Some GREAT News!!!

Ok well it has definatly been a little bit since I posted last. Theres several factors that have played in to this. Part of it is from my time spent out at the outpost where once again Blogger is blocked. No suprise there tho. Also as I'm sure many of you all have probably heard, there was some communications cable that was cut in the Mediterranian Sea (I believe?) that has severly affected our communications. The internet at the cafes have been ridiculously slow and the phones have had a horrible connection. Also the internet has been down in my building for several weeks and with our re-deployment nearing, I decided to not worry about it and just wont have internet in my room for the rest of my time here. This means I am forced to use the SLOW internet cafes. I have been to the computers a LOT in the last week, but I've been primarily dealing with one thing; Bringing Charlie (our dog)home!

Well again if you check my other site dedicated to Charlie I will have more in depth details, but basically as of right now, Charlie has been picked up from the outpost, transported to BIAP, flown to Kuwait and has been on his 13 hour non-stop flight to America for almost 12 hours now. So here very shortly, he should be finally landing in the good old USA!! I can't believe that it has finally happened and I'm so excited that he's about to be back and I can't wait to see him again back home. Pretty cool to think his little paws will touch American soil for the first time on Valentines day!!

So with that said, there has been much going on around here lately. Not so much mission wise and out in sector, but with our re-deployment. We are VERY VERY close to getting out of here and so things are being taken care of and preped and getting ready to go home. It almost doesn't feel real. After 14 months of being here, the time to go home is SO close, but it still doesn't feel like its happening, despite all the work that we are doing to get ready to go. I wish I could tell yall when, but for the sake of OPSEC you'll just have to wait to find out. :)

One thing that was notable that happened about a week or so ago was that in one of the markets in our sector a female suicide bomber was blown up killing dozens of people. It has been very rare to have an incident take place in the markets anymore and I hope it does not shake the Iraqi people feeling of security and their resolve to go about their lives. From what I had heard of it, the lady was mentally handicapped and that she was unknowingly strapped with explosives and then detonated by someone else. How cowardly and pathetic is that, for them to exploit someone who has no clue whats going on. It sickens me to think they would do something like that, and I feel for that woman and her family, as well as those who were killed in the blast. I can only hope that this is a very isolate incident and that this does not turn in to a trend.

Lately we have been doing a lot of work with the CLC (Concerned Local Citizens) group with getting them prepared to handle things on their own. I don't think we've officially told them that we're going, but they all know. All the IP (Iraqi Police) and IA (Iraqi Army) know and I'm sure most people out there know. We've been here for a while and I'm sure they catch the news about 15 months and all that, so I'm sure it's no suprise that we are going to be going. But like I said, we've been working very closely with the CLC to help train them. We have had them come to the outpost and we give them clases on basic stuff like searching vechicles and the very basics of patrolling. Not to mention that we have done a whole slew of combined dismounted patrols with them. I think they have the potential to go good things for the area and I hope that after we leave that they continue to work with the new unit and the IP and IAs to ensure that this little slice of Baghdad stays safe. They have been a big help and I hope they help to ease the transition to the Iraqi security control.

Well that is about all for now. I am going to try and update more often, considering the last couple posts have been spread out, but if I can't as often as I like, know that I am doing good, and probably busy getting ready to finally leave this country and return the good and wonderful USA!!

March of the Iman...

Well, I'm going back in time a little bit to talk about a few events that happened several patrols ago. The reason for this is the damn internet is down in my building again, and ever since I got internet in my room it is almost like getting the motivation to go to the dentist when it comes to heading down to the MWR computers. But now the internet has been down for a while and I have no clue when it will be getting fixed so I'm finally putting together a post to take down to the computers and upload. From what I hear the computers are running really slow so I may or may not get to put up pictures that I am wanting to include with this. Guess we'll see.

The first significant event deals with the CLC or civilian armed guards that we have in some of the neighborhoods in our sector. I've talked about them many times, especially when it deals with running in to one of their armed dismount patrols at night or the weapons caches that these guys find for us from time to time. Although I disagree with the decision to allow them to have free roam, especially with weapons, they have actually proven to be a big help in assisting us in finding these caches and catching some of the bad guys around the area.

What basically happened, in a brief, as much as I know telling of this, there was some argument between two of the guys over some shooting incident that they were involved in and one was demanding the arrest of another. I don't know what escalated the situation but in the end the guy who was wanting to other arrested was not getting his way, so he let loose with his AK-47. He ended up shooting the leader, his son and I believe another person before he was shot and detained. I don't believe he was killed, but the wounds that the leader of the group sustained proved to be fatal. It's kind of weird because we have worked with them many times and I have met and talked with the leader of this group on many occassions. Again, although I do not agree with his group running around with guns, I did think that he was a genuinly good guy and it sucks to think that he's dead now. And it wasn't even a member of the local militia that did it. Now I guess we will see how these guys end up doing with a new leader.

