January 26, 2004
82nd Airborne troops try to adjust to life back in N.C.
Associated Press
FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. — Staff Sgt. Paul T. Hart is trying to break his habit of driving down the middle of Cumberland County’s roads.
It’s a practice he developed to avoid roadside bombs during a year of duty in Iraq, but no longer necessary now that he’s returned to Fort Bragg.
“It takes a while to adjust back over here about the way you drive,” said Hart, a 30-year-old squad leader from Deer Park, Texas.
Hart is among the first of about 3,000 paratroopers of the 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment and supporting units who are returning to Fort Bragg through mid-February.
“My wife says I’m driving crazy now,” Hart said. “I used to drive like ‘Driving Miss Daisy’ or something.”
The threat of bombs and ambushes made the soldiers tend to drive faster and be leery of stop signs and approaching cars that might block the road and stall soldiers who would be easy targets for rooftop snipers, he said.
Roadside bombs were the worst threat, Hart said. “These people had dog carcasses with bombs in them,” he said.
Iraqis put bombs in garbage bags and sewer drains and under rocks, he said. An Iraqi woman might flag down soldiers saying someone was hurt on the side of the road as a ruse for an ambush.
Being back in the United States means not having to worry about being shot or having somebody come up behind you, like they did when soldiers walked outside compound gates, said Spc. Jesse C. Rolli, 26, a machine gunner from Dodgeville, Wis..
He said he jumped the other night when someone popped the cork on a bottle of champagne.
“You hear gunshots. You don’t have to worry about that no more,” Rolli said.
When the returning soldiers complete a month-long vacation in mid-February, they will spend six to eight weeks in intensive training to get ready for rapid deployment, said Brig. Gen. Richard Rowe, the assistant commander for operations.
While military leaders want to assure their soldiers that predictability will return to their lives, that’s not an easy promise to keep for the rapid-deployment force during the global war on terrorism, Rowe said.
“Remember, we are the force that exists because the world is not predictable,” Rowe said.
Hart hopes he will have time at home to reacquaint himself with his children again. He has spent one year at home since his 3-year-old son was born. He missed the child’s first year after the Army assigned him to South Korea.
“I just want to spend time with my family now, peace and quiet, no more booms, no more explosions, no more bullets flying in the air, no more people asking for this and that,” Hart said.
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------------------------------------------------------------ Albert Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results.
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