February 21, 2008 Issue                                       

©2007 The Chestnut Hill Local

Oreland soldier learns life, death not far in Iraq
by Jimmy J. Pack Jr.

Private First Class Dan Prior of Oreland. (Photo by Jimmy J. Pack Jr.)

We’re lucky people, living on the Hill. While many of our lives involve personal problems and quiet desperation, we somehow get by, dealing with our own dramas. When we wake up, there are seldom issues that face us daily that involve choices in life and death. For one man, Private First Class Daniel Prior of neighboring Oreland, one of his life dramas involved just that. Every second of his life was tenuous — the mere fact that any minute he could die was a reality.

Pvt. Prior has the face of a soldier. The harsh angles of his bones, constantly hidden smile, lend him a fiercely masculine intimidation that gives the outward appearance of a man bent, twisted and shaped by weeks of basic training and months of living — of surviving — in the desert of Iraq.

“I was in high school when I joined the Reserves,” says Pvt. Prior, home for a few months before being deployed to Egypt, a significantly safer assignment than where he’d been in 2005.

“I went to a recruiter to talk about the R.O.T.C. program, and by the time I left I had signed up for the Reserves.”

Prior, born in August 1986, signed up for the Reserves on a delayed entry program when he was 17 years old. In July 2004, he was called to basic training and was sent to Ft. Leonard Wood, Miss. on Sept. 9, 2004.

“Basic was basic. At the end of October I received advanced individual training. I was trained to be a truck driver, and then after that just had to report one weekend a month. All the while I was taking classes at Penn State Abington. Then I got a call in February telling me my unit was going to be shipped off to Iraq. First thing I thought was, @#$%! You just don’t think something like this is going to happen to you, even when you join the Army. The reality doesn’t sink in immediately. When you’re in basic training, there’s a lot of worry about your bunk, your uniform, your shoes, your gun. You make friends and there’s a lot of camaraderie. But the reality of war is something you’re never prepared for. ”

How can you prepare for the reality that you are going to be put into situations in which there are only two choices — kill or be killed? This is what basic training is supposed to prepare you for.

After spending only three weeks as an undergrad, Pvt. Prior was sent to Camp Shelby, Miss., the nation’s largest state-owned training site, over 134,820 acres.

“These are World War II era barracks. It was hot, humid — just miserable. This was the first time I was actually aware of how long I had been away from home. I was preparing for the worst but not yet ready to actually deal with it.”

The few weeks spent there, Pvt. Prior could feel worry trying to make its way into his consciousness. The heat, a reminder of the desert to come, pulled at the bottom of his stomach. These aren’t butterflies, they’re lead weights that make your insides feel as though they no longer want to stay inside. And here he was, only in Mississippi.

“We were sent to a transition point in Kuwait on May 13. After nine days I was pulled away from my unit and attached to the 10th Mountain Unit — we were all truck drivers.”

The 10th Mountain Unit was established in the early 1940s. After watching Finland defeat an invading Union of Soviet Socialist Republic Army, the American military were concerned there weren’t enough soldiers trained in warfare that involved snow-capped mountains. Special cold-gear, special food and special training were created and the 10th Mountain Division spent most of WWII in the mountains of northern Italy.

“We were sent to Al Asad, the second largest airbase in Iraq, at night. The air was cool — cooler than it was at Camp Shelby. After our commander briefed us, we all went to sleep and woke up to something completely different. This wasn’t my life anymore.

“In basic I’d get yelled at for having a crumb of food on my uniform. You’re made to feel scared. But in Iraq, that’s where you actually learn. Here, the last thing anyone cares about is a scuff on your shoe. It’s what you know, what you do, to stay alive. You have to be on edge every second you’re here — ready for anything. You have to train your mind, focus it on this one thought — a very large bomb can go off at any time and kill you.”

Despite all the basic and specialized training, Pvt. Prior realized there was nothing you could go through, whether exercises or war games, to prepare you for the thought that your life is expendable to many people around you.

“The base is surrounded by Constantine wire [barbed or razor wire coiled], and outside that wire the possibilities for you dying are endless. Your life and everyone else’s life is at stake every second. This is all you think about when you’re there.”

Imagine waking up every day fearing for your life. A trip to the mall, a sister’s wedding, dinner with a friend are not things we need to worry about, but thousands of men and women in uniform do live with the fear that they will die doing everyday activities — playing video games, sleeping, eating dinner. Thousands more around the world live with this fear as well.

On his first mission as part of a convoy, Pvt. Prior was sent out at night to deliver supplies to CKV (Camp Korean Village), a small Army outpost by the Jordanian border.

“I didn’t want to stick my head in a turret. I was assigned to stand post in an LMTV [a tractor trailer with an armored cap] as part of a six-car convoy. I was a gunman and this was one of my smallest convoys, complete with a scout vehicle and an ambulance.

We were heading on the MSR [Main Supply Route], a six-lane highway, and 10 miles short of our point, at around 7 a.m. I get thirsty and reach down for a soda. When I get back up in the turret, I can see the entire side of the truck is on fire. I didn’t even hear a thing when the IED [Improvised Explosive Device, ie: a homemade bomb] went off....

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