Cooking with Crisco.

This posted from my CHU.



It's about damn time.

In other notes, the picture of the ruins in the last post were from North of Samarra. I found the spot on Google Earth. They're at this location. Military maps label it as "Abu Dalit (tomb) Baghdad al Qadimah", or some variation thereof, depending on the scale of the map.

...a few things to say on the subject of towels.

Bonus points to the first commenter who catches the reference in the title. As to the rest of the post, here's what kept me from posting last week:


Note the lack of pretty much anything in the photo. Sandstorms pretty much nix air travel. And, considering that picture was taken north of Tikrit, I wasn't exactly able to get to my computer and edit the photos for a weekly update. I got the opportunity to fly up to Tikrit to the IA 4th Division G2 conference, and although the meeting was as expected (boring, uneventful, and fairly schizoid), the subsequent sandstorm and stranding were completely Un-expected. A couple of lessons learned from the whole affair, so it wasn't a complete loss professionally, and a couple of good photos, including one spectacular one made it an overall positive. First, on the way up, I noticed we were crossing Tampa above one of our checkpoints, so I took the opportunity to shoot a couple of pics in passing. Here's one of the checkpoint shots:


A bit further northwest, we flew over a farming area, and the 'crop circles' where the irrigation arms watered the barren nothingness were rather strange. Instead of the same setup in the states producing crops in a sea of grass, these were crops surrounded by a sea of dirt. It's not exactly desert in the way Kuwait was, all covered in sand, but up away from the river there is very little ground cover.


We landed at an IA FOB which used to be the grounds and buildings for one of Saddam's palaces there in Tikrit. Feeling he had been left out recently, Quirk decided to tag along and was very pleased at the palatial spread.


Of note, the script-looking "E" on the front of the building is actually the Indian numeral "4". Sidenote: English uses Arabic numerals, while for some reason, Arabic switched at some point in the past to an Indian numeral set. Weird, I know. Anyway, the back side of the palace overlooked the Tigris, being built on the cliffs some 40 feet above the water:


As I said, the conference was pretty much a goat-rope, mostly because it transitioned from a US led endeavor to an IA 'led' affair in the last week prior to execution. Reference here my comment in the last post about sticking to a calendar / schedule... SFC Shuck was not pleased. Of course after we flew to a US fob to await the return flight to O'Ryan, we got weathered in. I thought we'd escaped the large tent with cots scenario when we got out of Kuwait, but the ADACG transient housing tents at Speicher were thus:


We finally caught the birds, which did wonders to improve SFC Shuck's mood:


And finally, the Coup de Grace. While flying East off the Tigris south of Samarra, I noticed a ziggurat off to our South and managed to crack off two shots with le-point-and-shoot. The native image was about 11* off camber, and almost didn't leave enough to rotate and crop the photo, but Photoshop was kind, and after some auto-leveling to help reduce the dust, I came out with the following:


I've got a slightly larger and clearer image, but this should suffice for most wide-screen computer desktops. The other image is also considerably larger, and considering the tones are mostly browns, the 'saved for web' image isn't degraded too much. I'll take the time to find the actual location on Google Maps when I get a chance, but since the internet here in the MWR lab is giving me fits (along with the crappy mouse), I'm punting on that goal.

A week behind...

So I know I'm a little late with this update, but calendars have this tendency to march steadily to the right and down, and excrement occurs. However, in the name of continuity and completeness, I am posting a bit about what happened two weeks ago at the same time I'm hitting what happened last week. Quick synopsis: We conducted a joint 9mm range with the IA battalion staff officers, and hit some checkpoints. Also, I've got a couple of 'interesting' photos that I took during that week.


First, the range. If I remember correctly, we had representatives from all of the S-shops, and since the Sergeant Major was on leave, the Assistant Sergeant Major came as well. It was a learning experience on both sides, as some of them had never fired the new Glock pistols they were issued last year. We kept it simple, with moving and shooting limited to straight toward the target, and laterally left and right from the 5-meter line. Only one mag change, and that was at a pre-determined point between firing events. So enough with the explanation, here are the photos! Our first entry has MSG Jones conducting our range safety brief. (Note to family: Yes, that is me on the left with the bald head. I gave up on haircuts and just started shaving my head again)


Next, we have one of the IA lieutenants moving from right to left at the five-meter line, along with SSG(P) Moncree as lane safety and one of our interpreters.


On our checkpoint patrol, we observed the handoff of the southernmost checkpoint in 1st BN's AO to 3rd BN's control (thus making it our northernmost). The 'pillaging' of the checkpoint by the 1BN soldiers was pretty much as expected, but what should have been apparent, but wasn't until we saw the following, was that 3BN expected this, and was prepared. As we're sitting in the bermed pull-off by the checkpoint, one of the 3BN 5-ton trucks showed up towing a trailer with well... this:


We should have understood that they would know the 1BN 'handoff' would consist of basically stripping the usable stuff from the buildings, and would come prepared, but it was kind of a pleasant surprise. It's not that they can't plan, it's more the sticking to a calendar thing they have a problem with.


As for the 'interesting' photos, I'll post the first, then explain.


