Well, this isn't a good story. Thing sure have started to get crazy lately. IED's are on the rise. We've been hit with indirect twice, one only being about a week ago. A while back, maybe 10 days, a VBIED hit the mayors office of Tuz and caused some damage, killing 4 and injuring 9. Today another VBIED hit. I'm not sure on the location. Some have said the mayors house but the latest story is showing that it was at a local cafe. Again no soldiers were killed. I'm not sure on the details of the story. But the info that is coming out is that between 20 and 30 people were killed. I don't know the numbers of IA to civilian. But that is a lot of deaths. Again the trend seems to be that the insurgents have moved the majority of their attacks away from US soldiers and have started to attack there own people.
It seems that the current deaths in this country, resulting from attacks, have been on normal everyday civilian. So I ask that you pray for the people of this providence, and the whole country, and that you would ask God to deliver them from the terror that is around them. God bless you all-
Thursday, June 02, 2005
Wednesday, June 01, 2005
I Have Finally Written and I Have a Little to Say
Well, unfortunately the internet has gone out so I guess I will find this a good opportunity to write about things that have happened since the last time I wrote. I wish that I had not taken so long because so much of what has happened I’m sure I have forgot. But anyways let me begin.
About a month ago or so on one Wednesday night a brother in Christ was baptized at the Peacemaker Chapel. As awesome as it was that our brother followed in his commitment to the Lord, it was so amazing that he was an Iraqi. I don’t know his real name, nor could I type it if I did because I would be putting him and his family at risk, but we call him Joseph and he is one of our interpreters. He is of the Assyrian community which is a long line of Christians who hold to the Orthodox and Catholic tradition. He was a believer before coming to the Peacemaker Chapel but had never followed in a believer’s baptism. He had only been baptized as a baby by the sprinkling of water.
So we had our service and then we gathered around a makeshift pool that the Chaplin used to submerge him. It was a good time. There were about 14 of us present and afterward we gathered as we always do and sang amazing grace as we held hands. I thank God that there are men in this county like Joseph, who are willing to follow his Lord in a commitment such as baptism. He was worried to some degree though to the fact of finding a wife, as are many of our interpreters who are believers in Him. We take it for granted how luck we are in America not only to have our religious freedoms, but that so many wonderful Christian women are out there for us to marry, God willing. In this county the men are not nearly as lucky.
For the most part this county’s people fall under the sects of Muslim, as I’m sure most of you know. The government has never been a threat to the Christianity of Iraq. Christianity teaches peace and submission to government so during Saddam’s reign the Christian community kept the peace and Saddam repaid them by not persecuting them. But the common folk of Iraq are different. The times are changing and religious freedoms are becoming more and more every day, but there are still the radicals who wish to destroy everything that is not their own. So the Christians of Iraq must to some degree hide their faith until they felt led by the Lord to share it. Not only are their very lives threatened by some one knowing there allegiance but so are there families. So with such a threat a man seeking a wife in a culture where marriages are arranged is something that is almost impossible. Some men even have to hide their faith from there family, there father, who is the one responsible for choosing the bride. So pray for these men who have been given a new life. Ask God to give them protection, clear testimonies, and a possibility to marry a woman who loves the Lord as they do. As for the women, in this culture women never leave the side of a male relative or a trusted friend of the family so I have only been able to meet a few and I am forbidden to talk directly with them as this is a sign of disrespect toward the man. Though I have never met them I am sure that the Christian women posses the same hard ships as the men in this county, so may God give both of them strength and peace in such a difficult place.
Now let me tell you a story that only few have ever heard. It is the legend of the fobbit. You may ask what a fobbit is, but know that many of them are out there. Some of you have heard of hobbits. But a fobbit is a far more hated thing. In the far off land of Iraq there are solders that go to fight. But some of them never get to see the battle, but live in their little holes while others go out and avenge the evil of this far off land. The thing that is so amazing about a fobbit is that it was once just like a normal man. To look at him you would never notice the difference. But very different is a fobbit from a normal man. Not is strength, nor in character, but in service. The places where men go to live, in Iraq, while they fight against the evil men who lie in the sand waiting for there opportunity to kill, are called FOB’s, and a FOB is nothing more then a base with a fancy name, Forward Observation Base.
