Missions

I actually was not sure if I wanted to do a post on missions but I decided that since this blog was for myself as much as it was for letting people back home know what I am up to that I would do it anyways just so that I do not forget what they were like. For me missions are the exciting part of this deployment so far. I will start this post by saying that the threat level in the areas that we have been traveling in are very low. Most of the violence is directed at the Iraqi Army (IA) and the Iraqi police (IP) forces in the area. That's not to say that when we go out we are completely relaxed, after all I did not grow old by being retarded and not showing some bit of caution ( this point can be argued by some I suppose :) For that simple fact the only time I get really nervous when driving around is when we are anywhere near an IP or IA checkpoint or base. As some of you have seen my primary job when we leave the base is as a machine gunner on whatever vehicle I happen to be traveling in on that day, although on some occasions I have been tasked as a driver when we do not have enough qualified people to fill all the positions. It is either the MRAP or an up-armored Humvee. I prefer the MRAP as it is a larger vehicle and the height of it allows me to see over the walls, when I am gunning, that they have along side most of the roads here.

My first mission here was a night mission and I will admit that I was completely freaked out. We had not gotten all our equipment in country yet so the only crew served weapons we had were SAW's ( squad automatic weapon ) which is the smallest of the three types of machine guns that my unit has. These days here in Iraq all night driving on paved or common roads is done in white light meaning everyone uses their headlights. I was in the last vehicle providing rear security so I got no benefit from the headlights as far as visibility goes. So the whole trip to our destination and back I had to use my night vision goggles. It was cool in the "cool guy army stuff" kind of way but it was a little nerve racking as your visibility with night vision is not as good as when you have actual light.

One of the many scary things was not knowing what to expect and really having no idea what to look out for. During our horrendous stay in Kuwait we went to many classes on convoys and what to look for as far as IED's and VBIED's but once you get here and actually try and put that info to use you quickly find out that the info was not really that good at all. Unfortunately since this is a public blog, meaning that anyone in the world can see it, I am not at liberty to say what they told us to look out for and such but trust me, not very useful information.

There are alot of IA and IP checkpoints along all the roads here. These are places along the road where the civilian traffic has to stop and show ID to continue down the road. We do not have to stop so all we would do was slow down through the obstacles they have emplaced at the checkpoints and continue on our merry way. We left the camp at a fairly late hour and I was surprised and a little unnerved at the amount of people still hanging about. We are not allowed to drive through major cities anymore so we skirt around them but you are still driving fairly near to the edge of the cities. So chances are you are going to see the general populace in your travels. But not knowing that on that first mission made it a little bit stressful at the time. I have taken many pictures here of what the houses and buildings here look like but none of them really do justice to the reality of it all. There are houses and buildings still standing that have obviously been bombed, shot up and blown up. The landscape definitely has an apocalyptic aura about it. Basically that first mission, seeing in night vision, made me feel as if I was on some sort of Mad Max / Road Warrior movie set.

A couple days after our night mission we went on a quick day mission which after the first one was a little less nerve racking as we had a little better idea of what to expect out there. The only time I really got nervous was after we rolled through a town that was completely packed with people. It was a little town and there must have been 300 to 400 people in the streets and hanging out around the shops doing business. But when we rolled back through that same town 3 hours later there was not a soul in sight. This was strange because all the other towns that we had rolled through on our way back still had people in them doing their daily business but this one was dead quiet. The reason this freaked me out was that every person that I have talked to that has served over here said that if you rolled through an area that is usually busy but when you roll through it is dead quiet it is a bad sign and usually means that you are going to be hit by something. So when we got to the town and I saw there was absolutely no one in sight I got extremely nervous about the whole situation. Nothing happened and we made it back through without incident but not a good feeling about that situation at all. Once we got back to base I asked about the town and found out that it is well known for its smuggling and foreign fighter activities.

One huge difference that I myself have noticed in my comparisons of the first gulf war and now are the driving habits of the locals. When I was in this region in 1991 the local people did not ever move out of the way of Army convoys. But now up here they will pull over to the side of the road as soon as they see you as you are coming towards them, sometimes as much as a mile ahead of your position. They will also pull over to the side of the road when you come up behind them. It makes you feel as if you are in some kind of presidential convoy. I was a little amazed at this at first until I saw a couple of cars that had obvious bullet holes in them then it made perfect sense. With the somewhat peaceful atmosphere here these days it is easy to forget that these people here have lived through the whole invasion and occupation of this country. If I had been here through all that I suppose I would pull over also.

A somewhat comical aspect but not really is the perception of us here in Iraq , as far as I have seen it. On that first day mission alot of folks gave us hand gestures that in America would mean " so happy to see you here, you are doing a great job" but apparently do not mean the same thing here. When we got back from our day mission we were talking about how it seemed most folks were happy to see us, giving us the thumbs up and waving at us. only to be informed by folks that have been here before that those gestures here do not transfer to the same gesture back at home. So now when we roll out I just return the gestures with a big grin on my face.