CAMP ADDER, Iraq - The men climbed over the sides of the cargo truck, some straightened their matching blue coveralls while others wrapped red and white scarves around their heads to block the dusty morning sunshine.
Most smiled and waved as Sgt. Jessica Talley walked up. The men said hello and patted their chests in a traditional Arab greeting.
Each day, hundreds of Iraqis - residents of villages near U.S. bases in Iraq - congregate at various main gates of camps across Iraq. They are mostly unskilled day laborers who need the $10 daily wage to feed their families.
And American forces need them, too.
These Iraqi men do work typically done by lower ranks in garrisons back home. They pile sandbags, pick up trash, dig ditches and in some cases, pour new sidewalks and roadways - tasks for which the army has little time and no manpower for in a war zone.
But there is no guarantee that these men are on only the military's payroll - some are likely scoping out bases for the insurgency.
"You just don't know," Talley said. "You can't fully trust any of them."
The petite soldier from Gentry is their foreman, of sorts.
A member of Arkansas' 217th Brigade Support Battalion, 142nd Fires Brigade - which is attached to the state's 39th Infantry Brigade for this deployment - Talley works at garrison command, delegating jobs, checking progress and ensuring there are enough U.S. soldiers standing guard as the local men work.
A big board in the operations office of the 217th displays a long list of projects scrawled in blue ink - most of which are requests from various units on camp.
"We're limited on what we can do because we're required to have one soldier for every 10 workers," Talley said. The number of guards available on any given day determines the size of the work force. Each unit on camp has to contribute soldiers for guard duty. Talley also has two 82nd Airborne soldiers who have volunteered for guard duty for their remaining few months in Iraq.
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"It's good to have the same guys every day," Talley said. "They work hard; they know the workers and they know the job."
Spc. James Sullivan of Alabama said that after more than a year in Iraq with the 82nd Airborne, he'd rather spend the last few months of his tour on camp. The 82nd spent a year running convoys across the vast desert of Anbar province in western Iraq and was replaced by Arkansas' 2nd Battalion, 39th Infantry Brigade and moved south to finish out its 15-month tour.
"I'd much rather be doing this than that," Sullivan said. "Spending days on the road, 14-hour days, then three days off. This is to give some of the guys a cool-down period - it's a lot easier."
He pointed over to the crew of Iraqi workers loading concertina wire into a truck bed.
"There's always something worse we could be doing," Sullivan added.
"The local nationals are here to make life easier for these guys here on post and to earn a living for themselves," said Sgt. Maj. Ted Walker of Kingston, who oversees operations for the 217th. "It's a win-win situation. When these guys come in from a mission, God knows they need the rest. And it gives locals jobs."
The workers are heavily scrutinized, however.
Sullivan is armed. His presence isn't to protect these men from harm, but to ensure they do no harm.
"It worries me, yeah," Talley said. "You don't know which ones are here for that [trouble] and which ones are just here to work. I get nervous when a group of the regulars don't show up for work. I wonder, 'Where are they? What are they up to?'"
This is the balancing act of Iraq's reconstruction - the ongoing push to shift more contracts and jobs to local workers creates new security issues for U.S. troops. The Department of Defense Joint Contracting Command began the Iraq First Initiative, a $5 billion program giving Iraqi contractors priority on reconstruction contracts with the requirement that all workers doing a job are Iraqis.
Iraq's work force lacks skilled laborers, so part of the plan includes training in various trades.
Lt. Col. James Treece of Beebe, Camp Adder garrison commander and commander of the 217th Brigade Support Battalion, compared the initiative to the concept of giving a man a fish so he can eat for a day, versusteaching a man to fish so he eats for a lifetime.
The day laborers who work on U.S. posts may learn a few skills, but mainly it's a job that hopefully prevents them from being recruited by the insurgency to make a living, Treece said.
"This is more like giving them a fish for a day," he said. It's simply a job.
Using the local work force on U.S. camps in Iraq is not a new concept.
Work crews like these have been used since 2003. And while the occasional worker is found pacing off distances between buildings for makeshift maps, such incidents are rare. Workers are searched every day at the gate and allowed to bring in only their lunch. They are also fingerprinted, give retinal scans and entered into the FBI database before being issued a work pass.
That process has drastically improved in the past year alone.
"We let them use our work gloves, but they buy their own coveralls," Walker said. "The workers get $10 a day, translators get $15. And their sheik gets [paid] to recruit them and let them work."
The Army doesn't always have the tools the workers need to get a job done, however. Cement is mixed in small, old mixers. Demolition equipment typically is limited to hammers and crowbars. Walker and Talley drive the heavy equipment used to fill blast barriers and sand bags with dirt.
"These guys are very innovative," Talley said. "They'll find a way to get things done. ... I like that."
At the end of the day, Talley made another round of the job sites. At the post chapel, where a work crew gathered construction scraps, a worker stepped off to the side as he grabbed his thumb in pain.
Talley followed him and asked to see his wound.
"Iraqi man strong," he told her. Injured workers can be treated at the camp's medical clinic if needed, but most prefer to go to their own doctors at home.
She watched as the crew climbed back into the truck, headed to the gate and home.
They waved at her from the truck bed.
"Y'all do good work," she told them. "Y'all are awesome !"
Front Section, Pages 1, 20 on 05/18/2008