Battalion offers good news from Iraq
[Link to Full Article]
Green Bay woman tries to balance reports from war
By Nathan Phelps
The photo of Spc. Ryan Burkhart from Maine is one image of the war in Iraq that doesn’t garner the national headlines.
In the photo, the member of the Maine Army National Guard’s 133rd Engineer Battalion is saying goodbye to an Iraqi child after spending two months helping to rebuild a school in northern Iraq.
Sgt. 1st Class Julie Friedman of Green Bay, who is deployed to Mosul, Iraq, took the photo.
“Our main focus is just trying to show everyone all the good things the soldiers are doing and to show the soldiers what they are doing is appreciated,” she said. “The attacks, the bombings, the deaths make the headlines everyday, but you will also find … at the hometown level, our stories are picked up a lot.”
Friedman is part of the 139th Mobile Public Affairs Battalion, which has been sending back photos, video and stories since they arrived in Iraq earlier this year.
The importance of what she does was demonstrated by her coverage of an Alabama-based signal company that helped reopen a school. She heard about it from one of the GIs who worked on the project.[...]
Read the Entire Entry...»
Maj. Peter Rogers, director of public affairs with the Maine National Guard, said those kinds of stories make a difference to the soldiers and their families.
“The families see so many negative stories in the press … it does a lot for morale both here and over there,” he said. “Everybody is really starving for information over there, and I think people really want to see the good news stories coming out, because they know they are there.”
The Maine National Guard currently has about 700 members deployed to Iraq, about 500 of which are in the 133rd.
Getting the positive story out to the local markets gives a little balance and perspective to what’s happening in Iraq, Friedman said.
“The people back in the hometowns are really, really interested in what their soldiers are doing,” Friedman said. “We have a lot of Reserve and Guard people on this deployment, so we have a lot of hometown markets we’re trying to get to.”
The unit also handles media requests for interviews, supplies stories and video for the Department of Defense, produces a broadcast news program and puts out a weekly newspaper, The Olympia Observer, for the troops who are serving with Task Force Olympia.
“We try to cover a little bit of all the units there,” said Friedman, senior editor of The Olympia Observer. “We like to give everybody a little bit of recognition, even though in the news here you might only read about the Stryker (brigade), there’s a lot of soldiers there with a lot of important jobs.”
Like other military personnel deployed to Iraq, Friedman and the 139th do their job with the possibility of becoming a target of insurgents who continue to battle Iraqi and coalition forces in that country.
“The violence is all just so random,” Friedman said. “I take just as much risk every month when I drive from Green Bay down to Madison to go to my drill weekends.”
Friedman is part of a detachment from Madison that is attached to the Illinois-based 139th.
There are about 20 other GIs who specialize in communications that are serving with her, including several from Wisconsin.
Friedman, a 43-year-old Rhinelander native, arrived in Iraq in late winter after leaving behind her husband, Mark, and a job at St. Norbert College in De Pere.
« Ok, I'm done!
