Hillah, Iraq.

We had a very late night mission planned, so I had scheduled my day accordingly. A thorough cleaning of my hooch, with reorganization of stuff to follow. Probably work on Levi’s Six Step Buff and Tan plan, then a nap because we are going to be up late again. Laundry, PX, chow, go fight war. Ready, break.

I had just located the mop when the duty guy told me that some colonel I had never heard of was on the phone asking for me. As a rule, unknown colonels asking for me by name has rarely lead to good news, and I frantically searched my mind for something I had done that could get me in trouble. I couldn’t think of anything, which was worse because I hate getting in trouble for stuff that I didn’t know I was doing.

The colonel wanted to ask me some questions about exactly who we are working for here (which is actually a bit of a complicated issue), but since there is no secure phone so we had to take care of this by super secret satellite secure (S^4) email. I fired up our super secret satellite secure email (S^4) computer (for those that think AOL is a bad deal, the Army pays about $11 a minute for super secret satellite secure email) to find that I had eleven new messages, all recommending different routing schemes for my air requests, and one asking why one of my Forward Air Controllers asked for a live bomb drop to destroy a suspected weapons cache. Asking to drop live bombs on a suspected weapons cache is akin to lobbing a five hundred pound Raid Room Fogger from four miles away into the snack bar at the community pool because you thought you saw a roach, a move likely to put you in bad odor with the Community Association.

Not that I blame the guy for asking. I decided that these issues clearly called for lunch before they could be dealt with properly. Lunch took two hours. Of those two hours, I ate for twenty five minutes. The Polish were guarding the chow hall today, and I got stopped at the gate because I was in civilian clothes.

“You can’t come in.”, the guard said.
“Why not?”
“You are not in uniform.”
“Yes. Nice work.”
“You must be in uniform to eat.”
“Since when?”
“Since this morning.”
“By whose order?”
“Ze camp commander.”
“That’s crap. I am going to eat.”, and I started to walk past him.

He physically blocked my way, which changed the dynamic of the situation drastically as I can hardly be civil before the first cup of coffee is done.  The camp commander is Polish. There is long standing professional enmity between us and the Poles because we go out to catch bad guys a bit more aggressively than they. Personally, they took great umbrage about the recent incident where a Polish soldier stole an MP3 player from the Hadjimart, a move that resulted in the banning of Poles from the Hadjimart and the associated Special Forces sponsored Internet Cafe. And now they were getting us back by making us wear uniforms to chow.

I tried a quick campaign of Overbearing Officer, but that made no headway. I had to admire the years of Soviet rule as far as zeal for doing what you are told was concerned. I reasoned that I was far more clever than the fighting man from Lubelskie Province (or wherever). I smiled, and walked around the corner to the other entrance. He blocked me, too. OK, Polish Commander, you win this round.

I hustled back to put on my uniform, now thoroughly riled about this absurd situation. I made it past Lugnut, and talked to the American chow hall manager, who had heard nothing of this new policy. We both went to talk to the Captain of the Guard, who, honestly, showed more than a bit of Continental decency by welcoming my questions, and offering me a cup of coffee before we started. Either the old Soviet Intelligence Apparatus was still operating, or the Major understood that things go smoother with coffee and manners. He produced the written order, and now I was in a bind. I really didn’t have a leg to stand on because there was the written order, of which I could not claim  ignorance. I decided to pick my battles carefully, and went to eat.

Fortunately, the SF guys have no such hangups about rules, published or otherwise. They raised the devil over this new policy, so much so that the camp Army Liaison got an interview with the camp commander to get the original policy of civilian clothes but no workout gear reinstated by mid afternoon. I returned from lunch to find that the S^4 email computer could not connect. I spent the rest of the afternoon flailing with that problem and a myriad of unrelated issues, and finally decided that my time would clearly be better spent sleeping. I had spent the entire day in a furious activity, but ultimately was in the same place that I started when I woke up. Sweet, sweet rerack.

A very interesting mission tonight. We were going after five targets in a town not too far away. I thought that we had proved that hitting a lot of targets sequentially in a small town simply didn’t work, but here we were planning  another mission exactly like the ones that didn’t work so well before. But, hey, being out chasing bad guys is better than trying to get the computer to connect, no matter how good the plan is.

We were going after a bunch of guys that were suspected of attacking SWAT with rocket propelled grenades recently. No SWAT were killed in the attack, but they were really mad about the affair, and worked aggressively to get the intel needed needed to catch these guys. We were going to swoop into town, and three assault elements were going to take down their targets, while Anglico provided security and air strikes if needed.

The usual routine of gearing up.

We got marshalled up:

The gunner picked Action, which I took as a sign of good morale. We rolled out, and things went great for about twenty minutes. On the major highway, one of the SWAT trucks got a flat, which turned into a bit of a circus as apparently they didn’t have the equipment or the experience needed to change a tire.

The Iraqi mindset works a lot on the principal of God’s will. If something does or does not happen, it is God’s will. In fact, some think it is a bad idea to fix things because that is going against God’s will, and if God wants it fixed, God will take care of it. SWAT sort of fiddled around with the tire for a bit. The Captain informed them that they had ten minutes to get the tire fixed or else we would be forced to leave them (or at least their truck) on the side of the road to continue the mission. I guess God miracled some knowledge to them, because they had the tire changed in six minutes.

As planned, we swooped down on the town, and quickly found the primary bad guy we were looking for. The assaulters told me later that when they kicked down the door, the bad guy stood up and the first thing he shouted was, “I swear I never cut anybody’s head off, and I gave that money the El Salvadorans gave me to the people they wanted me to!” Which is the most interesting conversation opener I have heard in a while. Anglico set up a blocking position in the center of town where we could react quickly if anybody needed our guns, or we could fire illumination rounds to support the assault teams. One of the targets was down a nearby side street.

Here is the street I was guarding.

This is a donkey who didn’t’ seem to mind all the guys with guns, but just kept grazing around.

You can make your own jokes. I learned that donkeys are not very particular about where or what they eat. Especially skinny ones. We arrested the bad guys:

Happily, this was a very successful mission. We caught six bad guys, including the ones responsible for attacking SWAT. We captured the rocket propelled grenade launcher, as well as a grenade and some rifles. On the way back, SWAT was in such a good mood that they kept stopping at all the Iraqi police checkpoints to talk to their friends, which held up the entire convoy.

We got done debriefing at 0500. I called my Beautiful Bride, and it was great talking to her. I felt bad because I had nothing much to say because I was so tired. It wasn’t a very good use of an excellent connection, but I really enjoyed hearing her voice. She was really sweet and understanding about my situation, which is one of the many reasons why she is a good piece of gear.