The 'fighting 69th' is one of the most culturally diverse units in the US military, which can be an advantage on the streets of Baghdad, writes Denis Staunton in New York.
When Capt Sean Flynn was patrolling Baghdad's notorious Airport Road last year, in his pocket he carried cards and religious tokens sent to him by relations in Newtowncashel, Co Longford. A native New Yorker whose family moved to the US in the 19th century, Flynn was commanding B Company of the 1st Battalion, 69th Infantry, the regiment known as "the fighting 69th".
"We were 'the B Company Banshees' because when the enemy heard us coming, they heard the squeal of my motors and the squeal of our tanks," he says. "It was like a banshee because they knew that someone around them was in for some business. Every one of our vehicles had a shamrock painted on it and our uniforms had the shamrock patch."
A handful of the men under Flynn's command were Irish-Americans like himself, but most were from the dozens of other ethnic groups that make up New York's population. One of the most ethnically diverse units in the US military, the 69th includes several soldiers who received citizenship along with Purple Hearts when they came home after being wounded in Iraq. The Minister for Transport, Martin Cullen, was condemned by the Green Party, among others, after he attended a wreath-laying ceremony welcoming home the 69th unit from Iraq on March 16th last.
In the regiment's armoury, or barracks, on Lexington Avenue, the Irish influence is everywhere, from the symbols in the regimental colours to the names of the commanding officers whose portraits hang on the walls. Long-departed Lynches, Donovans, McCarthys, Walshes, Cavanaughs, Corcorans and Ryans glare down on today's soldiers and Flynn says the regiment's tradition remains a powerful force.
"That spirit that this regiment has carried since the Civil War and the Spanish- American War and World War One and World War Two is very much resident in this unit, whether Irish or Spanish or Colombian or Russian or Korean or Chinese," he says. "We have them all. We're still an immigrant battalion, largely, and we all have that same spirit."
The 69th is a National Guard unit, made up of "citizen soldiers" who in peacetime train just one weekend a month, spending the rest of their time working in civilian jobs or studying (with tuition fees paid by the military). Flynn, for example, is a journalism graduate who works as a corporate and financial communications consultant and has written a book about Alaska.
BEFORE THE REGIMENT was sent to Iraq in 2004, it had not been deployed to combat since the second World War and few of its soldiers ever expected to be sent on an overseas mission. Everything changed on September 11th 2001 when the New York National Guard was called up, first to maintain order at Ground Zero and later to guard key installations in the state.
It was revealed this week that the National Guard has had its worst month for recruiting since last summer as potential recruits fear that they will be sent to Iraq. It signed up 90 per cent of its goal of 6,530 recruits.
Sgt John Byrnes, a veteran of the first Gulf War and Somalia, was sitting in a lecture on comparative religion when he heard that the World Trade Center had been attacked by two aircraft. He left the classroom, handed in some homework to other professors and ran most of the way to the barracks to go on duty.
"I remember punching my locker in my National Guard armoury, punching it over and over again until my hand hurt because I was so angry," he says. "It was just one of those days when all of these emotions well up together. You're angry, you're sad, you start to worry about friends who work down here in the area. We had a lot of people who were missing . . . It really cemented my desire to really work on things that are important to national security and maybe not be diverted into a career in banking or something like that, to really focus on securing this country."
Byrnes has no doubt about the value of his mission in Iraq, despite the fact that arguments for the invasion were originally predicated on the existence of weapons of mass destruction, which later proved to be imaginary. He maintains that many Iraqis welcomed the American forces and were grateful for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and that he helped to provide security and stability for those who needed it. Happy to be back in New York, he has no wish to return to Iraq but says he will go back if called upon.
"Would I like to? Absolutely not," he says. "Would you like me to kick you in the knee? It's about that unpleasant, it just lasts a lot longer. Am I willing to? Absolutely."
SOME OF THE soldiers who have returned from Iraq are critical of media coverage of the war and one told me he found it hard to see how any patriotic American could make "negative expressions" about President George W Bush.
Aaron Sefton takes a lighter approach to criticism, partly because he is so accustomed to hearing it from his fiancée, who was fiercely opposed to the invasion.
"She hates the fact that I went," he says. "She doesn't agree with our president. She doesn't agree that 9/11 and the war on terror are linked. She doesn't think that at all. She doesn't think she was safer on September 10th than she was on September 12th.
"What I say to her is, she has a right to her opinion. I value her opinion. I value that she should be so lucky that she can be in a country where she can say what she wants. In Iraq, they've never had that experience. I've met a lot of good Iraqi people. I've met a lot of brave Iraqi people."
Sefton, who led a small mechanised unit in Baghdad, says he spent much of his time ensuring that his soldiers treated Iraqis with respect, but that their lack of knowledge about the culture was a serious problem.
"I don't know the full picture," he says. "I know my tiny little piece of Baghdad. But I think that there could have been more done to teach our soldiers about their culture, everything about them. Even after having been there a year we really don't know anything about them."
Soldiers from New York may have had an advantage over their counterparts from some other parts of the US because they grew up in a culturally heterogenous city.
"As a New Yorker, you have street smarts. You know where to go and when something looks bad," says 22-year-old Specialist Raul "Elvis" Suazo.
Suazo, whose parents came to the US from Central America, joined the National Guard to get a free education but lobbied to have the rules bent so that he could join his unit in Iraq.
"I'd call my mother and she'd be crying, but she understood that it's my job," he says. "When I came back, she couldn't stop feeding me. I came back really skinny and so she kept giving me home cooking."
Some National Guard units have complained that they were less well-equipped than regular army units and Flynn asked for more troops when he was in Iraq, but was refused. Flynn says that the price of going to war can be high for National Guard soldiers, who are older than regular soldiers. Although they are guaranteed the right to return to their jobs, they often miss out on promotion opportunities at a crucial stage in their careers.
"I know very few in this unit who are eager to go back to Iraq," Flynn says. "They want to go back to their lives. It's been a long, hard five years. But I suspect . . . that if any piece or part of the unit was recalled to Iraq, that the rest would fall down like dominos because you're not going to let your mates go back to battle without you.
"That's really what we fight for. We don't fight for anybody else but each other in the end."