‘A slow salute, a heartfelt prayer and a quiet tear in my eyes’

Editor’s Note: Veteran Dan Grota writes a regular column for the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman. This year marks 10 years since he was called to active duty to deploy for service in Iraq.

Since being called up to active duty 10 years ago, Veterans Day has been a little different for me.

November 2003 was a whirlwind for myself and my buddies of HHC 898 ENG, a combat engineer unit of Washington state’s National Guard’s 81st Brigade out of Everett. We were part of the largest call-up of the state’s guardsmen since World War II. Units from Washington state, California, Idaho and one mid-Western state made it more than 4,500 soldiers in all. I worked in the battalion maintenance section as a light wheel/diesel and track mechanic. I was 42 with more than 18 years in service, but at the time, my rank was specialist, just a notch below sergeant.

October 2003 to February 2004 were days filled with endless preparation, long hours, training and tedium for deployment to war. Iraq was where we were to be stationed and to be tested in what was to called Operation Iraqi Freedom Part 2, which lasted from February 2004 to February 2005, a year in hell for us.

I kept a journal during those years. Lately, I’ve been reading back over those entries. I thought I might share some them as a tribute for Veterans Day. It was during this time I learned the true meaning of Veterans Day and why I keep it close to my wounded heart.

So these entries are written around Nov. 11 or close to it. The first takes place when we received word we were going and the flurry of activity that took place. We stripped our motor pool up in a tiny town called Sedro Wooley. I will never forget the day we drove in a convoy from Sedro Wooly to Everett and how the people of the town lined the streets with yellow ribbons and flags. There wasn’t a dry eye in that convoy that day. We ended up staying in motels scattered throughout Everett. We were getting ready for the big move to Fort Lewis for four months of training and processing for deployment to Iraq.

•••••

Nov. 19, 2003

“Well I’m writing this in my motel room in south Everett. Since Nov. 11, 2003, I have been working seven days a week. Working with my fellow soldiers. Getting ready to go to war.

“We are now Title 10, or in other words, regular Army (fully active duty). My life has been turned upside down. All of my apartment has been stuffed into a 10’x5’x11’ storage locker. My car to is be sold or donated. My TV, computer and my best artwork is in the possession of my brother Matt.”

•••••

Later that same month we moved from Everett to Fort Lewis. The work pace never let up. We went though hours of tedium processing in the mobilization station, which included waiting in endless lines for medical exams, dental exams, wills and other paperwork. Then we would pack and train more and prepare our vehicles for the long trip by ship to Kuwait and loading Conex shipping containers with all of our gear. Our uniforms of woodland green camouflage, the Battle Dress uniform, were traded in for those of desert tan and sand colors called the Desert Camouflage uniform. Body armor vests called Interceptor Ballistic Armor and new helmets, both made from Kevlar, were issued along with the suede desert boots. Gone were the days of shined black boots and green camouflage.

Time was short. We were to fly to Kuwait Feb. 17, 2004, our staging area. By that time we were all exhausted. My unit was split up and scattered to the four winds. Of my section alone (nearly 52 soldiers), only 18 remained as part of HHC 898. Only eight were mechanics. The rest of HHC 898, barely 60 in number, remained as a unit to go overseas.

By April of that year we were in Iraq. The 898 now was part of Task Force Tacoma, a vital member of the 81st Brigade Combat Team at LSA Anaconda, a huge logistics base north of Balad, Iraq. I worked as a member of a contact team. It was a two-man mechanic first response team driving a special HUMV with a full load of tools on convoys, on base and wherever we were needed. My partner and battle buddy was Sgt. Rick Stankiewicz, a Navy vet of the Vietnam War and my best friend during the war. I lost count how many times we went out on the roads off base.

This was a different kind of war. It wasn’t about frontlines or two opposing armies fighting toe to toe. It was about mortar, rocket and rocket-propelled grenade attacks leveled against the base by an unseen enemy.

But the real killer was improvised explosive devices, or IEDs. These homemade nightmares killed or maimed 90 percent of all wounded troops during the entire war. They were buried in the roadbed or off the shoulder — once or twice in the bodies of dead animals — and set off by cellphone, tripwire or pressure plate.

All of our wheeled assets had been up armored either by factory reps on at other bases using kits or from scrap metal we found. Sometimes we got lucky and received HUMV’s that were heavily armored at the factories stateside.

