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GUILDERLAND — Three friends from Guilderland High School’s class of 1997 say that they were glad to have each other as they served in the armed forces in Iraq.
"We played football together," Edward Person said, gesturing toward Mark Gillen.

Person, Gillen, and Michael Colloton went from high school to the State University of New York College at Cortland together, and from there into the National Guard. They made the required six-year commitment, which at the time, they did not know would mean being sent to war.
Colloton and Person called each other on the phone and with the support of the other said, "Let’s do it!" and signed up together.

They joined before the terrorists’ attacks of September 11, 2001.
Members of the National Guard hadn’t been called to active duty in the Army since World War Two, "nobody thought it would happen," Person said. He joined to pay for college, with the idea of serving one weekend a month and two weeks a year.

Since the Cold War, Person said, the National Guard is the biggest branch of the Army. It’s a reserve army, he said. As a militia, it’s useful because it is too expensive to keep such a large full-time Army, he said.

Gillen said that after September 11, the trio took on traditional National Guard state jobs, serving in Manhattan, guarding the buses, subways and power plants. Gillen was sent into Manhattan to patrol Times Square and subways, he said.

In July, 2003 the three friends received word that their Battalion was being called up to fight in Iraq.
"We still didn’t believe it," Person said. Their active duty started on October 1, 2003.
"We trained for four long months in one of the coldest places on earth, and then were sent to some of the hottest places on earth," Gillen said, shaking his head as he thought about how it didn’t make sense to train at Fort Drum to prepare for desert conditions.

Colloton’s younger brother, Mark Colloton who had graduated from Guilderland High School in 2001, was in the middle of his under graduate studies at Schenectady Community College when he was also called into active duty to serve in Iraq. He was from a different battalion but was stationed not far away from his brother’s base so the two got to visit each other often, Colloton said.

While they where lucky to be stationed near each other, Colloton added that his parents weren’t so lucky because both sons in the National Guard were called up to serve in the Army.

From February, 2004 till January, 2005 the three friends served as members of the 2nd Battalion 108th infantry.
"We were the foot soldiers, the grunts," Gillen said.

The roads were the frontline
While they traveled all over Iraq, Person said that they spent most nights in Balad, north of Baghdad, and had a number of day missions in Tikrit. They lived in a bunker, while other soldiers were luckier and lived in old palaces, Gillen said. Most days, they had to travel an hour-and-a-half to get from their base to their day’s mission.

While they are trained mortar men, most of their missions were raids or escorting fuel from Turkey to Baghdad, they said.
"The frontlines were the roads," Person said. The scariest part of the day was traveling from one place to another, especially because of roadside bombs, they all agreed.
"The enemy could be running up next to you," Person said of the guerrilla warfare.

Gillen said they would find a roadside bomb, or a bomb would go off on an everyday basis.
"They loved us being there because they didn’t have to hijack a plane to get us — we were right in their backyard," Gillen said of the insurgents.

Person said all the insurgents would do is dig a hole on the side of the road, place a bomb, and be gone. They often didn’t see the culprits, because the bombs would be placed early in the morning, before their cavalcade came through.

Gillen said sometimes insurgents would place a bomb but then wait a good ways away, hide behind a rock, and set off a detonator to be more precise as the soldiers came closer.
"They’re a bunch of MacGyvers over there," Gillen said referring to the enemies makeshift bombs and their ability to improvise using the limited supplies available to them. And they were very clever at hiding them as well, Gillen said.
"When we were escorting trucks with fuel, it is very humbling because we were moving targets," Colloton said.

They were primarily escorting Turkish drivers who were risking their lives as well, Person said.

While soldiers complaining about lack of adequate protection at a press conference in Iraq got a lot of media coverage, Person said the hype about not having proper armor wasn’t true. Two of their platoon’s Humvees were blown up and, if the men hadn’t had proper armor, they would have died, he said.
Colloton is very supportive of President George W. Bush and voted for him in the last presidential election because, "Being in the military, Bush was the best candidate," Colloton said. "He’ll take care of us... I didn’t feel like that from other candidates."

