Dirt Sailors

[NATO AIR]

Thanks Ralph (been trying to join my shipmates for the last year over there):

http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/64251.htm

'DIRT SAILORS'
THEY'RE Navy, and they're in the desert.

While the Army and Marines carry the bulk of the load in Iraq and Kuwait, the Navy and Air Force increasingly supply support troops to give our stressed land forces a bit of breathing space.

There are 10,000 "dirt sailors" in the Central Command, which stretches from the Horn of Africa to Afghanistan. Thirteen hundred of them serve under Capt. Steve Nowak, USN, the commander of the Navy Expeditionary Logistics Support Group headquartered in Camp Arifjan, Kuwait. According to Capt. Nowak, it's the Navy's largest on-shore effort of this type since the Second World War.

Of course, the Seabees — the Navy's earth-movers and buildiers — have a distinguished history of working on dry land, but this new organization is something very different. Faced with a wide range of unusual missions — from running port operations with the Army, to handling air cargo, to performing customs inspections — they're inventing another side of our Navy's future.

The custom-inspection mission's good for some surprises. Most of the work's doing agricultural inspections or fishing stray ammunition out of backpacks. But one enterprising unit tried to sneak out the entire head from the infamous statue of Saddam that toppled in Baghad after our troops arrived. After it was confiscated, no one knew what to do with it — until the Iraqi government decided they'd take it back.

Upstate New York plays a crucial role in the Navy's contributions: a company of reserve warehouse specialists from Horseheads works as a Direct Supply Support Company in Kuwait. It "wasn't their job." But it needed to be done, so they did it.

Other Naval personnel run a field hospital in Kuwait, serve as security guards, patrol in the Gulf, protect oil rigs — and find themselves on convoy runs to Baghdad. To today's sailors, no mission's too tough — or too "un-Navy."

It makes an old soldier feel a little less bad about the last few Army-Navy games. — RALPH PETERS