The next event was a pretty big one to be a part of. There was a Muslim religious holiday recently, and infact it may even still be going on, in honor of a fallen Iman, Hussein. One of the days, was the biggest celebration days and apparently on that day, the people come to the streets by the thousands and parade around and punish themselves by whipping themselves in the back with these chain whip type of things. We knew they were going to be going on, but we wern't really sure where. Also, during these kinds of celebrations we try to keep our distance and not interfere with what they are doing. At one point we had turned on to this street and started heading down it, when we noticed a HUGE procession of people coming down the road. We couldn't turn around and so in an attempt to stay out of the way as best as possible, we pulled off to the side of the road and waited for them to pass.

There were thousands of men, women and childern that were marching, some of them playing music, some dancing and signing, others dressed up in costume and the rest just walking along with it all. We all locked our doors because we were in a situation that was not the best of ones to be in. We were surrounded big thousands of people and in the event they wanted to get to us, it would of been a lot easier than any other time without all those people. It took almost 30-40 minutes for the procession to pass and the whole time we just sat in our seats and watched the people go by, ocassionally waving to the people when they waved at us. It was pretty surreal because normally we try to keep people away from our trucks as best we can when we are out there. Every now and again a group of kids will form by one of the windows but even they aren't right up on the vehicle. But with the huge amounts of people out there, there was nothing we could do and our trucks were completly surrounded with people putting their faces right up to the windows. Once the crowd thinned and we could drive off without interfering we did so.

We had a basic idea of what the holiday was about, but we wanted to know more so I went to our interperator and asked him. I guess the story behind it deals with the split between the Shiite and Sunni sects of Islam, and this was a Shiite holiday. There was an Iman, Hussein, who a big group of the Muslims felt should be the next to run all of Islam, but on his way to Iraq from Mecca in Saudia Arabia, in which he was to talk with the people who were calling for him to be in charge, an Army was sent out after his caravan to kill him. His caravan consisted of mostly women and childer so he did not have much of a fighting force. When he learned of this, he went in to the nearby city and called out for people to join him and help him fight, but no one came out and in the end he was slaughtered, had his head cut off and brough back to the king to prove he was dead. This is why the Iraqi people come out in the steets and whip themselves, to show their support now which they did not do before and to punish themselves for what they had done to him. I find it pretty interesting to learn about these holidays and to learn about the Muslim religion, but one thing I have noticed is that there seems to be much violence in the history and holidays of their religion. Maybe that is why, things are the way they are for us in that region.

Lastly I had hoped on Google the other day and looked up the area of Baghdad that we are in and was learning about the history of this area. Basically the area we are in is the oldest part of Baghdad, and when Baghdad was initially founded, many many years BC, where our sector is, thats where Baghdad began. Its kind of crazy to know that probably some of the same streets and alleyways that I patrol around, have been some of the some paths people have taken for thousands of years.

So thats about all for now. I have some more I want to talk about but I will get to that with another post. Hopefully it won't be as long for the next one, but the way the internet is going around here, you never know.

I didn't know it got THIS cold here...

Alright, well it has been a little bit since my last post and that is partially due to a little bit of laziness on my part compounded with the inability to access my Blogger account from the outpost. I was going to put a post up right before I left, but I figured, no I'll just do it once I get to the outpost. Well, as I've talked about before the people who control the firewall that prevents us from going to many websites, I have noticed are very bi-polar when it comes to allowing/denying access to Blogger. Sometimes they do and others they dont. One day I may be able to get on and the next I wont and then the next day again I can't. It's pretty crazy and it can get quite annoying sometimes. Gets my hopes up.

The first thing that I wanted to post about was some updates on our situation with our adopted dog at the outpost, Charlie. As many of you know that have been reading my blog for a while, or even those of you that have noticed the sidebar link to a website I have up dedicated to this cause, is that I have been working my ass off trying to take care of things and figured things out as for a way to get Charlie back to the US. Myself along with many others have gotten attached to him and the thought of leaving him behind when we re-deploy makes my stomach turn. He's such an awesome dog, and so began my mission of trying to get him home.

I won't break it all down here (just visit Charlie site or read the first post about Charlie to learn more) but basically I've gotten him shots here in Iraq, food, a travel cage as well as coordinated everything for his travel and return home, all except how to get him out of Iraq. With the end of our deployment approaching, I was begining to worry as a few options that I was working had not worked out. Fortunatly just about a week and a half ago I received some additional help in this area, and was put in touch with someone that will be able to get him out of Iraq and on his way home to the US! I had to talk with some other people to work out some minor details and some coordination stuff, but at this point just about everything is in place to make this happen, just waiting on an exact date!! Hopefully should be happening within the next couple of weeks. It still doesn't seem real, but I'm so excited that this will be finally happening. I can't wait for his journey to begin!

