By Darrell Halen
 

For more than a year, Army 1st Lt. Barry Couture “chased bad guys” and helped Iraqis rebuild their lives – a stark contrast to life in his relatively quiet hometown of Pelham.

Couture, 25, led an armored platoon of about 24 men in eastern Baghdad. One man was killed, another seriously injured.

“The Iraq experience especially makes you grow up fast, just because you’re literally ... in charge of these guys lives,” said Couture, who recently returned home after completing a 15-month tour in Iraq.

While there, his men fought the Mahdi militia, the paramilitary force of the Iraqi Shi’ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

At the same time, Couture was in charge of starting civic projects – working on sewage systems, electricity, water and doing trash cleanup. Working with local leaders, he tried to make life better for the Iraqis and gain their trust.

“I did a lot of work with the schools,” he said. “That was my biggest focus. A lot of them had shattered windows. We’d replace the windows, get their plumbing straight. Make sure their bathrooms worked. Made sure the teachers are getting paid.”

Couture, a 2001 Pelham High School graduate, was only about two weeks into his first-year studies at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point when the 9/11 terrorist attacks took place.

“You sort of had the idea that the peacetime army was shattered on that day,” he said. “Everyone had that tangible feeling, especially the seniors. Those few seconds it took the planes to hit, we all watched it on TV. We went quickly from a peacetime army to an army of war.”

Time magazine, in fact, dubbed Couture’s class the “Class of 9/11.” They were cadets, according to the magazine, who entered West Point shortly before the world changed and were prepared for a new kind of war.

Death and destruction

In the spring of 2007, while serving in Iraq, Couture’s Humvee was hit by an armor-piercing roadside bomb known as an explosively formed projectile or EFP.

The EFP ripped through the Humvee’s trunk and tore off its spare tire. The blast’s force cracked two windows and flattened the vehicle’s tires.

“My ears were ringing for two days,” Couture told the newspaper Stars and Stripes.

A band that Couture wears on his wrist honors the memory of one of his men, Specialist Charles Leonard of Monroe, La., who was killed in a firefight, leaving behind a wife and child.

“But luckily that was the only (casualty),” said Couture. “We had a lot of close calls, but we were really, really fortunate.”

Another man, Couture’s senior noncommissioned officer, suffered burns to his face and hands when an EFP ripped through a tank. The man eventually recovered and returned to the platoon.

“He didn’t have to,” Couture said. “You sort of become a family when you’re over there. He felt strongly that he needed to come back and finish what we all started.”

“He helped run the show with me so it was great having him back,” he added. “It was an uplift for everyone when he got back because it kind of represented to us a really dark and bad time when he got hurt, and then him coming back and things started getting better – it made life a lot more bearable and easier.”

Tour extended

As Gen. David Patraeus took over command of the coalition forces and the military’s surge in Iraq began, Couture learned his year-long tour, which began in October 2006, was extended to 15 months. His platoon moved from Rustamiyah Forward Operating Base to combat outposts – first to an abandoned potato chip factory, and later to an Iraqi bunker Saddam Hussein had built when he was in power.

During their tour, Couture’s platoon patrolled at least eight hours a day, with the men moving in tanks and Humvees. With his uniform, protective gear and ammunition on him, Couture carried about 85 extra pounds on his 175-pound frame.

Back in Pelham, his parents worried for his safety.

“Our faith helped me, our friends helped me,” said his mother, Maureen. “You just get through every day. It’s really, really hard.”

What Couture learned in Iraq is that he and his men had to resist falling into habits, that doing the uncomfortable helped keep them safe.

“The insurgents pick up that you take the same route every day. That you do certain things the same way all the time,” he said.

“Things start becoming routine, and the biggest thing is, the entire time, you have to fight complacency,” he added. “Iraq is really weeks and weeks of boredom, followed by a couple of seconds of terror, sheer terror.”

Couture described his platoon as a cohesive unit, whose members pulled for each other. Each one protected the soldier next to him.

“My noncommissioned officers were just amazing at just keeping the soldiers aware, making sure they all had all their protective gear on, just kicking them in the butt when they needed it,” Couture said. “That’s the biggest reason why most of them got through, I think.”

“There was kind of a tension all the time,” he added. “But at the same time, we laughed a lot. You’re never having a good time, but you make the most of your situation.”

Coming home

When Couture attended Pelham High, he had a classmate who would make the ultimate sacrifice to Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Sgt. Daniel Gionet, who graduated the same year as Couture, was an Army medic when he was killed in June 2006 after a bomb hit his tank.

Couture was still in the U.S. at the time, and his father, Bruce, called him to deliver the news.

“Just like all the other ones, it’s sad, and you wish it didn’t have to happen,” Couture said. “But that’s the situation over there. That’s the way things work. I think it hits when it was somebody from your hometown.”

Couture came home on Jan. 19 and spent time with family and friends before returning to Fort Hood, Texas, where he is stationed. His tour of duty in Iraq, he said, seemed to pass quickly.

“You’re so focused on what you’re doing and there’s so much to do, it actually goes by quick,” Couture said. “I didn’t feel like we were there 15 months. Your days are so full. The days feel long, but the weeks and months fly by.”