Oerdin's Iraq thread.

[Dinner]

I just wanted to thank everyone here at Apolyton who sent letters and/or contributed to the care package which just arrived here in Iraq. You are all fantastic! Lancer, it was a very thoughtful thing for you to organize this and its wonderful how so many people here at poly pull together to help one another everyday. Poly is truly a one of a kind online community.

I'd like to send special thanks to Chemical Ollie, Winston, and Lancer who took the time to send letters to me. They were very thoughtful and it is always a warm feeling to recieve words of encouragement from the outside world.

For those of you who don't know Lancer took up a collection here at poly and several of our members donated money and time in order to send me a care package while I am serving with the US Army in Iraq. The final package contained summer sausages, salami, smocked chedder cheese, and several wheels of gouda cheese. I'm thinking Lancer has cornered the market in shelf stable cheese in Oregon.

You are all great. Thank you so much.

[Dinner]

When the good stuff happens it happens all at once.

Not only did the care package sent by everyone here at poly arrive but care packages from my parents and from my aunt also arrived on the same day. Thank you very much everyone.

My parents sent me my gerber multitool which I stupidly left in San Diego as well as gardening seeds so I can finally start a garden. While my aunt sent me enough reading magazines to last me for a good two months of constient reading. It looks like my team and I will be very up on the news for the forseeable future. She also sent me snack foods and cheese so between the cheese she sent and the cheese Lancer mailed I now have enough cheese to feed and army. Which is good because it seems half of the Army keeps asking for some of my cheese.

[East Street Trader]

What local cheeses are there in Iraq, Oerdin?

[Dinner]

In other news...

Ok, I haven't had to much time to post updates so now I'm going to do a day by day run down of my recent activities which should get everyone back up to date.

Friday 4/16/04- On this day we drove with a few guys from the local Civil Affairs Company from Kirkuk to Tuz which is almost due east of Tikrit near the Iranian border. The CA guys were waiting on a plane load of school supplies to arrive so they could hand them out at local schools and we thought we'd tag along to hand out coloring books (which have a nice suttile anti-violence/ tolerence theme to them) and then go to the local market to hand out booklets on the new iraqi constitution and information about what the electorial process will be for any future elections. Unfortunately, the plane carrying CA's supplies didn't show up so they didn't want to go to the schools empty handed.

Still, we got to go to the market and hand out the other fliers. Tuz is an area which hasn't recieved alot of Psyop attention so I'm glade we hit it even in a small way.

Saturday 4/17/04- This was more or less a day off for us. Though we spent alot of time PMCSing our gear, washing the truck, doing an invoentory of equipment, ordering new supplies, and then trying to make everything fit inside the back of our one little humvee. We also got to go to the Air Force base and take part in an equipment issue the Air Force was giving to its Airmen. Normally, Army soldiers would have to go to an Army base but since this is a combat zone the Air Force made a special exception and allowed us to plus up with some of their gear. All in all they issued us new combat helmets which are a big improvement over the old helmets (in weight, level of protection, and comfort), two new pairs of boots (one with gortex and one without) which are FAR better then the cheap crappy ones the Army was giving out, more molly gear (Molly is the name of the load bearing equipment which has lots of snaps and loops so soldiers can costumize how and where they carry their gear), moisture wicking socks/shirts/underwear (vital in a country this hot), and various other goodies. All in all not a bad haul and the fact that it was free makes it so much better.

When we got back we found out we would be going on a cordon and search mission at 0100 the next morning so we got busy getting ready for that (I.E. packing gear, writing loudspeaker scripts, etc...). It was while we were getting ready that we found out that one of our teams in najaf had a close call. They were in a collumn of humvees traveling through the town when a group of men fired three RPGs at their vehicle. Luckily, their aim was ****e so the vehicle only got hit with shrapnel and the infantry killed the ****ers that attacked them but it was still a close call. What really sucks is their team was the only vehicle in the whole collumn not to be uparmoured. we've all been asking for uparmoured vehicles since before we left but for some reason our chain of command never seems to get them for us.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by East Street Trader
What local cheeses are there in Iraq, Oerdin?

