Iraq assignment turned out to be life changing for Grau

Wednesday, Aug. 6, 2008

He was on a team responsible for fixing radar gear and using that equipment to scan the skies for enemy rockets. If any got too close to the camp, Grau said, he and his shipmates cued their phalanx guns and made every attempt to ‘‘blast them out of the sky.” Stress came with the territory.

He was on his first individual augmentee assignment and was serving with the C-RAM unit from July to December 2007 at Camp Victory just outside Baghdad. At about 8:30 p.m., the stars were shining and a rare breeze rustled through the palm trees. He and about nine of his friends plopped down on their lawn chairs right outside the trailers where they slept and lit cigars.

They called the much anticipated ritual the ‘‘19 Hun Herf.” A herf is a group of guys who gather to smoke stogies. Grau and his friends usually met about 7 p.m. They would spend at least an hour every evening talking trash, listening to CDs and sampling any variety of leaf-wrapped tobacco, from cheap convenience store smokes to Cuba’s finest.

Grau ordered the cigars, CDs and the boom box on the Internet — luxuries that have led some to say that Camp Victory has it a bit easier than other military installations in the war-torn country. There’s Pizza Hut, Subway and Burger King. Folks on base can have their clothes laundered. Internet and phone access is readily available. They sleep in air-conditioned, two-man trailers — all posh conditions compared to ship life and other camps in Iraq.

But suddenly, the harsher reality of war thundered down. A firefight rang out just beyond the concrete walls of the camp. You could hear the ear-piercing ‘‘rat-a-tat-tat” for hundreds of yards, he said.

Rumors spread that a soldier inside the thick concrete walls was struck in the chest by a stray bullet and didn’t make it. Grau said he never found out what really happened.

Grau, 26, with seven years of service in the Navy, recounted the story sitting at his desk in dress whites at Patuxent River Naval Air Station, where he’s been assigned to Commander Fleet Readiness Center since May 2006. He said bombs at Camp Victory were often heard in the distance. And that wasn’t the only time the fight got close.

He and his friends celebrated like ‘‘wild hyenas” during the times when they were successful in blasting down rockets before they landed. If one ever hit, they felt responsible and guilty. Marines and soldiers were out for hours in the streets. They come home to the base, he said, and ‘‘they want to feel safe.”

Being an individual augmentee wasn’t easy. In addition to explosives being launched regularly in his direction, Grau said he was away from his family for nearly a year, and he went through a divorce during that time.

But those months away also offered him a chance to get his life back on track. He got out of debt. He made some friendships he thinks will last a lifetime. It gave him a new appreciation of what soldiers and Marines have to do every day. And, what he saw helped dispel what he called ‘‘generalities” portrayed in the media.

The Iraqis he met, Grau said, worked in various jobs at the camp, such as construction, cooking or plumbing. They talked about their families and pulled out pictures to show. ‘‘They weren’t the zealots you see in the news. They show up for work, joke around and relax a little,” Grau said. ‘‘But you can see a lot of fatigue in their eyes. They’ve been through a lot.”

The experience, Grau said, changed his life.

‘‘It was undeniably the most positive experience I’ve had.” For anyone going on an IA assignment, Grau said, there’s two ways to look at it. You can be bitter.

Or, he said, ‘‘you can get everything out of it that you can. Use it as a chance to meet friends, see cool, exciting things and have stories to tell your grandkids,” he said. ‘‘Seeing the world through those kinds of eyes was an experience that I wouldn’t trade.”