Daily death fear for US soliders in Iraq

BAQUBA - At Forward Operating Base Gabe, soldiers work out the Nieves fitness centre and send emails from the Charles Webb room.

The base is named after Dan Gabrielson, killed in action on July 9, 2003. The fitness centre was dedicated to Isaac Nieves, KIA April 8, 2004. Charles Webb died on duty on November 3, 2004.

One wonders if they will soon run out of rooms to name the dead after. Now the KIA figure in Iraq has reached 2000, it is difficult to understand why the military would wish for so many reminders of the fallen. It's not as if soldiers aren't well-informed about the fate that may be waiting around the next corner.

While on patrol, they drive past slogans painted on concrete barriers such as "Fear God" and "Be ready, warrior".

The one that sticks in the mind of Sergeant Joseph Barnes of North Carolina, is more ominous. "There's a sign on one of the posts that says 'Is today the day?"'

Just a few hours after he escaped with nothing worse than a flat tyre from a roadside bomb that hit his fuel truck, Barnes said: "Every time you go out, you go out knowing that you might not come back."

Not going out won't necessarily save you either.

The luckiest man in FOB Gabe is Staff Sergeant Jonathan Miller, a 31-year-old from Alabama, with more than 12 years service in the Army.

One night in September he was asleep when a rocket crashed through the roof of his cabin and passed above his head, out through the wall and into sandbags. It failed to explode and he escaped with cuts and grazes.

Miller said he heard the whistle as the rocket came in and instinctively rolled off his bed to the floor.

"Usually I would have sat up so thank God I rolled over," he said.

"It was really, really loud. You have the whistle all the time when something's coming in and you think 'Hey, it's a rocket attack'. But that day it was the only thing you could hear in the world."

Miller said he and his room-mate Sergeant Michael Heard had trouble sleeping after that.

"We were both really haggard for a week."

Heard, a 26-year-old from Texas, recalls that night as "the closest to death I ever want to get".

"But that's the way it happens. He held through. God was on our side." Most soldiers at Gabe and nearby bases, most of whom have been around nine months in Iraq, have stories of lucky escapes.

Relatively few, however, have been killed.

Major John Gordino, a doctor from Texas, who runs Gabe's medical station, says the worst situation he has dealt with was when eight Iraqi soldiers seriously wounded in a car bomb attack were brought in.

He says the Iraqi security forces, a prime target for insurgents, usually have much more severe injuries than US soldiers.

"They're less likely to wear their protective equipment compared to all the American soldiers. Anything that happens is much more severe."

- REUTERS