Soldier Returns Home for Christmas

This Christmas season, Benjamin Grumbach, who grew up in Pacific Palisades, is celebrating at his family’s home in the Alphabet streets. Last Christmas the Army staff sergeant was serving in Iraq, where he spent most of the day driving around in a Humvee. ‘Probably one of the most dangerous things to do over there,’ he said, referring to the fact that the vehicles have been a favorite target of Iraqi militants since the fall of Baghdad. Grumbach said his duties last December 25 with the Army’s 173rd Airborne Brigade included visiting soldiers in various camps and safe houses, ‘shaking hands, wishing them Merry Christmas, taking photos of them, delivering their mail.’ At the end of the day, when he and the officers he was traveling with finally got to eat dinner, Grumbach was happy to see they were being served a traditional Christmas meal, which he ate out of a Styrofoam container, standing up, off the hood of his Humvee. ‘We had turkey and all the trimmings, ‘ he recalled this week. ‘It was okay.’ The Palisadian-Post has been following the journey of this one hometown soldier since the Iraq invasion began in March 2003. In his 11 months of duty there, Grumbach had a half-dozen assignments, starting with the takeover of the Bashur airfield in the Kurdish-controlled north that made headlines around the world. Other assignments include guarding the oil fields in Kirkuk, guarding an overcrowded detention facility, guarding a bank, and trying to stop looting. During that time, Grumbach often had to work in 120-degree heat, survive on MREs (prepackaged food), and had to take Cipro tablets when he became ill from dehydration. The only time he had to fire his rifle was in a 21-gun salute in honor of a fallen comrade in his unit. Last November, right after he came off a two-week furlough in Italy, his home base, he was stationed in Mosul. The job he enjoyed most while serving in Iraq was when he was asked to be the liaison between the newly created department of education and the city in Altun Kopre. ‘We had to go around to all the schools to see what materials they needed to repair their buildings. I learned a lot about their culture and how they viewed things. It was the most interesting thing we did over there.’ Grumbach, 27, enlisted in the Army right out of St. Monica High, and after eight years has risen to become section chief of an artillery unit. The oldest of four children, he decided to join the military after responding to an ad he saw in Sports Illustrated. The army was offering a free pair of socks. ‘When the socks came they weren’t even standard army issue,’ his father Curtis recalled. ‘But they did have ‘ARMY’ embroidered on them.’ Ben, however, seemed more interested in the information pack, which promised him the opportunity for adventure. He spent his 18th birthday in boot camp in North Carolina and since then has been posted to Oklahoma, Germany, Bosnia, Korea, North Carolina, Italy and Iraq. His sister Katie, 25, is in the Army Reserve. While Ben was in Iraq, his mother Debbie sent him numerous care packages (including homemade bread and his favorite sunflower seeds) and he sent gifts in return (a prayer rug for Katie, maps and knives for his brothers’Tim, 20, and Dan, 18’and some Iraqi money imprinted with Saddam Hussein’s face. ‘It isn’t worth squat but I thought you would get a kick out of it,’ he wrote to his family in June 2003.) When Grumbach left Iraq in February he was posted back to Vicenza, Italy, where his battalion is based. He said he was given ‘lots of recovery time’ and a chance to travel with his wife Jennifer, including scuba diving in Egypt. Grumbach’s next posting will be Afghanistan, starting in February or March. Asked if he would be part of the group searching caves for Osama bin Laden, Grumbach said he doubted it, since his specialty was long-distance artillery fire. Originally scheduled to leave the Army next August, Grumbach said his ‘new date’ is May 2006”but that could change again,’ referring to the military’s ‘Stop-Loss orders’ which prohibit soldiers from leaving the Army if their units are scheduled to be deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan. If he does not get out in 2006, Grumbach said he will ask for a new tour of duty. His first choice is ‘back to Fort Bragg, where my wife is from.’