Jazzy Graza

On a morning still cloaked in shadow, with dawn barely broken, the hazy silhouettes of Fullerton ROTC members assemble in the darkness before breaking off into three groups to begin exercise drills on the Matador Soccer Field.

The mornings end differently than they used to for Sgt. Berenice Rivas and the half dozen or more members who served in Iraq.

Exercise begins at 6:30 a.m., Monday, Wednesday and Friday, under the guise of a new day.

That much is pretty much the same. For Rivas though, the incentive is no longer to get back indoors before the heat rises to a blistering 140 degrees like it did in Iraq.

Medical Sgt. Chris Redding reported to exercise from a U.S. base in Germany before heading to Landstchul Medical Hospital, where he was surrounded by the sights and sounds of the war.

From June 2003 to October 2004, Transportation Sgt. Antonio Limcaco would begin Monday exercising but it would end roaming through Iraqi towns in a truck, on alert for any IEDs – improvised explosive devices – suicide bombers or roadside explosives.

“I would sweat so much. I drank a lot of water,” said Rivas, who was with 223rd Finance with the National Guard, 15 miles outside of Baghdad. “I know a lot of soldiers who would faint because it was so hot. The heat was one of the biggest threats.”

In Kuwait, Medical Sgt. David Wurbel, 25, watched the war from a hospital where he treated patients as a medic. He was attending Orange Coast Community College before being deployed to Kuwait in February 2003, before the U.S. invaded.

In Kuwait, once the war was underway, Wurbel said he would normally see between 200 and 300 patients a day. A mass casualty accident could bring as many as 500 soldiers to the hospital in two hours.

“As the war progressed, we started seeing more actual combat injuries: gunshot wounds, shrapnel wounds, multiple fractures from car accidents, multiple shrapnel wounds from the IEDs,” Wurbel said.

Redding, deployed to Germany in 2004, said because of the of his role as a medical sergeant, he needed to arrive each day sharp and ready regardless of what was seen the previous day. Though he said he talks about his experiences occasionally with his wife, he said most people “wouldn’t understand.”

“It’s very mentally draining seeing casualties every day. If you are downrange, I would suspect you would see casualties frequently but not 24-7,” Redding, a history major, said. “You rely on your friends a lot to keep you motivated. With technology today – e-mail, phone calls – we were fortunate. All of us had our own family support systems. But our individual friends over there are what we really rely on to keep us motivated.”

Wurbel said his war experience could be broken down into three phases. In the beginning, before being deployed, he said it was reminiscent of WWI with all the parades and celebrations.

After one of the medics was killed when his ambulance was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade, Wurbel’s experience entered the second phase, becoming “a real war and our friends can die. Then it became more of a personal war because you knew somebody who had died,” he said.

The final phase began when a father of an Iraqi girl brought in his daughter, who was badly burned, to one of the facilities.

“Then it became more,” he said. “It’s not just the soldiers but everyone is affected.”

Sgt. Andrew Adams was deployed in September 2004 with the Marines. U.S. forces aborted an attempt to seize control of the insurgent stronghold in April after a compromise was reached between the two sides, but re-engaged in battle on Nov. 7, 2004. Adams was part of the second offensive.

Leading up to the battle, Adams participated in convoy operations and guarded the main supply route on the Iraqi highway, looking for insurgents and IEDs. The expectation going into the battle was 80 percent casualties, Adams said.

“So I kind of figured I would die,” the 24-year-old history major said. “I am kind of religious, so I just prayed to God and made things right with the Lord and whatever happened, it will be done. If it was my fate to die with the team, I’ll die for it.”

It would be two weeks before U.S. forces gained control of the city. As a fire-team leader with 3rd Battalion 5th Marines, Adam’s team kicked down doors and cleared the area, building by building, in search of insurgents and weapons.

In his searches, Adams said he found automatic weapons, grenades and “tons of explosives.” He would remain stationed there until the end of his deployment. Several friends he knew died in the battle, he said.

“Every day was intense,” he said. “From the beginning of the day, we would load up our rifles. We were clearing rooms, clearing buildings. Each door you kick in, you never know if that will be the last one you will be kicking in because somebody could be waiting on the other side. In some of them … they were there waiting, and they got smoked [if they didn't surrender].”

As a part of Transportation Company 211, Limcaco was in Iraq on Dec. 15, 2003, when news arrived that Saddam Hussein was ambushed by military forces where he hid inside a cellar 10 miles south of his hometown of Tikrit. Limcaco remembers patrolling the base when he heard the news.

“It was pretty bad, it got hectic” in the days that followed, Limcaco said. “There were a lot of riots. There were gunshots everywhere. There were people mad, people angry because we captured their leader. There were people happy because they were free from his dictatorship.”

Though the capture of Saddam Hussein was broadcast worldwide as a victory, Limcaco’s enthusiasm was muted by not knowing when he would be able to return home. Limcaco’s term was extended several times, he said.

“In your heart you were celebrating, ‘yeah, we caught him.’ One of our main objectives was to catch Saddam Hussein,” Limcaco said. “But that doesn’t give you any concrete news that you’re going home.”

He said the soldiers were informed in a straight-forward manner.

“Basically, you got to support your friends, your comrades you’re with,” Limcaco said. “When they’re down, you got to give them support. It was really tough.”

On Jan. 31, 2005, Rivas, an environmental studies major, was in Iraq when the first free elections were held. In anticipation of the elections, Rivas said the base was put on alert out of fear that it might get mortared by Iraqi insurgents.

“It was in the newspapers,” Rivas said. “Everybody on the base knew that the elections were taking place so we were expecting something violent. But we actually didn’t experience anything violent.”

Despite the debate about weapons of mass destruction that led Limcaco to Iraq, he said U.N. inspectors’ final verdict that no weapons existed did not mean much to him.

The reason why the troops were there was not as important as following orders.

“You have to support the president no matter what. Our mission is to follow the orders of the commander in chief and the officer appointed over us,” Limcaco said. “So when they tell us, we’re out there to find weapons of mass destruction, we have to support them – even if there are none found at the moment, our mission and our goal is to follow the orders of our commanders.”

During boot camp, Rivas’ superiors drilled into her that she would eventually be deployed to Iraq. By the time she was deployed, the directives of the war had changed.

“I think it was very ambivalent because there were different things going on. There was talk about democracy, elections, talks about no weapons of mass destruction, so what’s going to be our next step,” she said.