Active Unit News

U.S. troops at home in Saddam's palace
By Bob Dart
Cox News Service
(05-08-03)
TIKRIT, Iraq -- "My back ain't hurting no more," declared Sgt. William Daniels of Mathiston, Miss., as he stretched out in a bedroom of one of Saddam Hussein's palaces. "This bed works miracles," he said, leaning back against the gold brocade headboard. "I've never felt a mattress this soft." For a week, he had slept in the cab of an Army five-ton truck. Then Daniels and some fellow Mississippi National Guardsmen were assigned to the 4th Infantry Division's headquarters at a community of palaces in the former Iraqi strongman's home town. The division is a long way from Fort Hood, Texas and Killeen, its home town in the Texas hill country. Daniels and Spc. Steven Carlson racked out atop a pink mattress in a bedroom of what has been dubbed the "Water Palace" by U.S. soldiers. The sandstone building sits astride the green lagoon that meanders for miles through acres of buildings and gardens in this complex of opulence. "My wife wouldn't believe this," said Carlson, of Big Creek, Miss. "Twenty years old and sleeping in Saddam's bed. I've got it made." The division's headquarters staff has it better than most of its nearly 17,000 troops scattered in foxholes and tents across northern Iraq, many of whom sleeping atop Humvees and tanks or on cots under the stars. Commanding Gen. Ray Odierno had a Meals Ready to Eat breakfast Sunday on the wide drive leading to the main palace, which was hit by missiles and is not occupied. "It's certainly a lot better than where I thought I would be living," said Capt. Tim Johnson, a signal company commander from Zebulon, Ga. "There was a different lifestyle inside these walls than there was outside these walls." Indeed, the contrast is startling between the poverty in villages and many city neighborhoods and the extravagance in this walled compound of dozens of palaces. It's doubtful that the bare feet of the children who wave at passing convoys of American soldiers by the hot, dusty roads ever felt the coolness of these marble floors and stairways. The furnishings are lavish -- sometimes garish. A formal dining table, apparently mahogany, is surrounded by pink chairs with pink rattan backs and pink roses on the upholstered seats. Winding staircases have candle holders on every step. The rooms have 40-foot tall ceilings and an array of chandeliers. Outside, there are palm trees, flowering oleanders and roses. The lagoon is stocked with fish. One soldier landed a string using chewing gum for bait, a safety pin for a hook and dental floss for a line. A building that Saddam evidently used for recreation -- it contains a huge indoor swimming pool and a theater -- has been converted into the mess hall and morale center for the soldiers. Once a day, there are eat hot meals in giant dining halls beneath chandeliers. The theater is showing movies and being used for a chapel. There is talk that the pool, which is reached by a winding marble stairway, will soon be filled and used. There is limited running water and electricity in the palaces, so clothes are washed in galvanized tubs with scrub boards. Soldiers have strung clotheslines across balconies and patios. Still, some toilets -- with gilded fixtures -- actually flush. The soldiers shower outside, using hoses. No one has tried the marble bathtubs, three feet deep with throne-like seats chiseled at one end. Sgt. Barry Cannon used a satellite phone to call his wife, Tegra, back in Calhoun City, Miss. "I told her that I was living in one of Saddam's palaces and she just fell out laughing," he said.

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