September 7, 2006

Liz Visick with photos of her son, Owen Powell, who is stationed in Sadr City, Baghdad, as a military policeman, and whose e-mails from the war zone are published in this article. The photos were taken at his wedding.

By Diane Chiddister

It is dusk, one of the few times of the day that Iraq approaches a reality other than that of the fifth level of Hell. The sky above is a pale cocktail blue, brightening to a washed-out yellow before sinking into a dust, brown shading of smog and sand just above the horizon. The air is cool, refreshing, now that the demon sun has dropped below the horizon and the temperature is a balmy 100 degrees. A light breeze teases a half-hearted whirlpool of sand to life in front of me, and it dances across the road for a second, before wandering off in search of another partner.

The moon is out already and almost full — a pale skull above the camp, the man in the moon’s phantom mouth silently agape in a voiceless scream. The locals have lit yet another trash fire just outside the perimeter wall — the thick black smoke, laced with the smell of burning rubber and human feces, curls and writhes in a thick, slow-motion band directly overhead, sliding greasily across the moon like a dusty veil over the face of a corpse.

In the distance, I can hear the faint crack-crack of gunfire, competing with a cheap loudspeaker wailing an iman’s call to prayer. The sounds are utterly alien, inherently unfriendly, and yet instantly sum up being in Iraq — along with the choking punch of the acrid smoke in the back of my throat, the irritating rasp of sand in my boots, and the swarmy embrace of sweat-greased body armor. I turn to my friend and say, only half jokingly, “Tell me again why we are in this country?” Phil just looks at me and grins thinly in his quiet way, and says nothing.

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In recent months, the United States has dispatched 7,000 additional troops into Iraq in an attempt to quell the rising sectarian violence, according to the New York Times. Among those 7,000 is Owen Powell, the author of the preceding e-mail, which he sent to friends and family on Aug. 11. Powell, 39, is a former Yellow Springs resident and the son of Liz Visick, a longtime village community member, who offered the e-mails to the News. An Army sergeant and military policeman, Powell was dispatched last month to Sadr City, one of the most violent sections in the increasingly chaotic city of Baghdad.

According to Visick, her son’s unit provides support for the Iraqi Army. In one of the group’s first missions, they acted as nighttime security guards for civil engineers who needed to repair a bridge:

Night missions are loved by Army types, because no matter how complicated a mission is during the day, it becomes exponentially more difficult at night. This was to be no exception.

Couple problems. First, and most worrisome, is that after two and a half weeks of working on these absolutely trashed HMMWVs, and 70 percent still not being mission ready, someone high up in the chain of command said, “That’s it, to hell with safety, I’m sending the soldiers out regardless of whether the trucks are ready or not.”…

I would appreciate it if I get killed if someone would rake these guys over the coals for sending soldiers out the gate in unsafe trucks. The infamous Donald Rumsfield mentality strikes again.

Next problem is that we were supposed to have 10 days of joint operations with the MP units that have been here for close to a year. This transition would get us acquainted with the area, the routes, the enemy, etc. – all the little specific details that might keep us alive and combat effective.

Nope. We did the one four-hour mission (which wasn’t even the mission type that we will be doing here), and wham, now we’re on our own. Learn quick, boys....

We drove through downtown Baghdad to a little FOB (forward operating base) called Loyalty, where we were to meet up with the engineers we were to escort that night. Downtown Baghdad reminds me a lot of Korea, except far more dilapidated, poverty stricken, drowning in garbage and generally shot up. Lots of people, open air markets, tons of cars that obey no traffic laws, and everything seems to be made out of cheaply poured concrete. There is a feeling of general lawlessness, and a feeling of impending violence, as if anything could explode at any time.

All of the great training that we received in Kuwait about what IEDs look like, of VBIEDs (car bombs) was all well and good there, but here EVERYTHING matches the description. One’s eyes are constantly catching glimpses of a box or can or a lump or a wire, usually a split second before you roll by it, and so I feel like I am constantly holding my breath — will it blow up? Or is it just another empty box, along with the five million other empty boxes lining the road?

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Her first-born child is a man of great contradictions, Visick said in a recent interview.