Each patrol had three Humvees so more than half of theirs were blown up, Person said.

They were lucky that none of the their direct group was killed, Colloton said, although one of their friends did loose 50 percent of his hearing.
"Complacency, that’s how a lot of people died," Colloton said of his fellow American soldiers.
When soldiers "started to get cocky, that’s when it happened," Person said.

Raids
The soldiers described raids they made on the homes of Iraqis and insurgent Iranians or Syrians.

For a raid, the American soldiers were notified a few hours ahead of time. After a quick briefing, each soldier would check equipment, gather weapons and night vision goggles, and move out, Gillen said.
"We were pretty sneaky about it, and most raids were done at 5 a.m.," Gillen said, so they caught their enemies off guard most of the time.

Once they raided a house, a helicopter would move in, he said.

Person remembers one particularly dangerous raid when the enemy started shooting back, but that was few and far between, he said.

Each Iraqi is allowed to own one gun so he can protect himself, but if he has more than one, American soldiers would confiscate them.
The three friends were trained as mortar men but, Colloton said, "There was very low call for mortar men." They generally used their mortaring skills only once or twice a month, he said.

Sometimes when they were going into a large raid, like a whole village, the mortar man’s job is to sit on the outside of the village and shoot mortars in, which results in a high death rate, Gillen said. He also explained that a mortar can be shot from up to three miles away, and is very accurate.

The Iraqis used mortar as well; they would shoot them into the Americans’ Forward Operating Base. Person said then he used radar detection to fire back at them.

Asked what it was like to fire mortars into the unknown, not sure who or how many would be killed, Gillen said that it becomes routine; and Colloton said it became second nature.
Colloton said he never got used to seeing people get injured firsthand. But it did become "common for us to hear ‘so many U.S. soldiers were killed today’ which never got easier to hear," he said.
Progress "
Soon after they arrived in Iraq, 150 American soldiers were killed in a month; April the time of Ramadan was the deadliest month while they were there, Colloton said.

Person said that they were lucky to get out and be sent home before another Ramadan, which is the ninth month of the year in the Islamic Calendar.
Iraqis who believe jihad is holy war against infidels, believe that killing one person during Ramadan counts for a thousand deaths, which all connects to the after life for them, Colloton said. So during that month, "every day we were attacked," Colloton said.

But then, right before the three Guilderland soldiers left Iraq there were 35 days in a row with no reports of anything happening, Colloton said.
"We kicked their asses basically," Person said. Over the course of a year of being stationed there, the American military reduced the strength of the opposition, they said.

Colloton said what he thinks made a huge difference is that the Americans had cleared out the insurgents weapons.

They had huge caches, Person said. One by one, the U.S. Army discovered where the stashes were and raided them, he said. Gillen said that the United States had good intelligence.

It seemed as though they had an endless weapons supply, Colloton said.

The men said that, while there is still a complete war zone in Iraq, they felt within the time they were there, that a giant step had been taken.

Another common mission they were assigned, was to escort insurgents to prison. Colloton said that, on occasion, there was someone who just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time and they would let them go.
But, Gillen said, "If someone tried to kill someone, they would be going away for a long time." Or if an Iraqi is caught with a weapon in the act, or setting up a bomb then they would be taken to prison as well. The Guidlerland men explained though that most of the time they didn’t see the culprit who set a roadside bomb, or who shot at them from far away. However, on occasion, they would come upon a man in the act of setting bomb by the side of the road.

Interaction with locals
While the battalion had a couple of interpreters, the Guilderland natives explained that, as foot soldiers, they weren’t working and interacting with local people in the rebuilding process.

