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Soldiers to share stories on GazetteXtra blog

A Janesville-based Wisconsin National Guard unit began its tour of duty in Iraq this spring.

Starting today, men and women of Alpha Company will tell the stories of their daily lives on a blog on the Gazette's Web site.

Alpha Company is part of the 132nd Support Battalion, which is part of Wisconsin's 32nd "Red Arrow" Brigade, comprising about 3,200 soldiers now in Iraq.

Alpha Company's approximately 150 members come from across southern Wisconsin.

Coordinating the blog on the Iraq end is Spc. James Morrow. In civilian life, Morrow is a UW-Whitewater student from Milwaukee.

Readers may recall that Janesville gave the soldiers a warm send-off in February. Soon afterward, the unit was on its way to Fort Bliss, Texas.

The Red Arrow's sojourn in Iraq comes at a critical time. American forces are withdrawing from Iraqi cities. Iraqi forces are replacing them.

Alpha Company is not involved in combat. It is at Camp Bucca, a prison camp in southern Iraq near the Kuwait border. Summer temperatures can soar higher than they ever get in Wisconsin—over 120 degrees.

The military calls Camp Bucca a "Theater Internment Facility," or TIF. About 600 soldiers from the 32nd Brigade Combat Team are at Camp Bucca, according to Lt. Col. Tim Donovan, the brigade's lead public-relations person in Iraq. The rest of the 32nd is in different parts of the country, many in the Baghdad area.

Camp Bucca housed 22,000 detainees a year ago but now oversees about 4,000, according to the military newspaper Stars and Stripes.

Hundreds of people come to Camp Bucca every day to visit family members interned there, according to an article on the U.S. Air Force Web site.

News reports say the camp is scheduled to be closed in September. Two other internment facilities near Baghdad will continue to operate into 2010, when the Iraqis will take over.

Most members of Alpha Company are "detainee escorts," Morrow said in an e-mail, "with responsibility of ensuring the safety and security of detainees' movements from compounds to hospitals and holding areas for in-processing."

The unit also is in charge of "command and control of the Forward Operating Base," Morrow said. That means taking care of supply, administration and MWR, or Morale Welfare and Recreation.

Alpha Company members also staff positions relating to pay, food, religious services, security and weapons maintenance, Morrow wrote.

Alpha Company is committed to a 12-month deployment, which includes training, so soldiers are hoping to be sent home by next February.