National's Jamie Allen Heads Off to War
The war in Iraq has a familiar face for many area families – there are legions of soldiers who serve at Fort Leavenworth, Whitman Air Force Base, Fort Riley and overseas who have Platte County addresses.
For some, like State Representative Jason Brown, it’s an obligation: Brown, a member of the Army Reserve, was called back into active duty last year and took a bullet in the lung before heading back to Platte City. To others – say, career officers – it’s an occupation. But for 24-year-old Jamie Allen of Parkville it’s a call to service that he cannot deny.
Allen may not fit the image many people have for a soldier. The son of Jim and Nancy Allen, the owners of The National Golf Club, he could have chosen any number of career paths, any number of ways to spend his twenties, but he chose to volunteer for one of the most dangerous missions he could as a sailor in the U.S. Navy.
Allen, who graduated from the U.S. Naval academy in 2006, originally planned to be a helicopter pilot. Excelling at the academy, he was chosen for pilot training but Navy doctors soon discovered that he Allen had a rare, uncorrectable eye problem that disqualified him from flying.
Soon after, Allen learned of new fighting force, a group that would specialize in electronic warfare. In addition, it would be the first fighting ground force in the history of the Navy.
Their mission is one of the more important ones in the war. One of the greatest threats facing American soldiers in Iraq is the Improvised Explosive Device (IED) – a radio controlled roadside bomb that terrorists explode when convoys of soldiers pass by. While the Army and Marines have radio jamming technology, their jammers were also blocking regular communication between American soldiers. In order for soldiers on a convoy to remain in contact with their base, other vehicles or soldiers, they needed to turn off their jamming equipment.
In January of 2006, Navy brass were briefed on the problem and offered their assistance. The Navy works in a highly electronic environment at sea and their radio technology is considered to be the most advanced and best in the world. Their understanding of the electromagnetic spectrum meant they could jam just the insurgent’s radio frequency and not those of friendly forces. The Army officially solicited the Navy’s help later that year.
“I honestly believe that this support will reduce casualties more than any other single action of the long war,” Lt. General, US Army Peter W. Chiarelli, said in the letter. Three months ago, the call went out for volunteers.
Allen answered the call, one of only four ensigns out of the 290 sailors that volunteered for the force.
Understandably, Jim and Nancy Allen had a “mixed reaction” to their son’s decision.
“Somebody has to do it but, you know…he had options,” Jim Allen told the Luminary. “I tried to talk him out of it, but he said, ‘look, you know…we’re really having a major effect. This is one the defining moments of my generation, and I can help save lives.’”
Within three weeks, Allen received his orders, and was off to war.
Allen spent one week at Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia where he received a variety of vaccines. There, he also made his last will and testament. After being processed, he was off to Indian Head Naval Service Weapons in Maryland where he learned about the Navy’s Counter Radio-controlled IED Electronic Warfare (CREW) program. Considered to be one of the Navy’s most classified and secret programs, Allen was not even allowed a cellphone or contact with the outside while being briefed.
After a week there, Allen was sent to Fort Jackson in South Carolina where he received the Navy’s equivalent of ground combat training. Telling him that he was “in the ‘Narmy’ now,” Allen trained from 5 a.m. in the morning until 5 p.m. in the evening, spending every minute in the field, breaking only to eat a MRE in the near 100 degree heat. He qualified on the M-16 and 9mm sidearm, he was trained in urban warfare, he was trained on what to do in the event of a capture.
At the end of two weeks, Allen was on a plane for Kuwait. The trip took 34 hours. Allen didn’t sleep a wink.
In an e-mail home, Allen described the trip.
“Our flight was bumped around …delayed…canceled…and then finally about six hours late. We all were tired, stinky, and irritable. However, we found out that our flight was so screwed up because our inbound aircraft was bringing dead American soldiers to Kuwait so that they so that they could return home to America. It made our problems seem pretty small.”
Allen arrived in Camp Liberty, America’s base of operations for the Iraq war, where all of the Generals and staff work from. He described the scene.
“[It’s] like a small city…but all the cars are tanks, Humvees, and all the citizens carry machine guns.”
The first night, the camp came under some fire from insurgents who lobbed mortars. Allen described them as being “like lightening strikes…more annoying than dangerous.”
Allen will be spending the next nine months with the fabled 2nd US
Cavalry Regiment’s Stryker Brigade. The Stryker is a light armored vehicle designed to provide both protection and mobility for ground forces in urban areas. Allen said his brigade does real “Tom Clancy type stuff…grabbing bad guys in the middle of the night.”
With six weeks of training and a Naval background, Allen is under no illusions – he has a difficult leadership job ahead of him as junior officer, even if he is responsible for saving them from dying in a roadside explosion.
“Army guys,” Allen said, “do things a little bit different than the Navy…but I guess they have to. They are outside the wire everyday doing things that would make most of us mess our pants. I really have to give it to these young 18, 19 year old privates who are out here…they are brave guys…we’ll see how it goes.”
Jim Allen already feels he knows how it will go.
“If you look at him he’s not a real gung ho guy, but I think he’s gonna do his duty and do his job well.