V Corps soldiers and family members listen to a presentation at a family deployment briefing in Heidelberg, Germany, Wednesday night. (Michael Abrams / S&S)
V Corps soldiers and family members listen to a presentation at a family deployment briefing in Heidelberg, Germany, Wednesday night. (Michael Abrams / S&S)
Lt. Col. Mark Gorton, commander of V Corps' Special Troop Battalion, addresses soldiers and family members Wednesday night. (Michael Abrams / S&S)
Sgt. Jeffery Acord of the 208th Finance Battalion talks to deploying V Corps soldiers and their family members about money matters. (Michael Abrams / S&S)
HEIDELBERG, Germany — They may hardly recognize the place.
As members of the Army’s V Corps Special Troops Battalion prepare to leave for a second tour of Iraq in January, Lt. Col. Mark Gorton told soldiers Wednesday that plenty has changed since they last visited Baghdad.
In the roughly two years since the Heidelberg-based headquarters unit helped lead the blitzkrieg invasion of Iraq, accommodations in the capital’s Camp Victory have come a long way.
“When Fifth Corps first established Victory, it was a very different place,” Gorton said at a mandatory deployment briefing for soldiers and families. “Nothing worked, it was bombed out, no infrastructure. It was a mess. … Since we’ve been there, they’ve made a lot of improvements.”
Wednesday’s briefing was one of two held this week to help soldiers and families prepare for their deployment. A third briefing will be held Tuesday at 7 p.m. in the ballroom of the Village Pavilion in Heidelberg’s Patrick Henry Village.
For many of those attending, the presentations by various family support, benefit and legal experts were a repeat of the information delivered before their first deployment.
“For a lot of people, this is just the same ol’, same ol’,” said Master Sgt. Thomas Holterman, the battalion’s rear detachment sergeant major.
But the one presentation that kept the crowd of roughly 300 people spellbound was the one delivered by Sgt. Jeffery Acord, a battalion pay and entitlements expert.
Ticking through a list of deployment entitlements, Acord told soldiers exactly how deployment would affect their paychecks. The entitlements include a $105 a month per diem, $225 a month hostile fire pay, a $100 a month hardship allotment and a $250 a month family separation allowance.
“That’s quite a bit a hunk of change,” Acord said.
Among the amenities soldiers will find this time around at Camp Victory are a 24-hour gym, regular aerobics and martial-arts classes, fortified living trailers, real beds, movies, catered dining facilities, and fully loaded Morale, Welfare and Recreation centers.
In some cases, soldiers might even get a chance to do some catch-and-release fishing. Gorton said that during a recent visit, he was amused to see soldiers reeling in carp and other fish from the vast moat that surrounds Victory’s Al Faw Palace — the sprawling marble and concrete installation that serves as headquarters for coalition forces in Iraq.
The battalion commander also said he was particularly impressed by the quality of food at the camp’s dining facilities, operated and maintained by the defense contracting firm KBR.
“The food was awesome,” Gorton said. “Nobody is going to go hungry at Camp Victory.”
When V Corps arrives in the Fertile Crescent, it will assume command of the Multi-National Corps-Iraq and relieve the XVIII Airborne Corps. V Corps headquarters will be responsible for ground operations throughout the country, including security, integration of Iraqi forces and reconstruction.
While a number of units attached to V Corps have already deployed to Iraq, Gorton said that the Special Troops Battalion deployment consisted of roughly 800 personnel.
In addition to V Corps command responsibilities, soldiers in the battalion will, among other things, be tasked with billeting general officers who inhabit the many villas that surround the palace, operating firing ranges, escorting Iraqi workers in and out of camp, and running regular convoys to the Green Zone and Camp Anaconda, a logistical hub more than 50 miles north of Baghdad.
