Back From My Trip

I made it back from my excursion through the country side of Iraq. I can't get really print any of what I was doing other than to say I was checking on equipment we have at another location. I flew via C-130 to get there and it felt like we traveled across half of Iraq to get to our destination. We made several stops at other camps along the way, and one unscheduled stop because we lost an engine on the last leg. While at my destination, I had the chance to do a little sight seeing. I had a chance to see the remnants of Saddam's wonderful Air Force. I'm not sure what kind of aircraft these were, but I know they were trainers of some sort. They were pretty torn up, but most of the pieces were still there including the machine guns.

We went on to explore an old munitions storage bunker. There were still remnants of stabilizing fins, chutes, and what looked like rocket launchers.

Finally, we had the chance to check out a personnel bunker. The entrance is under the tin overhang. The impressive thing about this was how nice the equipment inside was. It was all built by the Dutch through a contract with the Iraqi's many years ago, but it looked like top notch stuff. I tried something new here and I've attached a short video. It's just one I did with my camera so there's no sound and I realize it's dark and hard to see - so now you know how it was for us. At one point in the video you'll see my "Gunny". This is the Marine GySgt who was traveling with me. He's looking through night vision goggles we used to aid us during our expedition. After 4 days on the ground, Gunny and I headed back to camp Victory via Blackhawk in the middle of the night. I personally hate flying on helicopters and I'll just say, that pitch black terror fest over hostile territory managed to solidify my feelings even further.....