I met Erik Puder while I was working at The Rib Cage; he’s one of the regulars. I often saw him buying shots for his friends (and sometimes strangers). He’s a big guy – hard to miss – and he’s ALWAYS smiling. Recently I learned that he’d volunteered to go to Iraq with a local National Guard Battalion out of Houston, Mississippi. The 288th SAPPER Company is currently at Fort McCoy, Wisconsin, a training center designed to prepare soldiers for their tour in Iraq by simulating the conditions they can expect over there – a process the Army calls “mobilization.” Puder is the kind of guy who can make light of any situation, a fact I confirmed when I last called him to chat. “Aw, darlin’, it sucks here!” he said (I could actually hear him smiling). “The food sucks, there’s no beer, no pretty women to look at – it’s worse than Baghdad! I can’t wait to get out of here.” That’s strange, I thought. Who knew there is a mini “fake Iraq,” even more bleak than the actual war zone, and it’s right here in the U.S., in Wisconsin? Puder and his battalion will leave for the real Iraq later this year. I sat down with him before he left Oxford to get one local soldier’s perspective on serving during wartime.
by Nature Keesee
What year did you join the National Guard?
I joined in 2001, when I was 21.
What made you make that decision?
Well, my father was in the National Guard; his father was in the Russian Army. So, I’ve got a lineage of military. I was sitting around my house when I was going to Northeast, and there was a group of guys talking, about to go to the University. We were trying to figure out money for tuition and what-not. A friend of mine was actually dating a recruiter, and she was like, “Well, you know, you can get money for college.” I wanted to join anyway; I’ve always wanted to join. As a child I was always playing with toy soldiers and I was really fascinated with my dad’s military career. This just kind of made sense, it was like this is going to do some good for me. So, I ended up joining.
Tell me a little about Boot Camp, what was that like?
I went to Basic Training at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. There, you’ve got your Reserves, your National Guard, and your regular Army, all together in the same room. It’s all the same training, everybody’s uniform says United States Army. The difference is the National Guard was founded as more of a homeland defense mechanism, but it’s to the understanding that if any type of conflict occurs and the regular Army’s strength isn’t enough to sufficiently accomplish the mission, the National Guard and the Reserves are called up to active duty and we’re all thrown in there together. Basic was interesting. The first two or three weeks it was really difficult to adjust. You’re constantly supervised, monitored; they treat you like a child. The stress level’s phenomenal, and the tasks that they expect you to accomplish are almost impossible. The best way I can describe it – and I think this goes for any branch, Navy, Army, Marines – I’ve served side by side with Marines and they all agreed that in Basic Training, they break you down and build you up stronger. That’s the mindset. I treated it like a job, so the Drill Sergeant was my boss; I just did what the boss man said and everything was fine. As long as you weren’t a smartass, kept your mouth shut, blend in – which is hard to do when you’re 6’3” and 250 lbs. – I blended the best I could and I did pretty well. I was surprised; I thought I was going to have a more difficult time. But I really wanted to do it, because my dad was a soldier, his father was a soldier…
What is your job? What did you get trained to do?
I’m in communications, 25-U. After Basic, my AIT was at Fort Gordon, Georgia. I did a 21-week course there. They trained me to install, maintain and troubleshoot the SINCGARS, radios, MSE equipment, satellite equipment, computers, how to set up a LAN. Anything that has to do with talking, communication, that’s what I deal with.
Now your responsibility is to drill once a month?
Right, we do one weekend a month drill. During drill we take classes, teach, just kind of keep our skill level up to par and make sure that the job we’re trained to do we don’t forget.
You’re basically obligated to do your drills and summer camp, but then at any time they can call you up and say you’re going to be shipped off.
Right, then you go under Title 10, regular Army.
So after you decided to go back to school, you got called up?
Yeah, I’d gone back to Ole Miss and picked my classes, I’d decided I wanted to be a Special Ed teacher. You get a letter in the mail, but my platoon sergeant had already given me a call and let me know what was going on.
How did that make you feel? Were you scared or excited, or…
There had been so much talk and rumors, of course this is after 9/11; I think it was expected. Pretty much since 9/11 I was getting ready mentally for it and I believe every soldier was. But it definitely was still a surprise in a way. Yes, I was excited, and a little nervous, but I was mentally ready to go.
Not really scared, then? Even with all the stories in the news about troops dying every day, bombs going off here and there…
I wasn’t scared. It was simple for me, I was single, and I didn’t think it would be that difficult for me tear myself away from the monotony of my regular life. So, we pulled out of the states in January of ‘05. Then we were over there until I got back in January of ‘06.
