Story Photos
 From left to right, Spc. Chris Washington, Spc. Chris Merwin and Pfc. Jerry Neher pack supplies at the National Guard Armory in Longview as Bravo Battery readies for a second deployment to Iraq. Bill Wagner / The Daily News
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Bravo to Iraq: Local Guardsmen prepare for looming deployment
Monday, June 16, 2008 6:11 PM PDT
By Thacher Schmid
Printable version
E-mail this articleFor the soldiers in Bravo Battery, the hardest part of readying for war in Iraq has nothing to do with learning how to use new M-4 rifles or an armored vehicle’s GPS navigation system.
It comes in a tiny package, complete with coos, screams and poopy diapers.
Spc. Chris Merwin, Spc. Tutulu Kaumatule and Sgt. Josh Albright will say goodbye to newborn babies before they deploy: Merwin to three-month-old Lilea, Albright to six-week-old Payton, and Kaumatule to a yet-unborn son due in August.
Tying up loose ends with families is just one of the obstacles facing the Longview-based National Guard unit, part of the U.S. Army National Guard’s 81st Armored Brigade, 2nd Battalion, 146th Field Artillery Regiment, due to deploy to the Middle East for the second time in the fall. This time, the mission will be decidedly more dangerous.
Bravo watched over four Kuwaiti bases in 2003, but this time around it’s guarding military convoys in chaotic Iraq. The roughly 100 members of the artillery battery will have to learn new infantry and military policing skills as they head to training in Yakima on July 12 and at Fort McCoy in Wisconsin in late August. The time of deployment and exact location in Iraq are classified.
“I’m more worried about her,” Merwin’s wife, Alicia Merwin, said of Lilea as she dabbed her eyes with a cotton kerchief. “When he comes back, she’s not really going to know who he is, and I think that’s the hardest part for both of us.”
Alicia Merwin is making a quilt for her husband of 14 months, and the couple has been seeing a therapist to learn skills needed to navigate a long-distance, stressful relationship. Chris Merwin said he’s going through his “honey-do” list, working on Lilea’s nursery and “doing the whole nesting thing.”
“Yesterday (Lilea) laughed for the first time, and we were so happy, and at the same time it was sad because it was like, man, it’s the stuff I’m going to be missing,” he said in the couple’s Kalama apartment.
For Sung Ja (SUN-jah) Albright, caring for a young one while Sgt. Albright goes off to war is a familiar challenge. She nursed Dylan, 4, when her husband went to Kuwait in 2003. Now, however, she also has Cayden, 1, and baby Payton.
“It’s hard enough just trying to get used to the idea of having three kids, then all of a sudden you take him out of the picture and it’s a little scary,” she said.
Dylan and Cayden are both “big daddy’s boys” and likely to “take it pretty hard” when he goes, Josh Albright said.
‘Not a video game’
The three Guardsmen said they will rely upon their training and others in their close-knit unit to get them through the deployment.
Merwin and Albright are both guys you wouldn’t pick a fight with, but Kaumatule, 20, is a brick house, a former wrestler who won tournaments for Hudson Bay High School in Vancouver. Yet the nickname Bravo Battery gave him is “Kate,” from “K plus eight,” a reference to his last name and a TV show. Headed to a war that started when he was a freshman, Kaumatule said he’s scared but plans to keep on his toes and focused on his job.
“I can’t really go in thinking I’m Superman, because I’m not,” he said. “It’s not a video game; I can’t just press ‘restart.’”
Kaumatule joined the Guard unit at age 17, part of his effort to contribute to his family after learning his mother Monika had thyroid cancer. As part of the Guard’s “split op” program, he was able to go back and finish his senior year after completing basic training. He’s now assigned to the unit’s honor guard, responsible for military funerals, and said he’s glad he hasn’t had a funeral for an Iraq soldier, “because if I did, I wouldn’t know how to contain myself.”
“I had to present my first flag the other day to a woman whose husband passed away, and she bawled, and inside, I was crying,” he said. “Outside, I couldn’t.”
“I just hope someone from my group doesn’t have to present my flag to my family.”
Merwin said when he went to Kuwait in 2003, he never dreamed he’d be back.
“I thought (the war) would be over with by now,” Merwin said. But he knows he has a responsibility to follow his orders despite whatever reservations he may have.
“It’s very complicated, you know? He’s my commander-in-chief, you know?” he said, speaking of President Bush.
Josh Albright said he understands the Iraq mission will be tougher than Kuwait, and in some ways, the wait is the hardest part.
“It’s this excitement and this fear, and this dread,” Albright said.
He and Sung Ja tried hard to be serious as a reporter filmed a Web video, but smiles kept creeping into their expressions as they observed the antics of young Dylan and Cayden.
“These are my weapons of mass destruction right here,” Josh Albright joked, as Cayden screeched and Dylan repeated “say cheese” over and over.
Mixed emotions on war
The families’ conflicted feelings about the war — now more than five years old — parallel the country’s. A recent Gallup polls indicate 63 percent of Americans now see the conflict as a “mistake,” while 65 percent believe the U.S. has an “obligation” to remain in Iraq until it stabilizes.
Sung Ja said she supports her husband but not the war.
“This time around, it’s a little bit more difficult for me to accept that he has to be there, because in reality I don’t feel like he should,” Sung Ja Albright said. “I fully support him, obviously. I don’t support the war, and that makes it kind of hard. It kind of puts you in an awkward position, I think.”
