http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/ny-wowait133218775apr13.story
Foe They're Fighting: Boredom
4th Infantry members yet to see battle
By Dionne Searcey
STAFF CORRESPONDENT
April 13, 2003
Northern Kuwait - It was a weekend night in the desert and the First Annual Kuwaiti Redneck Rodeo was under way at the Bravo Company tent.
Soldiers lassoed their sergeant, wrestled him to the ground and hog-tied him. And then they did it again.
"When we're bored we start acting like idiots," said Pfc. Kurt Wagner, one of the ropers.
It's been three months since military brass told the soldiers in the Army's most lethal mechanized division that they were heading for Iraq. They finally made it to Kuwait last week to find that the war may have peaked without them.
"The president can't declare victory 'til we're there. He just can't," one officer said on a recent night as scenes of looting in Baghdad flashed across the sole television in camp.
While they waited to cross the Iraqi border, many soldiers in the Army's 4th Infantry Division practiced urban combat drills at a high-tech obstacle course where technicians can pump in the smell of rotting flesh and sounds of screaming women.
No one dares to mention that it could be the closest they get to urban combat.
Commanders know that with every day that passes, their chances of engaging in battle decrease. Still, they focus on fighting tactics. Around here, talk of peacekeeping is taboo.
Col. Gian Gentile, the second-highest ranking officer at the camp, said his troops would be happy to carry out whatever mission they're handed.
"Now, deep down inside, there's probably a certain sense of relief among the soldiers," that most of the fighting is done, Gentile said of the 1st Combat Brigade.
Under the tents where the ground troops live, frustration, not relief, appeared to be the most obvious sentiment. Still hoping to get involved in a piece of the fight, they've spent the past week prepping some of the Army's most high-tech equipment. But there are backlogs and shortages and electrical failures to overcome.
Waiting has been difficult for soldiers who already have made sacrifices to get this far. Spc. Stephen Alejandro of Flushing, Queens, missed the birth of his firstborn, Keira Alejandro, in March. The Army had told his unit that deployment was imminent, so officials refused to let him leave Texas to witness her birth. As it turns out, he didn't leave for Kuwait until April 5.
"All this stuff they've put us through ...," Alejandro said, trailing off. "They brought us down here so we might as well do our job."
Until then, there are human rodeos to organize, music magazines to leaf through and football games to play.
Wagner, 22, figured that by this time he'd be in the middle of Baghdad fighting off Republican Guard units. He was so sure of it, in fact, that three months ago when he received his deployment orders, he tattooed on his arm a portrait of Saddam Hussein with a bloodied bayonet through his head.
"I joined the infantry to fight my country's wars," Wagner said. "Peacekeeping is a policeman's job."
He stared at the picture on his arm.
A buddy reassured him: "It's still a good tattoo."