After what has seemed an eternity, I've finally made it to Iraq. I had very long flights from Ft. Benning to Kuwait - via Ireland - and then a long drive from Kuwait city to Ali Al Salem Air Base. From there, it was an hour and 20 minute flight via C130 into Baghdad. This was a HOT HOT flight. We sat on the runway for 25 of the longest minutes of my life. Full body armor packed in with lots of oth
er people in the blazing sun sitting in a tin can. Not fun. Once here, LT JG Bob and I were greeted by a member of JIEDDO and driven to our compound. As far as living conditions, it's not too bad. I'll put up some pictures soon. The interesting part was the large fire fight that took place a few hours after we got here. The bad guys decided they wanted to shoot something in our general direction and it was a full on shoot fest with the base security guys. These bullets were whizzing by within feet of us. I've attached a picture of a light pole sitting about 25 feet from where my bed is. The bullet I'm holding did not make that large upper hole - a larger caliber round did. I could see tracer rounds flying feet over head before I quickly retreated to my trailer, an
d someone with a different angle said they could see the sparks from rounds bouncing off the street in front of us. Lucky for us we have 12 foot concrete barriers around o
ur sleeping quarters. (you can see one of the barriers in the background) The round I'm holding is from an AK47 and I found it this morning on the roof of the building we use for offices. This morning, as several of us were standing outside discussing the previous evenings firefight, two large rockets flew overhead and impacted our base. These landed a long distance from us, but the explosions were very loud and unnerving. In the picture, you can see the smoke from the larger impact (this is a couple minutes after it hit).
er people in the blazing sun sitting in a tin can. Not fun. Once here, LT JG Bob and I were greeted by a member of JIEDDO and driven to our compound. As far as living conditions, it's not too bad. I'll put up some pictures soon. The interesting part was the large fire fight that took place a few hours after we got here. The bad guys decided they wanted to shoot something in our general direction and it was a full on shoot fest with the base security guys. These bullets were whizzing by within feet of us. I've attached a picture of a light pole sitting about 25 feet from where my bed is. The bullet I'm holding did not make that large upper hole - a larger caliber round did. I could see tracer rounds flying feet over head before I quickly retreated to my trailer, an
d someone with a different angle said they could see the sparks from rounds bouncing off the street in front of us. Lucky for us we have 12 foot concrete barriers around o
ur sleeping quarters. (you can see one of the barriers in the background) The round I'm holding is from an AK47 and I found it this morning on the roof of the building we use for offices. This morning, as several of us were standing outside discussing the previous evenings firefight, two large rockets flew overhead and impacted our base. These landed a long distance from us, but the explosions were very loud and unnerving. In the picture, you can see the smoke from the larger impact (this is a couple minutes after it hit).This may sound a bit strange, but people didn't really get very worked up by any of this. It was just business as usual. It wasn't really scary - just strange. I'm not sure how to explain it.
1 comment:
Can you get all that cleared up BEFORE i get there? :) See you soon...
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