I haven't seen any dispite spending three months looking for them. The Iraqis do seem to like yogurt an aweful lot though.

[Barinthus]

Hey Oerdin. I'm glad to hear from you once again - was wondering about you while reading latest news reports.

:Shame: on the chain for not getting those vehicles. It's a relief that that team is alright. According to news, insurgents are more sophisicated than before in terms of their tactics and it appears that they have been engaging in a effective counter-psychological campaign.

Also, don't forget your OFF!, you don't want those sandfly eggs in your body especially your face.

[Dinner]

Sunday 4/18/04- This day deserves a post all to its self. It start with us not being able to sleep because the chain of command gave a total of five hours warning about the cordon and search operation which was supposed to start at 0100, then it got worse from there. It turns out our headquarters had known about this mission for the better part of a week, bu,t they forgot about it until five hours before the mission.

So any way, I spent the available hours double checking all of my gear, I cleaned my two weapons, made sure my NVGs are working and have fresh batteries, and I go through all of the precombat checks a soldier is trained to do. Then I get on the laptop and I started to write several loudspeaker scripts along with several alternate scripts for the cordon and search just in case certain senerios happen. So that means I wrote one basic script to inform the people their town is being searched and they needed to stay in their homes etc... then I write scripts in case fighting breaks out, or crowds form, and other such things like that. After that I took it to the NCOIC and the OIC for their approvial, after they signed off on it I got one of our translaters to translate it into Arabic, and then we recorded it onto a minidisc so we can then play the tracks from our vehicle mounted loudspeakers. By the time that was finished I was out of time but I was ready to go.

1200 we arrive at the start point for the mission, check in, and then do our premission brief to the LTC who is in charge. It's during this time that we learn the mission is not being run by the normal infantry but is instead being run by a bunch of HQ wennies who never go outside the front gate. The entire group had never run a single operation together before nor had they ever been on an operation off post. That didn't exactly inspire confidence.

Any way 0100 rolls around and although we are ready it seems that no one else is. We sat for another half hour and then finally asked the 1SG what the hold up is to which he says they're running a little late. No problem, but, by 0300 we begin to get impacient. Finally at 0330 they finally give the mission convoy brief and by 0400 we're off (Military missions seldom take off late so that these guys left three hours late should have been a sign).

A cordon and search is when the Army surrounds an entire town, divides it into several sterile cantonments, and then searches every house in the town. The purpose of this is to locate illegal weapons and ammo plus to arrest people who intel reports said were hiding out there. So any way we are assigned to enter from the south side of the town along a narrow dirt road which runs along several fields and irrigation canals. This is were problem #1 crops up. The LTC who was in charge of this mission never bothered to do a route recon and his maps were from the 1st gulf war in '91 so they were badly outdated. In that last 13 years the farm fields had been turned into flooded rice paddies and the irrigation canals had been widened in order to accomidate the extra water needed for the rice paddies. The result was they narrowed the narrow road even more and then since it was raining the road became a mud trap for the vehicles trying to drive down it.

It was supposed to take everyone 25 minutes to get into place but in reality it took 1.5 hours and to top it off several of the vehicles (not mine though) slide off the road and got mired in the muddy ditches. Attempting to pull them out with a wench didn't work so three "wreckers" (essentially they are modified trucks with digging and towing equipment added on so roads can be cleared and vehicles towed) were called in but the roads were so narrow that two of them got stuck themselves in the muddy irrigation ditches.

At this point it is now 0600 and the LTC is nearly pulling his hair out. I've safely driving my humvee past the other vehicles that are stuck without getting myself stuck and am now at the stagging point. The LTC says we can't wait for the stuck vehicles and he orders everyone else to begin the cordon stage of the operation. Everyone quickly gets into place though it is obvious that the whole town knew we were coming because they had come out of their houses and were watching (from a safe distance) as the sole remaining wrecker attempted to pull the vehicles out of the muddy ditch. To make it worse several sheep herders had already lead their flocks out to the pasture fields (this wouldn't have happened if they hadn't started three hours late or if they had reconed the routes) so we had to make them herd their various sheep, goats, and cows back to their stables.

