In Maine, anxiety and fear follow Mosul news

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When news of the Mosul explosion hit Maine on Tuesday morning, waves of anxiety crossed the state.

For some relatives, including a worried wife and an impatient girlfriend, the fear lasted into Wednesday.

For a private contractor from Greenville and two Army surgeons, Tuesday’s attack was a tragic reminder of the continuing violence.

Laurie Gray of Penobscot, a cosmetologist who works at Kelli’s Kreations in Bucksport, heard about the Base Marez explosion at 9:30 a.m. Tuesday. She immediately started to worry about her husband, Harold Gray, a sergeant with the 133rd Engineer Battalion. Harold’s father, George Gray, who also lives in Penobscot and works at Ellsworth City Hall, found his thoughts wandering half the world away.

Many nights, Harold and Laurie chat over the Internet. But there was no such comfort Tuesday night. Then at 3:30 a.m. Wednesday, the phone rang. It was Harold.

Sgt. Gray, who works building roads and other facilities, had just returned to Marez with a convoy when the attack occurred. He had not yet made his way to the mess tent.

He told Laurie he felt “dumbfounded.” The Tuesday attack hit “very close to home.”

George Gray then called to calm nervous relatives Wednesday morning, and Laurie was back at work in Bucksport.

Harold had been due to move to safer ground in Kuwait in a few days but wasn’t sure Wednesday whether those plans would change. George and Laurie hoped not.

In Laurie’s voice, a sense of relief could be heard.

Jerusha Reynolds, 25, of Portland received an e-mail at 8:30 a.m. Wednesday from her boyfriend, a specialist in the 133rd Engineer Battalion, saying he knew little about the attack even 24 hours later.

Clint Chicoine, 27, of Mechanic Falls left the Mosul base camp for a mission just hours before the explosion, and knew even less than Reynolds about what occurred, she said.

“He said in his e-mail he knows the attack happened” but nothing about who was killed or hurt, Reynolds said. “I don’t think it was official information that they got.”

Reynolds and her family waited anxiously for word from Chicoine after hearing news reports that members of his battalion had been killed, she said. The couple has been together since last November, but have been friends for many years, she said.

“We were all pretty much connected to the Internet and we had CNN on all day,” Reynolds said. “It sent all of us into a wreck for the day.”

Chicoine remains at his post north of the destroyed mess tent, and doesn’t know when he will return to Mosul, Reynolds said. He never mentioned concerns about the mess tent’s security, but has said in previous e-mails that he worries about the safety of tents soldiers use when away from base camp, she said.

Chicoine usually avoids telling her about the aspects of his work that could make her worry, Reynolds said.

“He doesn’t tell me much, so it’s better,” she said.

Alan Johnston, 44, a private security contractor originally from Greenville, was in Mosul 10 days ago and said by e-mail Wednesday that 15 to 20 rockets hammered the Base Marez area daily when he was there.

“The security situation in the area is very unstable and volatile right now. Many insurgents from other countries are in the area,” Johnston wrote.

The Windsor resident has seen friends die, and he suffered injuries earlier this year from a car bomb. More than 20 local Kurdish people he worked with have been executed, he wrote.

“The insurgents would capture the Iraqi soldiers going home for the weekend, torture them, cut three or four lines in their chest, pluck their eyeballs out, place their ID cards on their foreheads and then shoot them in the forehead through the card and drop them off near the base so everyone could see them and get scared to quit,” Johnston wrote.

“It is tough. We want the Iraqis to fight and provide their own security, but they are not ready,” he wrote.

Two Army surgeons who visited Bangor International Airport on Wednesday for a refueling stop described the daily violence they witnessed at their hospital in Baghdad.

“Ninety-five percent of what we do is trauma,” general surgeon Alec Beekly said from the airport as fellow soldiers rushed to telephones to call home.

Nearly 200 service members from the Army’s 310th Military Intelligence Battalion and the 31st Combat Support Hospital stopped at BIA on Wednesday on their way to Fort Bliss, Texas. The troops hoped to be home by Christmas.

Both Beekly and surgeon Jim Sebesta were in Kuwait during the Mosul attack, and thought it unlikely that any of those injured were sent to their hospital, where they treat anyone who comes through the door, from Iraqi infants to coalition soldiers to insurgents, Sebesta said.

“We didn’t know if they were good guys or bad guys,” Sebesta said.

Fragments from explosions and stray bullets injure the most children, the men said. Many uniformed coalition and Iraqi soldiers are only in their teens and early 20s, Beekly said, shaking his head.

“It’s always hard with kids,” he said. “It’s tragic because they’re all young.”

Once in a while their fellow soldiers get permission to bring an Iraqi to the hospital for treatment. Sebesta recalled a 14-year-old girl whose 40-pound liver tumor was removed by one of his colleagues.

“Our hope is, one day, if we’re still there on a mission, we’ll be able to do more of the humanitarian work,” Beekly said.

And while he didn’t say much, 1st Sgt. Brian Abbott of Warren sent an e-mail home Wednesday to let his family and friends know he was all right after the Mosul attack.