Tell me a little bit about the process, once you get that letter, you get that phone call and you know you are going to Iraq.
Then you go through a mobilization, which is training preparing you for the country that you’re being deployed to. We had to brush up on the culture of the country, because you want to be respectful of the country that you’re going to. The mission was Iraqi Freedom. We were going over there to make these people free and to get them out from underneath the tyranny and the terrorism that was ruling their land and the senseless murders, the corruption…we wanted to make that go away.
That was all part of your preparation training?
Right, and we took training on how to avoid IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices), how to react to mortar fire, brush up on medical training and basic soldiering skills to get prepared for combat.
What was it was like when you first got to Iraq? Was it culture shock even though they had prepared you?
Oh definitely. No amount of training can prepare you for the vastness of the land, the people, the way they act. We left in January, so actually it was kinda cold. The nights got really cold, we were expecting desert, you know. I was expecting Lawrence of Arabia type atmosphere. That’s what I had in the back of my mind. Where we were stationed, though, it wasn’t just so barren. There were palm date trees; we were really close to the Euphrates River, so we had a little tributary running through there. There was a little bit of vegetation, but when the summer hit, it hit hard.
What were your living conditions like? Were you living in buildings or tents?
We were in tents, forty man tents. We stayed in those tents for months.
No privacy, huh?
None. You’re bunk-to-bunk. It was really difficult. And some people had it worse than others, I’m sure, but where we were stationed the living conditions weren’t that much to be desired.
What sort of things did you guys do to boost morale?
We played a lot of poker. Play cards, talk about home, we’d get care packages and share letters, share pictures. While we were deployed there were children being born; families were having kids, family members were passing away. It was difficult to choreograph, to juggle all that while you’re in a combat situation. Especially with the living conditions like they were. About three months before our tour ended, we got better two-man cans, and that was like the Hilton Hotel. It was really great when we got those in. But it was dangerous where we were stationed. We were subjected to multi-mortar fires weekly, three or four times a week we were getting hit. Sometimes we’d go two or three weeks with nothing, but then we’d get hit again and IEDs were rampant. It was really scary going out on the road. I didn’t go out so much. I basically just fixed the internal communication problems; I put the radios in the Hummers, made sure everybody was talking that went out on the missions. I went out a few times, saw a few things outside the wire, but for the most part I stayed in, so I was fortunate. I had a lot of buddies go out and several of them got hurt. It was a bad day whenever those IEDs hit the vehicle; it’s a scary thing.
How did your family and friends treat you when you came home (for leave)? Like a hero?
Yeah. It’s very gratifying when someone thanks me for the service I do, but in the back of my mind, it’s like, I really didn’t do anything, you know. I’m a soldier; I was over there. When I first joined it was a real pleasurable experience for people to thank me, but now with all the controversy about the war, you get different emotional feelings and you get different feedback from individuals. So, it just takes you back a little, makes you think. I know I did a good thing. I was on foot patrols and delivered school supplies to children who needed them. These people have nothing. There’s no help, there’s no welfare program, there’s no student housing, no government help. It’s like, you’re born, and if you don’t get help, you die, and that’s it. Now I know there’s children in America who need help as well, but at least they can get it. There’s programs to help people in America, there were none in Iraq. I took part in helping out with highway patrol, setting up communications, one of the first highway patrols in that area. We delivered school supplies, worked with hospitals, set up police stations, trying to get some order in that place and some help for these people. So, you can get into the politics of the war encompassing oil money, rich politicians becoming richer; but for me personally, I put that in the back of my mind. I know I helped some kids over there so I see a point in why we need to be over there.
What were the Iraqis’ attitudes towards the soldiers? I hear in the media all the time that they don’t want us there…
That’s not entirely true. You did get a few rocks thrown at you every now and then, but for the most part, I heard so many, “Thank you, Mister.” Grown women and men coming up to you and crying, thanking you. We’d give them MRE’s, and the children would thank us. When I walked in that classroom, I passed out crayons and note pads, and the kids were crying, telling me thank you and drawing pictures immediately to give to the soldiers. You know, you walk into an average school in America and pass out crayons, you’re liable to get them thrown back at you. It’s just because kids in America tend to have more – and some people don’t – but there’s no one helping these people. I saw children with scars because someone in their vicinity stepped on a land mine; you see stuff like that and it’s just awful. There’s no sanitation in the schools, everything is so dirty, and you wonder if anything ever is going to be done in this country to where the troops can get pulled out. They have to educate the next generation so they can take control. Democracy is a well-oiled machine and you can’t just set it up and then expect somebody to run it with no training.
