On Friday, the News Tribune (Tacoma, WA) reported on Scott Connely, a "civilian contractor" who survived the Dec. 21, 2004, bombing incident at Forward Operating Base Marez in Mosul, the most lethal event for U.S. armed forces in the entire Iraq war and is now back with his family in Lacey.[1] -- The Olympian (Olympia, WA) wrote a similar story on Connely in January.[2] -- The distinction between "military" and "civilian" in a Stryker brigade combat team (SBCT) may be clear administratively, but in functional terms it's a nebulous one that's based mostly the Pentagon's interest in savings in an era in which the nation-state is morphing into a market state. -- "Market state" is a term popularized by Philip Bobbitt in a book entitled The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace, and the Course of History (Knopf, 2002), arguing that "the market state is superseding the nation-state as a consequence of the end of the Long War" (p. 211). -- ("Long War" is Bobbitt's term for the struggle, lasting from 1914 to 1991 and encompassing World War I, World War II, and the Cold War, in which bourgeois parliamentary democracy, Communism, and fascism determined which embodied the legitimate constitutional form of the nation-state.) -- An SBCT might be, for Bobbitt, a representative expression of the "market state," in that it requires a lot of support from private industry. -- As Gregory Alderete writes in the Army Logistician (March-April 2005): "Approximately 120 specialized contractors are an integral part of the SBCTs’ highly complex systems maintenance, sustainment, and technical support. The Army now must ensure that contractors are planned for and integrated into all SBCT operations and risk assessments. Considering the factors of mission, enemy, terrain, troops, time, and civilians, many contractors are actually operating in the forward areas of the SBCT. However, supporting the SBCT requires the convergence of standard Army and nonstandard contractor support. For example, 57 of the 79 C4ISR systems are supported by systems contractors exclusively. As Phillip Sibley, senior LAR at the Army Communications-Electronics Command (CECOM) at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, accurately stated, 'This isn’t your father’s Army anymore.'" -- In addition to saving dollars, military outsourcing can also keep casualty figures down. -- Fortunately Connely survived the Dec. 21 bombing. -- Had he perished, his death would not have been counted as a U.S. military fatality. -- The web site Iraq Coalition Casuality Count keeps a partial list of contractors killed working with the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq. -- On Mar. 18, the number of "civilian contractors" who had lost their lives in Iraq was given as 212....
1.
Military
LIFE AFTER WAR
By Angie Leventis
** Civilian contractor deals with post-traumatic transitions -- A Lacey man injured in the mess hall bombing in Iraq is home recuperating. -- He is one of thousands of contractors who straddle the private sector and the military, providing support for the war. **
News Tribune (Tacoma, WA)
March 18, 2005
http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/military/stryker/story/4699869p-4342893c.html
[PHOTO CAPTION: Unable to climb the stairs of his family’s home in Lacey, Scott Connely watches TV and relaxes with his 1-year-old son, Brandon, in a room the family prepared for him on the ground floor. Connely, a civilian contractor, injured his leg in the December mess hall bombing in Mosul, Iraq.]
Scott Connely thought the worst was behind him as he sat down to eat his last meal in Iraq at the ill-fated dining hall in Mosul on Dec. 21. [On Dec. 21, Reuters reported on the attack.]
It was just six hours before he was scheduled to go home, and all the 34-year-old civilian contractor could think about was spending Christmas with his wife and two children in Lacey.
Just 45 feet behind him, a suicide bomber detonated the blast that killed 22, including six Fort Lewis Stryker soldiers. Dozens more were injured.
He heard the explosion and hit the ground, thinking at first it was mortars. He crawled through the smoky, bloody dining hall and soldiers carried him to safety.
Connely missed Christmas with his family. But now, back home and recuperating from a leg injury caused by two pieces of shrapnel, he says he’s happy to be alive and with them once again.
“With how close I was to the blast, I was really very lucky,” he said, his year-old son, Brandon, at his knee, trying to play with the metal device that holds his dad’s right leg together.
His 4-year-old daughter, Brittany, sat nearby in the first-floor den that her father rarely leaves except for physical therapy and doctor’s appointments. It’s equipped with a bed decorated in a Denver Broncos theme, for days when he can’t make it upstairs.
From September to December, Connely had worked in northern Iraq with the second Stryker Brigade, providing computer support.
He’s one of thousands of contractors overseas, providing a web of support that keeps the war effort going, from moving fuel to helping with communications.
Their jobs can be as dangerous as those of the soldiers they work alongside. On Sunday, two contractors working for a company that provides security for the U.S. Embassy were killed by a roadside bomb south of Baghdad. Another was injured.
If it wasn’t for his disability, Connely would be returning to Iraq this month. Instead, he hobbles around the house on crutches and can barely put 75 pounds on his leg.
Holding the fractured bone while it heals is a device of pins and bars. It’s scheduled to be surgically removed today.
He hopes to return to work by summer, but he’ll never be able to run or do a lot of heavy exercise.
His wife, Jennifer, wasn’t thrilled when he first told her he’d be going to Iraq. Connely had served five years in the Army at Fort Lewis and Jennifer works for the Washington State Military Department, so they’re not strangers to military life. But he’d never gone overseas in a war as a soldier, much less as a civilian.
