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.