Eela KMTB

Breakfast was a treat. It was chai tea, bread, fruit and this green gruel. I think it was some grain concoction meant to stick to your ribs to get you to lunch. I hadn’t eaten breakfast in the IA DFAC yet, I was limiting my visits to just lunch. I was told lunch was their biggest meal and the one they took the most care preparing, so I had steered clear of breakfast and dinner. It was bad; I’ll be sticking to lunch from now on.

Two of their most senior officers had cornered me the morning of our mission and wanted to talk, so we sat together for breakfast. Col Maud was still gone on leave and I cursed him, this was a big trip.

It was probably the most dangerous and difficult mission they’ve been sent on. The distance was 300+ kilometers and down south into very dangerous territory. The two officers told me they wanted coalition forces to go with them on the trip, as guntruck escorts. This would be their second independent mission without Coalition Forces (CF) but the first one going this far south. They reasoned that even Bagdad had been given back to the CF to patrol and this was just too dangerous for IA on the road by themselves.

This was a blow to me, really, we’d been training them for some time, and they knew what had to be done and how to do it and had excellent leadership to get them thru it. They had never turned down a mission before and I had faith in them. This last minute request was out of character. Both officers were highly respected and included the Kurd who the day before had called them, in effect, ineffectual as a unit. That’s not what he actually said, he called them all Shia, but that’s what it means. This was my Infantry officer and the rest of the officers hated him, but he happened to be united with this other IA Major whom I highly respected. This had to be taken seriously. We got thru breakfast and went back to the office to talk it thru.

I think their biggest fear was returning with civilian trucks. They’re being issued a whole bunch of Silverado trucks and the distant station was waiting for them to pick them up. Putting them inside convoy’s create 1) a very long convoy difficult to protect, and 2) target’s of opportunity, for bandits. They told me that convoy’s like these under the control of CF are hardly every hit (true) because we can call in so much support to protect them. When they go on their own, insurgents notice and shoot them up or bandits will cull one of them from the herd. So, we ditched the 15 extra civilian vehicles and just concentrated on filling up the trucks with cargo. As we discussed it, the mission was training and anything we brought back from the distant station makes it a successful mission. It was a difficult day, but they agreed to go on their own.

Turns out they were hit twice by IED’s on the way down. Both were within an hour of each other but to their credit, they did all the right things. They pulled into a safe haven; they left the disabled vehicle with a guard for the return trip and continued the mission. I was sitting in the Operations Room when they called in the second IED strike. They headed back to the safe haven where they’d left the first vehicle. All of this is happening in the middle of a 6 hour convoy trip in the dead of night. There are all kinds of responses you can give them, but we try to let them work thru the problem. We quietly started calling nearby coalition units to see if they’d be available to provide emergency support.

There was a time I’d thought we’d have to rally our coalition team and drive down to pick them up, but Allah be praised, they put their heads together and cannibalized some parts to make one whole HMMWV and got at least one of them back on the road. They picked up the second HMMWV on the return trip and towed it back. They did what they had to do and what an Army expects of them. They got back into those vehicles in the middle of the night in a very dangerous country and completed the mission.

They brought back two of the pickups. They arrived in camp the next morning at 1:30am. Iraqi’s returning from missions honk horns and wake everybody up; I think it’s a cultural thing. Horns honk, headlights flashing, the new pickups had cop lights on top with a piercing siren. It was a huge spectacle. Everyone came out of the barracks and you had 500 Jundee in various stages of dress jumping up and down cheering, waving, and crawling over the new equipment. It felt really good to be a part of them.

I had my super flashlight with me and took Col Maud (finally returned, bout damn time) to see the HMMWV that got hammered by the IED. I and about 200 Jundee crowded around it. It must have been loaded with ball bearings, it had taken out both front tires. There were minor injuries to the occupants; the guy in the front seat had hearing loss which we hope is temporary but it could have been much worse. Given the two IED’s and all the cargo they returned with, I’m calling it a VERY successful mission. It’s even more successful since they completed it themselves and did what they had to do. This will be a tremendous morale boost for the entire unit.

My General called just after and we had a nice conversation. I received my yearly review for the OIF tour and she had some nice things to say about me and the team here. That felt really good, but not as good as seeing that convoy come thru the gate at 1:30 in the morning with horns honking, sirens wailing and everyone safe. I’ll keep that image with me for a long time. We’re doing the right thing here, I’m convinced of that.

I’m getting close to finishing up. I’ve been in contact with the new team and they’ll be here inside of two weeks. I’ll be going back to Balad for the rest of my tour. We have lots to do before I go, more later.

Best wishes from Iraq.

Kurd control

Col Muad went home for leave. He’s killing me; I can’t believe he left his unit here like this.

I fought pretty hard to keep him. When I first arrived he wasn’t here, he was at Law school in Bagdad. He’s the Regimental Commander, a full Colonel and my counterpart in training. It’s rare for someone to get into those schools so when they offered it to him, he grabbed it. In the meantime I met the junior officers and bonded with them. Col Muad eventually returned and I got the chance to meet him. He stayed for a couple of days and then left again to go back to school with the promise on his death bed that this was the last time, promise, En’Shalla, when this year was over he’d be here full time, this was finals and he had to take them or it’d be a wasted year. College students...

