Published: May 03, 2008 07:41 pm      

Native Bluefield soldier has key role in training Iraqi forces

BLUEFIELD — U.S. Army Captain Keith Pruett was serving in the regular Army in September of 2001, when a well-trained group of determined terrorists commandeered four commercial airliners and used them to carry out suicide attacks on the north and south towers of the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon and a fourth attack that was thwarted when passengers on the flight forced the terrorists to crash in rural southwestern Pennsylvania.

Pruett, 31, of Bluefield, started his third tour in Iraq at the first of April. “My first tour, of course, was the invasion when I was with the 3rd Infantry Division,” Pruett said via a cell telephone interview from his quarters in a Coalition forward Operations Base somewhere in Baghdad. Because of the separation of distance, there was a 2-4 second delay between each exchange. Pruett was patient between each question and answer.

“Sorry sir,” he said at one point in the conversation, apologizing for the delay. After saying that, he apologized once again for calling a reporter he has known for at least 18 years, sir. “It’s a conditioned response,” Pruett said, as the voice of the playful young high school student who played quarterback for the Bluefield High School Beaver football team in the mid-1990s filtered back to the top.

“During my second tour in 2004 and 2005, I was in Iraq helping soldiers as they were making the transition back out of combat before they returned to the states,” Pruett said. “This time, I’m on a very unique assignment. I am part of a transition team and our sole purpose here is to train Iraqi forces to operate in a successful manner, capable of governing Iraq and allowing us to get the heck out of here.”

Pruett is staying at a Coalition FOB, “but I’m only about a 10-minute walk from my guys,” he said of the Iraqi soldiers he is working with. Pruett is part of a nine-member team, headed by a lieutenant colonel, and including three majors and four non-commissioned officers. “I’m the man in the middle,” he said.

The transition team that Pruett is with is working with an Iraqi Army Brigade. “We are actually imbedded with them and try to teach, coach and mentor them on our areas of expertise,” he said. “I am a logistics trainer. I train and work with their logistics officer. We have an intel officer who works with their intelligence officer and so on.

“The key thing here is not to do everything for the Iraqis,” he said. “We have our jobs down pat now, and it’s easy for us to do things. We need to help them stand on their own. They have to make the system work and to make it grow to suit the specific needs of their soldiers. It’s an amazing experience. It’s the first time I’ve ever worked and interacted so closely with the Iraqi soldiers.”

The past seven years have been an incredible learning experience for Pruett. He expects to be on assignment for a total of 15 months on this assignment which started in December and involved an extensive three-month long study at Fort Riley, Kansas of the Iraqi language, culture and heritage. “We have interpreters with us at all times,” he said. “The challenge is to be patient. We’re here to teach. I want them to think that Keith Pruett is a good guy. It’s easy for me to have a lot of respect for the Iraqi soldiers. For as little as they have and as little as get paid for the work they do, I’m amazed by the motivation that they have.”

Pruett said that the brigade he is imbedded with is made up of both Sunni and Shia Muslims. He said that despite the differences between the two elements of the same faith, he has only observed unity among the Iraqi soldiers. “Small steps,” Pruett said. “Small but important.

“The jundi (an Arabic term for lower-level soldier) look up to you as an American soldier to a ridiculous level,” Pruett said. “We blouse our uniform pants at the bottom in our boots. If, by accident, one of the blousings comes loose and falls down over one of you boots and the jundi see you walking by, the next time you see them, they’ll be walking around with one of their uniform pants legs unbloused.”

Pruett spent time between both of his deployments in Europe. He met a young lady after his first deployment, the daughter of an Army officer who was in Europe studying, The two hit it off immediately, and resumed dating after Pruett completed his second deployment. In January of Keith and Chantel Pruett came home to Mercer County, when to the county courthouse in Princeton with both sets of parents and got married. “I couldn’t be doing what I’m doing without Chantel and my family,” Keith said. “She’s my best friend.”

The time that he has spent in other countries has broadened his appreciation for the world. “When I was playing football at Beaver and we would get beat bad on a Friday night, by the next day I was absolutely convinced that we were going to beat our next opponent even if it was against the top ranked school in the state,” Pruett said. “I was that confident, and I believed that America is always the best.

“After spending three years in Europe and getting exposed to other cultures, I discovered that there are a lot of other countries where people have done some amazing things,” he said. “I was bias to the American culture, but I found out that America isn’t always the best at everything. It was humbling to realize that. We’re part of the world — a great, great part of the world — but that doesn’t mean we’re the best at everything. There are a lot of brilliant people all over the world.”

Just because he’s a half a world away, Pruett remains connected to things happening locally and nationally. “I think all soldiers are receptive and perceptive when we come back home,” he said. “The military is not politics. The Commander and Chief is our boss. We follow our orders. My fear is when people react to us because of politics.

“It’s kind of like the guys out in Berkeley, Calif., who picketed the Marine recruiting station,” Pruett said. “Those guys are the ones who give them the opportunity to protest. Their standing in front of the guys who would come here and try to take that freedom away. There’s nothing political about that.

“That was a fear, I think, when the Vietnam guys came back home, but I still have concerns now about how we’re caring for the Vietnam vets now,” Pruett said. “I don’t think that every casualty takes place on the battlefield. If a father and daughter become distanced because of what he experiences in war, that’s a casualty. If a family splits up because of a long deployment, that’s a casualty. How many sacrifices do soldiers make? Americans always need to ask themselves that question.”

When Pruett gets out of the military, he hopes to return to the U.S. and find a football program that could use his talents as a coach. Pruett graduated from Beaver in 1995 and from Carson Newman College in 2001. “I learned a lot from my parents and from the coaches I had,” he said mentioning both Beaver Coach Fred Simon and former Graham coach, the late Glynn Carlock. “All that means a lot to me.”

But for now, Pruett is focused on the new mission. “Right now, we’re the pole that’s holding this tent up,” he said. “We’re trying to do some good here.” Pruett will be on this assignment until February of 2009, but hopes to return to Bluefield on leave in from Aug. 22 through Sept. 8. “There may be a football game that time of year that I’d like to see,” he said. The Beaver-Graham football game is scheduled for Aug. 29.

— Contact Bill Archer at barcher@bdtonline.com