“It’s always been a tug of war, since he was about 9 years old, between this lively, pushing-the-limits, spirited person with a — poet. He’s very contemplative, endlessly questioning how he thinks and feels. He’s very sensitive,” she said.

Powell’s contradictions include an attraction to and talent with the weapons of war — he’s a very good shot, according to Visick — along with a deep questioning about the purpose of war, according to Visick. He has been strongly influenced by the pacifism of the Quakers, Visick said, and considers himself a Buddhist.

Powell, whose father, Bob Powell, was a fighter pilot in Vietnam, joined the Marines straight out of high school, Visick said. When his tour of duty ended, he attended Ohio State University and lived for several years in Yellow Springs, where his parents had a home on Allen Street in the late 1980s before they divorced. Owen Powell later enlisted in the Army and has served as a peacekeeper in Bosnia and in Korea, where he met his Canadian wife. He was stationed in Germany just before being deployed to Iraq this summer.

Powell does not support the war in Iraq and did not want to go there, his mother said. But now that he’s in Iraq, she believes he takes pride in doing his job well, and in doing his best to keep his fellow soldiers safe.

The hard point about pulling security, particularly for a fairly long time, is how easy it is to get complacent. At first it’s sort of exciting, get into a place, clear buildings, watch the rooftops, look for hidden bombs, and then...well, you just sort of sit and wait for someone to shoot at you. Or something. Anything.

After a while, we started to rotate positions, so that one person could rest while the others remained alert. I was already really tired at this point, so when it was my turn I sort of zoned out. It’s not really possible in situations like this to go to sleep, at least not for me, not yet, but you do sort of drift into a trance. The most surreal part of it, though, is to wake up from your power micro-nap, with that momentary slip of time and space where you don’t really know where you are, and you should be home in Germany snoozing next to your wife and instead realize that you really are sitting in an armored vehicle in the middle of a four-lane road in Sadr City, Baghdad, at 4 in the morning with a .50 caliber machine gun on your roof.

* * *

Like his father, Owen Powell is a big, husky man, and he’s also a very sweet man, Visick said. When he came home from the Marines as a young man, he brought for his mother, who loves stuffed animals, a huge stuffed bear. He had to ride on the plane with that bear sitting on his lap, she said.

“I believe that’s the bravest thing he’s ever done,” she said. “It was very sweet that he would do that for his mum.”

Asked how she deals with the danger her son lives with daily, Visick said she was “well-trained” by having been married to Owen’s father, who flew bombing missions in Vietnam for two years.

“At first I was devastated,” she said. “But human beings can’t sustain that level of intensity about anything. You adapt to keep going. I learned not to worry until one has something to worry about. It’s a good lesson for life.”

Right now, she said, the most important thing she can do is to love her son, and to let him know that he’s loved.

“I know you can rest on the assurance that you’re loved,” she said. “It takes the fear away. That’s what I can do for O.”

After dark, we met up with the engineers that we were going to provide security for, and eventually made our way to the gate, and prepared to drive out into the Baghdad night. At which point my radio, which had operated perfectly on the drive to Loyalty, decided it wouldn’t work, shortly followed by my night vision goggles, which had worked perfectly during my pre-combat checks early that day. So we drove out on my first combat night mission, with no radios to call for help, and effectively blind. I was not happy.

Then we got lost.

And found what appeared to be a pressure plate–activated IED stretched across the road.

And almost shot up a military convoy that came up on us and didn’t want to slow down and acknowledge our signals.

Our brand new rechargeable, two million candlepower spotlights went dead after 20 minutes.

My gunner lost the green dazzler laser that my squad leader gave to me with strict instructions not to lose.

And underneath everything is the heat, the heavy gear, the cramped and torturous confines of a HMMWV interior (surely one of the worst ideas for a vehicle the Army has ever come up with), and underneath everything else that is going on, the constant low-level, droning fear that any second now there will be a brilliant flash, a titanic shudder, and you will be dead, or missing any number of critical body parts.

So you can see how my night was going, and it was just starting. There comes a time when you just have to say to hell with it, and stop worrying, and deal with whatever is going on.

* * *

The News will publish occasional e-mails from Powell in the community forum pages.

Contact: dchiddister@ysnews.com