This latest rotation out to the outpost wasn't quite as bad as the last one I talked about. Of course, being deeper in to the winter, the average temperatures were lower, but this time both the heaters in the guard towers were working, although one much better than the other. Our shack thing that we chill in while working the gate didn't have heat most of the time, but towards the end guys came in fixing and adding heaters all over the place so we got a semi-functial one out there. Overall, it wasn't all that bad, despite still have a cold shift. I ended up getting decently sick for a couple days, but fortunatly that was it. I still have a lagging cough, but for the most part I'm over it. I hate being sick and lately I seem to be getting at least a little sick each time we head out there. Quite unusual considering that I normally get sick maybe once or twice a year.

Speaking of the cold, a story of amazement needs to be told. I wish I was telling this from a first hand experience but I can't say that I was there. It ended up happening while I was a asleep and I'm a little bummed that I wasn't woken up. Anyways, the day before we headed out to the outpost it had been raining. Nothing crazy, just a slow steady rain, which in its own part sucked because it turned pretty much most of our base and a lot of Baghdad in to a giant mudpit. Anyways, the temperatures had been dropping and apparently in the night the temps dropped below freezing and coming early morning, the steady slight rain turned to snow!!

I know it sounds crazy, and I didn't believe it at first. I had to get a 2nd person to verify this story and sure enough. My first reaction was, "Since when does it snow in hell?!?" I then realized how much more it sucked here than Phoenix. Not only does it get slighly hotter in the summer but even colder in the winter. I have NEVER seen snow in Phoenix and it blows my mind to think that it happened here in Baghdad.

Thats about all for now. I have a couple more stories I want to tell but I'm tired and I'll just wait until tomorrow and put them in another posting. Plus theres a couple pictures I wan't to throw up for that, so I need to get those as well. Maybe give me 2 days, knowing my level of laziness on my days off! :)

"Laughter is an instant vacation." -Milton Berle

Theres many things that we have experienced here, some of them good, some of them bad and some of them, well, just there. But theres one thing about being with a group of guys that have become like brothers to you, and thats the ability to just have a good time despite the situation that you find yourself in. That is one of the greatest things I've noticed durring this deployment, is that we can be in a horrible situation (combat related or not) and just make the best of it. The last 2 days, I can honestly say I have had some of the best times here in Iraq, not by anything that we have done mission wise, but just having a good laugh at the expense of myself and others in our platoon.

It all started on the last patrol that I went on. We had our First Sergeant that headed out with us, and his driver, a mortar guy, used to go out with our platoon alot back in the day. He's a great guy and a part of me misses the good times when he was along! *tear* Hahah. Anyways, he's a smoker and normally smokes Marlboro #27 cigarettes. I smoke Marlboro Lights and while we were smoking he gave me a pack saying he didn't like smoking lights. I thought it was an awesome gesture, and of course I took the free pack! I lit up a cigarette from the pack and immediatly there was a semi-loud snap as the end of my cigarette exploded. I'm not going to lie, it scared the piss out of me for a second, and for some stupid reason the first thought in my head was sniper. I know, its dumb, but thats what I thought, but that passed quickly. After everyone got their laugh, he proceeded to tell me that every single cigarette in there has been rigged to explode. Alright, well now IM going to have some fun with this.

It became my personal mission to get as many people with one of the exploding cigarettes as I could. I managed to get a few people while we were still at the outpost but eventually everyone knew that I had them, so I couldn't give them away. Thats when I decided to give one to one of the Iraqi Army guys. It was pretty funny and he refused to smoke the rest of it! It was in good fun, so dont worry. We both were having a good laugh from it. Later while out on a dismounted patrol, when we finished up we were waiting around for the trucks to come back and pick us up when one of the guys in my squad wanted a smoke, but left his in the truck. Here ya go, I've got one for ya! He totally forgot I had those, and when he lit it up, he was startled by the pop like everyone else. The best part was there were about 15 Iraqi kids that were around us. All of us start laughing and pointing and ALL the kids start doing the same. He must of felt like an ass! Always great to see others suffer! I can't recall how many people I got, but it was pretty close to every one that was in the pack. And just now as I'm writing this, my grenadier finally smoked the one I snuck in to his pack on a cigarette break we just took. GOOD TIMES!!

