War in Iraq, a Soldier's View

We move to Tallil and see just how much security they have guarding the area. Plus we get to see some areas that had at least a little development and what the Iraqi military lived with. My conclusion, the military had incredibly poor living conditions and equipment considering how much money/oil this country was floating on. Especially since Saddam spent so much money on Iraq's military; it the military was like this, the citizens must be living in third world conditions.

27-Mar-03 9:37 PM

Today was another crazy day.
Not crazy as in hectic, we’ve had lot’s of days like that. Today was one of those day’s you realize that there’s a war going on and you life is in danger.

Today of course was the day that we moved up to Tallil Airbase (just outside of An Nasiriyah). The day started about 7:00am and we immediately started packing, nobody seemed to be in a hurry we just went to it, I guess we’ve got plenty of moving experience now so it’s not that hard of thing to do. I got my gear loaded in the Deuce and got the Deuce prepped to go then started helping everybody else get ready. I’m starting to like having the Deuce, it’s not as good as my Xterra but I know how to handle it now and drive it without any problem. I bet I’m even a better driver than Griffin especially off-road. He talks about how he’s got so much experience driving deuce and a halfs but I’ve noticed that a lot of what he say’s is talk. If you put him behind the wheel he’d probably be all over the place and then make up some excuse about why things are going wrong (He’s been getting on my nerves today if you haven’t noticed).

Anyway the last few minutes packing were getting pretty bad, I was loading the trailer AND I had to get the Deuce brought around and hooked up and SGT. Garcia, who hadn’t been helping for the last half hour, told me, “ the stairs have to be put on the trailer too.” I told him to, “get some guys and take care of it.” So I went around to move the Deuce up to the trailer and he yells at me from 20 meters away (while talking to E-5 Anderson) to ask me if I had taken care of the ladder. I just yelled back “NO!” and kept doing what I was doing; luckily Layton had overheard what had happened and took care of it for me.

That’s what has been bugging me this whole day; it seems like all the NCOs have been telling people what to do but instead of helping they watch for hours just watching us sweat while they talk and sip their waters like we weren’t desperate for help. E-5 Anderson especially has a problem with this, he’ll order people to load his crap onto a truck so he can go have a smoke.

Now I understand that by the rules of the military all they have to do is order us around and let things happen, but when there only 17 of us the help is needed, especially when they have nothing else to do. I’ll never be able to respect any leader, NCO or Commissioned officer, that isn't willing to get his hands dirty and work with the rest of the grunts, especially when its obvious help is needed.
Oh and barking out criticisms doesn’t count as “Helping”.

After all the drama we still got out to by 9:00am and met up with 8 other vehicles that we were going with to the airbase.

Major Yarber gave us a briefing and told us to keep our, Kevlar and flack jacket because there have been snipers taking potshots at convoys. That was my first indication that we were going closer to the “action”.

Once we got on the move there wasn’t any snipers or firefights to the airbase but we saw lots of signs that there was a war going on. Luckily this time I had my camera charged so was able to get pictures. First I noticed that a lot of vehicles broken down on the side of the road, marine LAV’s and a lot of 5 and 2 1/2 ton trucks. Plus the road was littered with rubber pads thrown from tracked vehicles speeding along the highway. I know enough about the way the Army deploys armor to know that that was a sign that when I saw the tanks driving on the road a few days before, they were expecting combant in the next few miles. They usually truck the tanks in on Super HETs and drive them the last 100 miles to their target.

Above on the overpasses there were the same guard buildings that I had seen before but now I’m almost sure that they are Iraqi made to deter traffic on the road. Some looked like they had bullet holes on the side but they were definitely made like the buildings here at the airbase. The closer we got to the airbase the more combat vehicles we saw, mostly Bradley IFV’s and Humvees with top mounted grenade launchers and machine guns.

As we got to the airbase we saw lots of interesting things. First there was a large bunker/ palace looking building that I thought was an Iraqi command post but it turned out (according to LtCol. Lockwood) to be the birthplace of Abraham.

Then as we got to the base my questions were answered weather it was civilian or military and how big it was. The outskirts had lots of junkyards with old military trucks scrapped and some of the buildings had pictures of Saddam Hussein at the gates. It reminded a lot of the Nazi pictures of Hitler around all his military installations, frankly I’d get really sick of seeing pictures of Bush every where I went; thank god we don’t do things like that in America.

