Soldiers from North Coast counties bound for 10-month tour of duty

Erwin Stephan of Santa Rosa is ready to go to war.

"I like to keep it simple," said Stephan, 44, a specialist in the California Army National Guard. "I'm going over there to do a job, and I want to come home alive."

Stephan, a Santa Rosa High School graduate in 1982, is one of about 800 soldiers in a National Guard task force bound for a 10-month tour of duty in Iraq.

The Task Force 1st Battalion, 143rd Field Artillery includes about 20 soldiers from Sonoma, Marin, Lake and Mendocino counties who come from the Guard's Santa Rosa-based 579th Engineer Battalion.

Following a farewell ceremony Thursday at Fort Dix, N.J., where they recently completed two months of training, the troops will depart for Kuwait, the gateway to war-torn Iraq.

"His life is in God's hands whether he lives or dies," said Nelly Edwards, Stephan's mother and a Mennonite. "My faith is in God. That's what keeps me going."

Edwards said she and her son are aware of "lies and deception" regarding the U.S. invasion of Iraq, but her son is "doing his job as he sees it."

"I'm at peace," Edwards said. "He said, 'Mom, this is my choice.' "

Edwards, a German born in the Ukraine, fled Russian persecution during World War II and survived a Czechoslovakian concentration camp before coming to America.

She said the Iraq war is not about oil but about "good and evil." Iraqi insurgents are "blowing up women and children in the name of Allah. They think they're going to heaven. That, to me, is sick."

Stephan said the soldiers are schooled not to talk about politics.

"I support my president," he said. "He's my commander-in-chief."

A soldier's job is to complete the mission and "to protect my buddies," Stephan said.

The North Bay men are in the task force's A Battery, which will be assigned to convoy security, guarding tractor-trailer rigs that haul supplies throughout the country, said Lt. Col. Ian Falk of Brentwood, the task force commander.

"It's a critical mission," Falk said. "No less dangerous than what anybody else is doing."

Anywhere a soldier goes in Iraq "you've got to be on the lookout for IEDs" -- improvised explosive devices, Falk said.

Of the 3,732 U.S. fatalities reported as of Monday, 39 percent, or 1,468, were attributed to IEDs, according to iCasualties.org, a Web site that tracks war casualties from military and government releases.

The 579th Engineers, Sonoma County's only military unit, sent a 90-member company to Iraq in 2004-2005. The company sustained more casualties -- three dead and about 20 wounded -- than any other California National Guard unit at the time.

The soldiers on convoy duty will ride in air-conditioned and up-armored Humvees and in armored security vehicles, 15-ton, four-wheeled vehicles with angled armor that can withstand 12-pound mine blasts under the wheels.

Air conditioning is necessary because soldiers must ride in Humvees with the windows rolled up, Falk said.

Central Iraq, where most of the task force will be based, is now 120 degrees in the day, he said. In September, it will get down around 100.

Two months at Fort Dix, where it is hot and humid, was good preparation for the Mideast, Falk said.

The training, which included military tactics as well as first aid for every soldier, eliminated some soldiers from the task force. Moving about with body armor weighing 25 to 30 pounds, some soldiers developed back problems, Falk said.

Stephan said A Battery "excelled above and beyond our expectations" in training.

"We're more than prepared," he said. "We bonded as human beings."

Other task force units will be assigned to guard military bases and to serve as military police, Falk said.

His soldiers won't have much interaction with Iraqis, but will support the overall goal of helping Iraq "become self-sustaining" so "we can eventually get out of there," Falk said.

"I don't think anybody wants to stay there any longer than we have to," he said.

You can reach Staff Writer Guy Kovner at 521-5457 or guy.kovner@pressdemocrat.com.