Once we finally came back in, I was viewing a video in a bulletin sent to me on MySpace and it was one of those that out of nowhere this Exorcist looking chic pops out and theres a loud screeching and it scares the piss out of you. I showed it to my good buddy, but before doing so I hooked up my sound system and cranked it up. Lets just say it scared the piss out of him. He yelled and jumped up punching in front of him. Another guy introduced me to this maze, that as you go through it, it gets hard and you really have to concentrate and then out of nowhere that Exorcist creature scares you. Well, we then began tricking everyone telling them that we'd give them $20 if they could beat this certin level and talk it up and it was just hilarious. We ended up getting 4 or 5 people good and the last one was my grenadier in my team and there was probably about 15 people around him watching him. Again, another great laugh at someone elses expense! I can honestly say I haven't laughed that hard in a long while.

The last bit of fun has come from something that we have come up with now refered to as the "Cornbread Challenge." It started off as a punishment from my grenadier to my automatic rifleman because he had secretly ashed a whole cigarette on his head. To make up for it, he had to eat 5 pieces of cornbread from the chowhall. Well I figured that he couldn't do it and so he bet me he could. We gave him 20 mins to do so, and he couldn't throw up until it was all down. He could drink or do whatever he wanted to the pieces tho. On the day of, he ended up making another $20 bet with another guy so we started the challenge. He almost made it, 4 1/2 pieces but he finally ended up running out of the chowhall puking as he barely made it out of the door!! After that, people began saying they could do it and the Cornbread Challenge was born. For the next contestant we changed the rules a little and if he could do it in 10 minutes my grenadier would give him $60. This was a big guy and I actually thought he'd do it, but at 4 1/4 the cornbread got the best of him and he went to the trash can and began regurgatating the cornbread through his mouth and nose! He had done this on a non-empty stomach so we amended a final change to the challenge. 6 pieces in 11 minutes, $60. We wrote the challenge up on our platoon board, and listed the failures so far and put up a signup list. We had our first taker that night.

Given the popularity of the challenge now, people were beginging to want to watch in hopes of seeing someone fail and puke their guts out. Our in house video guru was around for the next challenger, along with 8 of us that were not on patrol. We were now going to video record each attempt in hopes of catching more and more desctructive failures! The next participant was someone that was going to give this challenge a run for its money (literally... $60) and we were a little worried he might do it. He went to town, but again just like the rest, just after finishing the 5th piece and with 1 minute left on the clock he couldn't handle it anymore and the cornbread came back up! The best part was another guy made a $10 bet with me that he would do it and of course he lost. So this is now $30 I've made off side bets due to the Cornbread Challenge. As it stands, 3 men have entered, and none have come out a victor. The challenge still stands, and we may have contestant #4 tomorrow. Hopefully loser number 4!!!

The last bit of hilarity came while we were eating at the chowhall. Just before we were about to finish up, the warning sirens came on for incoming mortar rounds/rockets. Well, we have this new unit that is here in large numbers and I don't know if its what they've been told or trained on, but when that siren went off 1/2 the chowhall dove for the ground and were laying on the ground and hiding under tables. The rest of us just kind of sat there. This was my cue to get up and casually walk over to where the togo boxes were and grab one to put the rest of my food up so I could take it back with me. As Im walking there, people are diving in the front door hitting the ground as I'm trying to step over and around those huddled on the floor. I got a good kick out of it. Afterwords we headed out and back to our rooms laughing most of the way at what we had just experienced.

One year anniversary...

Today is Jan 3rd, 2008. It is a significant milestone for us today. Exactly 1 year ago, 365 days ago, 8760 hours ago, 525600 minutes ago and 31536000 seconds ago (wow) we left American soil to begin our journey to Iraq, not knowing what exactly we would be doing, where we were going to be going, and when we would do it. All we knew was that President Bush was getting ready to "officially" announce the troop surge and that we were the 1st ones to deploy as a part of this new change in strategy in Iraq.

The best part about all of this was that we had just finished up Christmas of 2006. We had not been given leave due to a certin readiness cycle we were on at Ft Bragg, being Americas Strategic Reserve Force, the 82nd Airborne. 4 days later, they brought rumors began circling of a deployment. No one believe it until later that day our CO brought us in to officially announce our upcoming deployment. There was a mix of excitment, worry and a few people that just did not want to do it. Most of us were eager to go and all we wanted to know is when.... well.... 6 DAYS!! Wow, you have got to be kidding me?! Happy New Years, good bye America! And just like that we left. We were under the impression that this was to be a 6 month deployment, but once in country we began to learn that wasn't going to be the case. We just didn't know exactly how long. I really don't remeber when exactly we found out, but after a while we learned that we had been scooped up in to this 15 month tour extension thing. So just like that, people left loved ones, families and friends for almost a year and a half, on 6 days notice.

