Proof Reading And Pictures

So I just looked at my previous post and realized just how many errors there were. [Most were fixed.] Remind me to never post after being up for so long. I am surprised you all could even read that garbage.

Anyway, in honor of being here for almost six months I have decided to post some pictures. Hope you all enjoy!

"Juice" firing off an AT-4 rocket to start off a very long night along the Tigris River...

I had installed that piece of glass the day prior to getting hit by this IED. It saved my life.

Some of the students from a local school that we have been doing improvements on.

Conducting raids on a village that an IED emplacer had just ran to. We found him.

The crew of Dragoon 3-2, aka: "The Slutty Pumpkin"

(Inside joke for the name of the truck. Watch "How I Met Your Mother" on CBS to figure it out.)

Almost There

Well, I am finally back on the FOB just in time to head back out to the Patrol Base for a few more days. The past few days were pretty busy. We did three straight nights of Air Assault missions. That’s when we all load up on helicopters and get dropped off in the middle of no where and all we got is what we have on us, and it’s a lot. We carry a lot of gear because you never know what you will find while you are out there. So we carry everything from rocket launchers (AT-4) to bolt cutters, to spike strips and as always plenty of ammo.

So the month of March is soon to be coming to and end and the end of this month is a major milestone for this deployment. As of April 1st I will have been gone for 6 months. Yeah, six months already, half a year gone. I haven’t seen my family or friends or fiancé this whole time. But I will soon! As it stands right now and as always is subject to change, I should be home around the first of May for some much needed R&R. I get two weeks from the day I land in Dallas to spend with everyone, and I am so looking forward to it. Holly and I had big plans to go on a cruise or to Mexico or Puerto Rico, but with it never really being for sure on what day I would arrive it made it hard to plan a trip. So we have decide to go somewhere that is almost a sure bet on a good time; Las Vegas. You cant go wrong with Vegas from what I have been told. I myself have never been and neither has Holly but with the crappy luck that we both have I am sure that we can waste plenty of money in a short time. I have also heard that they are very welcoming to soldiers coming in from Iraq, so I will be playing the “I nearly got my head blown off by a bomb” card and see what upgrades I can get with that.

Well everyone this is the first night that I can get more than 5 hours of sleep so I plan on taking full advantage of that. I head out for 48 hours of fun in the sun so I will check in a few days from now.

Non-Stop

So I know it has been awhile. The good news is that I am alive and well. The bad news is that we are very busy for the next few days. So don’t worry I didn’t forget you all. I am either; sleeping, eating or playing Army. Here in the next few nights we should be wrapping things up and I will have time to take a shower and hopefully write a blog. So enjoy your Spring Break or work week or whatever it is that you do. And maybe someday soon I will have some time to write.

Combat Tourist

Well I’m back from my little tour of Iraq. As you know I had to go to a trial in Baghdad and put the Super Mario Brothers away for 6 years each for their possession of an RPG. It was good to see our work finally pay off and see these two go away for a few years. Life expectancy in an Iraqi prison is only seven years so we will see just how tough they really are.

After spending 5 days in the “International Zone” or IZ as the cool kids call it, I am convinced that there are way too many politicians here. In what is one of the most dangerous cities in Iraq, I was surrounded by men and women in suits and ties skirts and heels hustling around talking on their cell phones. I am convinced that these people don’t really understand that there is a war going on about 5 miles away. I stayed at one of Saddam’s former palaces and it was very awesome, too bad they don’t allow photography inside. I ate Burger King and Pizza Hut and got coffee from the Green Bean Coffee Shop every morning. At night we watched movies off the side of the cabaña next to Saddam’s former palace pool. We went site seeing and saw the Al Rasheed Hotel where all the press stays; I saw the “Cross Sabers” and the Iraqi Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and many other sites as well.

It will probably be the only trip that I will ever make to Baghdad, so I made the best of it. It was almost like an early R&R and a very much needed break. But now I am back here at my little FOB up here. I did miss this place, it’s got everything we need and there are to many ways to get in trouble and spend money down there so it’s best I stay out of there.

Unfortunately, while I was gone the battalion I am attached too lost 6 guys in a very bad attack. One gun truck was hit with and IED and exploded into flames. The guys in the truck behind them saw their injured buddies trapped inside and got out and started running up to the truck to save their comrades when a second IED detonated on them killing 3 of them. Yesterday was the memorial service for them and it was one of the saddest ones I have been to. I hate going to them, and hopefully I won’t have to go to any more. It was hard to hear as they told each soldiers story and how young some of them where. Some of these guys were born in 1987 and 1988. That’s nearly my little sister’s age, and that’s awful that this happened to these guys that were just barely out of high school. Its just one of the harsh realities of this place I guess.