What we have here is the result of the previous team buying a safe to store various items inside the conex, and the lock on said safe catastrophically failing, resulting in the necessary 'alternate key' method. Though the housing is HEAVY, the door is pretty much tinfoil, and using just the axe (as a sledgehammer) and the pry-bar, I was able to gain entry in less than 10 minutes. Caveat Emptor indeed! Finally, we have the previously promised photo of Morgan, the stray who showed up as we were doing the handover from the previous team, and who now is living (rather comfortably) on the IA side of the FOB.

A dog's life

There is this phrase, usually listed as an acronym, in military terminology which denotes that nothing of interest has occured. The phrase is Nothing Significant to Report, or NSTR for short. This update is gonna be kinda like that. Another week went by. We went over and talked to our IA counterparts. We went out and checked on checkpoints. We are still waiting on the satellite system to come in the mail. We are slowly getting more settled and into a rhythm, finally.

The reason I called it "A dog's life" is that the photos are almost all of dogs we've seen out on the checkpoints. We had a little dog that showed up here right before the team we replaced left, but when she started getting on some nerves we had to take the interpreters take her over to the IA side and put her out. No worries, dog lovers, she is doing well, and made the transition from the old HQ area to the new buildings. I saw her the other day, and she's still much fatter than when she first showed up by our CHUs, so apparently she's eating well. The old team named her Morgan, since they said she spoke better English than the 'terp of the same name who they fired last year. I for some reason don't have any pictures of her that I've taken, but I'll ask around to see if anybody else does. So, without further ado, here are some pictures of dogs out on the checkpoints:

Watching the backside of the berm:



Checking the c-wire:



Awwww, a puppy!



More puppies:



And for our last picture, a mirage. I did not take this photo, it was taken by CPT Gibson, apparently with his 4x digital zoom turned on, as the image has not been resized or retouched (other than saving for the web w/ Photoshop). It has been over 100 degrees here. The picture was taken in March...

Finally, some admin notes. I'm currently trying to get a collection of photos together with each of the team members featured, in order to send home to their families. Don't bug them about the pics yet, as I'm still looking through to make sure I've got one (each) of everybody. Don't be surprised if you get a big photo attached to an email in the relatively near future. Also, if any of you had issues checking this blog in the last couple of days, GoDaddy (my hosting service) upgraded the machine where the site is physically stored, which is great. However, in the process the Frontpage extensions (which I use to publish the non-blog part of the site) got corrupted, causing the thing to ask for a username and password. Anywho, it confused me, and I'm pretty computer savvy, but it's fixed now.


Oh, by the way, it's getting kinda annoying when Blogger eats my carriage returns to keep the pictures all aligned correctly with the text. I did however remember they have an 'edit html' tab in the blog post editor, so hopefully inserting line breaks in the appropriate places will work...

IA MEPS

So I hear from some of the guys on the team that there are actually people out there reading this! That's great! And to all of you who have sent thank-you's, you're very welcome. This weekly reflection on what's going on around here helps put perspective on things, and also lets me know that I'm one week closer to getting outta here. The focus of this week's update is again good stuff going on. As I alluded to before, we recently had an event where our IA counterpart showed good signs of the progress they've made.

What I'm talking about was the 2nd iteration of a local IA MEPS (Military Enlistment Processing Station). We got the FRAGO from higher to be prepared to support the inprocessing and testing of local CLC/SOI (Concerned Local Citizens/ Sons of Iraq) for their applications to the IA and IP (Iraqi Police). The pictures tell some of the story, so I'll explain each in turn. First, we have a look out our front gate at 0730 on the first morning of the 3-day event:

About 200+ showed up on the first day, about the same on the 2nd day, and then more than 300 showed up the final day when they opened up the application process to locals not already in a SOI group. Our second picture shows a local SOI group, most of whom brought their 'uniform' consisting of a construction vest, assembled outside the gate waiting to inprocess.

Next we have a group arriving at the IA side of the FOB after processing through the gate via one of the 'uparmored' IA 5-tons.

There were some hiccups with coordinating the transportation process at the very beginning, but by about the 3rd run on the first day everything was running smoothly. The application process for the IA and IP are exactly the same with regard to paperwork, but the IA application requires a PT test. Definetly a case of "Iraqi good-enough", but since it was their event we just observed. The PT stations were well organized, consisting of a 1 mile run (probably more like 1k, tops), a 100 meter sprint, pushups, pullups, and situps. As you saw above in the first picture, not everyone was dressed in what we would consider appropriate PT gear, but that didn't stop them from getting the job done. Thus, for our next two exhibits we have .... da da Daaaa! Dudes running in man-dresses! (more appropriately called disdashas)

For our final PT picture, we have yours truly in the front leaning rest encouraging some test-takers:

In team internal news, we did some CHU area cleanup and construction and have done some improvements on the AO. We all helped get the area cleaned up, and got some storage built for all the spare lumber. MSG Jones hammered out (pun intended) the walkway upgrade, and SFC Shuck got the washing machine plumbed in from the spigot across the yard and fixed the drainage so it runs out to the driveway instead of under the CHUs. Much better than hauling buckets, and less mosquito breeding area.

Good stuff all around. Even the boss got involved: