RENESSA L. GERHARDT
Patriot, Chapter 1919
Army, Iraq
Combat Wounded Female
Soldier
Renessa L. Gerhardt was born in Lubbock, Texas
in 1985. When she was five years old, her family moved to Saudi Arabia.
They lived in Yanbu (about an hour away from Jeddah) where Renessa attended
the Yanbu International School until, when she was age ten, they returned to
Texas. The Gerhardt’s then lived, initially in Denton, where Renessa
finished elementary school. They next moved to Houston where she graduated
from Bleyl Middle School and then attended Cy-Creek High School until
(having skipped 11th grade) mid-way through her senior year. Then, when she
was seventeen, the family returned to Saudi Arabia, once again to Yanbu.
Renessa graduated from the Yanbu International High School in 2003. That
was only about six months after arrival back in Saudi Arabia, school being
dismissed early as a result of concerns about terrorist activity.
Shortly after graduation from high school, she enlisted
in the Army, taking a five-year contract under the Delayed Entry Program (DEP).
But, she began to have some misgivings, and today Renessa says, “When I
first signed my contract for the Army, I was extremely nervous about my
decision (I was in the DEP for almost a year). A few weeks after I had
signed the contract I was preparing to take a shower while listening to the
radio. When I turned it on to my favorite country station a man’s voice
came over the radio. I had never heard that particular voice before and I
was instantly intrigued. He basically said not to worry about my decision,
God was going to take care of me, and he reminded me that God is always with
me. As soon as he said those few sentences my finger slipped and I
accidentally turned off the radio. I quickly turned it back on and the
station was in the middle of a commercial. I will never forget that
experience and I know those words were for me and others who doubt if God is
watching over them.”
Renessa entered active duty in August 2003 and went
through One Station Unit Training at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, first
taking Basic Training and then Advanced Individual Training in the Military
Police. Upon completion of training, she was ordered overseas.
Private
Gerhardt arrived in Germany in January 2004 and
was quickly assigned to the 630th MP Company in Bamberg. She would remain
assigned to that company for the duration of her five-year enlistment.
However, the 630th MP’s did not spend all that time in Germany, they had two
long deployments to Iraq during her enlistment. Renessa came and went from
Bamberg three times, and came and went twice from Iraq.
In April 2004, the 630th MP Company deployed to Iraq, for
Operation Iraqi Freedom II, and was attached to the 759th MP Battalion in
Baghdad. The MPs were in charge of numerous Iraqi Police stations on the
east side of the Tigris River and they provided training for Iraqi Police in
the areas of force protection, patrolling, and station operations. When al-Sadr’s
“Mahdi Army” began attacking Iraqi Police stations, the U.S. MP’s began
manning those stations 24 hours a day to repel the attacks. By June 2004
most of the MP’s were out of the police stations and were conducting area
security operations throughout the city. In October 2004, the 630th MP
Company provided route security along the major roads leading into Fallujah
when the insurgents were being cleared from there by coalition forces. At
the end of the twelve-month assignment, in April 2005, Renessa’s company
returned to Bamberg.
After 15-months back at home station in Bamberg, the
630th MP Company deployed to Iraq for the second time, arriving in theater
June 26, 2006. The company was initially at Camp Rustamiyah, where for the
next five months they worked with the Iraqi National Police and assisted
with security missions in eastern Baghdad.
Then in November 2006, the company displaced to Forward
Operating Base (FOB) “Shield” in a northeastern section of the city known as
Adhamiya, a large Sunni enclave surrounded by the Shiite neighborhoods of
Shaab and Ur. The only other U.S. unit in Adhamiya at that time was the
1st Battalion, 26th Infantry, 1st Infantry Division, and the Shiite areas
had no coalition troops at all. The MPs provided training and assistance,
or conducted joint operations with the Iraqi Police and their objective was
to improve the policing skills of the Iraqi Police and to build up the
people’s trust in their national police force. Building confidence was
difficult to do because during the Saddam era the police were there to
enforce his brutal regime, and the people did not see them as providing law
and order.
When the 630th MP Company first came on the scene there
were incidents where the Iraqi Police and Iraqi Army were shooting at each
other. Local citizens would not assist or interact with either the police or
the MPs and sometimes the MPs had a difficult time trusting their police
counterparts. Nineteen of the police were dismissed after being suspected
of cooperating with the insurgents, one of them died while emplacing a
roadside bomb, and 30 others were arrested for corruption or collaboration
with the insurgents. There were some counter-examples on the plus side, but
not many. Twenty policemen in the district were killed by the insurgents,
and some others displayed extreme acts of dedication and won the respect of
the Americans. During the next two months, things had begun to improve,
but only gradually, when the first benefits of the “surge” began to be felt
by the 630th MPs. In January 2007, the 2nd Brigade Combat Team of the 82nd
Airborne Division began arriving in Adhamiya, and things started to get
better quickly.
The MPs saw a big difference. Previously uncooperative
neighborhood residents began to go out of their way to help, and would wave
them down when they were out on patrol to give information about the
insurgents. In February 2007, Operation Law and Order began in Baghdad and
things got even better.
