Memorial Day Blues

Seems I haven't posted much in the last two months. Oh, well. Things here continue at a hectic pace.

A few updates. LTC Dumas is no longer with us. He is medically out because of his hip. No one is crying.

Two of our three Battalions are up and running missions outside the wire. I have moved over to the second mechanized Battalion to help get them trained up. We have been told by Baghdad we have six weeks to make them combat ready.

They are smoking some good shit down in Baghdad.

All of our team has been hit with IEDs at least once. No one has been wounded, a testament to the armored Hummer, in my humble opinion. I was hit when I was gunner during a night mission.

I had ducked down into the turret just as the IED went off. What I saw was a blinding flash of light and a large explosion. It shook me pretty good. I quickly checked to see if I was injured, ie., patted my body parts down to see if it was still in one peice and or, not leaking. Finding nothing wrong I let the rest of the crew know I was ok. We continued to move a safe distance and then put up a cordon around the site and called EOD.

I didn't feel fear or shock or anything else. I mean, what are you gonna do, anyway?

We checked out the hummer and found a dozen chunks knocked in the sides and turret, the spare tire was blown to hell, and the radio antenna was cut in two. We replaced the antenna, and once EOD arrived on site- we continued the mission.

The mission was an overwatch of an abandoned checkpoint. Four explosions went off during the night- no terrorist caught, or seen, for that matter.

The next morning I found that a piece of shapnel had cut the faberic on my helmet cover. Had I been standing up...

Bottom line. Shit happens. If you start to dwell on it it will drive you crazy. I mean what do you say? I dun got blowed up. That pretty much cover it.

Just another day.

Our team of advisors is short handed and we are losing our 1SG in the end of June. We got two new LTs as replacements.

...what the fuck, over?

I gotta train these two LTs to be soldiers before I can turn them loose on the Iraqi Army. We are trying our damnedest to loose this war through our own stupidity.

3ID continues to turn this war into another training exercise. They have poured more concrete and filled more sandbags that Hitler did on the Atlantic Wall. To say they have a bunker mentality is to shortchange the NAZI highcommand.

I am sure the soldiers of 3ID are great upsatanding examples of the American Fighting Man...er...person....whatever.

We have a saying:

3rd Infantry Division.
Making the world safe.








...for 3rd Infantry Division.


fuck....I gotta go to work.

dutch- out