From Soldiers in the Jungles of Belize,

Messages for the Folks Back Home

            To the radio operators at Base Camp Iceberg, Belize, duct tape was not the stuff of jokes. It performed very well in the jungle of Central America, thank you, supporting the camp’s inverted-V dipole from a standard U.S. Army military mast.   

             Nor was there anything lightweight about the antenna fashioned entirely of plain-vanilla twin lead.  This worked just fine for Lt. Col. Darrel Wyatt’s Army Military Affiliate Radio System (MARS) station linking the 73^rd U.S. Army Field Hospital Belize Detachment with its home base in St. Petersburg, Fla.

            Why duct tape and twin lead?

“The antenna had to fit in a duffel bag,” Wyatt explained. “There wasn’t room for anything fancier.”

            ACM7RAA, one of the newest soldier stations in the Army MARS, proved to be a very busy one on its maiden deployment in February 2003. During the first days of operation it handled priority resupply traffic plus phone patch connections by the dozen between the deployed troops (predominately called-up reservists) and their families back home.

            The soldiers’ mission in Central America was humanitarian, with an overtone of preparedness for war. The 73^rd provided medical care for Task Force Jaguar, an engineer team drawn from the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps building community facilities for the impoverished population. Its medics also brought unfortunately rare health care to villages nearby.

             Wyatt is a physician in the civilian side of his life (based in Crystal River, Fla.) and a 33-year veteran in the Army reserves. He’s also an extra-class amateur radio operator known to Florida MARS by the military call sign AAV4FB and the billet assignment of state MARS recruitment coordinator on the staff of state MARS director Bert Fow AAA4FL.

           Before the 73^rd’s first detachment of reservists departed Florida, Jim Hamilton AAT4RD, Florida State MARS liaison coordinator and a retired pilot, arranged a MARS license for the unit. The license was issued on Jan. 9 and three days later AAR4RAC appeared on the air for training.

            Among the trainees was Col. (Dr.) Jeffrey Harrow, acting commanding officer of the field hospital (now licensed as AAV4NQ/T). The 73rd is a transportable 500-bed hospital complete with operating room, lab, x-ray and rehab facilities. Small teams of medics are taking turns in Belize as their annual active-duty training exercise.

             Wyatt and the initial detachment arrived in Central America Feb. 15. By 5 p.m. that day he had joined the regular Florida MARS afternoon traffic net.

            Among the first messages handled was a MARSgram (morale-and-welfare message) to his friend and fellow MARS member Becky Norman, AAV4FN, back in Crystal River: “All arrived safely. No landline. No e-mail. In case of emergency send MARS priority.” (Becky Norman, who is Florida MARS webmaster, responded to the MARS operator relaying it, “Roger. Thank you, thank you, thank you.”)

            While Belize was getting on the air, MARS phone patch stations back in the United States went on the watch to handle contacts with families back home. Operators in nearly a dozen states pitched in to relay the calls as propagation came and went. (When veterans and friends in Ocala Fla., site of the Florida MARS phone patch station AAR4CSS, heard of the operation, they began contributing phone cards to help pay for the long-distance connections within the United States)

            Chief Army MARS Bob Sutton was quick to congratulate Wyatt and his Belize crew and the stateside members who worked with them.

“For all of those that were/are involved, our hats are off to you,” Sutton declared in his weekly broadcast. “Thanks for a job well done.”

            After a week, Wyatt set about training fresh operators to keep the station going after his rotation home. This was on top of supervising erection of the portable hospital and providing medical care for the engineers, whose work can be dangerous.

            Later, back home, Wyatt described the operation.

            “Base Camp Iceberg started with an empty field,” he said. “No electricity, no water, no phone, no fence.  Plenty of bugs!  Including very large scorpions.  There was one small boa constrictor. 

            “On rotation one, our principal duties were to establish the base camp, including the hospital.  This included the establishment of water, power and security for the site, along with sleeping quarters (tents) and the hospital (also in tents, but with climate control).

            “The mission of the 73^rd Field Hospital in Belize was multiple, first to support Task Force Jaguar, in their planned construction of four schools and one community center for the community of Dangriga, Belize. These engineers doing ground prep andusing large, heavy equipment, tend to be at risk of major crushing accidents. Support of a unit of this type requires continuous ambulance support at the job site and a constant state of readiness for serious trauma. (One serious accident did occur, involving a vehicle.)

            “The second mission was to run was we call MEDRETTE missions to outlying civilian communities.  This area is medically under-served.”

            “The overall mission was a humanitarian one and included units and personnel from Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and the Belize Defense Force.  Navy Seabees worked along beside the Army and Air Force engineers as an exercise in joint operations.  Many of the engineers came from North Carolina, but some came from as far away as Okinawa,” he said. “Many of the Air Force personnel came from Travis Air Force Base, California.

  For MARS operation, Wyatt had a Kenwood TS 450s, an Ameritron 811 amplifier and 3kw MFJ tuner. Power came from the hospital’s two 100-kw generators. “The linear’s relay circuit was inoperable upon arrival so we did not have a functioning amplifier,” Wyatt said. ”Still, we had particularly good propagation to Tennessee, Missouri, New York, and Pennsylvania.  Propagation was less reliable to Florida.  Air Force MARS was very supportive as well.”

            “As far as the Florida Army MARS mission is concerned, I am the recruiting coordinator for Florida and I saw this as an opportunity to increase the visibility of Army MARS with many reserve soldiers and units,” he said.

            It certainly enhanced MARS visibility in the regular armed forces. Among visitors to the station during its first couple of weeks on the air: Army Gen. James T. Hill, commander of the Southern Command, which embraces Army, Navy and Air Force units guarding the U.S. southern flank.

            For pictures from Belize, visit the Florida Army MARS web site, www.flmars.org, and click on Camp Iceberg.

            --Bill Sexton
"Bill Sexton's MARS column appeared originally in the June 2003 issue of Worldradio magazine."