So with that all said, it has now been one full year. Had this been a "normal" deployment. We would be back in America soil. Shoot had this been what we expected, we would of been back a LONG time ago. Could of even done 2 of those in this time. But, this is no problem now because we have known about 15 months for a while and mentally prepared ourselves. The nice thing is that we are entering the final streach of this deployment. It seriously felt like this time would never come, but we are coming so close to being done with this hellish nightmare of a deployment. I along with many others, cannot WAIT for this to be done. Again I'm glad that I came, but Im ready to finish up, get the t-shirt and go home.

So being 3 days in to the new year of 2008, I have started a new program. It really wasn't a "New Years Resolution" because it all just has to do with the timinig of the deployment, but it has worked out that this began on Jan 1st for me. For most of the deployment, since we had been working our asses off, I had decided to take it easy on working out. I agreed with myself that I would take it easy and then the last 3 months I would hit the gym hard and get well in to shape. Well, I'm on day 3 now, and I'm not going to lie, Im hurting! But its my own damn fault, and it should only be temporary. As soon as I get in to the swing of things, it should be fine. But one interesting suprise is that I figured over the past year of not eating a lot and not working out all that much, that I would of lost a good amount of weight, but in fact I had actually gained weight! Not much, but it was a nice suprise. So I'm already ahead of the game. I'll keep yall posted on future gains and goals achieved!

Goodbye 2007!!!

Today is Dec 31st, the last day of the year 2007. This year has brought many memories, experiences and friendships and one big event in my life, that will forever be with me. On Jan 3rd of this year, we deployed to Kuwait and then finally up in to Baghdad, Iraq. Most of this year has been spent deployed, running missions, fighting a war within a concrete jungle, and just plain being bored out of my mind. But if theres one thing that this year has brought me, it would be the friends and brothers that I have been with and have come to think of as family. We have been through it all together and Im sure we will remain together for the rest of our lives.

Of all the years in my life, this will be one that I will remeber more than any. The memories I have from this place over the past year will be with me forever, and I will look back with both joy and sorrow. In the past year we have lost 2 great men from our company, men whos families did not get to spend this holiday season with the ones they love. These men made a sacrifice that no one could have asked them to make, and we will always remeber and tell the stories of these great men.

With a little time left, we will continue to make memories in this place through part of 2008, but the experiences of this year have been wide and numerous. In a land, far away from home, in a place much different than anything we have ever experienced before, we had made a life. Not the best of lives that could be lived, but we have made the best of what we have had. We will continue to do so until the day arrives that we are able to leave here, to finish our work in this land, and to head home to be with those that we love that we left behind.

For this New Years I have ended up with a nice suprise. Due to the rotations of our days off, I am ending up getting quite a few days off this time and will enjoy all of it. I plan on using this time to start packing things up and to start sending some boxes home. My goal is to minimize what I have to actually carry back with me, because the experience of carry all the gear at one time on our way here absolutely sucked ass and I will not go through that again if I don't have to. I have quite a bit of stuff that I bought here and I need to really assess what I want to keep and whats just not worth taking back. Probably over the next week I am going to get a bunch of stuff to send back and will buy a tuffbox to mail it back in.

Lastly things around here have been getting gayer and gayer by the day. There are so many stupid rules being put in place and they are enforcing them with vengence. Both of the other platoons in our company in the time that we were at the outpost ended up getting caught for "infractions" and having to post NCOs and infractors in front of the chow hall to check for other infractions. How stupid and what a way to boost the morale of the troops which has already dropped significantly after spending 12 months in this hell hole. There are so many new stupid rules and dumb shit that its not even worth listing, but it makes me wonder what they are thinking. Who in their right mind at this point in the game would want to make things even worse on us. Again I say "And they wonder why no one wants to re-enlist."

Merry COLD Christmas!

Just a quick update, I managed to avoid the pink belley and I am offically safe now! :) I know some people wondered why I would post it here when anyone can read it, but the people in my platoon DON'T read my blog, because well, they'd be reading their own lives. So yeah. Also I noticed this is my 100th post!! Wow, I can't believe I have managed that many things to say about this place. Well still should be a few more coming before I head home...

Alright well Christmas is just about finishing up in this part of the world but I wanted to give a quick update. I figured that this Christmas, being that I was in Iraq, was not going to be the best of them, but it has turned out to be much worse than I would have expected.

Our rotation out to the outpost was working out so that I was going to be out here, away from the comforts of the home FOB. I was ok with that. I was also ok with not having a good Christmas meal or anything. I was fine. I was also accepting of the fact that I would usher the transition from Christmas eve to Christmas in a guard tower, probably cold as hell. Again no problems there.

