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Thursday, July 03, 2003

3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment 

KEEP YOUR HELMET ON!
In Iraq and in Colorado, soldiers and wives wait and worry




AP Photos NY385-NY391

By JIM KRANE and COLLEEN SLEVIN

Associated Press Writers

RAMADI, Iraq (AP) - In the wrecked skeleton of a former Iraqi military warehouse, 200 soldiers stand at rigid attention, jaws set, faces buffeted by a hot desert wind, saluting a memorial for Staff Sgt. William Latham.

An American flag whips the air above a pair of boots with an erect M-16 between them, a helmet atop its barrel.

For the soldiers of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, based at Fort Carson, Colo., the memorial is all too familiar. Latham was the ninth of 10 soldiers from the regiment to die in Iraq since May.

But if war and its aftermath is tough for the soldiers - their choked voices and wet eyes at Latham's memorial show their burden - most say it is harder still for their families back home.

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''God has tested my faith here more than once. It's getting harder and harder every day,'' says Spc. Jason Richards, 32, his voice barely audible above the wind. Richards is a member of the Bradley armored vehicle crew that Latham commanded.

''You think we're helping them and then they kill one of our buddies,'' he says. ''I don't understand how they can hate us so much. It just clouds your reasons for being here.''

As he speaks, members of his unit kneel before the Latham memorial, crossing themselves.

Richards, originally from Yardley, Pa., feels torments beyond the death of his crew chief. In June, he chased and shot an armed Iraqi man who ignored calls to stop. Before shooting the man, Richards says, he fired 17 warning shots. Afterward he and his crew rushed over and administered first aid. The man died.

Richards recalls talking with an Army counselor to help him deal with his conscience.

''I asked him 'Why is God testing me so much?''' Richards says. ''Now I'm going to suffer in hell for killing this guy.''

Richards says he calls and e-mails his wife, Stephanie, to talk about his troubles. Each time he does, he ratchets up her fears.

After killing the Iraqi, he called Stephanie, who'd just given birth to his first child. He tried to tell his wife about the shooting, but couldn't.

''I started choking up. I told her I had to go. I hung up.''

---

At the beginning of the war, Stephanie Richards was upset to see peace protests, considering them an insult to soldiers. Now she's distressed to see Iraqis protesting the American presence.

''He's missing all of this at home to help them and they're throwing rocks at him and killing his friends,'' the 23-year-old says, sitting at her parents' kitchen table in Colorado and holding 2-week-old Andee.

Lately, she's upset to hear people saying the war is over. To her, it seems like her husband and other soldiers are sitting ducks.

''I'm not going to have my husband killed after the war is over,'' she says.

''I don't want him there, they don't want him there and he doesn't want to be there. So let them come home.''

Growing up in the shadow of Fort Carson, Stephanie saw the unpredictability of military life and swore she'd never marry an Army guy. But she changed her mind after meeting Jason Richards, and married him three months later. They moved up their wedding date by a year because of rumors he would be sent overseas.

After he got his deployment orders, the couple met with a chaplain to help each understand what the other would be going through, and to help them remain a strong couple after the war.

She misses cooking pierogies and sausages for him and talking with him as he took a bath after a long day of training. But her daughter is a comfort. Andee reminds her of Jason in little ways - her voracious appetite, the ability to sleep through vacuuming as she sucks in her bottom lip and pouts.

Every day Stephanie takes a picture of the baby so her husband can catch up when he gets back. Though she's never met her father, Andee calms down when she listens to a tape of him reading Doctor Seuss' ''Oh, the Places You'll Go.''

Jason eventually told her about shooting the Iraqi. He didn't say much, but she could tell the shooting was tearing him up inside and she tried to reassure him.

''If it's between you and the other guy, you're the one who has to come home,'' she recalls saying.

But she also felt hopeless that she couldn't hold him or cheer him up.

''I just said 'I'll hold you when you're back home,''' she says. ''He can cowboy up for work but when he comes home he needs T.L.C.''

---

Justin Armstrong, a 23-year-old sergeant in the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, and his wife, Dorie, had grown accustomed to gathering at Tom and Kelli Broomhead's house on Fort Carson to play softball, drink beer and eat homemade gumbo.

