Living the war in Iraq

• Homer alumnus trades football and snowmobiles for IEDs in the desert

By Sean Pearson
Homer Tribune

When Tommy Boden hit the football field in a Homer Mariner uniform some five years ago, he was a force to be reckoned with. Known for his hard hits and hustle, Boden was often the guy who took the brunt and burden of both sides of Ironman football.
Now, the 23-year-old son of Fred Boden and Cookie and Ron Broste is stationed in Ramadi, Iraq as part of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division. As Bravo Team Leader of the Second Platoon, First Brigade Special Troops Battalion, First Brigade Combat Team, Boden continues to be an unyielding and relatively immovable force on the battlefield.
Boden, who enlisted in January of 2007, took some time away from his duties in the Al Anbar province this Veterans Day to talk about life at war.

HT: Why did you join the army?
Boden: I joined the army to get some self discipline and training on heavy equipment. It is not what I thought it would be. Officially, I am an operating engineer (running heavy equipment.) I ended up in a combat engineer unit that doesn’t have any heavy equipment. In the 82nd, you have no choice about deploying. Every other year, you will be sent to some combat zone. That is just how it works. I was over here ‘07-’08, had a year off and now we are back.

HT: What are your duties there?
Boden: “We are expected to find, neutralize and/or destroy all IED’s. (Improvised Explosive Device) We have not had to disarm any IED’s since we have been here. If we are not deployed, we are training on route clearance, clearing a building or how to take care of someone who has been injured. Right now, we are on night shift, due to the fact that we are about to get everybody out of Iraq. Leadership doesn’t want us to be seen very much. They say we are lessening our footprint.”

HT: What does a typical day look like for you?
Boden: “We wake up, eat, get our trucks ready, go to an OPORD (operations order), where our leadership tells us what our mission is going to be for the night. For example, they tell us where we are going, how fast we need to get there and if there were any attacks in the area.
Then we do the mission, work-out, eat, shower and do it all over again. Lately we have been traveling around the Al Anbar province to other bases to get more familiar with the entire area. We are at Al Asad right now.”

HT: Do you feel like your experiences with other men in your platoon have brought all of you closer together? Do you talk about how things are “back home?”
Boden: “I think our experiences have definitely brought us together. There are guys from New York, Colorado, Pennsylvania, everywhere. The combat patch we wear is two As inside of a circle, which stands for ‘All American.’ Unlike many other units, when the 82nd was first stood up, there were people from all over the United States.
We talk about home some – mostly about the things we miss and what we want to do and buy when we get back.”

HT: What do you miss about home?
Boden: “I miss how relaxed Homer is, I miss how nice people are, and most of all I miss riding my snowmobile. (After family and friends, of course.) My dad used to put a roast and veggies in a crock pot before we went riding, just thinking about it makes my mouth water.”

HT: Do you get any chance to interact with local people? Are they fairly friendly?
Boden: “We haven’t really gotten any chances to interact this deployment, but last deployment we did a lot. They are very friendly people. To us, they would seem overly friendly. I have had a guy take my hand so he could show me something.”

HT: What has been the hardest part of your experience overseas so far?
Boden: “For me, the hardest part of being here is the felling that life is passing me by. I feel like I am getting left behind by my peers. It seems like they are all getting married, have good paying jobs and nice cars or trucks.”

HT: What’s been the most frightening part or your deployment so far?
Boden: “I would have to say the most frightening part is knowing that, every night when I go out on mission, it could be my last. It’s disturbing that, throughout the day, you can hear gun fire in Ramadi just outside our gates. They say it’s celebratory fire, but there is just something in the back of your head wondering, ‘Where is that bullet going?’”

As Boden continues his work in Iraq, the Homer Tribune will follow with updates on life at war.

Help a soldier:
The Kenai Peninsula Borough Mayor Dave Carey has been sending packages and letters to troops overseas for the past six years to young men and women serving who are Kenai Peninsula residents. Called the “Red, White and Blue” program, he invites the public to add names to his mailing lists by forwarding them to dcarey@borough.kenai.ak.us
The care packages sent include smoked salmon, local newspapers, cookies from baking groups and any other items that may be of service to soldiers serving in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Contact the writer
Posted by Newsroom on Nov 11th, 2009 and filed under Headline News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.