Dear Cableites,
Tomorrow is Halloween, and it is hard to believe that I have been in the CZ (combat zone) for almost two months. Ironically we arrived into Kuwait on the 11th of September; eight years after this war had started.
While we were in Kuwait we were at Camp Buerhing, which is a large logistical/theater training base for about 10 days conducting more live fire exercises (shooting our weapons), drivers training on our vehicles, and signing for more equipment. Once we had completed our mission in Kuwait, we were then flown into Taji Iraq, where we were immersed into the Iraqi culture. We were on a small Iraqi army compound, sleeping, eating, and going to more classes in an Iraqi environment. This again was another ten day event that we all had felt we could have skipped. Not that we did not receive good training while there, we were at the point of information overflow.
Thankfully once complete we were on our way to our Duty location, but even this sort of travel does not come easy. We had to stop in Talill Iraq, where we met our Brigade Commander COL Newell. One point of interest in Talill is that just outside the wire is the home of the biblical profit Abraham. I was able to see it, but only from a distance. Hopefully I’ll be able to get a better look at it when I am in the area again.
Two days later we were actually on our last flight to our COP (Combat Out Post). We arrived into the FOB (Forward Operations Base) Gary Owen which is located just south of Amarah. From there we convoyed north about 20 minutes to our COP which is co-located with an Iraqi Border Guard head quarters. For the next five day’s we completed a battle handover with the outgoing team, and on the 12th of October we bid farewell to them and assumed full responsibility for our mission.
Since then we have been working on improvements to our Out Post to ensure it is safe, and also to try and make a few things here a little more comfortable to live. One of the improvements here has been to get Porta-Johns delivered, so we no longer have to burn our excrement. This is a welcomed reprieve for my men. Hopefully we will be able to continue to have this service and the local bad guys won’t scare them off. One of the service truck operators quit the other day because after they had left our compound they were pulled over by an unmarked truck and held at gun point and told that if he was seen again helping the Americans, he would be shot. There have been a lot of other events around here besides this that I cannot elaborate on due to security issues, but I can tell you that it does get interesting around here at times.
Since all of the normal day to day items around here were not exciting enough for us, we were tagged with a mission to provide escort and serve as a medium between a FOX news crew and our assigned Iraqi Brigade. The short story of this event is that we escorted a FOX news team out to the Um Na’ag Lake which is about 60 kilometers to our south east, so they could do a story on the Iraqi border guards conducting interdiction operations in the marshes and the lake. This marsh area is viewed as an important area due to the fact that the majority of illegal arms and explosives are smuggled through here from the friendly neighbors to the east in Iran (these usually wind up in Bagdad). So if you see a story on Fox about Iraqi operations in the swamps, you will see who I am working with, and where I work around.
Well that’s all for now. Good flying to you all, and I hope to see ya’ll sometime in Jan-Feb time frame.
MAJ Peter Queyrel
11-4 BTT Team Chief