A little divergence here for a minute. Let me tell you how damn cold it has been lately. If theres one thing that I cannot stand it is the cold. I know I had talked about this before and how I was dreading the winter approaching, but now that it is actually getting cold, I realize how much I truly hate it. The thing is, its not really all that cold. Its probably dropping down in to the upper 30's at night, but after going through a 120+ degree summer, thats a huge temperature difference. Add to the fact that this rotation my squads manning the guard positions durring the coldest part of the night. It probably wouldn't be all that bad if it wern't for the simple fact that the Army is great about not allowing you to be warm, despite the fact that they issue you all these different types of cold weather gear. But God forbid that you try and keep warm you know?!?

Well we've managed to make use of what items we are allowed to wear and I guess it hasn't been THAT bad. About a month ago or so I had order some skin tight winter underarmor pants and shirt which are great for keeping you warm. On top of that I wear this thick cotton shirt all under my uniform which together makes it not too bad. Ive got my gloves and a fleece cap that I wear under my helmet and late at night I use my issued poncho liner blanket and half ass wrap up in an attempt to keep warm. Normally our guard towers have these AC/Heater units in there, that last time we were here, they were functional, but somehow in the last 2 weeks that we were gone, they ALL ended up breaking. Fabulous. Also within the places we stay at the outpost, it is cold as shit, and it has been made clear that we must maintain the "standard" appearance, so no wearing jackets around or the fleece cap when not on guard. How retard!?! Theres hardly anyone here of any significance and for Christ sake were living out in the middle of Baghdad. Is this really necessary??

So enough of my bitching and complaining about the cold. Back to Christmas. So we started off on guard, cold, but anyways time passed and finally we were done. Immediately afterwords, our squad drew names for the Secret Santa that we were doing. We all bought gifts in the $10 to $20 range and drew random names and got whatever gift that person bought. Following that, we had our "Christmas Dinner" which conisted of some smoked sausage and pepperoni with some cheese and crackers. It actually wasn't too bad. Following that several of us light up some cigars and celebrate the day of Christ's birth. It wasn't turning out to be all that bad of a Christmas, until we found out that they were planning on having another platoon relieve us for a bit so we could travel to a nearby base and get some real Christmas dinner.

This doesn't sound like a bad idea right? Well you have to figure all the time of getting everything ready, getting the handover going, heading out, getting back blah blah blah. Nobody in our entire platoon wanted to do this, but we were being forced. How joyful! To make it even better for us, the time we were going to be heading out was going to be smack dab in the middle of my squads sleep time. Awesome, now we are giving up sleep to do something that we don't even want to do in the first place.

Well seeing as how we had no choice, we were woken up got ready, and then headed out. Once we got there we receieve a speech that basically stated the time that we had, and that everyone was being forced to go in to the chow hall, to grab a plate of food, sit down and eat it and enjoy it and be Merry. Wow, I'm now being ordered to have a Merry Christmas in a manner in which I don't even want to do. And they wonder why a 26 year old who doesn't like to have his life run like he's 12 doesn't want to re-enlist!! HA! The food was actually pretty good, but all we could think about was how we didn't want to be doing this in the first place. Oh well, its the Army. What can you do? And of course leave it up to them to take something and ruin it. Well thats about all that I have for now. Hope everyone back home has had a good Christmas, or whatever you celebrate!

If it ain't broke, don't fix it...

Lately there have been some changes. Some changes from the squad level all the way up to the company. And with all these changes, come new ways of doing things. Sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. It seems with all of this new stuff, there have been many changes, and the way things are today are much different than how they were just a couple months ago. With all the changes that have been going on, the best phrase that comes to mind and had been said by many people is "if it ain't broke, don't fix it!" Its pretty simple I think. If you come in to a system that has been working and working well, wouldn't it seem best to try and change as little as possible. Thats what you'd think but apparently that doesn't seem to be the case, and as a consequence, we suffer and things in certin ways have made a turn for the worse. I won't mention specifics but its kind of sad to see how things have changed. Several months ago when we got a new platoon leader, the guys working at the batallion headquarters told him he was taking over the best platoon in the batallion. Its just sad to know that the platoon they talked about isn't the same.

So on a lighter note, today is my 26th birthday. Exiciting I know. What a better way to spend your birthday than in a 3rd world war torn country. Awesome. Well at least I ended up having the day off simply by luck. I wasn't about to let anyone know it was my birthday (except those close to me) because my platoon has a tradition of holding down the birthday boy and pulling up their shirt and slapping the shit out of their stomach, giving you what has been referred to as a "pink belly." I don't plan on telling anyone until after New Years so I'm past the official statute of limitations for receiving a pink belly. Its the unwritten rule that if you sneak by for at least a week your officially safe. So far, 1 day down! :)

Well its been a little bit since I've posted and I've been pretty busy to be honest. We've been doing quite a bit and I probably could talk about a lot more but its late and I have to be up early so I'm just going to talk about an incident from the last patrol I went on. It was another long one, and we had our company commander out there with us so we had plenty of things to do.