For its part, the 630th MP’s moved out of their Forward
Operating Base and into the neighborhoods where they had been working and
fighting for months. Together with the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, they
conducted clearing operations in Shaab and Ur, the areas where previous to
the “surge,” there had not been any U.S. presence. The company then
established and manned two Combat Outposts (COP Callahan, in an abandoned
shopping center, and COP Old MoD, the former Ministry of Defense building),
and placed another platoon in a Joint Security Site, the headquarters for
the district police forces.
Life in the Combat Outposts was austere. All the
amenities of the larger Forward Operating Bases were gone and the troops ate
Meals, Ready to Eat (MREs) for every meal, slept on cots, and at first, had
no electricity, no showers, and no latrines.
The now
veteran SPC (E-4) Renessa Gerhardt
was in 2nd Platoon which was located at “Old MoD.” On most missions she was
normally the gunner, but sometimes driver, on an M1114, an up-armored HUMMV
further augmented with locally installed additional armor. The MPs added a
75-pound tank armor plate to the floor and sandboxes and ballistic-resistant
glass were installed in the doors. With all the modifications, an M1114 had
about 1,000 pounds of additional armor, and with the extra weight every part
of the vehicle from the door hinges to the axles had to be reinforced or
somehow modified to keep it from breaking. They had a “monster garage”
operation in their motor pool and it stayed busy. Also, Renessa and all the
crews were dressed in full Armored Security Vehicle uniforms for added
protection when they went out on missions. She was wounded June 21, 2007
when her vehicle was hit by an Improvised Explosive Device (IED). Events of
that day unfolded this way.
In Adhamiya, an M2 Bradley Fighting Vehicle of Company C,
1st Battalion, 26th Infantry, on a patrol from Forward Operating Base
“Apache,” was destroyed by a powerful, deep-buried IED. The crew of five,
together with their Iraqi interpreter, were all killed. Later, when 1st
Platoon, 630th MP Company was securing that site, they were ambushed and a
Rocket Propelled Grenade (RPG) round penetrated one the vehicles killing the
MP female driver and wounding the gunner and team leader. At that point,
four vehicles from 2nd Platoon, including Renessa’s M1114, were diverted
from a previously planned mission and sped for the scene of action. Enroute
to the site, Renessa’s vehicle also was hit by an IED. Details of that
day’s actions were reported in the media and are available in this “Military
Times” website:
http://www.militarytimes.com/news/2007/06/military_iedincident_070622w/
Her vehicle, heavily damaged, came to a stop 20 feet
beyond the IED crater and her team leader, SSG Mann, had massive leg
injuries. Gunner, Renessa, momentarily unconscious from the concussion, had
a wound to the forehead, and trauma of both arms and legs. Dazed and
disoriented, SPC Gerhardt nonetheless was preparing to engage insurgents
with the .50 cal machine gun (none were seen) when other platoon members
came up and took charge. The casualties were transported to FOB “Apache.”
When dismounting the vehicle upon arrival there, Renessa fell to the ground,
and unable to walk, was going into shock as she was carried into the Aid
Station. She and SSG Mann were further evacuated to the 28th Combat Support
Hospital in the Green Zone where she was treated for her head wound and was
held for observation for the effects of concussion, but only briefly, before
being returned to duty.
The company was short on personnel, but the operational
tempo remained high, so Renessa was sent out on her next mission the day
after her return from the hospital. Her last three months in Iraq were less
eventful for her personally, but a noteworthy event for the MPs, and all the
troops in northeast Baghdad, happened in August.
From their arrival in Adhamiya they had suspected the Abu
Hanifa Mosque was being used as a base of operations by the insurgents. As
an important Sunni holy site, U.S. forces could never get clearance to
search it. Now however, the increased presence of the troops had emboldened
the populace to take action for themselves. A local sheik, that had lost a
relative killed by the terrorists, together with his family members and some
Iraqi Army soldiers, stormed the mosque. When they were done with that,
then they called the MPs. Upon arrival, the 630th MP Company found 50
barrels of liquid explosives and more rifles than they could count, along
with an assortment of other weapons. From that point on, the Combat
Outposts stopped being mortared and there was a significant drop-off in
attacks throughout that area for the remaining weeks that the 630th MPs were
in Iraq.
The next month, September 2007, the company returned to
home station in Bamberg, Germany, and Renessa was with them. Her MP unit
had sent 171 soldiers into Iraq and had suffered 4 killed in action and 21
wounded.
During that deployment, the 630th MP Company had executed
2,200 missions, and during the earlier deployment in 2004 they had executed
1,300 missions. SPC Gerhardt participated in her fair share of them.
She was promoted to Sergeant while serving out the
remaining time on her enlistment in Bamberg, and she also applied,
“on-line,” for membership in the Military Order of the Purple Heart. She
became a member in June and then was discharged from the Army in August 2008
and returned home to Texas.
She immediately enrolled for medical training in Austin
Community College, and with no time wasted, has already started working
shifts as a VA Volunteer in our Purple Heart Coffee Bar in the Austin VA
Outpatient Clinic. This month, PATRIOT BULLETIN proudly features Chapter
1919’s own, Patriot Renessa Gerhardt.
--This
article is an account of experiences of Renessa Gerhardt, together with
information from news releases of the 21st Theatre Support Command Public
Affairs Office posted at
www.21tsc.army.mil/story/.
|
