COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: Military Service: General
Army and Marines stretched, so Navy offers some relief
Steve Liewer, San Diego Union-Tribune
March 20, 2006
When Petty Officer 3rd Class Angela Forbes enlisted three years ago, her vision of Navy life didn't include wading through snow at a mountain camp in northeastern Iraq, waking up each morning to a cold shower and smelling the pungent odor of outdoor toilets.But that is reality for Forbes and the 520 sailors of Navy Provincial Detainee Battalion Task Force 26, which runs the new military prison at Fort Suse. About 45 of them are based in San Diego County.
"I never saw myself in Iraq," said Forbes, 22, who had worked a desk job in Coronado for Navy Region Southwest until last fall. "I was a little nervous. You hardly ever see sailors doing something like this." Even as the Pentagon looks for ways to cut its Middle East ground force of 168,000 troops, the Navy's top officer has pushed aggressively to find more shore-based roles for his sailors so they can fill in for soldiers and Marines.
"It's very clear that the ground forces have been in a very tough rotation over the last several years," Adm. Michael Mullen, the chief of naval operations, said at a Pentagon news conference last month. "If we can pitch in and help relieve some of that, we're going to do that."
Before the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Navy's shore-based presence in the Persian Gulf numbered 1,500. Most of these sailors served with the 5th Fleet, headquartered in Bahrain.
That number has swelled to 10,000, with sailors serving from Afghanistan to the Horn of Africa. About
4,000 of them are in Iraq, the Navy said.
Next year, Mullen is planning to boost both figures by about 2,000 each. The Navy's total force worldwide is about 356,000.
"I don't think people understand, we've got a lot of sailors in harm's way," said Rear Adm. Donald Bullard, commander of the new Navy Expeditionary Combat Command, which oversees many of the service's ground forces in the region.
Among the niches the Navy is filling in the Middle East:
An air-ambulance detachment of six helicopters and crews operates in Iraq. It was formed last year from squadrons in Guam and Florida to relieve Army medical-evacuation units.
A customs inspection battalion with as many as 400 sailors checks people and goods through Kuwait before they enter Iraq.
A medical team of up to 300 sailors runs a hospital at Camp Arifjan in Kuwait.
Construction battalions “ also known as Seabees “ military intelligence specialists and bomb-disposal experts work throughout the Middle East.
Civil-affairs specialists and Seabees numbering 160 sailors will join newly formed "provincial reconstruction teams" in Afghanistan.
Hundreds of Navy corpsmen accompany Marines on their Iraq deployments.
About 700 shore-based sailors in newly formed units will take over river and harbor patrol duties in the Persian Gulf from Marine and Coast Guard units starting next year.
Capt. Kathy Isgrig, the Navy's chief of augmentation, is in charge of filling most of these slots. She finds out from U.S. Central Command what troops are needed and identifies what jobs the Navy can tackle. Then she works with the Navy's Personnel Command to find the sailors or reservists to fill those roles.
Volunteers are ideal, Isgrig said, although the Navy also designates certain sailors as being available for ground duty in the Middle East.
"If you've got guys who are saying, 'Send me! Send me!' then it's a lot easier," Isgrig said.
The Navy fill-ins are giving important relief to the badly stretched Army and Marine Corps, whose units have borne the brunt of the war effort.
"It's all to the good, as far as I'm concerned," said Michael O'Hanlon, a defense analyst with the Brookings Institution, a left-leaning Washington think tank. "We're at war. The Army and Marine Corps have been getting beat up."
Still, the prospect of long and risky deployments to the war zone is adding stress to the lives of sailors “ active-duty and reserve“ and their families.
Petty Officer 2nd Class Nicholas Jackson, 27, a Navy master-at-arms, had re-enlisted for a shore-duty tour training younger guards at Point Loma Naval Base until 2008.
He learned last July that the Navy had designated him for the Fort Suse task force. He left in October for three months of Army-run training at Fort Bliss, Texas, followed by service in Iraq slated to end in September.
"I never pictured myself going to Iraq," said Jackson, one of several sailors interviewed by telephone from Fort Suse.
His wife, Melissa, stays home at the Navy's Murphy Canyon housing area with her 14-year-old daughter and infant son, who was born two months before Nicholas left for Texas.
This is Nicholas Jackson's third deployment since he and his wife met. It is by far the hardest, she said.
"(Before), I knew he was safe. I knew he was on a ship," said Melissa Jackson, 34, her voice quavering. "At least he's working at the prison. But I still worry."
It's not only the enlisted sailors who find themselves doing unexpected jobs in dangerous places.
Until recently, Capt. Michael Olmstead worked with Isgrig on the Navy's Pentagon operations staff, looking for ways the sea service could contribute on the ground in the Middle East. A career officer on surface ships, he had previously skippered the Japan-based Navy frigate Gary.
In late summer, the Navy dispatched Olmstead to New Orleans as part of the military's Hurricane Katrina relief mission. He returned from that assignment and discovered he'd been given command of the Fort Suse task force. He took over in October when its members were still in Texas for training.
"I'd been pushing for the Navy to do more things like this," Olmstead said. "So how could I say no?"
Commanding this makeshift battalion has proved tougher than running a frigate. When Olmstead took the helm of the Gary, he inherited a crew that already knew how to function as a unit under long-established Navy protocols.
In his Fort Suse task force, few of his troops have worked together before. His sailors are feeling their way through an unfamiliar mission that also is one of the military's most sensitive, as the Abu Ghraib prison-abuse scandals underscored.
"It's a lot harder than I thought when I was sitting behind a desk," Olmstead acknowledged.
In past wars, it wasn't unusual for sailors to work ashore, even in frontline roles. During the last days of World War I, for example, the Navy lashed 14-inch battleship guns to railroad cars and blasted away at the German trenches from well back of the Allied lines, said Norman Polmar, a naval analyst and historian in Alexandria, Va.
"The Navy's trying to map out a role for itself in the war on terror," Polmar said. "If it helps the Army and Marine Corps, let's do it."
Some Pentagon watchers applaud the Navy for stepping into new or long-dormant roles to lessen the stress on the shore-based services.
"It's not an ideal situation to thrust sailors into roles we've never imagined," said Suzanne Nossel, a former U.S. deputy ambassador to the United Nations and now a fellow at the left-leaning Center for American Progress. "(But) it shouldn't be that we stretch one service to the breaking point just because sailors don't do land duty."
But not everyone believes that pressing sailors into fish-out-of-water roles in the Middle East is such a good thing.
Caitlyn Antrim, a former naval officer and director of the Center for Leadership and Global Diplomacy, said most sailors train to use high-tech weapons systems. Such skills aren't easily transferred to different shore-based missions, she said.
"If you're pulling people out of their specialty to use them in a generic role, it's a waste of a resource," said Antrim, whose father received the Medal of Honor as a World War II naval officer. "You're saying you don't value them very highly in the job they had."
Antrim said she fears sailors will leave the military rather than serve in battle-zone jobs they didn't seek or haven't fully trained for.
"People join the Navy because they want to be in the Navy," she said. "They don't join the Navy because they want to carry a sidearm and work on land."
Ultimately, it will be the troops in the trenches, and their families back home, who must live with the impacts of military decisions made at the highest levels.
Melissa Jackson hopes her husband gets out of the Navy when his enlistment runs out in 2008. She's afraid his military police job will get him sent back to Iraq again and again.
"I've got to support him. He's got to do what makes him happy," she said. "We never thought it would be like this, but I guess the world changes."
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