Holidays

I feel bad.  I haven't posted anything in a few days.  The holidays are a tough time, and I didn't quite feel like writing.  I didn't know how to say what I have been feeling.  The holidays for me means Christmas, my wedding anniversary, and New Years.  As of now all three have come.  It is hard to be away from home for the holidays.  If you have ever done it you know what I mean.  The job keeps us busy and one day is a lot like all the other, but all of a sudden it is Christmas Eve and you are looking around all of the stupid decorations that the hindu Indians who work there have put up in the chow hall and you start feeling it.  The last week has been hard to take.  It would have been better in a way if we had had a mission to take our minds off it, but we haven't.  We don't go out again until tomorrow.  I had a good day on Christmas.  We had a little barbeque and a gift exchange.  The girl who organized the gift exchange put a MINIMUM of $30 on the gift and it wasn't optional to participate.  I protested and didn't spend near that, but we all had a good time.  We played horseshoes in the dark (remember we work the night shift so our barbeque didn't start until the sun was going dow) with chemlights taped to the stakes so that we could see them.  It isn't easy to aim at a chemlight.  They mess with your depth perception.  We had as much fun as we could under the circumstances.  I did pretty well, and Julie got a video camera for Christmas that she could use as a webcam and I was able to see her and the boys that afternoon which made me really happy.  The boys had fun showing me all the presents that they got.  I think Julie enjoyed showing me her presents too.  

I remember the first Christmas that I was away from home and couldn't help but compare it to this one.  I was in Brazil and we went to a families house for a barbeque.  In the southern hemisphere it is summer at Christmas time and everyone barbeques.  The strange thing is that we didn't barbeque pork or beef but huge tortoises!  I spent the day slaughtering and butchering three of them.  I felt then a lot like I feel now.  I remember looking around me and being amazed that I was in such a strange place when all I wanted to do was be home with my family.  

I handled this Christmas a little better until my anniversary, our ninth, and then it started to get a lot more difficult. It was as hard to be away on this day as on Christmas.  I miss Julie most of all being over here and the day just served as a reminder of how far away I really am.  I have spent over a year of our nine away from home and it will be almost two out of 10 by the time I get back home.  It seems strange to be celebrating an anniversary when I haven't been home in six months and haven't seen my wife in two.  I don't live a married life.  I live a single life with someone at home I miss and like to talk to.  It's tough as you can imagine.

Today is New Years.  Here it is just one more day.  I worked hard today and although I was in a bad mood it was more because of the difficult week than because of what day it is.  Tomorrow we leave on a mission and I will have a lot to do to distract me from my sorrow.  

On the bright side I only have eight months left :|.  

Settling In

We are back in Taji for another night before going out again.  I am starting to adjust to the schedule and the life and the people that I work with.  I got a new truck commander before this mission, and it is working out really well.  He likes to yell, but I am used to yelling coming from my family!  Like us, he gets excited, but doesn't take it personal and five minutes later it's like nothing happened.  It makes the job easier.  Our driver, who is 18 from Boyd, TX, is still getting used to driving such a big truck.  He has never driven anything like it before.  He is just out of basic training, and his job training did not include driving at all.  I really don't know why he is our driver when my job in the army is supposed to be driving trucks, but he is and we are teaching him the best we can.  When we are done he will be the best driver in the company.  Now that our truck is running so smoothly there is talk of making us the lead scout.  That would be cool, but a huge responsibility, especially for me.  I would be the eyes of the convoy making sure there is nothing dangerous in our path.  It calls for good eyes!  We'll see what happens.

I had a great time yesterday after our trip to Baghdad.  We found the 24 hour MWR (rec center) and played pool and ping-pong all night.  I fared well against the other guys.  We had a good time together and are starting to come together as a group.  It's fun making fun of my driver who is not only young and inexperienced but is only about 5' tall.  Maybe 5' 1"!  He knows we love him.

So far we have been safe on our missions.  That will most likely be the case.  The company we replaced told us that they only had a handful of incidents and all of them consisted of pot shots from people that they couldn't even see.  We are well protected from gunfire in our armored monsters.  We just keep rolling like nothing happened.  There is always the possibility of more, so we keep ourselves ready and alert.  This trip was the best so far with no stops for broken vehicles or any problems.  We are all getting better at our jobs.  

Well, there is more work to be done to prepare my truck for our next trip, and I want to get it done before the Cowboy's game!  

 

Winter in Iraq

I am in the middle of a mission, but I get to spend every couple of nights in my own bed as we pass this way.  We are busy helping our logistics guys move equipment around.  We never know why and often don't know what we are helping to transport, but we make sure that they truck drivers get there and back safely.  We escort all types of cargo from civilian contractors to army convoys.  

I have been back to Baghdad since my last post and spent some time there.  We get to know all of the posts around us because we will eventually spend as much time in them as we will in our own.  When I am "home" I spend my time in my room on the internet or watching movies, but on the road we sleep in tents on cots so we are more likely to go out to the rec rooms and shops that they have set up for the soldiers.  Last night I watched "Iron Man" on a big screen TV sitting on a really soft leather chair in a rec center.  We are awake at night, so we had the place to ourselves early in the morning when everyone else on post was asleep.  It was fun.

