Spc. Stephen L. Bray, administrator with the 248th Area Support Medical Company out of Marietta, Ga., and Catchpenny's lead singer Christian Schauf sing together during a free rock concert Sept. 23 at the Morale, Welfare and Recreation east at Joint Base Balad, Iraq. Catchpenny allowed Bray, a Cartersville, Ga., native, on stage to play guitar with the band. Photo by Sgt. Ryan Twist

For a moment, service members put their jobs on hold and enjoyed a free Catchpenny rock concert Sept. 23 at Morale, Welfare and Recreation east on Joint Base Balad, Iraq.

Catchpenny was the 2009 Armed Forces Entertainer of the Year – the highest honor associated with touring for Armed Forces Entertainment.

“My hope is always that people have fun for a couple (of) hours and I don’t know if we’re going to change their week, but if we can change their day, that is pretty good,” said Christian Schauf, Catchpenny’s lead singer. “We have always wanted to make an impact with our music and do something positive with it.”

Christian Schauf, a Minneapolis native, said he can see a difference in the service members after the band’s concerts.

“You see the looks on their faces, and for that minute they forget they were in the middle of the desert and it’s 110 degrees,” said Zachary Schauf, Catchpenny’s singer and keyboard musician and Christian Schauf’s brother.

Sgt. Michael Carruth, the battalion maintenance office clerk with E Company, 2nd Detachment, 106th Support Battalion, out of Collins, Miss., attached to Task Force 1st Battalion, 155th Infantry Regiment, said he was one of those Soldiers.

“The Catchpenny concert took my mind off missing my family for a couple of hours,” said Carruth. “I am thankful. It was a perfect way to take my mind off matters here as well.”

Carruth said anything that can help service members ease their everyday stress is great.

“I loved the concert,” said Carruth. “I love music, so having a rock band perform for the troops is totally awesome. I was surprised at the fact they brought Soldiers on stage to play music with them. They seemed to love what they were doing as well.”

Zachary Schauf, a Minneapolis native, said his grandfather served in Korea and his older brother served in Iraq in 2003. He said the military has always been a big part of his life, and performing offers him a rare chance to give back.

“We feel really honored to have this opportunity to give back,” said Zachary Schauf. “It’s such a sacrifice for you guys to be over here. We’ve got to see firsthand that it’s not an easy job. We’re just thankful for the opportunity to hopefully help out for a minute, to give back a little bit.”

Christian Schauf said he has one life to live and he wants to do something entertaining and worthwhile with it.

“I always say we’re the rodeo clowns,” said Christian Schauf. “We are over here, but you guys are doing all the hard work and it’s really humbling to be over here and to see what people do for a year. We’re appreciative of that and we support what’s going on and try to do everything to do our part.”

The band has released two CDs and is working on their third.

“It was great to see a talented band perform for us here at Balad, and to speak with the members of the band before the show,” said Carruth. “I got the sense that they really believed in what they were doing for the troops. Catchpenny has gained at least one new fan.”

DVIDS
Story by Sgt. Ryan Twist

Today’s Bloggers’ Roundtable was with Air Force Lt. Col. Thomas N. Williams, Jr. Ph.D., P.E., Chief of Planning, Engineering Directorate, Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq. Williams is part of the ministerial level assistance being provided the Iraqi government.

In a recent news story for the Department of Defense, Lt. Col. Williams highlighted three projects as examples of the work being done by the Iraqis to become more environmentally friendly.

Many parts of the Middle East are notorious for their attitude towards equipment maintenance. “Run it until it breaks” is often the only way operators know to handle even the most critical equipment in their nation’s infrastructure. One of the initiatives that is being put forward in Iraq to counter this attitude trains the Iraqi military to operate and maintain their own equipment.

Lt. Col. Williams told us that these training programs are working, but that graduates are often leaving the military for higher paying jobs in the civilian sector. The training also covers topics congruent with maintenance, such as the proper disposal of wastes. As an example, the training teaches correct disposal of waste oil, rather than just dumping it on the ground.

With Iraq facing a host of equally important issues, such as the drought, needed transportation improvements and the necessity of importing refined oil products, Williams anticipates that the mission of his office will continue for as long as the American military is in Iraq. The key, as he sees it, is to demonstrate to the Iraqi ministries how environmentally sound practices aid in creating the solutions to Iraq’s many problems.

An Iraqi traffic policeman watches as cars go through a green light at a busy intersection in downtown Kirkuk city, Iraq, May 9. The street lights have been operational for less than a month, but already the lights have helped make the job of controlling traffic easier. The new traffic lights along with barrier removals throughout Kirkuk city were made possible due to increases in security as the city returns to a state of normalcy. Photo by Pfc. Justin Naylor

Imagine a city about the size of San Francisco with large barriers blocking off busy roads and market areas, and no working stop lights.

