Reaction to Attack

He says that when an IED goes off it takes you by total surprise. They are so well hidden that no one has any idea they are there until the explosive force rocks your world. The surprise causes your heart to skip a beat and you instinctively hold your breathe. The radio immediately fills with a cacophony of voices. Dust and smoke hang in the air.

But it's in those fews moments right after the blast that training takes over. The fear takes second stage as adrenaline dumps into the bloodstream. Metabolism speeds up, time seems to slow down.

He says that at that moment you know what has to be done and you do it. It's like the world is falling apart around him but he stays as calm as he can and gets the job done. He picks his vehicle commanders voice out of the roar and follows each and every command.

Even when he's not directly involved in an action the chatter over the radio brings back memories of the times he has been directly involved. He listens and knows immediately what thoughts are going through the minds of the men behind the voices. He can feel what they are feeling. He can see in his mind what they see with their eyes.

Reflections on Leave

We haven't heard from him in almost ten days- which causes some anxiety since we had been used to getting an email or talking to him on chat regularly - even an occasional phone call. Not much new to report. Everyone has read or heard about the rise of attacks in Iraq. The resurgence in terrorism. The kidnappings. The violence. It's at times like these that we reflect on what he's already told us, we wonder what he's doing now (if he's safe) and dream of a quiet future. So in this email I digress to the time when he was home on leave.

We had a party at our house during leave. At first he hadn't wanted a party, he didn't want a big fuss. But then something changed. Suddenly he wanted people around - family and friends. We invited immediate family and a few close friends. Those that greeted him in our home on that day had no idea what he had endured (unless they had been in the same situation). No matter how much news coverage we've watched, how many newspaper articles we've read or how many photos we've seen, we can't relate. He has lived it. He has his own news reel that constantly plays back through his mind.

He told us stories. He shared some photos. But he told us he was bored. He talked about safe subjects. He didn't talk about the day the IED blew up next to them. He didn't talk about the mortar rounds hitting so close he could feel them. He didn't talk about the ambushes. He didn't talk about all the times he could have died. He didn't mention the dead. These things bothered him and he couldn't talk about them that day. He didn't want to worry us even though he was worrying himself.

One night, very late, I asked him how he really felt. He said he was afraid of death and I didn't know how to respond. It's a subject we'd never had to really deal with before. It's then that I realized he'd aged more than his years. I had already sensed a chasm between him and his friends. He had changed so much and they had remained so much the same. He missed his buddies in the Troop. With them he was safe. They never ask how many guys he's killed, they don't care. He has nothing to prove with them. And it's something we didn't dwell on.

He welcomed the smell of a home cooked meal and would devour it in two minutes and then leave. He stayed out all night and came home early in the morning. The self inflicted fatigue helped him cope with his new reality and the restlessness he felt. He spent hours trying to make sense of a world that he no longer felt a part of, things he no longer knew.

His life was in turmoil. The things he wanted to be the same had changed and some things that hadn't changed, he wished had. His life seemed like a movie with an hour cut out of the middle - his life no longer made any sense.

When he was here we gave him time. We gave him room. Allowed him to share his experiences at his own pace, (and understood that maybe some of them he'll never share). We accepted. We understood. And we also realize that when he returns to us when this is over we must give him even more time, continue to accept and continue to understand.

Republic of Korea

He told me the other day that he (and quite a few others) had the honor of escorting the Republic of Korea's Army into Northern Iraq.

They will be moving into the northern areas of Iraq to provide security and perform civil funcitons.

It's interesting that his grandfather served in Korea with the 2nd ID and was based out of Fort Lewis. What goes around comes around.

Now his grandson is escorting Korean soldiers while attached to the 2nd ID based at Fort Lewis.

Layover in Scania

Three-thirty AM Sunday morning. The phone rings and reality confuses itself with dreams. By the third ring you realize what's happening and leap from bed like it's on fire under you. Racing down the hall and across the living room you pray that you can reach the phone before the caller hangs up. Whew! Made it!

I already knew who was on the other end. Well, maybe I wasn't positive, but I had a pretty strong feeling. We got to talk to him for a bit, all the while forcing the sleep from our eyes.

