by Kent Jennings Brockwell
Staff Writer
If you were to ask the average American to name a word they associated with Iraq, most would probably say war or car bomb or Saddam.
“Beanie Babies,” however, would be the answer if you were to ask local bankruptcy attorney Ed Merrigan.
Merrigan, a major with the U.S. Army Reserves who recently returned from deployment in Iraq, recently spoke at a Jacksonville Bankruptcy Bar luncheon about his time in the Middle East.
As executive officer of the 478th Civil Affairs Battalion, Merrigan and his troops were in charge of helping rebuild Iraq’s infrastructure, most of which he said was outdated or inoperable. His unit was also there to act as ambassadors to the locals and help them with what they needed.
“Think of anything that the City of Jacksonville does for you here,” he said. “That is what we did there.”
From getting the local power plant operational again to repairing and reopening Baghdad’s schools, Merrigan said he and his 230-soldier battalion helped rebuild a country that had been neglected for too long by its own government.
Though a common perception about the U.S.’s rebuilding effort is that we are fixing what our military destroyed in the war, Merrigan said that is a far cry from the truth. Though there was some damage to infrastructure harmed during combat action, Merrigan said most of Iraq’s infrastructure was already broken and had not worked long before U.S. troops first stepped foot in the country.
“When I landed in Baghdad, there had been no preventative maintenance on any of the infrastructure in 40 years,” he said. “Just think of what Jacksonville would be like if we didn’t do anything in 40 years to maintain our infrastructure.”
Comparatively, Baghdad is the size of Austin, Texas. But while Austin has 700,000 residents, Baghdad has more than 6 million. Merrigan said to imagine that many people in a city that size but with open sewage trenches, virtually no clean drinking water and electricity that works only 30 percent of the time.
Merrigan said that while he was deployed, the U.S. spent $53 million on rebuilding Iraq’s infrastructure, which involved more than 2,000 individual projects including rebuilding schools and hospitals, installing sewer lines and opening local government centers.
“By the time we left Iraq, all of the schools were open and all of the hospitals were open,” he said.
The power plant was back up and running, too, for the most part. Merrigan said when he arrived in Baghdad, the power was typically on for two days at a time and off for four. By the time he left, the situation was reversed with power being on for four days and off for two. While not perfect, that is not bad considering that Baghdad’s current electrical grid was designed by the British in 1948.
Besides fixing schools and power systems, Merrigan and his troops were also responsible for trying to improve the locals’ perspective of the American soldiers patrolling their streets. Though serious cultural and language barriers often made relationship building efforts with the Iraqis sluggish, Merrigan said he and his men found a quick way to make friends with the local children.
When preparing for a day’s patrol around Baghdad, Merrigan said Humvees were packed with more than just ammunition and grenades. They were also carrying boxes filled with Beanie Baby stuffed animals and hard candy.
“Wherever we would go, if we knew there were going to be kids there, we would pass out Beanie Babies,” he said.
His troops also passed out more than 600 pairs of new shoes for the Iraqi children. Though he is proud of the infrastructure work his battalion was able to perform, Merrigan said his fondest memories of his deployment involved his daily interaction with Iraq’s children.
“Because of the media, lots of people unfortunately think about Abu Grab when they think about Iraq,” he said. “I think about my soldiers that were 8,000 miles away from their families and were giving out candy to the kids and they were doing that when they were just in a gun battle four hours before.”
Even though he and his troops were shot at about three or four times per week, none of Merrigan’s 230 soldiers were killed in Iraq and only a handful were injured.
Besides the weekly encounters with enemy gunfire, Merrigan and his unit had another enemy they battled every day — the sun.
Merrigan’s unit did all of their work in 130 degree weather while wearing more than 50 pounds of body armor, grenades and ammunition. Though many people (who undoubtedly have never been to the Middle East) downplay the extreme Iraqi temperatures by saying “it is a dry heat,” Merrigan compares it to sticking your head in a 130 degree oven all day.
“Even the Iraqis complain about the heat,” he said. “My grandparents were from Ireland where they dug potatoes out of the mud in the rain. I wasn’t genetically composed to serve in the Middle East.”
But he did, proudly.