The 2nd day that we were out, we ended up linking up with this guy at night that they wanted to talk to and see about maybe using him for some information. We ended up linking up with him but there were some people around so we went to move out to a more secluded location. I took my team, which was a total mix matched team. It was me, our medic, a forward observer, and squad leader from Scouts who was out with us. Anyways, we started walking along and all of a sudden these 2 kids took off running away down the alley. I thought to myself "What the hell?!" when all of a sudden 3 more came running out of a side alley I was coming up on and ran the same way the first 2 kids went. I was just coming up on the alley when this happened so I looked down the alley and thats when I saw this huge crowd of 40 people yelling and screaming!

Oh shit, whats going on now. Thats when the sound of what I figured to be a small caliber pistol rang out and some people started scattering. I immediatly stopped in place taking cover slighly behind a wall, shouldered my rifle and turned my night vision laser on to start scanning the people. Without skipping a beat the Scouts squad leader had moved up right next to me behind a car, and did the same thing. At this point people started rushing out of the homes with all sorts of stuff in their hands. Some people had boards, pipes and other things. This was getting bad when all of a sudden the Scout squad leader called out that one of them had an AK-47. This just got worse. This all happened in a matter of seconds and I yell out for everyone to stop as I begin to have my team advance on the crowd.

We were moving fast and I'm not going to lie I was a little worried about running in to a crowd full of angry people with all sorts of weapons ranging up to a pistol and a rifle. As we came running forward the crowd began to desperse and take off running. It was chaotic as we tried chasing people down and find those with weapons. We ended up losing the guys with weapons so we hearded up everyone that was left and began searching and talking to them. I'm not real sure what started this or why, but 2 of the fueding groups were there and even when we had them "contained" they were still arguing and yelling and getting physical. Thats where we had to step in and step up our level of agression to quell the situation and prevent it from getting out of hand. While we were dealing with all of that one of the guys pulling security noticed 2 guys dressed in all black come in to his alleyway and began walking away. Right before they turned off he noticed they had an AK-47 with them. When it was called up over the radio my awareness level went up 1000% anticipating things to go down or at least some pursuit after them, but for some reason still unknown to me now, we did no go after them.

We finally ended up calimg everything down and finsihing up what we were doing so we headed on back to link up with the rest of our guys and began telling the story of the craziness that just happened. It was pretty exciting and crazy to think about how close things had come to being really bad and getting really out of hand. The thing that worried me was if whoever had that AK within the crowd had started shooting at us, it would of been a hell of a time trying to shoot back at them without hitting all the people that were around. So what do you do in that situation?!? Hope I never find out.

Making up for lost time...

In the past few months, I can honesty say that I have not been on any raids. It has been quite a while. Now, this is not saying that raids were not happening, it just worked out to where I didn't end up on any for quite some time. It seemed as if for me there was going to be no more kicking in doors, rushing in to homes/businesses and all the craziness and excitment that comes with them. Since it has been so long since the last time I had engaged a known enemy, raids were the last form of a rush and excitment that was left.

Well that all changed over this last week. In one of my previous posts I talked about the night time raid with the masked and armed local guards. Apparently that was to be the first in a series of raids for me and the others of my squad. The next raid was to go after some guys that we wouldn't mind capturing. These were to be the snap raids, or the ones where we get info at the last minute and head out to the target location without any real plan. This isn't a bad thing because we have been doing these for a while and everyone knows what to do as far as the little stuff. Just the major stuff usually gets hashed out between to squad leader, myself and the other team leader quick like and then we roll from there. We've gotten quite good at this and has allowed our reaction time to such info to be quick. So the first place we ended up going to was a bust so we headed out to our next location.

The next location was located in a "business" type of section and the place we entered was pretty big for the amount of guys we had. Nothing new and we quickly cleared the floors and rooms but no luck again. The roof eaisly connected to many other same level or close to the same level roofs of the adjacent buildings. There was only one occupant but there were some cups of Chai Tea (the typical Iraqi tea drink) that were out that were still warm, leading us to believe they had escaped as we were got there or just before. We wern't going to call this one quits just yet and began searching around to try and find them. While searching the home we found some vests with bodyarmor and ammunition vests. Now we really wanted these guys. At one point while searching adjacent roof tops the other team awoke a family living below and out of fear they fired a couple warning shots from their AK rifle. The sounds of the shots ringing out had us on high alert and they began carefully going in to that home. Like I said tho, it just turned out to be a man trying to protect his big family from unknown invaders. We never ended up finding the guys we were looking for, but it was good to get out there as a squad and to conduct these raids and get back in to the swing of things.

