Hillah, Iraq. The mission for tonight was an amazing one. I cannot go into the details, but it involved remote controlled planes, an AC-130 gunship, boats with the contingency for a river chase, sniper teams extracted by helicopters, and very, very bad guys most likely guarded by their own personal security teams. It sounds like […]

Someone beating on your door at 0230 is rarely bringing good news. The warrant officer came in to tell me that some unit was conducting an operation in town, and we were the QRF force. I got up, and had managed to get my pants and boots on when he came back to say never […]

Hillah, Iraq. The mission planning starting to ramp up again. We have some great intel developing, and hopefully we will have a good mission in the next day or two.The pool has made progress. The KBR guys cleared and leveled the pool area, but we are waiting on sand. We also learned that the potable […]

Hillah, Iraq. Our Dr. Jones mission with snipers and boats was on for tonight, so we started planning. I got busy generating requests for air support. I actually submitted the requests yesterday, but these things generally must be tended, as the actual assets need a lot of information to make the air power magic happen. […]

Hillah, Iraq. Babylon…five thousand year old city in the cradle of civilization. Garden city on the banks of the Euphrates. Home of King Hammurabi and his code, where King Nebuchadnezzar built his hanging gardens. Alexander conquered and died here. (All of the above shamelessly and hastily copied from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylon) Today we got to escort an […]

Hillah, Iraq. Another travel day today as we head to glorious….Baghdad! However, a trip to Baghdad is not exciting enough unless you do it in a sandstorm! For comparison: (Notice the new C-Hut?) For comparison: For comparison: “Sandstorm” is a misnomer. They aren’t really sandstorms. They are dust storms. Keep in mind that there is […]

Hillah, Iraq. The Navy and Marine Corps have a long tradition of asking a lot of their officers and NCOs. Challenging tasks are often accomplished by young men and women with no training specific to the mission, and few resources. This tradition is accompanied by an equally long history of never turning down an assignment, […]

Hillah, Iraq. When I went to meet the Warrant Officer and Staff Sergeant for breakfast, I found them in the main ‘street’ running the length of the trailer area. They were talking to three ‘out of town’ Marines: a female major, a male second lieutenant, and a female lance corporal. They were here doing research […]

Hillah, Iraq. Originally, we were supposed to go to the shooting range. However, a knocking on my door at 0730 for a meeting lead to the news that we were on call for a high priority mission. We were waiting for some intel that could lead to the arrest of a bad guy trying to […]

Hillah, Iraq. Short entry today, but with lots of eye candy. We went to the shooting range.’Shooting range’ is a big misleading, as it is just a patch of desert that we have opted to claim for expending ordinance and ammunition. The pictures looked washed out because we were having another sandstorm.   *Sorry for […]