Flowering bugs

It hit 100 degrees again here this afternoon.

There are bushes here that have been flowering from all the heavy rains. They’re planted along the sidewalks and I run past them in the morning (65 degrees). They grow fairly tall and I duck under them as I run, they’re not unlike flowering lilac bushes at home, just not as huge. I shy away from touching any part of them because I don’t know what kind of bugs are in them. I’ve never had a problem with bugs or crawlies, but you know how you’ll walk to a lilac bush and sweep the leaves with your hands or pick the flowers? You don’t do that here, or at least I don’t. It’s the difference between growing up in the Midwest v. a desert environment, I guess; I just don’t know what’s in the bushes. And it’s not on my list of things to do to go rummage around in the bushes to see what’s in them.

They do look nice though, they’re pink flowering dessert plants that’ll bloom until it gets terribly hot. They’re around the castles and buildings and I imagine somebody planted them and cocked his green thumb and patted himself on the back for their beauty. I, however, miss the greenhouses with a hundred varieties of perennials, bushes, shrubs that you just insert into the dirt and walk away from. I miss the greening in the spring, the new sprouts, the trees.

Different subject – We still have a lot of injuries and deaths over here, but they’ve gone down dramatically because we’ve up-armored everything. The HMMWV’s are so heavily armored now that many of them have remote gun turret's on top, the gunner can sit inside his cab and swivel the turret and watch outside using optics or night vision sights. They can see further down the road than somebody on top with binoculars, its very state of the art equipment (and expensive). Gunners riding up on top in the turret were getting their arms, heads and upper bodies hurt because of the blast radius from the IED, but everybody else inside the truck were just getting shook up. The IED’s were not being as effective as they were in the past. But then, EFP’s came to the theater.

EFP’s are explosive formed projectiles. We haven’t seen too many of these because it takes some skill to put them together, but suffice it to say that traditional IED’s were like a shotgun blast that usually just rocked the truck a bit, EFP’s were like slugs, they’d punch a hole thru the armor and do a lot of damage. I bring this up because we’re up-armoring everything now, including the civilian trucks that make up the convoy. They have blast “grates” around the cabs of the truck and windows and they look like vehicles right out of Road Warrior. The Iraqi Army has adopted a lot of these techniques as well; they’re targets out there just like we are. EFP’s really need to be aimed so they’re not as effective with convoys running 55 MPH down the road. We’re also now able to prematurely detonate most of the IED’s out there with electronics so again, the numbers are dropping. It’s a good news story.

We really are planning on how to reduce our size here in country; it’s a big push from everyone involved. Some of the planning meetings I get to attend are figuring out how to support the Army if the CSS side is reduced. We provide combat service support (food/water/fuel) to more than just the Army, the Army makes up only about 60% of who we support.

All is well here. People have crested the mid point of the tour and starting to think about the last 4-5 months. The weather has been pretty nice, the heat still feels good and we’re not in Kuwait. I traveled again thru Kuwait coming and going from leave and still think it’s a hole, no saving grace but the oil. It’ll hit 140 degrees there at the height of the summer, that’s not fit for man or beast. Half of our unit is down there and we make up missions to get them to come here and visit, just to get them out of that desolation. All sand, not even flowering plants, just scorpions and camel spiders.

Thanks for all the emails and notes I’ve gotten from everyone, nice to keep in contact and stay in touch.

Best wishes from Iraq!