Good Lookin' Out

The day after the memorial we suited up and rolled out the gate for one of our infamous 'meetings'. Right before we rolled out we caught word that on the route we take to get there some local nationals chased away some undesirables that were apparently digging a hole in the road for a nice fat bizomb. Well EOD rolled out and cleared the area. After that our alert was even higher than it usually is. I was scanning looking at everything hoping that I would be able to identify an IED before it identified us, which usually isn't the case. Needless to say pucker factor was high. We made it to the 'meeting' sans explosions. Minutes later after arriving we recieved a call that Delta Company had been hit at one of the places we had just driven past, only minutes before. We had driven past that same fucking spot, the exact same fucking spot, only minutes before. As we sat at the meeting my gunner Hannibal heard several more explosions in the vicinity. As we prepared to leave we heard a huge explosion that vibrated through the vehicles and it had exploded about 600m from our position. This explosion had also happened at a place where we drove past. We rolled out with seats sucked up our ass's in pucker factor 10. We made it back to the FOB without incident but it was a pretty tense drive. Thank god no one was killed from Delta Company, the information that I've heard has been conflicting on his injuries and as far as I know only involved his foot and the soldier is stable.

I woke up this morning not looking forward to the task at hand. Especially more so when I found out 3 more IED's had hit random units during the early morning hours. Oh boy!!! Well we rolled on out in search of some people doing something bad- supposedly. We found some random weapons, and encountered the same old story- "No, misster, no Militia we are all good great gravy, nothing is wrong......etc....etc....etc". I definitely was feeling like I was making a huge difference. I got to talk to an LN and I asked him some questions that I had about the Jaish Al Mahdi in my never ending quest to know my enemy. He told me that the JAM is over 600,000 strong. This isn't the first time I've been told this by ISF. But like everyone else when you start asking about the JAM they get mum real quick.

All together it wasn't a bad mission, and from my point of view we didn't accomplish shit but I'm sure on somebody's report it will be a huge hit. I went to a class on how to speak to the locals and they told us to not threaten them. The reason for this is that they don't give a fuck. Especially the Shiia after being oppressed by the Baathist party for so many years, they know that there isn't a damn thing that we can do to them that would even equal some of the atrocities that Sadaam commited towards them. Hey maybe threats from us work on some but for the majority we are just wasting our breath. Confused? You probably are but I can't tell you any more without saying too much as we've discussed before. I apologize its not that I want to but I know you understand.

The culmination of the night is when some LN's approached us and said they had found a grenade on their roof and they believed that someone had thrown it on there to get rid of it. We had some National Police (ISF) rolling with us so they went to go and investigate. They found the grenade and a bayonet and when they went to search some surrounding houses the arrested a guy where they found him to have a bunch of different style military uniforms and some body armor. The grendade turned out to be a US issued flash bang. The NP's took the guy in and we rolled out. Here I sit writing to you so everything worked out hunky dory.

I have this strong feeling that the guys from 2-1 were looking out for us yesterday we dodged 2 fucking IED's thats just to crazy to be coincidence. We looked hard to find anything in the road. It's just that they are hard to find, and unfortunately somebody else found them the hard way. No deaths as far as I know though.

Well I hope that my posts from here on out are as boring and bland as this one is. To make up for it here is a little vid that someone threw my way from a MySpace bulletin. Its Montel Williams representing the Soldiers on FOX news.



DEUCE DEUCE OUT!!!!!!!