Letter home
This is a portion of a letter our Soldier sent his mom and we got today.
"We haven't done anything to dangerous up to this point. The worst thing we've had to do is escort a wrecker (tow truck) into Samara that we have been watching. A Stryker drove through and hit an IED (Improvised Explosive Device) which is basically a home made bomb. It blew up underneath the vehicle and tore it's engine out. The driver was the only one hurt, he broke his leg in the explosion.
"We escorted the wrecker into Samara and guarded it while it hooked up. Then we had to tow it out of the city while it was still burning. The fire drew a huge crowd and they were throwing rocks at us. Some of the guys had to fire warning shots to keep the crowd calm.
"We drove in from Kuwait when we first arrived and along the way we had to fuel up (it's a long way). We stopped just before Baghdad to fuel up and there were a bunch of kids asking for candy and trying to sell us things. I threw candy and a little girl, probably about 8 or 9 years old, gave me a Dinar so I gave her a dollar. By the way, 2000 dinar is about a dollar US. I'm not sure of the spelling but her name was something like Arawa-a. She learned English in her school and spoke it pretty well.
"These kids were barefoot and they live in mud huts. They are very very poor and whole families live together - mom, dad, grandparents, uncles, aunts - the whole works. They walk miles to school and they also help with all the farm work at home.
"These people farm by hand, they irrigate with little ditches next to the rows of crops and fill the ditches by hand from the river using old old buckets. They don't have shovels, hoes or any other farm equipment.
"It gets cold here at night, not as cold as home, but then I have to sleep outside.
"I have to prep for tonight's mission so I have to stop writing."
"We haven't done anything to dangerous up to this point. The worst thing we've had to do is escort a wrecker (tow truck) into Samara that we have been watching. A Stryker drove through and hit an IED (Improvised Explosive Device) which is basically a home made bomb. It blew up underneath the vehicle and tore it's engine out. The driver was the only one hurt, he broke his leg in the explosion.
"We escorted the wrecker into Samara and guarded it while it hooked up. Then we had to tow it out of the city while it was still burning. The fire drew a huge crowd and they were throwing rocks at us. Some of the guys had to fire warning shots to keep the crowd calm.
"We drove in from Kuwait when we first arrived and along the way we had to fuel up (it's a long way). We stopped just before Baghdad to fuel up and there were a bunch of kids asking for candy and trying to sell us things. I threw candy and a little girl, probably about 8 or 9 years old, gave me a Dinar so I gave her a dollar. By the way, 2000 dinar is about a dollar US. I'm not sure of the spelling but her name was something like Arawa-a. She learned English in her school and spoke it pretty well.
"These kids were barefoot and they live in mud huts. They are very very poor and whole families live together - mom, dad, grandparents, uncles, aunts - the whole works. They walk miles to school and they also help with all the farm work at home.
"These people farm by hand, they irrigate with little ditches next to the rows of crops and fill the ditches by hand from the river using old old buckets. They don't have shovels, hoes or any other farm equipment.
"It gets cold here at night, not as cold as home, but then I have to sleep outside.
"I have to prep for tonight's mission so I have to stop writing."
posted by deesci | 7:06 PM
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