In Kirkuk city, Iraq, that was the case until recently, when security gains have allowed for city-wide projects to begin removing barriers from around police stations and market areas, as well as repairs to traffic lights.

The barriers, which had been in place for several years, were used throughout the city to help reduce possible vehicle-borne improvised-explosive device threats, and make the job of the Iraqi police easier by controlling the traffic flow in certain areas, said Capt. Brad Hardy, an Akron, Ohio, native and the commander of Headquarters and Headquarters Battery, 3rd Battalion, 82nd Field Artillery Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division.

By removing these barriers, we are helping return the city to normal and allowing the residents here to move more freely, which builds confidence in them about the police in the city doing their job of keeping Kirkuk’s residents safe, explained Sgt. Ammed Mustafa Ismael, a member of the Emergency Response Unit in Kirkuk.

“The security situation has just improved so much lately that we can remove these large barriers and feel confident about it,” said Ismael.

For Kirkuk’s residents who make a living by selling goods in markets, the barriers have created obstacles for potential consumers, limiting the number of customers.

“It’s a great idea,” explained the owner of a small shop about the barrier removal. “It makes a big difference in business and it is a lot easier for people to come and go.”

It is time for the city to return to normal, and the barriers were just creating too much congestion in busy areas, said the shop owner.

“The people [of Kirkuk city] were ready to see the barriers go,” said Lt. Col. Terry Cook, the commander of 3rd Bn., 82nd FA Regt.

Traffic lights have been turned on again in a few busy intersections of the city.

“The traffic lights are doing their job,” explained a Kirkuk city resident. “It has been a lot safer driving around.”

“Everyone stops for it,” said 1st Lt. Akmad Hussein, an inspector for the Kirkuk city traffic police. “The people of the city are learning to respect the lights, and we have been giving out tickets to those who do not.”

“The lights definitely make our job a lot easier,” he said.

Workers will continue to remove barriers from around the city as district council members approve more locations, and new traffic lights are established throughout Kirkuk, said Cook.

DVIDS
Story by Pfc. Justin Naylor

Lioness tells the story of a group of female Army support soldiers who were part of the first program in American history to send women into direct ground combat. Without the same training as their male counterparts but with a commitment to serve as needed, these young women fought in some of the bloodiest counterinsurgency battles of the Iraq war and returned home as part of this country’s first generation of female combat veterans. Lioness makes public, for the first time, their hidden history.

In April 2004, at the height of the insurgency in Iraq, five female soldiers unwittingly found themselves fighting alongside Marines in the battle for Ramadi and Fallujah.

Their story is told in a documentary film bearing their unit name, “Team Lioness,” which has been shown in private and public screenings throughout the United States and Europe in the past year. The Center for Women Veterans hosted the film at the Department of Veterans Affairs headquarters here yesterday.

“These stories are important to us at VA, because women veterans are coming to VA in great numbers, and we need to make sure we understand their experiences,” Betty Moseley Brown, associate director of the VA’s Center for Women Veterans, said as she introduced the film to an audience of about 50 viewers. “They became the first female soldiers in U.S. history to be sent into direct ground combat.”

Since the American Civil War, women have played important roles in the U.S. armed forces during war time — as nurses, journalists, pilots, engineers, logisticians and much more. But what they’re not, still, is infantry, armor or artillery — combat-arms specialties.

Still, many female servicemembers have been wounded and killed as a result of enemy fire. But it wasn’t until the start of the Iraq war in 2003 that women began finding themselves engaged in direct fighting.

Team Lioness pioneered women in direct fighting, although somewhat unintentionally. The women were intended to augment combat-arms platoons to search Iraqi women for money, weapons and drugs smuggling at checkpoints and on patrols. But eventually, their new roles in the ranks of combatant units led to ground combat alongside infantrymen, cavalrymen and artillerymen on the frontlines.

The film opens in a wilderness setting with b-roll of trees and damp leaves lining a still-flowing creek. The only sounds for several seconds are crickets chirping in the background. The tranquil silence of Mena, Ark., is suddenly broken by the boom of several shotgun rounds fired at a turtle in the creek.

The documentary’s introduction of Shannon Morgan, a former Army mechanic and Lioness, shows her innocence as a country girl, but with an obviously troubled past. Much of the film follows her around her family’s farm as she hunts squirrels with her shotgun and shares emotional testimonies of her time in Iraq.

“I don’t watch the news. I don’t read newspapers,” Morgan says in the film. “But the memories of war never go away.”

Morgan and the other Lionesses said they never expected to have to fire their weapon. But they quickly found themselves performing combat patrols, raids and house-to-house searches with the Marines in what was considered the most dangerous region of Iraq during what was arguably the most dangerous period of the entire campaign.