Another day we had some good info on a meeting that was taking place for some of the local militia and we decided to act on this quick. We headed out with a good amount of people for this raid and my team was to be the lead team. We ended up linking up with the leader of the local armed security guys and they went with us to the location. As we started getting close these guys began running and then sprinting around trying to get there as quick as possible and of course we had to keep up with them. The thing is I'm not sure the guys up with me knew where they were going and we began running all around this one neighborhood, but not towards the area we were supposed to go to. It was exhausting and to make matters worse, no one really brought any water because we figured this was going to be quick, in and out. Now we were echausted from sprint around all over the place and had almost no water to replenish. This was begining to suck.

We finally made it to where we were going and it ended up being a HUGE area. With the help of the security guys we secured the area and rounded up all the people that were around there for identification. This was where it got crazy because there had to of been over 100 people there and we hearded them all tightly together and begin the long process of identification. I can't recall how many we ended up getting but it turned out to be a good amount. The crazy thing was how many of these local security guards had showed up to help us out. It had to of been over 30 of them, which in many ways helps make our job easier. Like when we were on the way back with the detainees they had gotten some word from someone along the way about a possible weapons cache, so we stopped real quick and my team along with several of these guys went in to this "yard" thing and immediatly they went to working searching around like crazy and we pretty much just sat back and let them do the work. It was pretty nice, Im not even going to lie. We didn't find anything and so we headed on back finally after many hours of being out. We were all exhausted and thirsty and it was nice to finally chug a good bottle of water.

So that just about covers the major stuff out there. Its been good getting out there and doing these raids again, especially when they yeild the positive results. Hopefully this trend will continue and we can continue to be as proactive as possible until we leave here.

Well yesterday was the memorial ceremony for Reece. We had ourselves looking our best as we prepared to give our final respects to another brother, another great man. The service was done very well and it was good to be able to share in the memories of the guys that got up there to speak. I can tell it was tough for them. Its tough for everyone, even those of us who did not know him too well. Hearning about him I wish I would of had a chance to get to of known him better. In the end the memorial was a good thing, despite the rough feelings that came along with it. I know after attending Tolletts memorial that it had been a good thing to be able to express the feelings and emotions that you can't always express with one another when you are expected to pick up and continue on with your mission. I hope everyone was able to walk away from this memorial with a greater appreciation of the man Kyle Reece was and to be at peace with knowing he is in Heaven now, wathing down Im sure over all of us.

Never forget SPC Matthew Kyle Reece...

http://www.wral.com/news/state/story/2119198/

A soldier based at Fort Bragg has been killed in Iraq. The military confirmed Monday that Army Spc. Matthew K. Reece of Harrison, Ark., died Saturday from wounds sustained when his vehicle was struck by a roadside bomb in Baghdad.

Reece was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg. He joined the Army in 2005 and arrived at the 82nd Airborne the following year.

The military says Reece is survived by his wife, two children and his parents. A memorial service will be held in Iraq.

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It is another trying time for the soldiers of our company as another one of our brothers made the ultimate sacrafice, trying to bring peace and freedom to a nation that has not seen such a thing. His platoon was attacked by a faceless, cowardly enemy who will do anything to prevent such a bright future for their country.

I was a part of the QRF (Quick Reaction Force) that was called up immediatly after the attack. It was chaos getting up, ready and out to do what we could to help our fellow soldiers and friends. There was no hesitation, and the words struck deep in to us as we were told "They've been hit by an IED! They have casulties!"; We were in such a mode that got things happening FAST, despite the chaos, confusion and worries.

By the time we got to the scene, another unit was there and had secured the area. Our guys had already rushed off with the wounded soldiers, so we went to recover the vehicle. Once we had the truck back, myself and a couple other team leaders made sure to keep the soldiers away and began to sort through everything and recover important equipment that was left behind.

From the sight of the vehicle and the way things looked inside, I can only imagine the chaos that had fallen upon the guys in that convoy. One of my friends was the TC (Truck Commander) of that vehcile and he suffered some minor injuries. My heart goes out to him, the other guys in the truck that were hurt, as well as all the guys in that convoy and our company. We learned not too long after we had the vehicle back that SPC Reece had been killed. There was utter disbelief. Another soldier in the truck we were told they wern't sure if he was going to make it or not. Thanks to the great job of the soldiers and their medic that day, he will live.

It seemed things had been going well lately, and with the end of our deployment nearing, a lot of us had felt that we would ride the rest of the deployment out without incident. But just like that everything changed, and once again the true nature of this war and our enemy came back to haunt us. The men of Charlie company would have to endure the pain and emotions of another lost soldier. Although he may no longer be with us here physically, Reece will live on in the hearts and minds of the soldiers who were lucky enough to serve with him. May God watch over you and your family and know we are thinking of you and your sacrifice down here.