And so there is where you get the name of the hideous thing we call fobbits. They are men who are not given the opportunity, or who are too scared, to go out of these sand mounds which protect us. And before my very eyes I was being transformed into this nasty varmint. But thanks to the power of darkness (the night) and the need of light I was renewed back into my old self. We were going on a night mission to provide illume support for one of our teams which was to go in and search for an insurgent. As we drove though the gate I could feel my normal human strength being given back to me. We went out and set up and waited. Then they decided they needed illume support in another part of the our AO so we moved out again and then finally at the break of day they said our help was no longer needed and we moved back the FOB to get some rest after a long night. We never got to shoot, but at least we had left the FOB, if only for a short 7 hours and I was no longer in the fobbit transformation stage. And the guy they were after they found and brought back for questioning.
Then a couple of days later another mission was planned and this was one in which we knew we would fire. For this one we headed north to an area outside of Dakuik. It is a smaller city then TUZ, but still of decent size. We set up and were ready to shoot. We had some problems with the communication so it took longer to shoot then we would have liked. The purpose of the mission was to train and to hit an area close to the training camp of some who we don’t like. They have not yet done anything warranting a full blown attack but we wanted to send some TNT their way to let them know we are watching them. I think when they heard the explosion—they got our point.
The location we were at was a nice place and I was unfortunate in not having my camera with me on that day. Because of the dryness of the land a huge waterway has been built. I don’t know the correct name for it, but it looks like an aqueduct from what I know of them. It was about 20 feet wide with embankment that could be walked down. It didn’t look to deep, but I was wrong. After sitting in one place for so long our large size gained the notice of some local youths. Three kids, ages 13, 14, and 15 years old, came up and started talking to me. They didn’t speak well but knew the words for the stuff they wanted. All they did as we sat there was ask for water, food, candy, and American money. If these kids have learned anything from America it is greed. But I doubt it is an American thing since all of the Iraqi Army guys I have worked with do nothing but bag for stuff too. But they were good kids and then eventually went swimming in the waterway. I said early that I thought it shallow but I was wrong, and I saw that as the younger two started diving into the water.
Well, after a short swim, which I wish I could have enjoyed, we started talking and I finally gave in and gave them some water to drink. See, when we are sitting in a place we can’t give stuff out because we don’t want a crowd to gather around us, not even children. In this country it is no odd thing for them to use children as a means of killing Americans. I was weary of having the children come close to me but I thought it better for them to be near me then to be near any of the others tracks. But once they got up close to us, and even more so after they went swimming, I could see that they had nothing to cause me any damage.
Now it was time to fire the guns. I told the youths to hold there ears as it got ready to fire. It was pretty loud and the youths enjoyed the show. They were waiting to hear and see the explosion, but since we were shooting at a target about 25000 meters away seeing and hearing was not going to happen. But we were using a rocket assisted round which at about 20 second after firing you will hear a loud hiss sound as the rocket kicks in, and the kids like that. The one gun raid had finally finished firing its eight rounds and we were ready to move out. The children after seeing the show were ready to return home receiving nothing. So as they were leaving I climbed down and got a MRE for each of them and they returned running fast. I handed then out to them and they were pretty happy and thanked me and they were off.
On the same day that we were out firing an explosion happened in Tuz. Some one had made a VBIED (Vehicle Borne IED) and had hit the mayor’s office. From the stories I got four people had died and some were officials of the mayor’s office. The mayor himself was not hurt but some 9 people were. From a friend of mine on location, blood was everywhere. He is a deputy in the civilian world and he said it was one of the worst things he had ever seen. The group that he is apart of missed the blast by only a few seconds, thankfully they hadn’t left any earlier then they had. No US Forces were hurt in the blast, and the VBIED driver was killed in the blast.
A couple of days later another mission came down. One of the longest ones yet, it lasted from 0200 to 1000. I was not one of the lucky ones who got to go on this one so I don’t really have much to say about it but that as they were entering the FOB an explosion happened to the southwest of the FOB. It wasn’t that big of a deal for me but that it came from the direction of Tower One, one of our towers. I saw that the SOG, Sergeant of the Guard, was up there at that location so I wasn’t too worried about it. Come to find out the explosion was an IED that had been set up on the road to our south. Thankfully, our group was coming in the north side of the FOB this time. The IED that blow up didn’t hurt anyone but did destroy one of the Hum-V’s.
A day or so after that a solder was killed. I don’t know the full extent of the story because it happened not in Peacemaker Territory but in Warrior Country which is 1st Squadron AO. The story I heard is that a Hum-V was traveling down the road and a taxi stopped in the middle of the road and made a U-turn right in front of them causing the driver to slam on the breaks and turn to try to avoid it. As he was doing so the Hum-V started to tip till if finally flipped all the way over. The soldier who died was the gunner and the impact of the Hum-V on top of him as it flipped over was too much resulting in him loosing his life. I don’t know the soldier, and if I did I wouldn’t but it on here, but I do ask that you pray for the family that is grieving over their loss.