A couple of days after that, the unit got a phone call from Col Muad imploring them to get LTC Murphy to intervene with the coalition forces. Bagdad was going to replace him with another Colonel from down south. The replacement was Kurd and the story went that Col Muad wanted to be closer to his family in the south (Arab) and the Kurdish Col wanted a northern post (Kurdish), hence a match made in heaven. Not so, claimed Col Muad and the officers of the MTR. The Jundee threatened to demonstrate and go AWOL, we almost had a small riot going. So I went to bat for him. Bagdad has more drama and intrigue than any soap opera, I swear.

Col Muad has been with the unit since the first Jundee arrived and is portrayed as a father figure. The rumors got worse and Col Muad came back to quell them. In the meantime, I’d been putting all this into my daily reports and they go up pretty high. When Col Muad returned, he told me that some U.S. General had talked to an Iraqi General in Bagdad and got them to keep Col Muad as the commander. LTC Murphy was a hero. I was hailed, crisis averted...but not the end.

This is the fault line of the Kurds in the north and the Arabs in the south. For some time (count 500 years) the two have never gotten along. But we look beyond that and make them work together wherever we can. Our Regiment doesn’t have any Kurds in it and when we return from a mission thru the gates, if there are no coalition forces with them they’re hassled and searched. I’ve been down there once to help get them thru and I think its only because the CF is here that open warfare hasn’t broken out. The Regiment is the only unit on post without any Kurds in it and they’ve already told me they don’t know what will happen to the unit when the coalition leaves.

Then we got the war hero. This officer showed up the other day that previously had been a Captain, was carrying orders for Major and now wore the rank of LTC. He told Col Muad that one of the Generals had promoted him and that the paperwork would be following. So he took the position of XO, 2nd in command of the Regiment and the first Kurd assigned. As we see it, since they couldn’t get rid of Col Muad thru Bagdad, they placed this guy here to work from the inside.

He’s not making friends. He brought over 3 personal body guards that go wherever he goes. The first time I met him he belted on his sidearm. I guess that’s fair, I wear mine everywhere but somehow I feel safer than he apparently does. He’s also infantry and infantry officers are not always suited to lead service and support units or transportation units, especially when his vision is to make sure the unit can march in precision and fall into formation correctly. I don’t think he gives a rip how many missions they’ve run in the past 2 months. I going to hope his vision is deeper than that, but there’s definite resentment from the other officers as this new guy makes his mark.

Now here’s my conflict. The Kurds overall are more friendly with U.S. forces that either the Sunni’s or Shia’s and the Kurds have provided more support over the years to U.S. forces than either of the other two tribes. I've also already bonded with the officers of the Regiment and really believe they’re doing a good job. Our Kurdish XO hasn’t been the friendliest to any of them and has no desire to get to know them. Col Muad leaves us to deal with this guy and the whole place is in an uproar while he's gone.

We’re trying though. I brought in all the missions the MTR conducted and he and I sat down and went over them. We talked about future missions. I think he thawed a bit when he realized how much the Regiment has already accomplished. I know he wants to make his mark like all new leaders, but its an issue. I put a phone call into Col Muad to get his ass back here before he loses his job for good. We'll work it thru, day by day.

That’s the latest from up north. Weather is July-ish today, 113 degrees. No humidity though, doesn’t feel higher than 108.

Best wishes from Iraq.

Riot control

I carve out a good ½ hour for myself at the end of the day. I go sit out back on our veranda, light up a Cuban and pop a near-beer...a little bit of heaven. We have a thermometer there and anything under 100 is comfortable to me now. Last night it was 94 and felt a bit chilly. If it’s dark and the moon is out, it’s really very pleasant. I’m not sure how that’s going to feel when we get back to Ft. McCoy in September, but looking forward to finding out.

My Arabic is getting better, but as soon as I think I’m getting a decent vocabulary, I have an interpreter tell me something different and I’m all confused again. They already know not to speak native tongues to me; no Kurdish slang, no Turkman, they’re under strict orders to just give me generic Arabic that everyone can understand. We have 4 full time Terps and another 8 that come in during the day. Each of them has their own favorite sayings.

I was practicing Arabic last night at our convoy launch and picked up a couple of stalkers. I was walking up and down the convoy (rottle) making sure everything was battened down and I asked these two young Jundee to ask me what time it was? Then, every 10 minutes or so, one of them ran up with a big grin to ask me what time it was. That got old, real quick, but at least I can tell time.

I can sit now with the Commander or his staff and drink Chai without an interpreter present and we can make small talk, albeit with a lot of arm waving. Concepts are still hard to discuss. I found out that two of the officers speak better English than they’d let on, so we’ve been practicing on each other. It’s language by immersion which is always the best way to learn. I do wish I would have been here for the entire year. It’s been a little over 5 weeks now.