"Cross Sabers"

"The Palace Pool"

"Saddams Former Palace, now the US Embassy"

Its A Small World

It really is a small world. The other night “David” our interpreter and I were walking up to the hospital to get the details from the IP on three men that had been shot execution style by a local terrorist group earlier in the night. You think our conversation would have something to do with the struggles of the Iraqi people or the pain of the family that just had such a great loss. No, David was curious as to where I was from back in America. I told him I was from Oklahoma; it’s the state right above Texas. When he heard me may say Oklahoma his eyes got huge, like he actually some idea of what the hell I was talking about. Cause in fact he did. David’s father had lived in Oklahoma and not only that he had gone to OU. He had lived in freaking Norman. So here I am in Iraq talking to an interpreter from Tikrit, Saddam’s freaking home town and his father has not only been to America, but been to Oklahoma and lived in the same town that I grew up in. Not going to lie. It’s a little bit freaky almost. So I then asked David to ask his father where he lived in Norman, but he said he can’t, because terrorist killed his father 2 years ago when David was an Iraqi Policeman. And once again the depressing state of this place sank back in.

Green Zoner

I’m headed to Baghdad tonight for the trial of an insurgent that we captured a few months ago. There is no need to worry, I won’t be out on the streets fighting Al-Sadr’s Army or anything like that. I am just going to hang out in the “Green Zone” and go do this little court thing. It’s going to be an adventure just like everything else. And as always I will take plenty of pictures and I will write about it when I get back sometime next week. Until then you all have fun and check back around the middle of next week for another exciting installment of “The Life I Lead…”

JACOB

One Wild Night

It was wild. That’s really the only way to describe what all went down the past 48 hours out at the Patrol Base, simply wild. Our platoon is really working on picking up our “Op Tempo”. This means we are hitting the streets harder, hunting down the bad guys and pretty just going all out with a show of force. We have named this “Operation Tool Time” In honor of our worthless platoon sergeant “Tim Taylor”. He is a very scared man, and is always trying to talk our LT and the rest of the platoon out of missions. This in turns allows the terrorist more freedom to conduct their operations, then bringing it all full circle and making to more dangerous for all US Forces in the area. Needless to say he is by no means a brilliant man, and I obviously have great distaste for him. But he is gone on leave now so its time to go full speed.

So “Operation Tool Time” is in full swing and we are going at it pretty hard while out in sector for those ~48 hours. The first major incident plays out like an episode of COPS and a scene from the movie “Platoon” I believe. And it goes like this.

Our platoon was rolling north along a narrow dirt road atop a berm that holds in a canal on one side and swath of pathetic excuses for farms on the other side, it goes by the name “Canal Road”. Creative, I know. The tank is leading or patrol to a place where we were planning on over watching the road way for IED emplacers that night. The tank notices a person running full speed away from us. This is very suspicious for many reasons. First it’s nearly 11pm and no one is supposed to be out and about at this time. Second, he is in an area that many IED’s are detonated from and lastly he is running and these people know if you don’t have a reason to run from the Americans, then don’t, cause we will more than likely kill you.

So we decide to action on him. All the trucks pull off the berm and start off-roading through some very rutted fields. The trucks are bouncing all over the place, it feels like a riding a bull. The tank can see him duck into the fields and start trying to crawl away in its thermal sights. As the trucks trail blaze through the fields our LT’s truck hops a ditch and sinks off into a rice paddie. His truck remains stuck there for the next 30 minutes while we continue to operate around him. Now we are down to my truck and my roommate’s truck. Our trucks manage to make it to a small village where the tank last spotted him.

Doc, Jose and I bail out when we get to the village. We kick in a couple doors and push through the first few houses. At this point our hearts are racing; we are all pumped to catch this guy. I mean he has to be a bad guy cause they way he tried to evade us. We move across a little back yard at full speed and I kick the door in to a small mud hut and Doc goes in first and finds him trying to hide in the back corner behind a ten-speed bike from 1960 or something. We have our interpreter “David” tell him to get up, but he doesn’t. This is where we had to remove him from the hut. Once outside we put him against the wall and start trying to search him. David is telling him to hold still and stop moving and to get his hands out of pockets, after his third warning we are left with no choice but to subdue him. Still after slamming him around and taking him to the ground he is still trying to fight us off. We finally subdue him and get him searched and cuffed and proceed to further search the house and talk to the family in the area.

This is when you start to feel bad. This guy is 19 years old and has surprising substantial strength. We have caught guys red handed with RPG’s and everything else and they never resist, but this kid was hell bent on not giving up. We pull some of the family outside to see if they know this guy and right away the mother starts to cry out that it’s her son and he is well, handicap. Yep that’s right, he is a little slow, a few cans shy of a six pack. He doesn’t have full blown “Downs syndrome” or anything the physically identifies him as not running on all cylinders. My personal diagnosis is that he might have been Autistic or something like that and really had no idea what he was doing and just how close he was to getting gunned down. He was just scared I guess. He ran, hid and then made the unwise decision to try and resist from US Forces. We had no idea he wasn’t all there at the time we pursued and captured him. But looking back you kinda feel bad. But you got to do what you got to do. So the first major event of the night was that we spent about 45 minutes chasing down, capturing and wrestling and handicapped guy. All too just let him go to his family, and remind them to keep him inside after dark. Totally wining hearts and minds aren’t we?