Jamestown firefighter says experience in Iraq still gives him the chills – Jamestown Sun

JAMESTOWN — A Jamestown Fire Department inspector and firefighter says his experience in Iraq after 9/11 still gives him chills.

“It raised the hair on the back of my neck,” Mark Chapin said. “It’s like, ‘Really. Something could actually happen like this?’”

Chapin, a member of the then North Dakota National Guard’s 141st Engineer Combat Battalion, which is now the 817th Engineer Co. (Sapper), was deployed to Iraq in 2004 after 9/11. He served as a squad leader while in Iraq.

The 141st Engineer Combat Battalion was split up in Kuwait, and Chapin was told he would be in charge of a squad. From there, he said his squad’s mission was to drive the roads and look for improvised explosive devices to make sure the convoys could get to their bases safely.

“They would actually go out and they would make their own bomb,” Chapin said. “ … They would actually stick it out on the side of the road, and all they need to do is run two wires and they could run that out half a mile and hook it to a battery. So as the convoy came by, they would tap the battery, and it would go through the wire and set the explosion off.”

Terrorists hijacked four commercial airplanes carrying passengers on Sept. 11, 2001, crashing two of the airplanes into the World Trade Center towers and one at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. Passengers in the fourth plane tried to get control of the airplane, which crashed in Pennsylvania.

Chapin said he was working at C.H. Carpenter Lumber when 9/11 happened.

“When everybody started talking about this and got home and watched it on the news … you got goosebumps,” he said. “It was like, ‘OK, now I’m in the National Guard. What’s going to happen next?’”

Chapin said local Guard members did security at Jamestown Regional Airport.

“We were there an hour before it opened and we stayed there the whole day,” he said. “We stayed there until like an hour after everybody left just to make sure that nothing else suspicious was going on.”

From there, he said he started to think about what would happen if he was deployed. Chapin wrote down every contact in a notebook, including for his bills, plumbers, electricians, contractors and friends.

“I said ‘just in case’ because sometimes a lot of spouses don’t know who to call or what to do if something goes wrong,” he said.

Chapin said local Guard members got the call in November 2003 notifying them about being deployed. He said he had never been deployed before.

Chapin and other local Guard members didn’t know if they were going to be deployed overseas and first went to Colorado for training in December 2003. He said he thought the Guard members would take the place of the full-time military in Colorado if its members got deployed overseas.

“We were told that first we were supposed to be rebuilding,” he said. “Then when we got down to Colorado, we actually went through all the drills. We went door to door, kicking in doors like you were going to search the buildings and everything.”

Chapin said Guard members couldn’t tell their family members where they were after leaving Jamestown.

“Everything was secret,” he said.

He said the family was heartbroken to learn he was going to be deployed. He said he didn’t know how long he would be deployed and couldn’t promise family members that he was coming back. He said his daughter and son were still young – 8 or 9 years old and age 6, respectively, at the time – and didn’t really know what was going on.

Chapin said the Jamestown community eventually found out where the 141st Engineer Combat Battalion when Spc. Phil Brown was killed in action.

“I don’t know what was on the news then, but things made the news and people kind of knew where we were at,” he said.

On May 8, 2004, Brown, who served in Iraq with the North Dakota National Guard’s 141st Engineer Combat Battalion, was severely injured and later died from injuries sustained when an improvised explosive device went off west of Samarra, Iraq. Chapin sustained minor injuries as well.

“I was actually next to him (Brown),” Chapin said.

Chapin said he could have died in the same incident. He said a quarter-sized piece of shrapnel came through the windshield that would have gotten him in the head. He also said his groin protector had a piece of shrapnel the size of an eraser.

“We got pictures of the truck and everything,” he said. “The shrapnel actually ripped up the hood.”

Chapin said he was supposed to tell his wife what happened before the Pentagon informed her. He said the Pentagon told his wife about the incident before he informed her.

“After that, she was like, ‘Oh my god. Do you have to go out anymore?’” he said.

He said he told her that he still had to go out every day to look for improvised explosive devices.

After Brown’s death, Chapin said the troops were able to get remote-controlled vehicles. He said a camera was installed on each remote-controlled vehicle that would be used to determine if holes contained an improvised explosive device. If a hole contained an improvised explosive device, the troops either had to get explosives to it to blow it up or call explosive ordinance disposal that had a larger robot that could check the hole and drop C4 into it.

“There were quite a few times we would use them, and then sometimes we just shot at it with our Mark 19 – a big grenade round – blow them up that way,” Chapin said.

Throughout his time, troops were granted leave to come home. Chapin took his leave in September 2004.

“You got to come home, and it’s just totally different,” Chapin said. “You’re used to being on guard. You’re used to watching everything possible.”

Chapin said his kids were shy as well because he was away for such a long time.

While Chapin was on leave, Staff Sgt. Lance Koenig, who was from Carrington, North Dakota, died after an improvised explosive device detonated while he was conducting a dismounted patrol in Tikrit, Iraq.

Chapin said it was tough to go back out after Brown and Koenig were killed in action.

“I was off mission because I was next to Phil when he got killed for about three days, and the next day you go out there, you’re just like, OK, is there anything that happened? Is anybody else gonna get hurt?” he said. “So you’re really on guard. You’re really watching things, and it was tough going back out. Some people, you didn’t want to go back out. You had to. You have to try to keep other troops safe and do the best you can.”

Chapin said more cleaning needed to be done in Iraq. He said the contents to make bombs were lying all over the ground in some areas.

“We pulled off the road one time, and this is where they were making rounds for their whatever, and you could just see them,” he said. “They are all over out there.”

Chapin said members of the 141st Engineer Combat Battalion get together for a reunion each year. He said the reunion started as just the Bravo Company before they began inviting the entire 141st Engineer Combat Battalion.

The reunion includes going out to Brown’s grave site at Calvary Cemetery and doing a memorial.