20 May

Hillah, Iraq.

We have been really busy the last few days. To clear up any confusion, the Marines and I support an Army Special Forces unit, who, in turn, support and advise an El Salvadoran battalion who directly support the Iraqi Army. In addition, the Army guys work with the local Iraqi SWAT team. Got it? Marines, Navy, and Army supporting the El Salvadorans who support a bunch of Iraqis. For the sake of simplicity, let us call this motley lot of crime fighters…The Justice League.

Our area of responsibility is very, very quiet because The Justice League has been out in force making our presences known. Our Army guys are out looking for other stuff to do, but the regular Army units are not too keen on having a bunch of Green Berets and other units come into their neighborhood, even though these units don’t want to leave their camps and their areas of responsibility are pretty active with bad guys.

However, our hosting of the Minister of Defense was such a success that the Army has decided to allow us to go into areas ‘policed’ by the other units.Two nights ago, we mounted up an operation to go arrest some insurgents. We formed up around 1800. While briefing, the chief came in:

“Iraqi SWAT is here.”
“Great,” said the captain.
“They want dinner.”
“Figures.”

We left around 2100, and we rolled to a town about a half hour away. There we split our task force into two elements. The first element went into the town, kicked down the doors, and arrested two booger eaters. My element went racing out of town to the second objective. As we rolled through town, the SWAT team started firing their AK-47s up into the air, which is a wildly popular past time with Iraqis, particularly those with guns. It was like Jesse James and his gang riding into town. Never mind all the locals lining the streets. They shot out two street lights and a transformer before they ran out of ammo.Having dispensed with that oh so superfluous element of surprise, we left town along a single lane dirt road leading to the bad guy’s house. We first secured a water pumping station in case the bad guys had paid the water pumping employees to keep watch for them. Having taken two locals into custody, we roared up to the house where the bad guy and his four sons lived. My humvee provided rear security while the SF guys and SWAT guys went to do their door kicking thing. We caught two bad guys, but one squirted out the back into a big field. I actually got to fire the only rounds that evening as they asked ANGLICO to shoot some flares from our grenade launcher. My first shot out of the M-203 was a bit low, and nearly landed on the house. It missed the house but started a brush fire in the field where they were searching. Brush fires in Iraq are not a problem as there is not a whole lot of brush to fire. The second flare malfunctioned, and burst into four or five chunks of burning chemicals that also almost hit the house. The SF guys asked me to stop shooting, and thanked me for not burning down the objective.

The squirter got away, so we met the other task force back at the pumping station. We waited for half an hour in case he came back. Even though Iraqis allegedly hate dogs, every house has about 87 dogs, and they do not stop barking once they start. I sat there in the dark in the middle of the desert, listening to dozens of dogs bark at us. We then released the two pump station workers, apologized for the inconvenience, and came back home.

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