At key intersections were more Bradley’s and Infantry dug in incase somebody tired to storm the base. Most of the soldiers looked like they were resting but there was always somebody peering down the back of a barrel at everything that passed. Once we got on base we saw just how big it was. Compared to any Air force base in America it would be considered second rate but for a country that had a no fly zone covering 70% of the country for the last 11 years it was pretty extensive. There were units camped out in the parking lots in front of just about every line of buildings we passed. It was like the army dedicated the parking lots of an apartment complex to different companies and each had a definite job.
One parking lot would be filled with lots of communication equipment, another would be a maintenance lot, and the next would be a temporary hospital.

One thing that stood out to me about this area of Iraq was how similar to Utah it was. Some areas had sparse trees and marshy areas next to the road, it reminded me of undeveloped areas north of the Great Salt Lake. Coming up to an intersection you could have transplanted some tiny farm town/intersection from northern Utah and it would look exactly the same.

If the area looked like Northern Utah then the airbase reminded me of the way the DDO in Ogden looked like before Ogden revamped it. The narrow roads had shallow ditches on each side and trees planted at regular intervals but it was all in a kind of disrepair. The buildings were made of brick and stucco and some of the nice buildings only looked a few years old but still neglected. Others looked like they belonged on the outskirts of Mexico City, the walls were cracked and debris was everywhere.

We got to the area that was going to be our maintenance area for the next little while, we were told that EOD had done a small surface sweep for ordinance and booby traps but nothing had been checked in depth. Major Yarber told us that all of the buildings in the nearby area were ours to do with as we wanted but if we moved anything around we had to be careful since EOD hadn’t done a full check of the area yet.

We started nosing around to see what there was and it looked like the place had been abandoned so fast that almost everything had been left behind. One room was full of oxygen bottles and fire extinguishers, one was full of gas masks and rubber gloves, and some were obviously living quarters and offices. I looked at some of the items on the desks and cabinets of the rooms and they had lots of notebooks with Arabic writing in it. Another desk was covered with the little head shots of a bunch of Arabs I assumed to be the guys who worked in the buildings. From what I gathered the awning and buildings housed the fire reaction crew for the airbase, that’s why there was wrecked fire equipment around the area. At least 6 if not more people slept on the premises and had their lockers with all their gear behind the living quarters. The living quarters had a lot of personal gear left behind; personal hygiene and shoes mostly plus a lot of notebooks with writing.

One had Donald duck on the front and kind of childish writing on the inside. I wondered if it was from the guy’s child of something and the writing was something the father held dear to him. So I left it where I found it even though it will probably never get back to him (If he hasn’t been killed in the war).
The area looked like it had been abandoned for a while; I found a newspaper that had a date of April 2002 on it. But one cabinet had some uneaten food on it that hadn’t gone bad yet, but it might have been dried or preserved some other way.

After investigating we started to figure where our “Necessities” were going to be.
I figured we needed toilet, bedding, work area, and protection/defense.

I check a nearby bunker that turned out to be bigger than I thought, it went well down into the ground and had power inside, it might have been an underground command post but it had been wrecked when the Iraqi’s left.
The area surrounding our buildings had plenty of places that could be used as foxholes incase of attack, including some covered connexes that could hold the whole detachment.
SGT. Anderson and his squad got the toilet setup while the rest of us unloaded the trailer into the connex next to the awnings. And it looked like we might be getting tents tomorrow to sleep in, although that was debated because a lot of the detachment wants to stay in the buildings, but then EOD came around a pissed their pants because we had gone into the rooms that hadn’t been cleared. I guess Major Yarber jumped the gun on giving us the go-ahead to go in.

But one room had already been turned into a TV room so we spent the night watching a movie before going to bed under the stars. I set my bed up in my Deuce so I could get my own room.

I enjoy having the privacy, it’s nice to have some time alone for once, I may end up a hermit from the rest of the guys but right now everybody’s fighting anyway, maybe after everything has settled down things will be better.

Tonight we still have the guards up to keep an eye on us with the NVG’s. According to Maj. Yarber there have been probing attacks almost every night and two larger firefights since the base was taken 4 days ago. And our area is in the center of the base but next to the runways so we don’t have combat forces on each side so I feel a little better with people staying up at night. The worst things we’ve had to deal with were the explosions EOD has been doing to get rid of the UXO’s in the area. The blasts are big enough to rattle the doors and windows in all the buildings and vehicles and you never know when it’s going to happen.