Oerdin's Iraq thread - Continued

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Chemical Ollie
Oerdin, you seem to have gained some increased responsibility during your deployment.

Yes, and I'm happy about that. I've finally gotten to a place where no body f*cks with me and I'm calling the shots. I have to make sure the reports are well written and that I keep my team busy but other then that I more or less have a free hand. It's always possible that a higher ranking person will get transfered into my area but we only have two months to go so maybe this won't happen.

I'm trying real hard to be a better NCO then some of the NCOs I served under. That means I make sure my guys get two days off per week if at all possible and they get a bit of free time at night to take care of their personal stuff (writting home, doing laundry, and what not). I've written out exactly what each person is supposed to do and so far they've done an excellent job of making sure their jobs get done.

[Chemical Ollie]

Originally posted by Oerdin
I'm trying real hard to be a better NCO then some of the NCOs I served under. ---

Can't be too hard when looking back at what you wrote about them 5 months ago. It was characters like out of a B-movie

You are probably like Winters in "Band of Brothers", while they were like Sobel...

[Chemical Ollie]

Originally posted by Lonestar


But the Marines hadn't even stormed Fallujah. They just encircled the city until someone decided to throw money at the problem. (i.e. have an "Iraqi brigade" go in)

They were in allright. Not in large numbers, perhaps a company or batallion, but in none the less. But don't expect me to dig out news reports from April to prove it. And there were air strikes killing civilians in Falluja as late as this week. So much for power handover.

[Chemical Ollie]

Originally posted by Oerdin
Yesterday was a some what morbid day. --- Our job was to get the body and transfer it to the morgue in FOB Spiker outside of Tikrit. Unfortunately, the body wasn't in a body bag so six of us had to put the headless corpse and the decapitated head into a body bag.
---

:Yuk: But someone has to do the dirty work. It seems to be a good advice to wear gloves and mask, allright. Bacteria grow fast in dirty water.

My UN veteran buddy picked up a guy in Lebanon who was hit by an RPG round in the belly. The body bag was not really appropriate for the mission, he said they would rather need a bucket. He also showed me some pics of a guy who was killed by a hand grenade. There was plenty of hamburger meat hanging from the trees.

When he was home, the police asked him to clean out a stair house where a brutal knife murder had taken place. There was blood on the floor and walls from the top floor down to the ground level where the victim collapsed and died. The police knew that he had been in war and seen things like that before, while his mother who was the regular janitor refused to go in there.

[Chemical Ollie]

Originally posted by Oerdin


Field Commisions do happen, however, I am not seeking one.

Are you saying you have to seek (formally apply) for one to get one, or would your superiors handle all of that for you?

[Dinner]

They were in allright. Not in large numbers, perhaps a company or batallion, but in none the less. But don't expect me to dig out news reports from April to prove it. And there were air strikes killing civilians in Falluja as late as this week. So much for power handover.

You may recall the Iraqi government asking the Coalition to continue assisting to provide security forces. Power was handed over but the Iraqi government wants foreign troops to assist in controlling Islamic militants and Ba'athists.

[Chemical Ollie]

Exactly. So you guys will stay a few years more. Perhaps not Sgt Jackson himself, but 100 000's of other guys.

Edit: By the way, are you working at the computer around the clock now that you are the boss? First reply at 5 this morning (my time), then some replies during the day and some late at night.

[Dinner]

I have tomorrow off and I can't sleep so it's off to the computer I go.

[Dinner]

A while ago we passed off some of the more run of the mill security jobs off to the Iraqis, now, they've handed off about half of the gate guard jobs on this very post to the Iraqis and I'm beginning to wonder if that was such a hot idea. Case in point. Three times now our interpritor has gotten on the post without a soldier coming to pick him up. Normally, nonmilitary personnel cannot enter a base in a combat zone unless they are escorted by a soldier. Thus the SOP is for the guard at the front gate to call our house and then for one of us to go sign in our interpritor. Lately, the Iraqi guards have just been letting the Iraqi interpritors on without escorts.

The interpritors do have picture IDs but those IDs are cheap and could easily be faked. There are thousands of Iraqis who work on post so it's not like the guards are going to remember the faces of who belongs and who doesn't. This is a major security breech as far as I'm secured and it is a direct result of the military's desire to pull out as many US forces as possible and replace them with Iraqi forces.

[Dinner]

Today we went to the Tikrit office of the Iraqi Media Network in order to help write up line up the financing of the stations expansion. The expansion plans call for the building of a TV broadcasting station and an increase in the power output of the existing radio station. Iraqis, like most Arabs, don't have access to a great deal of public broadcasting so we're hoping to create more state owned TV stations to diseminate news and information. With luck the local TV station will be up and running before the census occurs in October so we can use it to help inform people about the census and the national elections which will be occuring in January.

After that we assisted the Head Quarters of our Psyop Company when they went on a log-pack to FOB Spiker. Now it's down time followed by dinner and then writing my daily report.

[johnj92131]

Please explain the term "log-pack"???

[Dinner]

Logistics run.

[Dinner]

I'm very disappointed with the revised up armored humvee. The thing has a top speed of 65-70mph and it over heats if you go that speed more then 10-15 minute if the AC is used. This started to happen to my vehicle today and turning off the AC only seems to slow down the over heating but not stop it. I've checked both the oil and the water levels and they're fine so I think the problem is the fan. The fan design seems to be to small for this vehicles engine plus it doesn't stay on long enough to actually do much cooling before it switches off again.

I only have 4700 miles on the vehicle yet there have already been numerous problems including a door latch which literally fell off while we were driving down the road and severalo dash board lights which light up but then won't turn off. I know these vehicles are made by the lowest bidder but it seems, as is usual, they cut to many corners and now GIs are stuck with vehicles which are extremely unreliable.

[Stuie]

So when they started "up armored" the humvees did they bother upgrading the engines to account for the extra weight? Sounds like they didn't.

[Dinner]

They added a turbo charger to the engine and you get a standard GM four speed automatic instead of the junky three speed the regular humvees use but that's about it. It doesn't seem like they upgraded the cooling system at all. They did add AC which they didn't have in the regular humvee but the AC unit never seems to get very cold. It can hold the line at 80 but even at night it can't seem to get lower.

Still, the AC is a god send when it's 125 degrees.