Fort Hood soldiers prepare for battle with scars from rampage

FORT HOOD, Texas (AFP) – Countless commanders in the US Army have prepared battalions for war since the terrorist attacks of September 11, but none of them had do it after losing soldiers in a shooting spree on a home base.

Call it a bizarre and cruel turn of events, but it is also the plate handed to Lieutenant Colonel Peter Andrysiak Jr., whose 20th Engineer Battalion leaves for Afghanistan in January to do the nasty job of clearing hidden bombs from long stretches of country roads.

A veteran of Iraq who had 100 GIs die on his watch over a pair of tours with the 1st Cavalry Division, Andrysiak lost four soldiers in the November 5 shooting here. Eleven others under his watch were wounded.

Now he's trying to turn the compass away from the horror of that day and toward the task ahead. And he knows just one way to do that: by turning inward to duty, and to discipline.

"I have always been pretty focused and I think I have understood the butcher's bill in war, and I think every day I am demanding because of that," Andrysiak said.

"For some of these soldiers that realize they're not invincible and it's caused them to be more focused and determined, because you'll hear that from the folks that are talking," he added.

"There's a lot of soldiers that are scared now, questioning themselves."

That would have happened after the battalion lost men in its first battle.

But a series of memorial services and funerals for this battalion sparked a time of introspection well before their jump-off to the war zone, and that is especially the case for the men of the 2nd Platoon, 510th Clearance Company.

It lost three soldiers. And the man accused of carrying out the massacre which left 13 people dead and 42 wounded was one of their own: an army psychiatrist set to deploy to Afghanistan who is now being investigated for ties to radical Islam.

With the TV cameras and swarms of reporters gone, the 20th Engineers got back to work last week, beginning each morning with intensive physical training that set the tone for the remainder of their duty day.

There is purpose in the work. Three in every four soldiers in this battalion have never fired a bullet in anger, so Andrysiak and officers like Sergeant Antonio Tysor are pushing their men hard.

The day after the shooting, Tysor couldn't tell his platoon what had happened to the soldiers who were not in formation because not all of the families had been notified yet.

"But they looked to their left and to their right and they knew what was going on," said Tysor, 2nd Platoon's sergeant and a two-tour veteran of Iraq.

"And I told them to remember how your battle buddy looks right now, look in his eyes, because half of them, maybe only four people out of our 28, has ever seen combat a day in their life," he added.

"I told them to remember that look. Just look at your battle buddy's face right now. That's why we train so much. That's why we train so hard, so that the enemy has to be good -- and not lucky -- to beat us."

Part of getting back to work was returning to the deployment processing center where the rampage took place.

The soldiers needed medical exams, booster shots, and to get through an endless reams of paperwork.

The 13 soldiers from the 2nd platoon who had witnessed the shooting and escaped unharmed were given special attention last week. They were all kept together through each step of the process. And their officers were on hand to make sure it all went well.

Private Joseph Foster, 21, is not sure when he will return to duty after being shot in the left hip.

But he wants to join the fight.

"I'm a soldier. It's my job," he said. "I continue doing my job, I continue doing what I do."