serves as MP in Iraq
Woodbridge resident
serves as MP in Iraq
BY COLLEEN LUTOLF
Staff Writer
A typical crowd scene in downtown Baghdad.
Like most 20-year-old American women, Woodbridge resident Yvonne Alers has a job. But unlike your average 20-year-old American woman, Alers’ occupation is currently located in Baghdad, Iraq, where she has spent the last eight months as a military police officer.
Pfc. Alers, of 204 MP Company, 3rd Battalion, enlisted in the Army in August 2002, the summer after she graduated from Woodbridge High School. She had just finished MP school in December 2002 when she got word she was going to be deployed to Ft. Polk in Leesville, La., at the end of January 2003.
"I said, ‘How can you be shipped out now, you just finished training,’ " Alers’ mother, Marisol, said.
Alers had spent only two months at Fort Polk when the company received word they were to be deployed to Kuwait on Feb. 14, Valentine’s Day.
Pfc. Yvonne Alers, 20, poses with Iraqi children near a police station in West Baghdad. The boy in the T-shirt and jeans was shot and killed soon after this photo was taken.
"We were activated and they gave us a three-day time period to pack and get everything ready to leave," she said
Alers said when her company got into "theater" — military-speak for an area of military operations — they spent the first month in Kuwait.
"Kuwait is no joke," Alers said. "It reached up to 110 degrees during the day, but it was freezing at nighttime."
The temperature wasn’t the only drastic difference in conditions the troops had to adjust to — Alers discovered a lot of sand in Kuwait.
PHOTOS COURTESY OF YVONNE ALERS Pfc. Yvonne Alers, a Woodbridge resident, is a mililtary police officer in Iraq. Alers has been stationed there since April.
"It’s like living in a giant sandbox. We couldn’t get rid of the sand," she said. "There’s sand everywhere — sand in your ears, sand in your eyes. People got bloody noses from all the dust."
Of course, the threat presented by the weather conditions hardly compared to that of being dropped off in a country whose government has recently been toppled, has no running water or electricity, and is full of unidentifiable insurgents who may or may not decide to toss a couple of grenades at your vehicle as you drive by, she said.
"We got there in April and it was really scary," Alers said. "Especially with the Jessica Lynch story, and tons of convoys had been ambushed. We didn’t know what was going to happen to us."
The first few days in Kuwait, Alers said, were frightening because alarms, which meant that everyone had to don protective gear, constantly sounded.
"We were continually alerted for Scud (missile) alerts. The first time it happened you were so scared because there were people in the shower, people eating cereal. We were freaking out. We didn’t know where any of the personnel were. It was scary," she said.
After a month, Alers’ company, transporting supplies, went on to Iraq. She was surprised as she got closer to Iraq to notice how urban the landscape was, she said.
"When they trained us, they explained there’d be hills and hills of sand with desert everywhere," Alers said. "It’s really very urban. There are high rises, little and big houses, apartments."
Alers said she and her company were originally stationed in one of Saddam Hussein’s many palaces in Baghdad, but they currently live in a tomb.
"It’s the tomb of one of Saddam’s relatives," Alers said. "He executed him, then gave him a tomb."
As a military police officer in Baghdad, Alers said she and other officers act as escorts for various people, offer force protection, guard living areas and teach Iraqi police officers to implement a structured police department. But she said that part gets frustrating.
"We work side by side with Iraqi police," Alers said. "They really had no form of keeping records. We taught them a lot."Even though the MPs spend a lot of time with the Iraqi police, they have to maintain a purely professional relationship with them, she said, because they don’t know if some of the Iraqis they work with are sympathetic to insurgents.
"We can’t trust them, so we can’t open up completely to them," she said.
Although Alers’ position does not allow her to get close to many Iraqis, she said she did form a bond with one little Iraqi girl.
Alers has a photo of herself with some of the neighborhood children that play in the streets near a police station in West Baghdad.
"I fell in love with that little girl," she said, pointing to the girl in the photograph. "She was a little scared of us. but she was in a dirty dress and no shoes and I felt so bad for her."
Alers said she cleaned the girl and washed her hair, and even gave her a lollipop.
Then she pointed to a smiling boy standing next to her in the photo.
"That boy got shot in the face and died." He was caught in the middle of crossfire, she said.
"It’s extremely dangerous near the police station in West Baghdad," she said. "It’s in the middle of the markets. Imagine Times Square, but with vehicles instead of people. The place is just packed and it’s so chaotic there."
