When the 216th Air Defense Artillery Echo Battery left Cloquet, Minn., in August 2004, it left as one unit ready to join Operation Iraqi Freedom.

What the National Guard unit couldn't know is that they would soon be split — with half the soldiers sent to guard an American contractor's compound in Saudi Arabia and the other half sent "to hell," according to soldiers now guarding the Daura oil refinery near Baghdad.

There, soldiers describe pulling 48- to 72-hour shifts and being out on patrol or guarding the base when sleep deprivation clouds their judgment. They describe equipment shortages — of everything from flashlights to laser-sighted scopes to medicine for insect bites. And they describe a frenetic pace coupled with shifting missions that they believe has needlessly endangered their lives and left them soured on the military.

"I'm just tired of letting my troops get pushed around," wrote Staff Sgt. Doug Heller of Duluth in a series of e-mail interviews. He corresponded with the Duluth News Tribune despite recent orders not to speak to the media. His messages provide a look at the ordeals of serving in Iraq and its impact on one unit.

"All I'm asking for is the people to realize that their friends, families and loved ones have been through hell," Heller wrote. "If there is a way for me to prevent this from happening in the future, I will try anything, at the cost of my rank."

It's an unusual move for active-duty soldiers to speak out about their mission, said John Marshall, combined Honor Guard Commander in Duluth. Marshall served in the Army and was injured in the Persian Gulf War.

"The situation must be pretty bad for them to talk," Marshall said. "By doing this, they are sticking their necks out."

SPLIT BATTERY

Soldiers learned around November 2004 that the E-battery would be split in half, said former unit commander Major Tad Hervas.

"It's very unusual," Hervas said. "They never want to split a unit. But (military commanders) said they believed in Echo 216, and that they had no choice."

Soldiers were needed to guard a compound in Saudi Arabia, and they needed visas to enter the country. Minnesota soldiers were most quickly able to obtain visas, Hervas said from his parents' home in Coon Rapids, while he was home on leave in August.

Soldiers and their families soon discovered that the living and working conditions in Saudi Arabia and Iraq are quite different.

Those in Saudi Arabia live in a renovated palace with private rooms and access to a swimming pool and bowling alley. Soldiers in Iraq live in a compound where electricity has been intermittent, sand fleas swarm during the rainy seasons, and soldiers bathe in gritty water from the Tigris River.

Soldiers from the 216th ironically call the camp, located inside Baghdad's protected Green Zone, "Camelot."

Specialist James Silda, a Gilbert native now serving with the 216th E-Battery in Iraq, believes his unit is doing too much with too few people. Of the already halved E-Battery, now numbering just less than 60 soldiers, sometimes 20 soldiers or more are gone. Some go home on leave, some work at the nearby operating base and others monitor perimeter security. That leaves about 36 soldiers to patrol their sector within Baghdad, Silda said.

Doug Heller's father, Bob Heller of Duluth, is a Vietnam War veteran. He realizes soldiers living in a war zone shouldn't expect luxury.

"The mission comes first," Bob Heller acknowledged, "but these conditions transcend what you'd expect."

The stepped-up operations pace, which soldiers believe is a result of the split battery and fewer available soldiers, worries Bob Heller the most. "The harder you work, the more you do, the more careless you get," he said.

NEW MISSION

Early this summer, the battery was ordered to step up patrols and provide new security support for two Iraqi Army compounds. Trips through the streets of Baghdad increased dramatically during the new mission, Silda said, and soldiers sometimes slept for three to five hours every other day.

"The real kicker here is we are doing all this with 60 people, while other full units, over 120 people, are doing the same job," Silda said. Soldiers resorted to drinking Red Bull and other caffeine-rich drinks to help them stay awake, Silda said.

Sleep deprivation may have caused at least one serious accident in Iraq, Doug Heller believes. After a series of long shifts, a senior noncommissioned officer was severely burned when he used a lighter to check the fuel level in a generator. Fumes from the fuel tank ignited, causing burns to the officer's face and upper body.

Hervas confirmed the incident. He said the officer "pushed himself pretty hard" and was working on about five hours of sleep a night. Such sleep patterns were "not uncommon for us over here," Hervas said.

Hervas also said while it was true the unit was at half-strength, "we were not given a mission that required a full battery." He said the sector assigned to E-battery was about half as large as other assignments.

Hervas recently was removed from his three-year command of the 216th E-battery and assigned as a Division G-3 air officer, helping to coordinate the air space over Baghdad. He described his reassignment as a lateral move and one designed to take advantage of his experience with the U.S. Air Force.

After Hervas was reassigned, the 216th was given another new mission. They are now training the Iraqi Special Forces Police. Maj. Alayne Conway, the Fourth Brigade public affairs officer assigned to the Third Infantry Division, said comments about such severe lack of sleep were "a bit exaggerated."

The 216th E-Battery is assigned to the Third Infantry Division. Conway also said the unit's operational tempo during the first part of their deployment didn't allow for a lot of time off but the tempo has since eased.

"The important thing to remember is that the 216th is a very competent unit," Conway wrote in an e-mail interview from Baghdad. Soldiers "wanted to see their Iraqi brothers succeed and devoted all their energy to that mission."

The pace has slowed a bit in the past month, Doug Heller and Silda said, as the unit begins winding down operations and prepares to come home later this year. But the effects linger.

LASTING BITTERNESS

Doug Heller volunteered to deploy to Iraq two months after returning from a tour in Bosnia. He said he loves the Army, and he loves his unit. But he is ready to call it quits after eight years with the National Guard.

"I guarantee that after they let us off stop-loss half my unit will be done" with the National Guard, Doug Heller said.

Members of the 216th should start packing their gear in December and be home in February "if the timelines don't change that much," Hervas said. Donna Flaherty of Deer River, whose son, Ryan, is with the 216th E-battery in Iraq, said she believes her son also will leave the Guard.

Ryan Flaherty's tour was supposed to be up as of December 2004 but has been extended through the military's stop-loss policy, through which the U.S. Defense Department has forced some members of the volunteer armed forces to stay in the service beyond their contracted dates.

"Probably for most of us (in Iraq), this will be the end of our military career because of this experience," Silda said.

It might be anyway, Marshall said. The military doesn't look very charitably on soldiers who complain publicly about operation conditions, he said, and can stall or halt their career advancement.

Speaking out "compromises everything," he said. "The military will make their lives hell. My guess is that they are trying to inform the public that they need more governmental support over there."