Local airman recalls time in Iraq
SPRINGHILL TWP. – David Michael Corob’s mother, Diane, wears a gold cross around her neck with her son’s birthstone set in the middle. He bought it for her in December, before he left for Iraq to serve on the 18th Military Police Brigade. “I was so scared when I found out he was leaving,” she said. “He bought this for me as a reminder of him, and I thought about him and prayed for him every day.”
Corob, an airman first class in the U.S. Air Force, needed all the prayers he could get. The 22-year-old with blue eyes and rosy cheeks was one of 380 airmen deployed to the Camp Bucca Theater Internment Facility in southern Iraq, a facility used to house prisoners of war.
Many of the prisoners who are being detained at Camp Bucca were transferred from Abu Ghraib after the prisoner abuse scandal, which means more military policemen, like Corob, were needed to maintain order among the detainees awaiting legal proceedings under the new Iraqi government.
It marked the first time airmen were used to guard detainees. In one of the largest helicopter moves since the Vietnam War, Air Force officials said, soldiers flew most of the airmen – 13 at a time – to Camp Bucca in UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters.
While at Camp Bucca, Corob and other airmen performed jobs normally reserved for deployed soldiers. They escorted patrols and convoys, provided force protection for the Army camp and guarded detainees.
“Camp Bucca isn’t as well known as Abu Ghraib yet, but it’s the largest POW camp in the world now,” Corob said Thursday at his family’s home in Gans.
Corob’s job, as part of security forces, was to guard the 12 compounds in camp. Each compound, separated from the others with double fences topped with razor wire, contained 600 to 900 prisoners.
It wasn’t, he said, an easy job. The prisoners rioted twice while he was deployed there, the first time on Jan. 31.
The military was conducting routine patrols for contraband – prisoners are allowed to have cigarettes, lighters, writing utensils, paper and other similar materials – in compound 5 when the prisoners became violent.
“Out of nowhere they just started acting up,” he said, adding that the facility’s commander deployed all available guards in an attempt to control the situation, which became more chaotic when the riot spread to three other compounds.
“The detainees made sling shots and were grabbing crater-sized rocks and shooting them at us,” he said. “You could have gotten killed if you got hit with one. They were launching them at the watchtowers, and windows were shattering.”
Corob said the guards tried to calm the prisoners using verbal warnings. After 45 minutes, the volatile situation was still escalating, and he said guards were given permission to use nonlethal force.
“They just wouldn’t stop,” he said. When the nonlethal force didn’t work, Corob said the guards were forced to use lethal force. Four detainees were killed and six were wounded.
“We had no choice but to go lethal,” he said.
The second riot occurred a month or so later in compound 3, where the majority of Shiite and Sunni prisoners were housed. Military officials had decided that everyone in that compound had to wear yellow jumpsuits.
“They all went crazy,” he said.
Corob said he had just finished a 12-hour shift in the watchtower and was sleeping when the sirens went off around 8:30 a.m.
“The prisoners took cloth, soaked it in lighter fluid and would wrap it around a rock. Then they could light it and throw it at us,” he said. “They ended up burning down 13 of their own tents and blew up one of our four-wheelers.”
No one was killed in the second riot, but Corob said some people were injured. One of the prison guard’s pants caught fire when he got hit with a rock, but the man was able to put it out before he was seriously injured, Corob said.
“The detainees just didn’t want to wear the yellow jumpsuits, so they rioted,” he said. “They’re like kids. If they don’t like something they’ll have a fit. You always have to be strict with them. We’re there to instill order.”
Corob said the prisoners are not allowed to communicate with prisoners in other compounds, but said they will yell to each other. They also tie things, like packs of cigarettes and notes, on rocks and try to throw them to each other, he said.
In addition to detainee operations and convoy duties, Corob said, the airmen conducted patrols as far as 6 miles from the base and provided armed escorts for convoys.
The job, he said, is hard physically as well as mentally.
“You work 18-hour shifts when you’re in the tower and you have to stay vigilant the whole time. If you get caught sleeping, your career is over,” he said. “You have to be on constant alert.”
In March, airmen and soldiers prevented a mass escape when they discovered a 600-foot-long tunnel detainees had dug leading out of the detention center.
“They dug it with half a plastic bucket they had,” he said. “Who knows where they got it from. Six of them escaped, but they were all found.”
Always on constant alert, Corob said it is easy to tire out, especially when the average temperature is over 100 degrees.
“After a while, physically, you’re just exhausted,” he said. “There’s nothing nice about the desert,” he said.
“I never want to see sand again. I don’t even want to go to the beach.”