After your year there, you came home and…
You come home and you go through a de-mobilization process, pretty much making sure that you’re psychologically fit to go back to society and get intertwined back into whatever life you had before you went on active duty in a combat zone. So I passed that and went back home. I lived with my brother-in-law and sister in New Albany and stayed on at the unit for about six months to help clean the equipment that we used, inventory, there’s so much work involved in a tour, it’s unbelievable. I did that, and then decided to go back to school. I found a place in Oxford and got enrolled. I treated school kind of like a military duty, too. So, it definitely made me more responsible in handling my business. It definitely changed me in that way, and I hope that I don’t lose that. Then the 288th company out of Houston was going to deploy and I decided to go back with them. We’ll be leaving in June to go back overseas to Iraq.
But this time, they didn’t call you up. This time you volunteered.
Yeah, this was a volunteer unit. They had some guys already internally but they needed volunteers.
So why did you volunteer?
That’s a good question. At the risk of sounding clichè, I volunteered because I’m a soldier and I just felt like I needed to. This goes far beyond any college money incentives or anything. This was more of a duty thing. More specifically because I’ve been over there, I kinda know what to expect, I know the area we’re going to. I spent some time over there, and I feel like I need to go back so that hopefully with my experience I can help those who may not be so ready to go. We’ve got a lot of young guys in this unit, several of them fresh out of Basic; some of them are veterans, but I just feel like I had to. Hell, there’s a group of Mississippi boys going, so I’m going, too.
With so many people vehemently opposed to the war, do you ever get approached by anyone and criticized?
Constantly. And I don’t take that personally. I appreciate everyone’s opinion, whether it be for…well, I’m not going to say for the war in Iraq…I’m going to say for the politics of the war in Iraq. You know there’s several times when even I thought maybe Bush should’ve backed up and punted a little bit and done some things differently. But I think for the most part, that’s a difficult job to have, to be in charge of sending troops overseas where so many of them are dying. I think it was something that needed to be done, but as far as people approaching me, yeah. I’ve never been fussed at, and I don’t take it personally because the approach is usually not that personal. I understand they’re speaking in a broad spectrum. So it’s not just an attack on me or my character as a soldier. I understand. People who are in opposition of what’s going on in the Middle East, with the US involvement, sometimes they make some good points. And then sometimes people who have more positive opinion about it make some good points, too. And that’s what a democracy is all about. So for a soldier to be blatantly upset at someone who opposes the politics, that’s not…you can’t do that, you know, a democracy is choice. It’s freedom of choice and because of soldiers, those individuals have that choice to have that opinion. So I appreciate everyone’s opinion.
Do you feel like we’re really making progress over there?
I do. I think some days, things are going good, we’re helping these people, we’re building schools, highway patrols, police stations, building an Iraqi army. I think we’re doing some good. And some days it looks like we might take two steps back because something happened that was totally unexpected. Then we’ll take another two or three steps forward, so it’s back and forth. But I think, yes, we are making progress. That’s the thing, you know? How in the world can anyone expect this country who’s been fighting for over 2,000 years to resolve itself politically or militarily within a month or two? It’s not gonna happen, this is gonna take time. And you can look at past wars and see that. You can’t just go in and quickly ratify the situation.
Are you nervous this time about going back? Or do you feel like since you’ve already been there, you know what to expect and you’re not scared at all?
Actually, I’m nervous. It’s difficult to explain. I think that I’m afraid that I’m gonna get over there and think, well, I already know what’s going on and what to do and I might get complacent and relaxed because I’ve already been over there. And that’s when something happens, that’s when you make mistakes. So I’m going to treat it like my first tour. Yes, I know more about what to look for but I’m definitely going to be eyes wide open like I was previously, or at least I hope I am. But yeah, I’m a little nervous, of course.
Anything else you want to add?
I guess the only thing is, we definitely need to keep up the “support your troops” motto. It’s very important, we need the backing of the general public in America. And before someone talks so badly about the happenings in the Middle East they need to do a little research and they need to think carefully about what they say, because opinions sometimes can be distorted and perhaps lack some fact. When you give an opinion on something, a lot of times you allow your own emotions to take over, and the words you say may just be something on a personal note as opposed to actual logical fact. And that can go, as well, in support of what’s going on, too. Someone who talks about supporting the war needs to be backed up by facts, too. Being informed is important. I think everyone needs to have a little more patience with it and a little more understanding and perhaps one day things will settle down. Plato said, “Only the dead have seen the end of war.” In the Bible it states, “As long as there is man there is war.” War is inevitable, it’s gonna happen. We’re there. Let’s do a good job, get home, and hopefully Iraq will be a safe place to live one day.