He was in Scania waiting to escort another convoy north. His layover would take him to early Monday morning, well before sunrise when the routine would start again.

They had started out Sunday morning before dawn from Balad (Anaconda). The "sticks" leaving under cover of darkness allowing him to experience yet another beautiful sunrise in Iraq from the drivers seat of his Stryker. (I sensed the words were tinted with a touch of sarcasm.)

South of Baghdad the lead elements spotted an IED buried in the median of the road. An EOD (Explosive Ordinance Disposal) team was called in to remove it. This held up all convoys - both south bound and north bound for two and a half hours. Several 155mm artillery shells were pulled from the ground without incident. Sitting quietly on the road these Stryker Soldiers think they'd rather have had the militia attack instead of finding an IED in the road. If attacked they would get to fire back and actually do something. With IED's they sit on their butts like big brown or green targets silhouetted against the tan background of the desert - especially the fuel tankers (In fact a couple days earlier one went up in flames after an RPG attack.)

He had tried to catch forty winks Saturday afternoon before they left. He couldn't get much rest though. It was 125 degrees in Balad - ( I believe he exaggerated a tad, I read later that it was only 119). He had laid in the tent sweating and feeling miserable. And the tents, besides being hot and stifling, are a haven for the camel spiders and scorpions that come inside to get out of the sun during the strongest heat of the day.

And the morning prior, Friday, they woke up to fog. A warm heavy confining fog which lifted as the sun came over the horizon turning the entire base into an open air sauna. The heat and humidity leaving everyone drained - made even worse because of the heavy Kevlar vests they wear at all times. He wondered if it would have been better if it had rained during the night but had second thoughts when he remembered the holes in the roof of the tent above his bed.

After talking to him (which can be pretty depressing when he tells us things like this) I can't help feeling that he's in prison and being punished - for doing nothing wrong at all. Murderers and child molesters in our prison system get better treatment than this.

Every day that passes is one day closer to home. But the hours seem to go by slowly - much too slowly.

Truckin' (Sorry this is long one)

(A lot to cover - this one got a little long. Again, sorry...)

The first rays of sunlight slowly creep over the horizon. The rays illuminate sixty or so 18-wheelers sitting bumper to bumper in a line that stretches across the Army base near Balad. The convoy’s objective is Combat Support Center Scania, about 160 miles away, south of Baghdad, near the town of Ash Shawmali.

Scania is best described as a “truck stop in the middle of nowhere." Danger is present for every convoy, each a rolling target of opportunity for the bad guys who attack with rifles, machine guns, grenades and roadside bombs.

The Strykers are here to prevent the bad guys from disrupting the convoy, tasked to escort the cargo trucks operated by civilian contractors.

The Strykers have the combat power to stop the attacks. The Strykers have changed convoy Standard Operating Procedure. If there’s someone trying to attack, they’re not going to just keep moving. They are going to stop, engage the enemy and destroy them if they can.

The convoy, which had just delivered supplies to Anaconda, begins to roll out just after dawn for the return trip to Scania. Leaving the gate, the trucks split up into separate “serials,” with the fast, eight-wheeled Stryker combat vehicles accompanying them, each loaded with up to nine dismounts - infantry troops. The HHT command vehicle of the Squadron with Jake at the controls takes a position in the first "serial". (The term "serial" is familiar to people in the field of electronics or computers and means the same thing here. The trucks form a line, one behind the other, in series - as opposed to parallel.)

The convoy soon is hauling a-- down a flat, black highway through a lush green countryside of fields, canals and squat mud brick farmhouses north of Baghdad. The Strykers bring speed, firepower and technology to the convoy escort job - three things that help keep the convoys safe.

Sitting in the commander’s vehicle, the Major monitors the progress of the convoy on computerized display screens. Each Stryker is represented by a blue dot, tracked by a GPS (Global Positioning System) satellite, each vehicle's location continuously updated on the map. Each vehicle sees this information and can also monitor the road ahead and the fields along the road with their video cameras.

