Good to be home!

The only good thing about Lt. Scott Mangum's six months in a sandy hell was catering a dinner for 850 soldiers and paying for it with Saddam Hussein's money.

"I got to spend a lot of the money they took from Saddam - that $200 million that they took. They gave some of it to us to upgrade our living ... I spent $17,000. I bought a bunch of freezers, refrigerators, air conditioners and fans just to make (life) better. I was buying ice for us ever day because it was so hot."I bought 850 guys dinner one night on Saddam, so that was good," Mangum said at his welcome home party Friday.Mangum, 28, has been in the Army six years and is now a platoon leader for the 3rd Infantry Division. He arrived home July 18 after spending six months in Iraq."It was real dirty, hard and long," he said of his experience, citing examples such as, "I went 45 days without a shower ... I stayed awake for six days."Mangum's division was the first into the northwest Baghdad."The crazy part was when we went to Baghdad, naturally. We were the first guys to go into northwest Baghdad. When we passed Baghdad International Airport and I saw the sign, I was like, 'Oh, this is it.' When you're doing it, you don't really know you're doing it. You just know you're tired and you're hungry." Mangum's six months were spent, for the most part, eating MRE's, using baby wipes for "everything" and trucking along on an emotional rollercoaster in the middle of a sandy hell away from his family.The best part was "getting on the plane" to come home, according to Mangum. "As you're driving up into Baghdad, there are kids lining up on the side of the street, waving at you, and they're so happy to see you, but their dads, their families, these men are standing behind them," he said, "and they're not very happy to see you and they're shooting at you."You're driving through and you've got all these kids, you see all the destruction, and you've got these kids waving at you and people shooting at you. "So it was like, all at once, every emotion you have was on that road. It was two or three days of that crap."When the troops moved into Baghdad and began occupying a water plant there, things got a little better, Mangum said. "Once we got there, they weren't shooting at us every day. They were shooting around us. They called it celebratory fire. I don't know - shooting's shooting, fire's fire to us." Living conditions did improve somewhat once they arrived in Baghdad, Mangum said, due to Saddam's money. The meal Mangum had catered in the middle of May was "the best food we'd had" since they arrived in Iraq. Each soldier had half a chicken, rice, vegetables and a soda.The one thing that Mangum really wanted to happen in Baghdad never did. He never got to see his friend, 1st Lt. Michael Roeufanz. Although they were in Baghdad at the same time, they were in different parts, Roeufanz said.Roeufanz, who has been in the Army 13 years, and Mangum attended Officer Candidate School and the Infantry Officer Basis Course together and became friends. "I looked for him" in Baghdad, said Roeufanz, a platoon leader in the 82nd Infantry Division, "but he was in the northeast and I was in the southwest." The thing that kept the men's living conditions bearable was the support from home.Not only did the support - namely packages - help Mangum, but they helped all his men."I got a total of 150 packages, I think, and I gave it all away," Mangum said. "I got a bunch of it when I was in Kuwait, before we left. We didn't know for sure that we were going, but we all had an idea, so I took all that stuff and I cascaded it all. I had this big metal box - I packed it all in there and put it in the back of my Humvee. From there, I just carried it. "I knew that we were going to need it eventually, but I didn't want to give it to the guys too early... And then when it started getting ugly, I always had stuff to give them." For a while, the mail was turned off, Mangum said. Up until that point, Debbie Martin, an art teacher at Pulaski County High School in Virginia, had been sending packages with the help of her students, friends, colleagues and family. Mangum's aunt, Holly Kincaid, another art teacher at the school, had given Martin Mangum's mailing address, and her class kind of adopted him. Along with all the packages she sent, Martin wrote to Mangum. "I sent him jokes, cartoons and stuff to keep their spirits up and let them know we appreciate them," she said, adding the project was good for her students.
Mangum said the support and packages meant more than anyone could realize.
"The very first day that the mail was turned back on, she sent 15 packages," he said with tears in his eyes. "There were 15 packages sitting there waiting on me. It was like, 'Oh, God.' We were pretty bad at that time. So as soon as I got those packages, I took them back to the guys. Everybody got something that day.
"I filled it up in those big yellow mail bags - two of those big bags - and I started walking around to everybody, saying, 'Here, take what you need.' They took what they needed and where we were at the water plant, it's a really big place and I ended up walking forever, but I walked and gave everybody something."That's the biggest thing. Everybody sent me something. And when they did, it was like you didn't even know you needed it until they sent it to you." Mangum, who also received packages from his mother, Beverly Sanna, and most of Beckley through her USA Today project for The Register-Herald called "Thanks for Serving," in which she partnered with the Red Cross and sent hundreds of packages to the soldiers. Former local Red Cross director Peggy Debnam described the project as "a wonderful partnership."
Mangum said the troops were very appreciative and needed everything that was sent. "Eyedrops were huge because the sand was so bad. You don't have toilet paper, but you've got baby wipes. You use baby wipes for everything.
"Deodorant was more of a luxury than a need. You didn't really need it, but you used it just because it smelled different than you did," he laughed. Coming back home was wonderful, Mangum said, but it had a low point, too. "The first week I felt real guilty about being home because all those guys are still over there. Then you get the word, 'Hey, you might be going back.' The possibility of going back is pretty good."
Mangum has faith in the U.S. military's progress in the war. "They got the two dirt bags and they'll find Saddam eventually." Mangum wasn't the only one happy about his homecoming, as was obvious from the crowd at his welcome party. His wife, Audrey, and children, Tori, 10, and Tristan, 3, were among them. The time Mangum was gone was hard, Audrey said. "You just have to go on and really do it for the kids so that they don't know there's a difference other than him being gone."
Even at the tender age of 3, Tristan knew where his dad was. "He would tell you he's in Iraq. He says it very funny, but he knew what he was talking about." A few days after Scott came home, Audrey said, he left for work before Tristan got up, and "(Tristan) got up that morning and he'd already gone to TP. He got up and said, 'Where's my dad' ... and I said, 'He went to work.' These big tears came to his eyes, and I said, 'No, he went to little work, not big work.'

(The Register-Herald, Monday, August 4, 2003. Reporter, Cassie M. O’Dell)