"Charlie Company" news

Oregon National Guard soldiers create and distribute official ID cards to the Iraqi police. They take iris scans, fingerprint scans and new photos with the Iraqi flag as a background. The data is key to U.S. security - and job security for the Iraqi police.

The soldiers in Charlie Company, 1-186, 2nd Platoon of Oregon’s 41st Infantry are far from home. Their mission: to escort convoys carrying water, food and oil used for U.S. forces in Iraq from base Camp Korean Village to base Trebil, near Jordan’s border.

So you wake up one morning and you think, “Yes, I want to go to war, I want to tell stories of soldiers’ sacrifices. I want to be scared, I want to be lonely, I want there to be something more to life than a desk job and lunch breaks and weekends.” So you pack your bags.

After a year of e-mails, letters, photos and care packages, Candace Zepp and Jason Westlund met for the first time in Frankfurt. Four years later,the two are now stationed together in Iraq, one of two married couples in Oregon's Charlie Company.

Flight medic 1st Sgt. Travis Powell, 39, planned to catch a fight home to Mollala, Ore., to marry his fiancé and enjoy his honeymoon, but his flight was canceled: The flight was reserved for a fallen soldier from Saturday night’s Blackhawk helicopter crash.

Lindsey Roberts first got word around midnight Thursday that her husband Wayne was coming home from Iraq that morning. A lot has changed since March: Roberts got to see his wife for the first time since they found out they're having a baby.

The coffee shop and deck are crowded with soldiers wearing t-shirts, shorts and flip-flops while Jimmy Buffet music videos play on a projector. For one day, the soldiers of Oregon's Charlie Company medevac are able to feel like civilians.

'We’re glad to help Oregon boys' | Oregon medics helped transport a wounded Oregon soldier in Iraq on Friday when an IED ripped through his armored vehicle in Baghdad. Two soldiers from Oregon died from injuries sustained in the blast.

Chief Warrant Officer Scott Anderson, 31, a magician, firefighter, paramedic and Blackhawk pilot from Canby, Ore., could be at the pool or watching TV in his room. Instead he spends part of his day off performing magic tricks in an Intensive Care Unit in Iraq.

Inside the armored vehicle hangs a pair of orange and black dice, a good luck charm in Oregon State Beaver colors from Justin Wrightman previous deployment to Iraq in 2007. Today, he stands guard...more near his Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle, which is adorned with stickers of the Oregon State University Beavers.

Jeremy Pierce remembers a fellow soldier telling him to stay awake; he remembers that he was losing a lot of blood. “I remember being put into the vehicle, looking at my left hand noticing that I had...more part of my finger missing," says Pierce, who lost his left leg, all the toes on his right foot and a part of that finger. "I knew I couldn’t stand up; my boot was in another spot.”

"It was a combat, stress-related, non-battle injury," says Sgt. Jason Westlund, 27, from Corvallis, Ore. "The patient movement request said he was suffering from psychotic schizophrenia." According to his paperwork the patient was hearing voices in his head.

Halfway through their deployment in Iraq, members of a Medevac unit from Salem, Ore., participated in a combat badge ceremony and rank promotion. “I’m going to keep my head up and keep moving forward,” said Spc. Angela Altabef, 21, of Salem, Ore.

The Explosive Ordinance Disposal is the military’s equivalent of a bomb squad at Joint Base Balad in Iraq, where Oregon National Guard medevac units from Charlie Company are stationed. A staff sergeant who grew up in Lincoln City, Ore., takes us inside his job.

Flight medics Sgt. Jason Westlund, 27, from Corvallis, Ore., and Spc. Scott Thurman, 27, from Keizer, Ore., sit inside a trailer swapping stories when a voice crackles over the little black radio on the table. Nine minutes later, they are in the air.