Tidings of War
Gearing up for a whole different kind of fight in the chaos of Iraq
The palm tree in front of the Paulson family's home has been trimmed with lights, and so has the evergreen in the living room. The house is ready for Christmas. But Lydia Paulson isn't quite ready for the holidays to begin because she dreads their end. Soon after New Year's Day, her husband, Randy, will head off for Iraq on a tour that could last a year or more. "Sometimes," she says, "I cannot look him in the face because I start to cry. It hurts that bad. . . . I know it's selfish, but I don't want him to go." Sgt. 1st Class Paulson, a veteran with 17 years in the Army, puts his arm around his wife. "The Army," he says, "has been good to me." Now, he adds, he has a job to do.
Christmas will be bittersweet for the soldiers of the 3rd Infantry Division now preparing for a second tour of duty in Iraq. The division led the Army's charge into Baghdad, overwhelming the Iraqi Republican Guard and toppling Saddam Hussein's regime. When it headed home, in August 2003, after nine months in the mideast, there was only a glimmer of the grueling insurgency that would draw the division back.
The 3rd Infantry troops--some veterans of the earlier fighting, some newcomers--will face a war very different from the desert tank battles fought on the way to Baghdad. Now the division will fight against guerrillas and for the support of a population that has fallen into despair. "We have constantly emphasized to our soldiers that we are not going back to the Iraq we left," says Lt. Col. David Funk, a battalion commander.
But it is also true that the 3rd Infantry that will return to Iraq is quite different, as well. The division's brigades are the first to be "transformed" into what the military calls "units of action." During the past year, the brigades have been reorganized to expand their capabilities and make them more flexible. "We had an awesome task," says Col. Robert Grymes, a division officer. "Reset the division, reorganize, and then train to go back. The dust is still settling."
Integrated. The division's transformation has added a new brigade, the 4th, virtually started from scratch. After the reorganization, no longer are engineers, tanks, and infantry in separate battalions. Instead, they have been integrated and trained to work as a group. And the new structure puts a greater emphasis on military tasks other than combat--such as psychological operations, information campaigns, and civil affairs work.
Both the division's reorganization and the new threat in Iraq required intensive training for new tasks. Much of the 4th Brigade's artillery battalion will be used to escort State Department officials, so artillerymen have been taught to use machine guns and run convoys. The armor companies have been trained on small arms, since patrol missions will require the use of armored humvees, not tanks. The division has tried to make sure that the soldiers in support jobs--mechanics, supply clerks, truck drivers--all have improved their rifle skills. "We have changed the way we train," says Grymes. "Every soldier is a rifleman, and he will be a wolf, not a sheep."
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