Winter has started here in Iraq.  It is near freezing every night and will stay this way for a few months.  People are surprised to learn that Iraq is at a similar latitude as Texas, and other than being incredibly dry has the same seasons as Texas.  It gets as cold here as it does there.  It warms up to comfortable temperature during the day, but I am asleep and only feel the cold of the night.  As a gunner I get to feel it while driving down the road.  All my years riding motorcycles in the cold has helped prepare me for what it's like up in that turret.  The army provides some pretty nice clothing though to help keep me warm.  It's funny though.  You know who the gunners are because they are the ones with multiple layers of clothing on and thick gloves.  The drivers and truck commanders get to sit in heated cabs so they just wear their ordinary uniform with a jacket that they can take off before getting into the truck.  In the summer they will be the ones in the air conditioning while the gunners get to sweat up in the hatch with all their gear on!  

I am getting lots of Christmas cards from everyone.  It is nice to get them all, even the ones from distant relatives on Julie's side of the family that I don't know to well.  It is nice to know that people are thinking about me.  I'm glad that I could come do something so important in my life and for the support that I am getting from everyone.  It's funny, I served a mission in the jungles of South America and now I am serving my country in the deserts of the Middle East.  Two totally different battles in two totally different environments.  What an amazing life I have had!

Murphy

We just finished one of the longest missions I could imagine without anyone getting hurt.  It was supposed to be a five hour mission and turned into a 12 your mission when everything that could go wrong did go wrong.  

First it started with my crew having to trade trucks with another crew because our truck does not have enough armor to go through the neighborhood where our mission took us.  We did not know what truck we were going to use until two hours before the mission and we had to work like mad to get it ready for us.  We didn't have time to take the other crew's equipment out of the truck before we left so we just put ours in and left.  

On the way to our destination our lead truck made a wrong turn.  That happens sometimes, especially on a route that we have not been on before, so it was no big deal.  It became a big deal when he got stuck in the mud while trying to turn around!  He got so stuck that it took two trucks and a couple of hours to get him unstuck.  We were now two hours behind schedule, but back on the road.

As we entered the base at our destination I had to unload or clear my .50 cal.  Something broke inside, and it became inoperable.  I worked on it for a while, but had to give up as we were turning around as quickly as possible because we were late.  It was good that we left the original crew's equipment in their truck because I had their .50 cal in reserve.  I wrestled mine out of the turret and mounted theirs and we continued the mission.  

So far: truck stuck in the mud and broken weapon

We started back just within our allowed window to start missions so that we only run in the dark.  We could just make it back as the sun would be rising.  That was until about two miles down the road until the lugs on our truck's right rear tire sheared off and we lost the wheel in the middle of the street!  Our wheel fell off.  It took another two hours to get my truck on the back of one of the empty HETTS (used to transport heavy equipment like MRAPS and tanks) that we fortunately had available and continue the mission.  I had to unmount the .50 cal that I had just mounted and finished the mission in the back of another truck.  By this time the sun was up and we had to contend with traffic in broad daylight in Sadr City.  At least I got to see Baghdad in the daytime.  

Oh, it's not over.

Next a trucks radio jamming equipment went down.  That is used to stop radio controlled IEDs.  We didn't have to stop, just adjust our convoy order.  

Then one of our drivers ran into another truck with his rhino.  Thats a heater box that sticks out in front of the truck to trigger heat activated IEDs in front of the truck instead of on the truck.  He bent it! 

Finally, we got back home.  Final tally: Truck stuck in the mud, broken weapon, broken truck, broken jammer, broken rhino, and a daylight drive through Sadr City.

I still had to help recover all the gear, from both crews, out of the broken truck so it could be taken to maintenance before I was able to go to bed.  I am still tired, but we all got back safe and we got the cargo delivered so it was a good mission.

I hope they don't all go like that!

First Mission

I finally made it to Iraq!  It is quite a trip to get here.  We left Fort Stewart on a charter plane and flew to Kuwait City with stops in Bangor, Maine, and Shannon, Ireland.  We stayed in Kuwait for two weeks doing a little training and getting our bodies acclimated to the new time and new environment.  Then we took a military transport to Baghdad where we were supposed to take helicopters to our final destination, Camp Taji just north of the city.  The helicopters weren't expecting us so after a wait of a couple of days at a camp outside of the Baghdad international airport we convoyed the 15 miles to Taji.  Once here we moved into our new rooms (yes, we each get our own room) and started training with the company that we eventually replaced.  We run all our missions at night, so after getting our bodies used to the new schedule in Kuwait, we had to revert back to a schedule almost the same as when we were in the United States.  Then we started our missions.

My first mission was a week ago.  I had never been "outside the wire" before, other than to get here from the airport and I had to get into the hatch and man my machine gun and do everything that I was supposed to do without anyone to show me what to do.  Mainly I just imitated what I saw other people doing.  It's a tough job being a gunner in a Gun Truck.  You have to man your gun, spotlight suspicious objects with a handheld spotlight, mark suspicious objects with chemlights, and do all this while being bucked like a bull rider on top of a huge truck going down war torn roads at 35 mph.  It is physically demanding.  The driver and truck commander just sit and watch!

I have to admit that I haven't really been scared yet.  I think that's because I am so busy up there that I don't have time to think about it.  It's also a tribute to the training, that it just seems like one more training exercise just like the ones that we were doing in Georgia.  The only difference this time is that I have live rounds in my gun and our equipment is way better.  I hope nothing happens to make me realize how dangerous it really is to do what I am doing.  People die every night out there.  So far, luckily, we haven't seen anything, and from what the outgoing company told us that is what we should expect for most of the time.  

Our last mission was what we call a barrier mission.  We escort trucks carrying concrete barriers to Sadr City in Baghdad (the most dangerous place in Iraq) and guard them while cranes replace old road barriers with the new ones.  We sit there for four or five hours until they are done and then escort them back.  So far pretty boring stuff.  Although no one shot at us!  That would make things more exciting.