The captains ran the city with the Sheiites, Gillen said.
The older captains had monthly meetings with the local people and, since America was paying for the rebuilding, Gillen said, the decision-making was split 50/50. "We gave our say since it was our American dollars but the local people also got to say what they felt should be built," Gillen said.
However, the Guilderland soldiers did interact with Iraqi children because the kids spoke English, but, Gillen said, "All they wanted was something from you." The kids were mainly "gimme, gimme," he said.
"They really don’t have anything over there... So a flashlight, it’s like gold," Gillen said.
"We handed out a lot of stuff," Colloton said. The men said they received boxes and boxes of care packages and accumulated a lot of toothbrushes so they handed them out to the Iraqi families through the children.
"The parents are traditional," Colloton said.
"And we weren’t allowed to talk to the women," Gillen said. All three men said that they only talked to the older males of a family or the children.
"I never saw a female driver on the road; the women always rode in the back," Colloton said.

While the local women were in the field working, he observed the men were sitting around in the villages chatting, Gillen said.

Iraqi men were helpful to American soldiers because they would say when a certain individual had been in a certain area at a certain time, to help the military weed out who had set up the bombs, Colloton said.

For the most part, Colloton said, he found the Iraqi people to be pretty supportive — the Iraqi nationals, he said.

After the officers got to know some of the locals they developed informants, Person said. Always for a fee, Colloton noted.

Once the military offered someone money, he would be very willing to help out, Gillen said.
"One guy turned in his own brother because he had a lot of weapons, but, in return, he got a lot of money, so his whole family could leave," Colloton said.

It is such an impoverished county, Colloton said, that large families live packed into one room. With no plumbing, Person added. Gillen said one time he saw a girl with fecal matter in her hair.
"There’s also no ethics on throwing away trash," Colloton said. The streets were full of trash, the soldiers said, which is what made it hard to see roadside bombs.

Brave men who cleared off the streets in a city every morning before the soldiers would parade into a city in a large cluster; saved a lot of lives, Person said.

Reflections
One of the worst parts of serving in Iraq for a year was the lack of sleep, said Gillen. In the middle of the night, the soldiers would hear the screaming sound of mortars and they would have to run down to the tubes to shoot back. This often happened at three in the morning, and they would serve two-hour shifts, each in a small lookout.
"For a couple of weeks, it was really bad," Gillen said of the constant fighting.
Communication was good between lookouts so, as one American soldier "saw someone shoot at us, the other would know where the shot came from and were able to fire mortars into that area," Colloton said.

Person agreed with his friends about the drain from lack of sleep and added that one of the worst things for him was the unbearable heat in the summer.

Person and Colloton’s 6 year National Guard term ended this April.

Colloton chose to sign up for an additional three years of service. He said once you complete the first 6 years, which is the minimum start, then a National Guardsmen can sign up for any quantity of additional years.

He re-enlisted because of the benefits, including government payments towards his tuition at the University at Albany, he said.

After his return home to the Unites States in January, Colloton enrolled this past semester at Albany to complete his master’s degree in special education.

Colloton said he would have completed his masters by now if he wasn’t called into active duty.
He doesn’t want to go back to Iraq but, if he were called up again, he said, "I wouldn’t complain."
Colloton said his younger brother, "will not be done until January 2008, which perfectly coincides with my new date of January 2008; so if we have to go back, it will be together," he said.

Gillen had originally joined the National Guard a year after Person and Colloton so his term won’t be completed until July 2006. He said he hasn’t decided yet if he wants to re-enlist after that. Now back in the states he says he’s been thinking about becoming a high school guidance counselor.

Person was not eager to re-enlist and decided 6 years was enough for him.
Person said his life was at a "stop loss" for a year-and-a-half.
When he was first called into active duty, "I was real upset," Person said. "I really had to put my life on hold."
At the time, he was trying to get into the Albany Fire Department and was running a very successful seal-coating business. "I was thinking, ‘This stinks; I don’t want to go.’" But now, he says, "There are no regrets."

The National Guard is a good program, Person said, it paid for his tuition at college.
After being away for a year-and-a-half, though, he has to rebuild his clientele. For five years, he has owned and operated "Empire Seal Coating Company." He had built a very successful business right out of college, but now, after being absent for more than year, he feels as though it’s like starting all over, getting his business back to what it was.
"It feels good to serve your country," Person said. He added that it was nice to come home to the support of fellow citizens, he said, explaining that people have come up to him on the street and told him how they appreciate the sacrifices he has made for them.