“My thoughts were that if my husband doesn’t go, then that means someone else’s husband had to,” she said. “It’s kind of our duty.”
When she got the 6 a.m. call that her husband had been hurt, her thoughts started spinning through the worst scenarios: permanent paralysis, head injuries, on the brink of death.
A few hours later, Connely was able to call on a satellite phone with specifics: He was going to be all right.
While he’s glad to be home and safe with his family, the transition has been difficult. He feels bad that he can’t help more with the kids and running the house, and she has to do all the driving. His rehabilitation is rigorous, with three physical therapy sessions a week and various medical appointments. He’s been more depressed and sometimes suffers post-traumatic stress symptoms.
They were recently eating dinner at a restaurant when a balloon popped nearby. For a second, he was back in that dining hall in Iraq.
Connely said he feels his civilian work and sacrifice are appreciated. On the military medical evacuation flight back to Fort Lewis, he was thanked by the pilot. Then a soldier on the plane took a patch off his uniform and gave it to Connely.
“That really means a lot,” he said.
--Angie Leventis: 253-597-8692
angie.leventis@thenewstribune.com
2.
FORT LEWIS CONTRACTOR BEARS SCARS OF MESS TENT EXPLOSION
By Christian Hill
** Lacey resident recounts carnage after suicide bombing **
Olympian
circa January 17, 2005
http://www.theolympian.com/home/specialsections/Military/20050117/70559.shtml
[PHOTO CAPTION: After being injured Dec. 21 by a suicide bomber in a mess tent near Mosul, Iraq, Lacey resident Scott Connely, who worked as a civilian contractor with the Fort Lewis-based Stryker brigade, talks about how glad he is to be home with his family. With him are his daughter, Brittany, 4, wife, Jennifer, and their 10-month-old son, Brandon. Fourteen U.S. soldiers died in the attack.]
LACEY -- On Dec. 21, Scott Connely spent what he thought were his final hours in Iraq before a trip home eating lunch and talking with a couple of colleagues.
Since September, Connely, 34, worked as a civilian contractor with the Fort Lewis-based Stryker brigade based in northern Iraq, providing technical support for the communication systems they use.
Now, seated in a mess tent at Forward Operating Base Marez near the Mosul airport, Connely found himself six hours away from the first leg of the journey back to his Lacey home. He looked forward to holidays spent with his wife, Jennifer, and their two young children.
The half-hour ride aboard a convoy that took him to the base, a route often planted with improvised explosive devices, had been incident-free.
"I thought the hard part was behind me," Connely recalled. "All I had to do was catch that plane."
Connely's back was turned to the suicide bomber who, 15 yards behind him, detonated the explosive that killed 14 U.S. service members and wounded dozens of other people, including him.
In an instant, his thoughts turned from family to survival.
He had dived to the ground and, fearing more explosions might follow, moved to escape the carnage.
"I tried to stand up and, of course, my legs didn't cooperate," he said while resting at home with his children, 4-year-old Brittany and 10-month-old Brandon, playing nearby.
Disoriented, he grabbed at the back of his right knee and felt his hand covered in his own blood.
He would later find out one piece of shrapnel entered the back of his knee and then exited.
Another piece imbedded in his knee, breaking his tibia.
He began to crawl to an exit across puddles of blood, the tent filled with a smoky haze and screams of pain.
Two soldiers came to his rescue and carried him to a gathering point on the other side of the chow hall.
From there he was loaded into a Stryker vehicle and raced to a base hospital. The hospital was overloaded, so he was airlifted to a hospital in Balad, just north of Baghdad.
"It was a long helicopter ride," he said.
"It felt like the longest for me because I had no water since they were obviously going to do surgery on me, and no painkillers at that point."
WORRIES AT HOME
Back in Lacey, Jennifer Connely was unaware of the attack, as it had occurred about 1 a.m. local time.
A call from a representative of her husband's company did more than rouse her from her sleep at 6 a.m.
"I kind of panicked, of course," she said. "When they said injured, I didn't know what that met."
Four hours later, a highly sedated Connely was able to call his wife via satellite phone.
He returned home Tuesday evening after spending three weeks in the hospital, including time in Germany and Washington, D.C., and enduring about a half-dozen surgeries.
The two colleagues he was lunching with remain at Walter Reed as they recover from their injuries.
Connely doesn't know if his knee will fully recover yet or when he'll be able to return to work.
IMMOBILIZING INJURY
A device surrounding his knee allows him to bend his leg while keeping the bones immobile.
He can't yet put any weight on his knee and uses crutches to get around the house and a wheelchair on longer trips, including Friday night's visit to a restaurant.
Doctors placed three permanent screws in his knee and said he'll likely need knee replacement surgery in a decade or so.
The Connelys praised the military's response to his injuries and the outpouring of national support, including cards from schoolchildren and a donated blanket from a church group.
The couple said their heart goes out to families who lost a loved one in the attack, including six soldiers from Fort Lewis.
"We're just very glad to have him home," Jennifer Connely said. "It was a long haul."
--Christian Hill covers the city of Lacey and military for The Olympian. He can be reached at 360-754-5427 or at chhill@olympia.gannett.com. <
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