The Broomheads, a decade older than the Armstrongs, helped show the younger couple the ropes of military life.

Tom Broomhead died May 27 in an ambush. His house on Fort Carson will be a lot different now.

''That's going to be my first stop when I get home,'' Armstrong says, eyes moist, square-jawed face smudged with dirt. ''I'm going to go and give Kelli a hug.''

Since his friend's death, Armstrong's been more careful. ''Some say paranoid. I say cautious.''

He checks every last thing on his Bradley, going through all the security and safety minutiae. For good reason: He's been shot at 10 or 15 times. Three or four times, he's fired back.

The dogged Iraqi resistance puzzles Armstrong and others in the 3rd ACR's 2nd Squadron, known as Saber Squadron.

Armstrong thinks Iraqis believe the Americans have come to steal the country's oil. Others say the Iraqis think U.S. troops are Israelis in disguise. It makes Armstrong angry to think his best friend was killed on the authority of such rumors.

''They don't understand that we're here to free them from a dictator. They think we're here to kill them,'' says Armstrong, his uniform encrusted with white salt stains from sweating under heavy body armor.

A few weeks ago, the 3rd Infantry Division took over in restive Fallujah and Saber Squadron got sent to Ramadi - still rough, but not quite as bad. Soon, though, the 3rd ACR will be sent back to Fallujah.

''They keep sending us letters saying we're so glad you're out of there. They don't realize we're going back in,'' Armstrong says. ''I don't have the heart to tell her. There's no sense in worrying her.''

Armstrong's wife mails him disposable cameras so he can take pictures of absolutely everything - his cot in the dust-caked barracks, his Bradley, Iraqis and their living conditions.

He and the rest of his unit live in a former Iraqi paratroop barracks with ragged holes in the walls where the windows used to be. Armstrong keeps a sniper rifle wrapped in burlap camouflage strips hanging on the wall. A copy of The Count of Monte Cristo lays on his cot, an old-fashioned wood frame version patched with parachute cord.

There's a pinup girl on one wall, a poster of a Wendy's double cheeseburger on another. The stenciled visage of Saddam Hussein stares down from the ceiling, its eyes scratched out.

Even though the base is near the banks of the Euphrates, there is almost no vegetation. The fine ''moondust'' that covers the ground billows through the open windows every time a Bradley passes. There's a quarter-inch on the floor under Armstrong's cot. It falls on him as he sleeps.

''She'd think it was disgusting,'' he says of his wife.

---

Dorie Armstrong, 22, knows her husband doesn't tell her everything that's happening. She knows he doesn't want her to worry as she waits in Colorado for his return.

''Sometimes he'll just say 'I have a story to tell you but I'll wait till I get home.'''

She does the same and tries to stay upbeat, sending photographs of her brother's new baby to her husband, a proud first-time uncle.

''I don't want him to have to worry about me,'' she says.

The Armstrongs met in high school in La Grande, Ore., and married three years ago, just a few days after Justin finished basic training. Their honeymoon was a trip to Fort Carson, where the young couple were quickly adopted by the Broomheads.

These days, Dorie writes funny stories to her husband about the newest addition to their family - a 5-month-old Labrador named Daisy. As their older dog Roscoe apparently stood by, Daisy somehow knocked down Dorie's flower pots and ate all the evidence.

Dorie sent her husband a picture of the two dogs sprawled on the couple's bed.

''He's always saying there won't be a spot in the bed when he comes back,'' she says.

She's been busy since he left - studying to become a registered nurse during the day and working at a nursing home at night - and that helps keep worrying at bay. She and a neighbor whose husband also is in Iraq take turns cooking dinner for each other and taking day trips to keep their minds off what's going on.

Every day, she wears half of a Mizpah pendant the couple bought the day before deployment along with an American flag pin on top of a yellow ribbon.

She tries to follow news reports about what is happening in Iraq without dwelling on them.

''You feel guilty because you can't wait to hear what unit it was and when it's not your husband's you're relieved,'' she says.

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