We sent the convoy out for a long mission last night. Our sleep cycle is hosed for the next 3-4 days until they come back but that’s the easy part. I worry about our troops and the Regiment on the road. They only travel at night so every 2-3 hours I set my alarm and go check on them. We’re in contact thru radio’s (both Iraqi and CF) and I’ll go monitor the traffic that’s come in. Both sides have staffs there all night just in case something happens. They have GPS systems in the convoys and we can track their progress.

Last night they reported two incidents. The first one was just as they were leaving the main city and only a half hour into the movement. There was a dead animal with wires coming out of its body on the side of the road. That’s a fairly old TTP these days (tactic, technique or procedure) because the CF used to stop to drag the dead animal off the road and it’d explode. We like a clean country, you know. We don’t do that anymore. Then we started calling EOD to come and deactivate it. The enemy changed their tactics and the dead animal was used as a decoy with the explosive under it, targeting the EOD. So we don’t do that anymore, either. Now when we call EOD they either blow it up from a distance or blow it up from a distance. EOD is just too valuable. If it doesn’t blow, they’ll push it off the road with a dozer or robot or something. We can stay ahead of them using technology, but it’s a short learning cycle for them and we’re constantly adjusting our TTP’s.

The other incident was a fight in the convoy by two Jundee. The Regiment is carrying Jundee for a school and planned to drop them off at a FOB along the way. These two guys had been up all day, in the hot sun and had missed chow at the DFAC because they were doing something else. Long story short, they got into a fight in the back of this large open cargo truck and someone fired off a burst from an AK-47 to get their attention. It worked, but it got our attention too and everyone had to stop and get control of the situation. It’s a little unnerving to our guys when they do this and we try to get them to use other methods. We could limit their ammo to only critical people but that’s a last resort, we want them to be able to defend themselves if they have to. Their police routinely fire into the air to get people’s attention so this wasn’t a big deal to the Iraqi’s. We don’t like it and try to get them to use other methods.

I had Chai with Col Ali this evening and we compared notes about the day. He told me that the base commander, a 1-star general had summoned him this morning to ask him why he hadn’t been informed that the Regiment was convoying. Col Ali had to remind him that both he and LTC Murphy had been over to see him about 4 days ago, in fact he wrote it down in his book and nodded and smiled all the while. Col Ali and I laughed at that one; he wrote it all down and told no one. That was why they struggled to provide support for the Jundee’s that came in, they were supposed to feed and house them. Generals…

Col Ali and I were talking about the enthusiasm of the Regiment and how everyone’s excited to run missions, morale is high; we haven’t had massive AWOL’s or problems and the Regiment looks really, really good. He’s an outstanding commander and has years of experience in transportation. The Jundee adore him like a father and the Army is lucky to have him. He told me that when they go on missions with CF in the lead, there’s helicopter gunship support and we pave the way into FOB’s to get fuel, water, etc. If they run into problems they have us to fall back on and the danger is minimized because they know that if they get hurt, the coalition can have a medevac there in minutes. I reminded him that once the coalition leaves, the danger should go down and it would all be relative…it should be easier to drive down the roads even without all the bells and whistles that the CF’s bring. The interpreter, who I’ve really come to trust, didn’t even translate. He said it would get worse and the only reason it’s as secure as it is today (relatively) is because of the coalition presence. Then he translated and the Col agreed, they’re all worried what’s going to happen when we leave this country behind. They really are good people. They just want to make a good living and feed their family, not so different than any American I know.

So the convoy arrived safely today and I just got off the phone with them, they’re loading up cargo now. They’ll start their round-about return mission this evening. Its all bulk cargo from there on back, and they'll be free of the Jundee’s hanging out the back of the trucks waving at the citizens. Kids... More to follow; let’s hope they arrive home safely.

Best wishes from Iraq.

This picture is too good not to share.

This is payday in Iraq. As one of my special friends observed, when was the last time you were paid with a stack of money wrapped in ribbon delivered in a plastic bag? This is one of those photo’s that will get framed for my desk and remind me of the Iraqi Army. It was taken just after the pay arrived. From here, it went out to the compound and paid the soldiers of the unit. Our Army used to do it the same way, before checking and ultimately direct deposit.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars used to be sent out to American units for Pay Day. The Pay Master duties usually fell to the youngest LT. We’d dress up in our finest Army uniform and SGT’s would conduct inspections of barracks and soldiers. We’d stand in formation and then line up for payments, counted out by the Lieutenant and counted back to him to make sure it was correct. This was a very formal event and we practiced how to report to the Lieutenant. If you wanted some Italian Lira, you had to tell the Pay Master before he counted out the money so he could re-compute the amount before you got it. This was before calculators, k? That was a lot of responsibility and woe befall the LT who came up short at the end of the day. It's very similiar here on Pay Day.

Happy 4th of July! Please seek out a parade, a band shell and fireworks and attend in my stead. I will be with you next year.

Best wishes from Iraq.