Some things tend to just simply get under my skin. For example, such shyte as is written below – an article from Sunday’s Mobile Register concerning our Alabama boys now fighting in Iraq. They went over there as the 4th Alabama, but now due to some regular Army paper-pushers they can’t wear the 4th Alabama tabs! What gives?
I’m asking every Alabama reader of this blog with so much as an ounce of pride to contact Senators Jeff Sessions and Richard C. Shelby, and your Representatives in the House, and ask them what they are doing to clip some of this red tape and get those 4th Alabama tabs back on the shoulders of our fighting men! While you’re at it, tell those politicians to start honestly looking into the Dept. of Veteran’s Affairs.
Sunday, December 11, 2005
By MIKE MARSHALL
Register Editor
CAMP SCANIA, Iraq — They fought at Seven Pines, Second Manassas, Antietam, Gettysburg and The Wilderness.
In 1916, they skirmished with Pancho Villa’s bandits along the Mexican border. They were at the Battle of Marne during World War I and the Battle of the Philippines during World War II.
The Alabama National Guard’s 167th Infantry Battalion, originally known as the 4th Alabama, was activated again in 1951, broken up into smaller units and sent to fight in the Korean War.
Now, it’s in Iraq, adding to the list of campaigns that new recruits learn to rattle off by heart.
Only Company A of the 167th was officially mobilized for Iraq, but in order for the unit to reach the requisite 145 men, soldiers had to be drawn from the 167th’s Companies B and C as well. Most of them volunteered. Company A is now an eclectic bunch, representing Alabama National Guard armories in Valley, Heflin, Pelham, Cullman, Childersberg and Talledega.
Each man — for women are not permitted in infantry companies — came over here wearing a small crescent patch on his left shoulder that said “4th Alabama,” the unit’s regimental designation up until 1917.
But they wear it no more. The Army’s legendary bureaucracy has caught up with this war: The patches have been removed, officially proscribed due to a lack of proper paperwork.
The problem started in July, when Staff Sgt. Will Moore, 45, of Birmingham took a break from the fighting to go to a five-day class called “Locating Land Mines” at Camp Liberty in Baghdad. He was standing at the chow hall’s salad bar when a regular Army sergeant major called him over to his table. Here’s how Moore described the encounter:
“He said, ‘What are you doing wearing that unauthorized tab?’ and I said, ‘What are you talking about? This is our unit tab and all of us wore it over here,’ and he said, ‘You will either take that tab off or you will go to jail,’ and I said, ‘I’m sorry, but I am proud of my unit: I don’t want to disobey an order, but I’m not going to take it off.’”
As the dining hall argument escalated, military police were called. Moore finally agreed to remove 4th Alabama from his uniform until he finished the class and got off the post. He was no longer free to wear it at Camp Liberty.
But that wasn’t the end of it.
“Next thing we know, it came down through channels that no one was to wear the 4th Alabama tab,” said Moore. “It was depressing to the men. I’ve been with this unit for about six years now and there’s a lot of pride that goes with that tab.”
Staff Sgt. Bobby “Skip” Griffin, 44, now keeps the banned patch hidden beneath a pocket flap.
“After we were over here for a while, we heard that the insurgents knew to look out for the ‘4th Alabama’ tab,” said Griffin. “I guess they developed a respect for it.”
Back at home, Griffin is a full-time Guard employee at the armory in Cullman, where he repairs everything from pistols to howitzers. He and his wife, Chris, a dental hygienist, have two sons: Jacob Forest Griffin, 13, and Jeb Stuart Griffin, 11.
As you might guess from those names, Griffin is a Civil War re-enactor, although he doesn’t call it “the Civil War.” For him, it’s “the War Between the States,” or, with a broader grin, “The War of Northern Aggression.”
He and historians trace the Alabama National Guard’s 167th Infantry Battalion back to the renowned regiment that fought in the Civil War. The 4th Alabama became a National Guard unit in 1911 and it was renamed the 167th Infantry Battalion at the start of World War I, as regiments went out of fashion.
Pride in the 4th Alabama transcends race. Staff Sgt. Moore is black, as are a lot of the men in the 167th. All the soldiers want their tab back.
Asked if the 4th Alabama’s Civil War years diminished his enthusiasm, Moore’s response was immediate.
“That tab celebrates the unit’s military achievements — all through its history,” he said. “Now here we are, black and white together, and we are representing all of Alabama. That says something.”
