chapel." The lights are fluorescent and the floors are linoleum. The walls are pale green. The 233rd is attached to the 519th Military Police Battalion of the U.S. Army out of Fort Polk, La. Command Sgt. Maj. Richard Schnitker of the 519th led the group that night in singing and gave a sermon designed to help the soldiers find the patience to deal with their long deployment. He invoked the Biblical plight of Job. And he urged patience with the Iraqi people. "What are we doing here in Iraq?" he asked the group. "Killing people with kindness," came an answer. "That's our intent," Schnitker said. He added, "The people of Iraq thought we came here to rape, pillage and destroy. Now they're finding out different."