When a “contact” occurs, the Major can mark the location of the attack with a red icon on the screen, and enter a description of what occurred. Each Stryker can then read the information by touching the icon that appears on the screen in their vehicle. A warning tone automatically sounds as each Stryker approaches the marked location, and a prerecorded voice (a woman’s) announces, “Danger. Danger. Enemy in area.” (How Star Trek is that?)

The Major also scouts the terrain the old-fashioned way, standing up through the open hatch, looking for any trouble ahead.

While the Major monitors the convoy’s progress, his gunner operates the (RaWS) Remote Weapons System, targeting the hull-mounted .50-caliber machine gun by working a joystick to center the cross hairs appearing on a black-and-white screen.

While the gunner sweeps the scope around, two more Stryker Soldiers watch for trouble from the sentry hatches at the back. Wearing helmets with headphones and microphones, they steadily feed information about activity on the road to the vehicle commanders.

Everyone tenses as the convoy approaches the built-up, urban outskirts of Baghdad. The roads are thick with traffic - cars, buses, trucks and construction vehicles. They pay close attention to highway overpasses, often used as an attack platform. The Soldiers also scan for signs of IED's (Improvised Explosive Devices) buried along the road, or anyone silhouetted on a rooftop.

Just before 9 a.m., they get a report of shots fired at one of the serials from the side of the highway. No one is hit. The escorts can’t tell where the shots came from. “Let’s keep moving if we don’t have a target,” the Major orders.

Always, the aim is to keep the convoy moving.

South of Baghdad, in open countryside, however, the Strykers have found an IED buried in the northbound lanes of the highway, and the convoy is halted as explosives experts are called in. Before they get there, the Major decides the convoy can detour around the IED, and the convoy rolls again.

Just after noon, the first serial rolls into CSC Scania.

The truckers say they are glad to have a Stryker escort. They've been driving in Iraq for the past 10 months and said attacks dramatically increased in the spring, prompting “hundreds” of drivers to quit in April. It was rough. Convoys got hit almost every day.

The convoys stopped running for about five days during the worst time. More than 1,000 trucks were marooned at Scania. Fuel supplies dwindled at places such as Anaconda, and dining facilities ran low on milk, eggs and fresh fruit. The back logs have been filled, the trucks are rolling, and the attacks have diminished. Thanks in part to the Strykers.

The Strykers have gone a long way toward helping keep the supply roads open. Much of the convoy escort work continues to be done by military police driving up-armored Humvees and gun trucks, but the MPs aren’t trained to dismount and fight an ambush, as the Stryker Troops are.

Now there's a combat force on the route that can engage and destroy the enemy, as opposed to just running the route. When Strykers get into a "kill zone", they assault that kill zone, and kill the enemy.

Confiscated Weapons

Confiscated weapons allow for "comparison shopping".


Ak's and M4

You know you've been mortared when...

Mortar attacks are common place for Soldiers serving in Iraq. Anaconda sees it's fair share of mortar rounds arching in over the perimeter and exploding at random somewhere on base. Volleys come in twice a day on average. Thankfully the Iraqi's are attacking in a hurry and don't take a lot of time to range their shots for accuracy. Most often the rounds explode harmlessly in the open areas of the FOB.

Sometimes the attackers get "lucky" and their rounds hit near or on buildings occupied by Soldiers. The rounds fired are most often anti-personal rounds the size of a pop can - 60mm. Small explosive charge, limited damage area. (Doesn't really make us feel any better to know these facts though.)

Radar installations pick up the rounds as they come in and sirens announce the attack. Soldiers drop what they are doing and head for the safety of the concrete block and sand bag bunkers.

So, how do you know when the rounds hit too close for comfort?

The Bumblebees. You hear Bumblebees...

If you are far enough away from the mortar round explosion you will hear it and see the cloud of smoke and dust but that's about it. However, if the round lands close, along with the explosion you also hear the sound of the shrapnel as it whizzes past you. I was told, by an authority on the subject, that the sound it makes is a lot like the sound a bee makes as it buzzes. But the sting of this bee is a whole lot more dangerous.