New Jersey Guard gets ready for war

McGREGOR RANGE, N.M. - The town of Al-Hadiz rises from the desert, an insurgent stronghold of dilapidated concrete houses, bombed-out pickup trucks, and civilians screaming as soldiers point guns into their bedrooms.

Buildings are marked with Arabic graffiti and AK-47s chatter in the background.

But all is not as it seems.

Al-Hadiz is in New Mexico. The insurgents are taxpayer-funded actors, some wearing traditional Arab clothing. And the troops are actually firing blanks as they train how to search an Iraqi home.

These are the closing scenes in the final days of training for nearly 3,000 members of the New Jersey National Guard, mobilized in June.

In their other lives, they are a poker dealer, a union plumber, a Dunkin' Donuts franchisee, a social studies teacher from Voorhees, a Philadelphia police officer.

But here, they're full-time soldiers - members of the 50th Infantry Brigade Combat Team - sweating in Kevlar helmets and 40-pound vests at McGregor Range, next to Fort Bliss on the Texas-New Mexico border. By month's end, they'll be on a flight to Kuwait. Then it's on to Iraq.

"They're only here because they want to be here," said Lt. Col. Brian Scully, the brigade's second-in-command. "They chose to be soldiers. There's a great love for it."

They've missed Wawa and Lorenzo's Pizza on South Street, beer and Comcast on Demand, say the troops, men and women who range in age from 18 to 59. One missed his only child's first steps.

But this is their mission now. Until next June, some will guard criminal detainees in at least two prisons in Iraq. Others will help run Baghdad's sprawling International Zone or secure convoys susceptible to roadside bombs.

The New Jersey National Guard says this is its largest deployment since World War II. And much has changed since then.

Training techniques have evolved during the five-year Iraq conflict. Soldiers spend a lot of time in humvees on 20-mile journeys through the New Mexico desert, facing fake IEDs, ambushes and snipers.

To learn how to escape from humvees knocked over by an IED or a blown tire, soldiers pile into a simulated vehicle as a military trainer uses a joystick to spin it upside-down. After some confusion, laughing and yelling, the troops stumble out, foam guns in hand and dazed looks on their faces.

"It's like scrambled eggs," said Pfc. Gabriel Orozco, 23, based in Newark.

Trainers monitor how quickly helicopters are called to pick up soldiers with severed limbs, how well drivers maneuver around obstacles, and whether gunners accidentally shoot civilian targets.

Members of the brigade run miles each day, learn hand-to-hand combat, study Arabic, and take media-training classes. They're taught how to quell a prison riot and are shot with paintballs to practice dodging sniper fire.

Female troops are everywhere - they are 10 percent of this particular force. There are divorced couples, engaged couples, and couples on the sly, fighting alongside one another on the front line.

"I'm grateful that we get to do this together," said Spec. China Melendez, 22, who is engaged to Cpl. Kenny Maldonado, 24. Both are from Bergen County.

For those separated from loved ones, however, two months away already has tested relationships.

Homesickness is the biggest emotional challenge for soldiers, said Staff Sgt. Daryl Caulfield, 43, a Westampton police officer assigned as a chaplain's assistant. "People just get lonely and need somebody to talk to," he said.

Caulfield loves his job. "It's great to go around and lift so many spirits," he said. For his support, he relies on his church, Easton Bible Church in Hainesport.

The church is paying for his wife and two children to fly to El Paso and stay at a hotel with him during a 96-hour leave next weekend. It will be the brigade's last break before deployment.

Another South Jersey church also is involved in the war effort. Scully has left his seven children, ages 1 to 16, with his wife in Marlton. The family's church, Solid Rock Baptist in Berlin Borough, is helping with carpooling and baby-sitting in his absence.

"My 5-year-old daughter asks, 'Daddy, are you coming home tomorrow?' " Scully said. "It tears my heart out."

His 12-year-old daughter writes every other day, and his wife of 20 years, Vicki, manages at home with a dry-erase board of the children's schedules and a 15-passenger van.

Before this deployment, the couple had been apart for two only weeks at a time.

"He's my best friend," Vicki Scully said. "It makes it easier for me to step up when he's just incredible."

Not everyone in the brigade is happy about the mission. A few soldiers expressed frustration, even anger, that trained infantrymen were being sent to Iraq for the "care and custody" of detainees.

"It should not be us," said First Sgt. John Archer, a two-tour Iraq combat veteran and former National Guard recruiter from Collingswood. "We shoot stuff, break stuff, occupy stuff."

Archer will have to make sure his troops do not curse, hurt, or offend Iraqi prisoners, some of whom might have killed Americans.

After years of being taught offensive skills, he said, the soldiers under his charge are learning to avoid conflict. He worries that they could get into trouble during their first months for being too aggressive with prisoners.

"While I understand that we're soldiers and do what we're told, they basically took my job away and made me do something I have no business doing," Archer said.

The Army is nervous about reliving the 2004 Abu Ghraib scandal, when soldiers were accused of abusing Iraqi prisoners, Archer said. He has been warned that if soldiers offend the Iraqis, they'll be sent to the military prison.

Archer pointed to his M4 assault rifle, with its high-tech laser mounted on top. "That thing is never going to get fired," he said. "It's ready to shoot people, not inspect detainees for boo-boos."

Archer's anger is not uncommon, others said.

"They essentially have us coming in to be [military police]," said Capt. Luis Delacruz, an infantry company commander. His soldiers are "definitely not happy about it," he said. "But duty calls, and they do what they're told," he said.

Duty takes a financial toll on the troops, nearly all of whom are employed or in school.

First Sgt. Gene Jones, 42, of Philadelphia, is on his second deployment. He works with dogs that sniff out bombs at Philadelphia International Airport for the Philadelphia Police, one of about 300 brigade soldiers who work in public safety.

By law, Jones is guaranteed his job back. But he must repay his pension for his time away, and his military base pay is less than he earns at home. Regardless, he sees both jobs as essential.

"There's still some people out there who take freedom for granted," Jones said. "You have to pay the price for freedom."

Others also feel a connection between their civilian and military roles. Capt. Rich Colton, 30, draws on his experience as a soldier when teaching American history to students at Eastern Regional High School in Voorhees.

Two of his former students from Deptford High School are in the Guard alongside him. "It's your personal responsibility to defend this country. I hope I gave them a little bit of that," he said.

Colton says he is sometimes quizzed in the classroom about the country's role in Iraq. His students' questions "reflect how America has thought about the war. In the beginning they were excited. But now they're wondering why we're there."

Colton exchanges e-mails with some of his old students. At night, he and fellow soldiers fill the Military Wellness and Recreation Building to shoot pool, fraternize with the opposite sex, and, mostly, go online.

Pvt. Lamont Seawright, one of about 30 soldiers from Camden, faces a large-screen TV and plays Call of Duty 4, a war-theme video game, to unwind and to prepare. "It gets you adjusted to war," he said.

Like many, Seawright, 27, said the National Guard had provided a way to straighten out his life.

"Being out in Camden and the ghetto, this is definitely something that's going to help me progress in life," he said. "I wasn't out there doing what I was supposed to be doing. Now, here I am, making a career out of it."

His mother served in Iraq in the Army, and now she's a civilian contractor there.

"If my mom can do it," he said smiling, "I can do it."