Hillah, Iraq.

Last night was even more fun. The plan was to pick a couple of roads along known insurgent routes of travel. We wanted to set up a lead element of two vehicles hidden from the road to report suspicious traffic. The suspicious traffic would be halted a kilometer or so down the road by the main elements. Ready, break!

We loaded up and rolled a bit early because the Army guys wanted to watch NASCAR on Armed Forces TV at 3AM. We drove WAY out into the desert, and finally drove along a dirt road that parallels the main road, but about a mile off. This dirt road is allegedly the main route of travel for booger eaters because they don’t want to deal with the police on the main road. We found a respectable clump of trees, and my humvee and a SF humvee hid behind them. The other vehicles went down the road about 1000 meters. The idea was that if the bad guys turned around when they saw the check point, we could nab them. We settled down to listen to dozens of dogs bark. Not only were there dogs this time, but even a donkey and a rooster got in on the action. You would have to be deaf and dumb to not hear all the racket.

A deaf and dumb car came rolling down the road. We hunkered down in the bushes and radioed the main element as they passed. I started laughing out loud at the situation. I felt exactly like we were a bunch of teenagers hiding behind a hedge getting ready to throw water balloons at passing cars. We stopped a couple of cars, but they had all their papers in order. While we waited, we tested our night vision gear, and I conducted a little training on using the infared laser pointer. This piece of gear is used to show pilots where the target is by lasing it with a beam of light only visible through night vision goggles. I also tried to figure out how to talk on an airplane verbally. Basically, there was nothing around except a clump of trees and hundred of barking dogs. I finally decided that the IR pointer and tracer rounds were going to have to do.

Finally we gave up, and tried a new spot. On the way there, we passed a big meeting of people far after curfew. We investigated, and found out that the booger eaters have been using the main road as the local police don’t like being out after dark, which is why we didn’t see many cars. We tried one other place, but after a total of six hours out, we gave up to come home. We got in about four in the morning, and by the time we debriefed, the sun was coming up. We are going to take the day off, then work the next four as the intel comes in.