By the time the next entry was written, I was a sergeant. We were all hardened by the countless attacks and brutal triple-digit heat. Dealing with more than 45 pounds of body armor made life in that furnace nearly unbearable. The risks of “going outside the wire,” every time we rolled out on convoys we were targets for the insurgents, working 12- to 24-hour workdays repairing blasted and shot-up vehicles.

We started off living in tents with sandbag walls for protection. Then we moved to trailers with high concrete blast walls surrounding each of them. Each trailer was split into three rooms with two soldiers per room. Air conditioning — powered by massive generator farms — was a must as the average cool day was 95 and the extreme was close to 125 in the shade.

We had built our motor pool from scratch, scraps and Conex shipping containers. Days off were few and they were a godsend. It was late in our time there with only a few more months to go. Close to Veterans Day again.

•••••

Nov. 12, 2004, 0600 hours, LSA Anaconda

“Boom!! RPG attack!

“My day off started out with a loud bang. Maybe 20 yards away, an RPG round impacts, sending frags and gravel into our trailers and ironically into one of the honey bucket outhouses. No one hurt.

“Bad week, too.

“We lost two more soldiers this week. The worst was SFC. Ottolini** from A co.579th ENG.BN.

“He got blown in half by a homemade land mine. It exploded under the driver’s compartment of the HUMV. It was a 155mm howitzer round with a doorbell (Under a pressure plate) as a trigger. That sucks because I knew the guy.

“He could crack the best one-liners. And he had a great sense of twisted humor, too. I would be working on his rig and swap jokes. Just last week he and his crew were showing off their new 1114 HUMV. Now it is a twisted wreck.

“Damn this place!”

•••••

SFC Class Ottolini of the California National Guard died Nov. 10. A Co. 579th was assigned to us as scouts.

I’ll never forget that smell of burnt oil, cordite, antifreeze, fuel and flesh. It wasn’t the first time I smelled that particular scent and it wouldn’t be the last either. I had to inspect it along with the other mechs of my unit when it was towed into our motor pool. We got to be very good at salvaging parts off of the wrecked vehicles to keep the good ones going, including wrecks in which our fellow GIs died.

But not this time. This time I told my section leader, SFC Nelson, that I would feel like a ghoul salvaging parts from this vehicle. I just couldn’t bring myself to tear into it. We never touched it again. No one questioned our decision. It was towed off for shipment to the states for research.

We did find one flaw in the design of the 1114 HUMV. It was armored on top and on the sides in the factory. It had none on the bottom, only a sheet metal plate that we had mistaken for armor.

We honored SFC Ottolini at a memorial ceremony at the base movie theater, and later when he was put on board a C-141 cargo jet. We lined the path up the ramp of the aircraft on both sides. As his steel casket was marched by, each soldier came to attention and saluted and held the salute until the detail passed. When the casket was placed inside with the flag draped over it, we silently filed by, one at a time, to give him our final farewells. Some stopped to gently touch the casket, others paused and offered a slow salute. Some took a knee and said a simple prayer. We did this for all of them. Some of us couldn’t attend all, just some. I was lucky to attend his and it moved me in ways I’m still trying to absorb.

Here’s my journal entry from that day.

•••••

Nov. 12, 2004 1900 hours

“A darkness has come upon me. Fear. I hope to survive this. But I fear that I will carry this war to the end of my days.”

•••••

We lost 10 that year in the most violent ways imaginable. Seven were my friends, nearly all from the 579th. Most died from IED attacks, two by sniper fire. Thankfully, everyone in my section came home alive. I shall never forget them.

In their loss I learned that Veterans Day is intended to honor those who did not make it home alive. This day is very personal for me. I am pretty sure every veteran who survived any war feels the same way.

I came out of the war changed, we all did. Physically, I went from 165 pounds to 135 pounds and my collarbone was permanently separated from my right shoulder in a rollover accident on an Iraqi highway.

Many other soldiers were grievously injured. They lost limbs or were disfigured from wounds sustained from IEDs, bullets or mortars.

Other wounds harmed the spirits of the more than 20,000 active-duty servicemen and women, many who returned home carrying the curse of post-traumatic stress disorder.

That is why I honor them privately every day and publically I pay my respects on Veterans Day and Memorial Day. That is why I was at the Veterans Wall of Honor in Wasilla on Monday along with the other veterans who have served and survived their wars, their times and eras. When the haunting tune of “Taps” was played, I rendered honors with a slow salute, a heartfelt prayer and a quiet tear in my eyes.

Wasilla resident Daniel D. Grota retired from the U.S. Army after more than 21 years of service.