Moore lives in Birmingham with his wife, Lola Moore, an assistant manager at the Home Depot in Fairfield. Between the two of them, they have six children, “our Brady Bunch,” as Moore calls them.
Capt. Butch Beach, commander of Company A, said that the unit has been certified as deserving of the designation 4th Alabama, but failed to file the required paperwork when its members began wearing the tab a good 20 years ago. They recently addressed that omission, applying to the Army’s Institute of Heraldry for authorization.
“Last I heard, they’re pushing up all the paperwork through appropriate channels, but I would assume that it’s going to take awhile,” said Beach.
As irritated as his men were over the enforced removal of their patches, they had bigger things to worry about.
Until about a month ago, they were encamped just south of Baghdad in the “Triangle of Death,” maintaining security around the hostile farming villages of Mahmadiyah, Yousefiya and Lutafiya.
Most of the 167th’s soldiers assigned to Humvee patrols know firsthand the shock of a roadside bomb blast. Four of them were sent home to recover from wounds. Purple Hearts were earned by 14 of the soldiers.
Here’s just a taste of what they experienced, as recounted by 1st Lt. Leo Deason, 40, a firefighter and paramedic for the city of Homewood.
“The villagers up in that area didn’t want to be seen as cooperating with us in any way,” he said Friday. “If they did that, they’d be executed.”
One brutally hot July morning, he and his men pulled five decomposing bodies out of what they called “IED Canal” because of all the Improvised Explosive Devices planted nearby. “Their hands had been tied and they’d been blindfolded, each one shot in the back of the head.”
The soldiers placed the rank corpses into body bags. “We just wanted them to get a decent burial,” he said.
They left them for an Iraqi Army unit that was supposed to collect the villagers’ remains for burial later that day.
“But they never showed up, so another platoon from Georgia went out to retrieve the body bags next morning. One of the soldiers was about to lift up a bag when he spotted ‘det cord’ inside it. That saved his life.”
The detonation cord was tethered to two 155 mm howitzer rounds.
Deason lives in Trussville with his wife, Monica; their son, Jeremy, a student at Jefferson Davis Community College; and their daughters: Jaclyn, Marleigh, and Savannah, students at Hewitt-Trussville High School and Hewitt-Trussville Middle School. Deason has spent 17 years in the regular Army and Guard.
About a month ago, the 167th moved from those harrowing neighborhoods south of Baghdad to more tranquil duty. They are in charge of maintaining security at Camp Scania, a giant truck stop that is about a 90-minute drive south from Baghdad.
Now, they live just on the edge of “The Badlands.” Convoys heading north from here travel only at night. Soldiers on convoys coming south heave huge sighs of relief once they reach Scania: They are rarely attacked as they press on toward Kuwait.
In addition to manning the gates and guard towers at Scania, the soldiers patrol Shumali, a largely friendly village of 25,000 a few miles from camp. Thursday, they inspected polling stations to be used in parliamentary elections on Dec. 15. In coming days, they will help the local Iraqi police secure those voting places with concertina wire.
Come election day, the 167th will be on standby at its camp in case trouble develops in the village.
Happy to be away from Baghdad, soldiers of the 167th mostly credit the leadership of Capt. Beach for their survival up north near Baghdad.
The son of Butch and Virginia Beach of Moody, Beach worked as an ROTC instructor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham when the 167th was called up. A reserved, smooth-complexioned 30-year-old, he looks like he could be kid brother to most of the 167th’s soldiers.
Beach commands with a quiet authority — “except for when he gets mad,” as one of his soldiers put it. He’s uniformly respected.
“I’ve spent a total of 13 years full-time in the Army, and he’s the best commander I’ve had,” said Staff Sgt. Glenn Smith, 33, of Alabaster. “He is very detail-oriented, and that drives us crazy sometimes. We trained harder than anybody when we were getting ready to come over. Other units would be taking the day off; we’d still be working.”
You might expect “weekend warriors” of the National Reserve and Guard to be assigned to support roles over here. But most of the Alabama Guard units I have visited over the past couple of years have never been far from the fight.
As Lt. Col. Scott Gedling, commander of Mobile’s 711th Signal Battalion when it was deployed here, memorably put it back in 2004:
“The Army knows that when Alabama boys get shot at, they’re going to shoot back.”
(Readers can e-mail Mike Marshall, editor of the Mobile Register, at mmarshall@mobileregister.com. He also may be contacted by regular mail at P.O. Box 2488, Mobile AL 36652.)
