OCR Text |
Show Mechanized infantryman recalls the ground war They took 32,000 prisoners at Checkpoint Bravo alone. The unit had to wear chemical suits for the first 48 hours without removing them. They are made with charcoal, because it absorbs chemicals. The suits were thick and hot like a winter coat, and after three hours they were drenched with sweat. However, the suits were some of the best chemical protection suits in the world. The Russians had some that were made of rubber, like tires. They were a quarter inch thick and hard. The Americans were able to take off the chemical suits because they were told the shelf life of chemical weapons was only several days and the shelf life had expired so the weapons would be inert. Todd said that in training they were told that the United States has the third best-trained army in the world. He said the best trained troops are the North Korean Rock Troops and second best are the Israelis. Todd said he believed the allies would not have won with sanctions alone. In addition, the message the Americans intercepted was that Saddam Hussein was going to attack at-tack in one week, anyhow. In the meantime the soldiers had food but the Iraqi people did not. "Their government hurt the Iraqi people more than we did Todd said. Todd's father, a Vietnam veteran, had another perspective on the conflict. con-flict. He said he felt it took the monkey off the back of the Vietnam veterans and that the 55,000 men who died are proud of these soldiers. It gave a purpose for giving giv-ing their lives in the earlier conflict. By CHERIE HUBER Todd B air of Bountiful is just 20 years old, but his experiences as infantry in-fantry righting vehicle driver for the U.S. Army in Operation Desert Storm have made him wise beyond his years. Todd and his group left Germany Christmas Day for Saudi Arabia. However, the ship with the vehicles 4'got lost" and it took another 20 days for the vehicles, Bradley Armor Ar-mor Personnel Carriers, to get to Saudi Arabia. The mission of the tank division he served with was to stop the Republican Guard from retreating to Baghdad. If they had not been able to stop them there on the battlefield they would have followed follow-ed them to Baghdad. In comments he made recently, Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf said it was Todd's unit's work, in part, that made it such a short war. Todd was the driver of one of the front tanks. The 7th Corps followed behind the wedge of tanks. They were to hit the Hanarabi Republican Guard Division. The Iraqi Medina Division decided to stand and fight rather than try to retreat to B aghdad. That division divided forces and Todd's group was going to cut them off at the Euphrates River. Instead they regrouped and in the ensuing battle destroyed about 700 Iraqi tanks in a seven-hour seven-hour tank battle. The artillery blasts were so powerful, "they would shake you out of your seat," Todd said. "We laughed at first before they got close. Then we joked to put the idea of dying out of our minds," he said. Dying was on their minds because the life expectancy of a tank driver in a battle like the Medina battle is 45 seconds and they considered their personnel carriers car-riers to be metal coffins. However, Todd came away from the battle with a greater appreciation of his equipment. One vehicle was destroyed but even in that incident all the men escaped unharmed. Afterward Todd saw that there were chunks of metal the size of pineapples sticking into the sides of his vehicle. Todd and those on his personnel carrier had one very narrow escape during the Medina Division battle when the gunner didn't see a tank that was about to fire on them. "I saw it and yelled for him to fire. But he was looking for it over the horizon hor-izon while it was right in front of us." Todd said he felt all sensation drain out of his body, then he quickly quick-ly decided to turn the tank sharply to the right. The round blew up to the left, right where they had been moments before. Todd also ran over a land mine. They survived because the mine delayed in going off and blew up into the rear engine. The heavy engine absorbed the blast. The vehicle had to be replaced. The Iraqis Ira-qis had strung land mines all over. The only member of his unit of 50 who was injured, stepped on a land mine. There were reports of Saddam Hussein going to the front lines with the Medina Division although it was never proven to be true. Another story circulated that Hussein was in the convoy that was destroyed but that he escaped. "Or so it was reported," Todd said. American technology was proven to be superior. "We could see them and shoot two times the distance that they could. With our thermo sighting we could see a mouse move out of a hole a mile away. It registers anything making over three degrees of heat, including electrical activity," he said. Saddam Hussein told his forces that the United States did not have any high tech equipment. The United States let some of the captured cap-tured enemy see the equipment being be-ing used and then let them go so they could spread the word to the people about all the specialized equipment the allies had. "Their equipment was prehistoric, compared com-pared to ours," Todd said. The army saved a lot of Soviet equipment and brought it back. "It's incredible how much more advanced we are," he remarked. He felt that the Soviets didn't want a war because they didn't want us to know what kind of equipment they had. They tried to buy U.S. equipment equip-ment after the war. The troops also had what was then a secret weapon, a "uranium-depleted "uranium-depleted round which is radioactive. radioac-tive. It finds the weakest point in the armament and then wiggles its way in," he said. The Checkpoint Bravo mission was a show of force. Todd's orders were to blow up Russian training vehicles, capture the Iraqi troops and not to get involved with the Bedouins, the wandering nomads of the area. They saw how Saddam Hussein had hurt the people of Iraq. They saw many Bedouins passing out from lack of food and water. "We didn't have food and water for ourselves but we gave what we could. We had just two quarts of water and two meals a day instead of three quarts of water and three meals a day. One Bedouin died in front of me because of lack of ' water," Todd said. They felt sad to see what was happening. When supplies finally arrived, they gave away cases of food. Todd lost 25 pounds himself. |