At this point we begin our loud speaker broadcasts and by and large the people all do exactly what we ask them to do, however, as the day drags on more and more people leave their houses in order to see what's going on. In a normal cordon and search mission run by a competent unit a search of a town this size could be completed in 2-3 hours but these guys take a grand total of 9 hours!! Thus at 1500 we're still there without any sleep waiting for them to finish! To help pass the time we handed out fliers to the people and give the kids candy we keep stocked in the back of the humvee. At 1500 they begin inventorying the various AK-47s (if a house had more then one then we took it), Armor piecing rounds (they're illegal), mortars (we arrested the fellow with those), RPGs (the owner of these gets to go to jail too), and what nots when they find a pistol is missing.

To make a long story short one of the REMFs tried to pocket a confiscated pistol and will now be court marshaled. Of course it took three hours to find out who did it and to get the whole story straight so by 1800 we were still there and I passed the 48 hours without sleep point.

To make matters worse during the hours of waiting I let one of the interpritors play with my M-16 and the idiot accidently fired off a three round burst into some farmer's field! :imadbant: I got my ass chewed on by the LTC for that and that particular person will not be touching my rifle ever again. Any way we finally get back to base at 1830 and the LTC, of course, wants to do an after action review (AAR) which takes another hour so I don't get to go to bed until 2000 at which time I had been awake for 50 hours straight.

God, I hope I don't have to go on any more missions with REMFs.

[Barinthus]

Originally posted by Oerdin
It turns out our headquarters had known about this mission for the better part of a week but they forgot about it until five hours before the mission.

I.... really.... hate.... THAT! Happens a lot at work :mutter:

Sheesh what a mess and yes, indeed, I hope you don't work with those REMFs.

[Kropotkin]

Incompetence seems to have affected that operation fromstart to finish. I guess you didn't sign up to be forced to take part in that.

[Stuie]

Good stuff Oerdin!

Stay safe and keep the stories coming!

[East Street Trader]

"...that perticular person will not be touching my rifle ever again..."

Well, just a suggestion but you might extend that to all perticular persons.

Interesting role your unit has.

[Arrian]

Sounds like an example of the reason the word "cluster****" exists.

Hang in there, Oerdin, and I agree with EST on the rifle thing.

-Arrian

[Chemical Ollie]

Nice story, and it seemed to have a good ending after all trouble.

Do you have those big, old-fashioned loadspeakers on the roof of your Hummer, like Blues Brothers in the movie?

How do you know the translator doesn't set you up, and record something completely different onto the minidiscs?

I remember large operations like that ending up in total chaos during my time in the military, but that was only training. When it's real, things could get scary. The worst thing happening to me was that I had to dump in the woods after the officers forgot that I was on sentry duty (no one came to relieve me), and the trucks I was supposed to guide onto the right trail happened to pass just when I did so. Fortunatly, they could find the way themselves.

Didn't you try to sleep in the Hummer when you waited for the "go" order? 1-2 hours could do a miracle. But I guess the delay was not expected?

And what's an REMF? Those American abrevasions (sp) are killing me.

[Barinthus]

Originally posted by Chemical Ollie

How do you know the translator doesn't set you up, and record something completely different onto the minidiscs?

I had the same thought. What if the translator actually translated it into Arabic for "Stay home or the American infidels will kill you and rape your women at your local mosque then sell your children into slavery" or "Americans have small weewees, our Iraqi babies have bigger weewees than they do, throw rocks at them and mock them."

[Chemical Ollie]

Why do you let the civilians keep one AK-47 per family? I can't figure out any legal use a civilian would have for an assault rifle. Letting them is calling for trouble. People could jump in and out of the guerilla at their own preferance.

And if their attitude turns really hostile, millions of angry unarmed civilians is much better than millions of angry civilians with assault rifles.