Spc. Tutulu Kaumatule (Kau-ma-TOO-lay) lives in Vancouver, his birthplace, but his close-knit family is from the Pacific island of Tonga. Though both his mother and father made a point of saying they’re proud of him, several family members openly admit they oppose the war, including Kaumatule’s grandmother and cousin Sas, who he considers a brother.
“I don’t want him to go,” Sas Ngauamo said. “I don’t like military in general.”
The pair’s pre-deployment plans include a road trip and reggae music festival — and partying “like it’s 2099,” as Ngauamo put it.
Kaumatule plans to leave training in Yakima to return for the birth of his son to his girlfriend, Sarah. He said he’s grateful he will get to see the boy, as yet unnamed, before he leaves. He hopes the deployment doesn’t damage his relationship with Sarah, who declined to be interviewed.
“I’ve heard so many stories, people married (or) breaking up overseas, and I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I’m just hoping for the best,” he said, his smile giving way to a furrowed brow. “If it doesn’t work out while I’m overseas, it doesn’t work out, but I can’t let that affect my job, because when it does, other people get hurt around you.”
Changing duty
Bravo Battery has a long history of diverse roles. Before World War II, it was a medical unit, but in 1939 it was reassigned to anti-aircraft guns in Alaska. During the Cold War, Bravo became a tank unit, then artillery, firing 155-millimeter howitzers — “king of battle,” as Merwin put it. (“He likes explosions,” Alicia Merwin explained.)
In Iraq, Bravo will be infantry-police, guarding U.S. military convoys, a more risky and intense role than its 2003 job of guarding four Kuwaiti bases.
“This unit has had to go through a lot of fluctuation historically,” said Sgt. Christopher Bailey, the unit’s top full-time non-commissioned officer. “It’s nothing new, that we’re doing something that we were not designed to do.”
Bailey said the mobilization order was for a year, but the amount of time spent in Iraq should be closer to nine months. He said the unit’s total number, which has dipped to around 50 in the past, will be “well over 100” by the time of deployment, due to “different assets around the state being moved around.”
The unit recently received new M-4 rifles, with shorter barrels than the older M-16s, and will get plenty of new equipment. According to Merwin, who's filling in for the unit’s departed supply officer, that includes bulletproof vests, eye protection, flame-retardant gloves, uniforms and a new class of armored vehicle.
Bailey said the unit would train on the relatively new “Guardian” armored vehicles at Yakima — which look like a cross between a tank and a Humvee. In Iraq they’ll work from even newer versions of the Guardian, featuring V-shaped hulls designed to minimize damage from improvised explosives.
“There is a newer (vehicle) that is being fielded, but we’re not allowed to train on that,” Bailey said. “Those are being sent to Iraq. I don’t even know the name. It’s a beefier, bulked-up version of the Guardian, with a bigger crew.”
Albright has been with the unit 15 years and, like the others, described the unit as cohesive.
The unit trains just once a month. Faced with new dangers and unfamiliar equipment, the upcoming Yakima and Fort McCoy trainings will be pivotal. Albright personally plans to focus on mastering new navigational systems.
“I think this time our mission is a lot more serious,” he said.
Service and humility
Helping victims of the flooding and torrential rain and winds that pounded the Northwest in December was a mission Bravo Battery soldiers found inspirational, they said. Given the increasingly murky situation in Iraq — one that analysts conservative and liberal say threatens to descend into civil war — the homegrown mission now stands out in contrast to the imminent deployment.
“We were out there helping out, kicking butt,” Merwin said. “I think that’s what the National Guard’s about right there, is helping families that need their help. I think that’s why most of us joined, you know? We sent a whole bunch of guys to the coast, and their eyes were, they were just really excited about doing something really close to home.”
“I think it’s really important to help people,” Albright said. “I happened to be one of the people that went down to Pacific County to try to alleviate some of the problems (and) it motivated me and inspired me.”
Those experiences, and the connections between soldiers with diverse life paths and shared duties, will be Bravo’s strength.
“I’ve been in (the National Guard) for 16 years now, and I have friends in the unit who I’ve worked month in, month out with for 12, 14, 15 years with some of them,” Albright said. “You develop strong bonds during that time.”
The unit’s close ties have made an impression on Kaumatule, who called Albright “a great leader” and said Merwin “would give you the shirt off his back.”
“I don’t know what it is, I don’t know how to explain it, we’re just close,” Kaumatule said. As much as the soldiers will miss their own families in Yakima, Wisconsin and Iraq, “we’re still family,” he said.
Bravo videos
Spc. Kaumatule
Pfc. Chris Merwin
Sgt. Josh Albright (coming soon)
Featured Bravo soldiers
Spc. Tutulu Kaumatule
Age: 20
Hometown: Vancouver
Years in Guard: 1.5
Deployment: First
Spouse: None, girlfriend Sarah
Children: None (son due in August)
Pfc. Chris Merwin
Age: 23
Hometown: Kalama
Years in Guard: Six
Deployment: Second
Spouse: Alicia
Children: Lilea, 3 months.
Sgt. Josh Albright
Age: 35
Hometown: Kelso
Years in Guard: 15
Deployment: Second
Spouse: Sung Ja
Children: Dylan, 4, Cayden, 1, Payton, 6 weeks.
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