Pilgrims on Tampa

Today wasn't really much of a DONSA (Day Of No Scheduled Activity). I had 12 things on my to do list that I wrote out last night, and if I include doing laundry (which somehow didn't make the list), I'll have hit 8 of 13 after this post gets finished. So much for a 'day off' as it were. Things are going well, and thus I'm continuing my weekly update. So without further ado, here are this week's pictures:

Here we have one of the IA checkpoints our battalion owns. The CHUs house both the CP operations area and the soldiers who man this checkpoint. That's right, these guys live ON the checkpoints, 24/7 between leave periods. They are committed to security, in a real and tangible sense. More on that later.











And here, believe it or not, is the standard issue IA 'Light Gun-truck'.














Here are the real gems for this update: Two pictures of foot traffic on MSR Tampa between Ad Dujayl and Balad.



























The thing about these photos is that these were pilgrims, walking on foot from Dujayl to the mosque in Balad to commemorate the anniversary of the death of the 11th Imam (Imam Hasan Al-Askari). There were a large number of local sheiks sitting at one of the markets along the roadside, and there were tables set up a couple hundred yards from each of the IA checkpoints where locals were passing out fruit slices and cups of water to the pilgrims. The trip is around 40km (24.8 miles), and as we learned from our terps, hasn't been done in three years, due to the lack of security along the route (and the Al-Askari mosque in Sammara having been destroyed). Like I said before, the IA is committed to security. They're getting results (despite whatever the US Media is crapping out), and the population does feel more secure. I've got more good stuff that has occured in the last week, but I think I'll stick with the current 'week delay' pattern with update information, as another layer in our OPSEC armor. Until next week...

Training video

Ok, so this is my second attempt. I tried the full-size (30-meg) video, and it choked. We'll go for the lowered quality 7-meg version and see what happens this time...

Boots on ground

We made it to our FOB. Finally. After months upon months of training, a couple random stops inbound, and a couple really cool helicopter rides (hey, I'd never ridden in one until last month, so they're cool to me), we arrived. Ft Riley, Funston, Buehring, Taji, FOB O'Ryan. We've been here almost 2 weeks, but it feels like we got here yesterday. Without the Sat/Sun weekend here, everything seems to melt together. Today is a down day, and much needed. Patrols to check out our IA counterpart, retarded admin runs to Anaconda... it's been pretty much assholes and elbows since we hit the ground here.

The upload speeds here are pretty slow, so I'm having to save images with slightly less quality than I'd like, but such is life. I've got a video I'm going to try and upload for my next post, but that may or may not work. We're working on getting high-speed satellite internet, not because there isn't internet available (obviously), but because we're a bunch of spoiled bandwidth junkies who can't stand waiting while browsing the internet. I find that I'll spend less time 'surfing' in the mornings if I can hit each of my daily read sites, read it, and go do something else. The 5-10 second wait between each page update, when reading motorcycle forums is pretty much a buzzkill. Anywho, here are some pictures from our training. I realized when I got here I have zero pictures of the Phoenix Academy at Taji, but don't really care because I'd rather forget I spent a week of my life trapped in that place anyway.

Here's a camel we ran into out on the mission rehearsal lanes on Camp Buehring. Moments later it was sniffing our tow-strap.

Here's Kevin checking out a group of camels that wandered up next to the staging area for the live-fire lanes at Buehring.

Here's the camel herder at the same spot. He came over and I had my first 'meet and greet' in arabic without a translator. A'salaam a'laikum was about all we got out correctly, but we were able to figure out through the 'point and motion' method that he owned these camels, and had 20 of them.

These are our trucks. You'll probably have to click on and retrieve the larger version to even notice that there is indeed a guy standing in the middle of the picture. Chris is on the order of 6' (I can't remember if he's just taller or shorter than me, but we're close) and you'll note how these things dwarf him. The turrets are very similar to the ones we had at Funston, i.e. they have armored windows which allow the gunner a wider field of view from a protected position. I like them, but that's just my $.02

Finally, here are our CHUs (Containerized Housing Units). Basically a shipping container with an AC unit, some doors and a window or two. The ones on the right are all east-west oriented while mine (on the left) is north-south. We've got a nice little fire-pit, and between the 2nd and 3rd one on the right there's a ping-pong room the last team had the KBR guys fabricate for us. The terps (interpreters) are ping-pong wizards, given the amount of time you have in the evenings.

Well that's it for this post, more to follow as events warrant, or time allows. Video (hopefully) to follow immediately...