John Walton, Wolfpack

This handsome guy is Carolynne’s son and my grandson, Sgt. Johnny Walton of the Army 82nd Airborne Division. The picture was taken in 2001 when Johnny, still seventeen and just graduated from high school, was in basic training. His unit shipped out to Iraq in September, 2003 and replaced Hernaldo Garay’s unit in Fallujah. (See “Hernaldo Garay, 82nd Airborne Division,” 4/5/06). Johnny turned twenty in that dangerous place.

I’m reading a wonderful book about the early days of the war by Karl Zinsmeister. “Boots on the Ground” tells the story of the 82nd Airborne Division as it convoys from Camp Champion in Kuwait to the Tallil Air Base in Iraq and then on to the City of Samawah and battles with Baathists and fedayeen terrorists. Zinsmeister traveled with Hernaldo’s 325th Regiment, embedded with the 2nd Battalion, Alpha Company.

A few hours after the Twin Towers collapsed, the 82nd Airborne in Ft. Bragg, North Carolina was mobilizing. Only the 82nd is able to get infantry, vehicles and armed helicopters onto an airplane headed anywhere on the globe in one day. Zins describes how they do it.

For every two or three thousand fighting men, take sixty to seventy communications trucks, gun jeeps, ammunition trailers and construction trucks (including a dump truck and a bulldozer) and pack them on pallets with stacks of shock absorbing cardboard. Within hours of any call from the President, these soldiers and this gear will pile into a C-130 and fly to wherever the bad guys live. Other C-130s each carry two armed Kiowa helicopters (or seven Kiowa's in the larger C-17s).

When the drop site comes into range, the first transport planes drop the Kiowa’s, then the rest of the transports drop the trucks and other gear, followed by the paratroopers. Each trooper wears body armor and a ballistic helmet, his weapon (rifle, machine gun, grenade launcher) will add another twenty pounds, and he’ll have forty-five pounds of ammo, food, water, night-vision gear and other equipment. (Johnny says it hurts when you land and “minor injuries” are common.)

Soon after landing, the Kiowa’s are aloft. These splendid helicopters are the modern-day equivalent of the horse cavalry, with weapons capable of killing tanks and masses of charging soldiers. The Kiowa teams are known as the Wolfpack.

As Zinsmeister put it, these American soldiers wrap goodness and agressiveness in the very same uniform. Here they are in Fallujah with the Kiowa's in the background. Johnny is in the third row, right in the middle.