For years, transportation troops, like the truck drivers and port operators with the Fort Eustis-based 7th Transportation Group who deployed Sunday to the Middle East, have been thought of as support soldiers.
They help move the infantrymen from the U.S. to the battlefield, then keep them supplied with the necessary gear for fighting a war.
The war in Iraq has changed that, Command Sgt. Maj. Dwayne Perry, the group's most senior enlisted soldier, said Wednesday night as he tried to get settled in his tent at Camp Arifjan.
"Everyone (in transportation) is starting to think more like combat soldiers," Perry said. "Everyone is thinking about going into harm's way."
They have to, he said.
The group's main job is to unload ships in Kuwaiti ports and truck the supplies into Iraq.
During this deployment, the group's second for the war in Iraq, the soldiers will focus more on trucking than on running ports.
And that makes them a key target for insurgents, Perry said.
For many, the memory of Spc. Raymond Faulstich, the first Eustis soldier to die in Iraq during a convoy ambush, is fresh. Faulstich, who was killed in early August, is only one of hundreds of Eustis-based soldiers to die on the road.
The 375th Transportation Group, the unit the 7th Transportation Group is replacing, lost three soldiers to roadside bombs and ambushes during their tour. Dozens were injured.
Perry and many of the group's other key leaders spent much of the day meeting with members of the 375th Transportation Group.
It's the first step, Perry said, for the "battle handoff."
"We need to know about what the enemy is doing," Perry said. "It was a different war when we were here before. Now it's guerrilla warfare."
"Right now we are not so interested in individual casualties," Perry said. "That is the name and face of the fallen soldier. We are thinking more about how these casualties happened and how and what we can do to mitigate it."
After three days at Arifjan - the camp that will be home base for the 7th Transportation Group for the next year - plans, databases and lessons from the 375th are being compiled so the group's leaders can make this deployment as safe as possible.
"Soldiers are concerned," Col. Jeff Miser, the group's commanding officer, said about the possible danger awaiting them north of the Kuwait border. "But those are the conditions we operate in."
Wednesday, the group picked up its vehicles, Humvees and 5-ton trucks, from the Port of As Suaiba in Kuwait.
Today several of those vehicles will be fitted with new communication systems and readied for "up-armor," which provides increased protection from small-arms fire and, to a degree, from roadside bombs.
"Increased communication is a big thing for us this time," Perry said. "We are coming here while it is improving. It's a real positive thing, because all of those improvements have been made since the last time we were here. Huge convoys can and are talking more easily with each other."
Next week, many of the group's soldiers will go through a live-fire convoy training course where they will practice responding to an ambush or roadside bomb. It's the second time in the past few weeks the group has done that.
"For what we do on a day-to-day basis, in the grand scheme of things, we aren't getting hit that bad," Perry said. "As the enemy adapts, we adapt."