The Lionesses talk about their first enemy encounters and the stress of seeing dead bodies for the first time, while fighting to stay alive. Morgan recalled battling with the darkest side of war just before shooting an insurgent in a firefight.

“It’s something you learn to deal with,” Morgan said. “I don’t regret what I did, but I wish it had never happened.”

The soldiers also talk about the difficulties of learning the tactics and vocabulary of the Marines they worked with. The transition from their Army ways, plus the frequency of enemy engagements, didn’t allow for much of a learning curve to make up for their lack of knowledge of various weapons systems, Army Capt. Anastasia Breslow, a signal corps officer and former Lioness, said in the film.

“If everyone [in the platoon] had been hurt, I would have had no idea how to get back to the forward operating base,” Breslow said. “I didn’t know how to use the biggest casualty-producing weapon we had. I felt we needed to know more.”

Although the film takes place primarily on the home front with Lioness and family interviews, it brings to light the realities today’s generation of military women, and all combat support troops, face in Iraq and Afghanistan. The line that separates the front from the rear is blurred by the urban and guerilla warfare troops encounter fighting terrorism within the Middle East.

The nature of modern warfare — fighting counterinsurgencies in random locations, as opposed to nation states on prescribed battlefields — has made it difficult to define what constitutes a combat-arms military specialty and what doesn’t.

Military women today still cannot legally serve in combat-arms positions, but they serve competently and are trained in a variety of roles and capacities in Iraq and Afghanistan because of the lessons learned from the original Team Lioness. Their experiences prompted training for women that was never done before. They learn infantry tactics, qualify on more weapons, and are better prepared for the chance they may have to engage the enemy.

“As a result of their experiences, now each military service trains female servicemembers to be Lionesses, training that was not offered whenever this documentary was actually filmed,” Brown said, referring to the weapons and tactical training female military members now receive.

DoD
By Army Staff Sgt. Michael J. Carden
American Forces Press Service

Captain Kim N. Campbell with her damaged A-10 Warthog

First profiled here.

Captain Kim N. Campbell is awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for heroism while participating in aerial flight as an A/OA-10 fighter pilot, 75th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron, 332d Expeditionary Operations Group, 332d Air Expeditionary Wing at Ahmed Al Jaber Air Base, Kuwait on 7 April 2003.

On that date, at North Baghdad Bridge, Iraq, flying as Yard 06, Captain Campbell’s professional skill and airmanship directly contributed to the successful close air support of ground forces from the 3d Infantry Division and recovery of an A-10 with heavy battle damage. While ingressing her original target area, Captain Campbell was diverted to a troops-in-contact situation where enemy forces had positioned themselves within 400 meters of the advancing friendly forces and were successfully preventing the lead elements of the 3d Infantry Division from crossing the North Baghdad Bridge.

Unable to eliminate the enemy without severe losses, the ground forward air controller had requested immediate close air support. After a quick situation update and target area study, Captain Campbell expertly employed 2.75 inch high explosive rockets on the enemy position that had been threatening the advancing forces, scoring a direct hit and silencing the opposition.

During her recovery from the weapons delivery pass, a surface-to-air missile impacted the tail of Captain Campbell’s aircraft. Immediately taking corrective action, she isolated the hydraulic systems and placed the A-10 into the manual reversion flight control mode of flight and prepared for the long and tenuous return flight to Kuwait.

Captain Campbell’s aviation prowess and coolness under pressure directly contributed to the successful completion of the critical mission and recovery of a valuable combat aircraft. The outstanding heroism and selfless devotion to duty displayed by Captain Campbell reflect great credit upon herself and the United States Air Force.

Distinguished Flying Cross Society

Damage from missle to Captain Kim N. Campbell's A-10 Warthog

Captain Kim N. Campbell stands with her battle damaged A-10 Warthog

With the throttle still full out, Campbell began to make her move up and away from the target. She was just beginning to move to her left, with the familiar, solid sensation of G-forces underneath her seat, “when I felt and heard a large explosion in the back of the aircraft.”

“There was no doubt in my mind,” she said. “I knew exactly what it was. I knew I’d been hit.”

It was an anti-aircraft missile, and the impact had sheared both hydraulic lines to her jet.

“Our hydraulics are really what allow our flight control system to function normally,” Campbell said. If the system is compromised, rudders, flaps, and other critical flight and landing gear won’t work.

“At this point there’s really one option,” Campbell said, “and that’s to switch to manual inversion” the A-10′s backup system of cables.

Campbell also knew she had a second option: eject and allow the plane to crash.

But there were civilians down there, and there was no knowing who would be hit by the burning Warthog.

Moreover, “ejecting in itself over friendly territory is one thing. Now, ejecting over enemy territory and going down over Baghdad, where we were just delivering ordnance on Iraqi Republican Guard, is a totally different story.”

Stars & Stripes