Dust in wind plagues Marines

[thedrifter]

Dust in wind plagues Marines
Sun, Feb. 16, 2003
BY JIM LANDERS
The Dallas Morning News

SHAQAT AL-HUWAIMILIYAH, Kuwait - (KRT) - The 80-ton battle tanks burst through the sandstorm in column, one by one. Turrets swiveled, gun barrels stared like menacing Cyclops, antenna bowed with tiny U.S. Marine Corps flags.

The five dozen Abrams M1A1 war machines of the 1st Tank Battalion, 1st Marine Division pulled up in companies of 14 and 16 to sight their 120 mm cannon and machine guns on targets 10 miles from Iraq. Their depleted-uranium rounds can pierce any armored vehicle in the world, and flamed through many Iraqi tanks in sands like these 12 years ago.

On this day, though, the desert won.

A river of sand moving with the wind swallowed the targets, the sentries, the ammo trucks and finally the tanks themselves.

Capt. Greg Poland, commander of Delta Company, called off the firing and waited for the flood of sand to pass.

In the Sahara, such storms are called Sirocco. Elsewhere in Saudi Arabia, they are known as Shamal. When the wind lifts the dust and sand into your face in sustained speeds of 60 mph in Kuwait, it is called Tooz.

"We can barely see the tanks, and the targets are probably snapping off their 2 x 4s," Poland said. "And this is not something we can afford to be anything but patient about."

Lance Cpl. Justin Sowels, not long removed from Mesquite, Texas, was all for patience. A driver of a Delta Company tank, Sowels spends his working hours on his back, peering through a periscope, steering, accelerating and braking in the nose of a big Abrams while his crewmates let fly with shot and shell directly over his head.

"The smoke pours, there's a big flash, and it makes a lot of noise," he said.

Drivers can see no one else in the tank, and depend on radio communications to know what the tank commander, loader and gunner are doing.

"It's real solitary," Sowels said. So while the wind screamed, the corporal closed his hatch and took a nap.

Delta Company arrived in Kuwait less than four weeks ago, and joined tanks that had just rolled off the ships. The 1st Division Marines are based in Camp Pendleton, Calif., and train in lighter versions of the Abrams. These tanks in the Kuwaiti desert are usually floating half a world away from Camp Pendleton, in case there's a fight.

"These are our war tanks," said Lance Cpl. Louis Vasquez of El Paso, Texas. "They've got the heavier armor and the heavier ammo."

Pvt. Scott Twente, a tank driver with Delta Company from San Antonio, Texas, said he wished he was about 20 miles further north, rolling down the road to Baghdad "so we could get this over with."

Even in the sand river of a Kuwaiti Tooz, Poland said Delta Company can fight.

"We believe in getting to the fight as fast as we can," said the commander, a native of Burlington, Iowa. "In weather like this, I'd probably order a switch to thermal sights. We can see the heat from the enemy's tanks, and against an Iraqi T-54 or T-72, we're going to win that fight."

The Abrams tank is pressurized inside to keep out sand, noise and any toxics let loose by an enemy. Filters clear any weaponized chemicals or germs before air is circulated through the tank.

The tanks roar through the desert at 45 miles per hour. Computers measure wind speed, air temperature, barometric pressure and distance before delivering what's called a "ballistic solution" to any enemy armor.

The tank carries 504 gallons of fuel, but the battalion needs a convoy of fuel trucks bringing up the rear to keep going.

"It does suck up a lot of gas," Poland said.

Not this day. Even within the pressurized tank hull, bits of sand leak through. This is the second Tooz in as many weeks, and they will come more often as winter rolls into spring in the Gulf.

"You don't want to fight a war in the spring. Those dust storms in Baghdad choke everything to a halt," said Jim Placke, a former U.S. diplomat who was stationed in Iraq in the 1970s and who now works in Washington for Cambridge Energy Research Associates.

Delta Company does not relish this wind, either. The Marine tank crews sleep on their tanks, on the rear deck above the warm engine or, in Poland's case, on the turret to be near the radio.

Twente crawled into his driver's seat the night before, he said, after "the wind almost blew me off the tank."

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? 2003, The Dallas Morning News.

Sempers,

Roger