The MPs and all troops are always at risk as potential targets of Improvised Explosive Devises (IEDs), Alers said. She found herself most at risk in her first two months in Iraq when she had to serve as gunner for her team.
Each team consists of a team leader, driver and gunner, Alers said. The gunner stands in the back of the vehicle, positioned at an automatic weapon mounted on top of the truck’s roof.
"Gunners always get hurt," Alers said. "They’re the most exposed."
"I’ve never, thank God, had to fire my weapon," as a gunner or a driver, she said, but she has had to drive her team out of dangerous situations.
"There have been times when I’m driving down the street and sparks are hitting the ground from gunfire," she said.
All MPs wear about 60 pounds of protective clothing, she said.
"We go full battle-rattle," she said. "I’m decked in the maximum amount of ammunition I can carry — my rifle and pistol, my kevlar."
Kevlar is a protective lightweight material that resists punctures.
Alers is the driver of her team, but, as a civilian, she said her mother wouldn’t even allow her to drive into New York City.
"Let me tell you, New York City drivers have nothing on these people," she said. "There’s no working signals, no stop signs, people are always honking their horns."
Acclimating herself to a completely foreign culture wasn’t the only obstacle Alers faced when she arrived in Iraq. She also had to contend with being one of the few female MPs.
"In my squad at one point, I was the only female. They were asking for female MPs in the infantry units because they were doing searches of Iraqi women and they didn’t want any problems," Alers said.
"Females are not really liked in the MP Corps," Alers said. "It was really difficult. I had to prove myself and that I could do a job just as much or just as well as (the men) can."
After she proved herself to be a reliable and capable officer, Alers said the other MPs treated her like "one of the guys."
But, she said, she still does not get respect from some of the Iraqi police officers.
"I’ve had a problem twice already," she said.
Some Iraqi men, who are not used to seeing women in dominant roles only men usually hold in their culture, don’t want to listen to Alers when she gives them commands.
"As capable and qualified as you are," Alers’ father, Hector, said, "it’s difficult dealing with the macho mentality. But she’s right there with them. She’s just such a motivated and positive person. She says, ‘I do what I’ve got to do’ and that’s just who Yvonne is."
Alers returned to Woodbridge last week and surprised her family. She is on leave until Dec. 18.
Her parents, Hector and Marisol Alers, are both Army veterans.
"This has been the hardest thing to have to go through as parents," her father said. "We were in the military during the Cold War, which was all about who was going to push the button (to begin a nuclear attack). In our era, we never really got into conflicts."
"I was in the Army in 1980 and I had a ball," Alers’ mother said. "I always got in trouble because I’m such a motor mouth."
Marisol Alers said when Yvonne wanted to join the Army to get experience before going to law school, it seemed like a good idea.
But since she’s been in Iraq, Marisol said, she feels "devastated."
"This whole year I feel like part of my family just wasn’t there," she said. "It’s very difficult to deal with.
"I’ve always had my daughter in decent neighborhoods and always kept her safe," she said. "Now she’s in extreme danger all the time. We’re just sitting at home dying. It’s unbearable."
The Alerses said the worst moment came when a Black Hawk helicopter full of military personnel going to Qatar on Rest and Relaxation was shot down. Yvonne was also scheduled to go to Qatar for Rest and Relaxation around that time.
"We were sitting here and heard a chopper went down with kids on R&R. My husband said, ‘If anything happens, she’ll call.’ I said, ‘If anything happened, she can’t call, she won’t be able to.’ That was the scariest experience so far," Marisol Alers said.
Although Yvonne joined the military police to gain experience for her law career, she said her experiences in Iraq have changed her mind.
"I’d really like to be a helicopter pilot," she said.
"To be a helicopter pilot in the military is very difficult. You’d have to be a lifer. I’d like to see the civilian world. So I’m interested in trauma transport, transporting trauma patients to different hospitals," she continued.
For Yvonne, coming back to Woodbridge means picking up where she left off after high school.
Her friend, Alexandra Cruz, 20, of Perth Amboy came over to visit Yvonne before the two headed for the mall to do some shopping.
"I haven’t seen her in two years," Cruz said. "But the friendship is the same. It doesn’t feel different or weird."
"She’s in the civilian world; I’m in the military," Alers said of Cruz, who attends Middlesex County College. "But we’re both amazed by each other’s experiences. I still love talking to my friends. I’m still excited to hear what’s going on in their lives."