Amherst soldier sees progress in Iraq

By Scott Marshall


Published: September 10, 2008

Curt Ivins, who captivated Rockfish River Elementary School third-graders earlier this year when he visited to thank them for writing to him in Iraq, is back in the United States and stopped by home in Amherst County last week to give an update and say hello.

Ivins, 23, an Army first lieutenant in the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, N.C., just finished a year in Iraq and talked about some of what he did there as an assistant intelligence officer.

His convoy-support base, Scania, halfway between Baghdad and Kuwait, had about 300 American troops assigned. They also got frequent visits from an assortment of small detachments from other countries such as Australia, Poland, Romania and Great Britain.

Rocket and mortar attacks were commonplace when he first arrived.

Ivins, a 2006 Virginia Military Institute graduate who majored in history, minored in both international studies and leadership studies and took three years of classical Arabic instruction –– and knows the language well enough to read license tags –– says the attacks subsided significantly during his year there.

“When I got there last summer, every few days, we were rocketed or mortared,” he said. “By the time I left, it was few and far in between, maybe one a month.” They went 110 days without one.

His job was to analyze what the enemy had done and what the enemy likely would do next. In between, he essentially was always on the job.

“When you’re in Iraq, the job never ends,” he said. Often, he slept in his uniform. Consequently, the stress never subsided. “That’s the part that makes you tired the most,” he said.

As part of his job, he would travel off base to meet with local officials, tribal leaders. He met the governors of two provinces. And he rode on reconnaissance patrols.

Local support became key, because their patrol area simply was too huge to manage with the number of troops they had, Ivins said. They built schools, water plants, rebuilt bridges, damns, roads, issued contracts and opened a date-processing facility. The Iraqis gradually improved their security forces, he said.

Scania Base also has a burn clinic. “It was the only one in Iraq solely for Iraqi children,” he said, run entirely with donated supplies from the U.S.

(CBS aired a report about the burn clinic: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/07/31/eveningnews/main4312349.shtml.)

A highlight during his tour: a visit by the Washington Redskins Cheerleaders. “That was a big morale booster,” he allowed.

His favorite soft drink, Mountain Dew, just wasn’t the same in Iraq. “It tastes entirely different,” he recalled, sipping a cold American-brewed can at home. It was the water or something, he surmised.

Mail was a big deal, including newspapers such as Stars and Stripes and The Army Times. Sure, they had their own Internet café with e-mail, instant messaging and access to Facebook and VoIP and pay phones. But they like holding the news in their hands, too.

Sometimes, support from home, while always important, wasn’t immediately acknowledged. “A lot of times, it had to be one-way support” because he was too mentally exhausted to reply. “It didn’t mean that I didn’t read 12 e-mails.”

“You’d say, ‘OK, he’s OK,’ ” said his mother, Sue, who teaches horseback riding at their home, so far off of U.S. 60 that cell phones typically lose reception. An American flag and an 82nd Airborne Division flag fly from the wooden-rail fence there.

And they appreciated care packages. At Christmas, he got seven boxes of supplies sent by the Charlottesville-based Blue Star Families of Central Virginia, an organization for family support of loved ones overseas (http://www.avenue.org/bsfcv).

Ivins plans to continue in the intelligence field. His next goal is to attain the rank of captain. He has about four years remaining in his Army commitment, unless he stays in longer. He probably has one more overseas deployment ahead.

Advice for people back home: Read, learn, investigate and do more than turn on television news to understand what is happening in the world. “You need to be educated,” he advised.

A major irritant to soldiers: “People say they support us but not what we do,” he said. “If you can support us, (then) you can support what we do.”

For his work, the Army awarded Ivins the Bronze Star.

Ivins’ final thoughts to the folks back home, in his own words:

“Finally, if it’s possible, I’d really like you to note and dedicate your article to my three friends and comrades, Capt. David Schultz, Staff Sgt. Laurent West and Spc. Jason Cox –– who died next to their fellow troopers defending their loved ones back home who they never got to see again, their country, and the values that they believed in –– and they believed in what they were doing.”