Then this last Sunday I was at church and one of the Majors was telling the Chaplin that another IED had hit that morning and one of the soldiers was hit with shrapnel in either the arm or leg. It wasn’t a major problem and one of the local docs took care of the problem and he was good to return to duty.
Later on that day I was on Tower Five pulling my duty and I heard a small explosion to the back of me. I couldn’t tell what it was or from where it came but I was waiting for one of the Towers in the Southern sector of the FOB to call it in. So as I was looking back monitoring the radio-BOOM- what I thought was a mortar landed about 300 meters from my location. I called it up to the Main Gate and Peacemaker X with is the main guys in charge. All of a sudden a Hum-V shoes up and tells us we have to go do crater analysis. My new Chief, SGT. Linebarger, and CPL Crawley take off and go to the site. They get there and send in the info. It turned out not to be a mortar but a rocket fired from about 3 miles away. The blast didn’t hurt anyone as it landed a good ways away from any thing. But I must say it was the most excitement I have had since I got here. Getting hit with rockets and mortars was something common at Brassfield-Mora, but here, those things don’t usually happen. As weird as it is to say, it was kind of fun. It made my day a little better having some excitement that didn’t hurt anyone.
That was a couple of days ago and not much has happened since then. Sorry it took so long to write, but for a long time there wasn’t anything to say, and once the stuff started coming, I just didn’t have much time. I’ll try to be better about it from now on.
DISCLAIMER: To all who are fobbits-no disrespect meant.
About a month ago or so on one Wednesday night a brother in Christ was baptized at the Peacemaker Chapel. As awesome as it was that our brother followed in his commitment to the Lord, it was so amazing that he was an Iraqi. I don’t know his real name, nor could I type it if I did because I would be putting him and his family at risk, but we call him Joseph and he is one of our interpreters. He is of the Assyrian community which is a long line of Christians who hold to the Orthodox and Catholic tradition. He was a believer before coming to the Peacemaker Chapel but had never followed in a believer’s baptism. He had only been baptized as a baby by the sprinkling of water.
So we had our service and then we gathered around a makeshift pool that the Chaplin used to submerge him. It was a good time. There were about 14 of us present and afterward we gathered as we always do and sang amazing grace as we held hands. I thank God that there are men in this county like Joseph, who are willing to follow his Lord in a commitment such as baptism. He was worried to some degree though to the fact of finding a wife, as are many of our interpreters who are believers in Him. We take it for granted how luck we are in America not only to have our religious freedoms, but that so many wonderful Christian women are out there for us to marry, God willing. In this county the men are not nearly as lucky.
For the most part this county’s people fall under the sects of Muslim, as I’m sure most of you know. The government has never been a threat to the Christianity of Iraq. Christianity teaches peace and submission to government so during Saddam’s reign the Christian community kept the peace and Saddam repaid them by not persecuting them. But the common folk of Iraq are different. The times are changing and religious freedoms are becoming more and more every day, but there are still the radicals who wish to destroy everything that is not their own. So the Christians of Iraq must to some degree hide their faith until they felt led by the Lord to share it. Not only are their very lives threatened by some one knowing there allegiance but so are there families. So with such a threat a man seeking a wife in a culture where marriages are arranged is something that is almost impossible. Some men even have to hide their faith from there family, there father, who is the one responsible for choosing the bride. So pray for these men who have been given a new life. Ask God to give them protection, clear testimonies, and a possibility to marry a woman who loves the Lord as they do. As for the women, in this culture women never leave the side of a male relative or a trusted friend of the family so I have only been able to meet a few and I am forbidden to talk directly with them as this is a sign of disrespect toward the man. Though I have never met them I am sure that the Christian women posses the same hard ships as the men in this county, so may God give both of them strength and peace in such a difficult place.
Now let me tell you a story that only few have ever heard. It is the legend of the fobbit. You may ask what a fobbit is, but know that many of them are out there. Some of you have heard of hobbits. But a fobbit is a far more hated thing. In the far off land of Iraq there are solders that go to fight. But some of them never get to see the battle, but live in their little holes while others go out and avenge the evil of this far off land. The thing that is so amazing about a fobbit is that it was once just like a normal man. To look at him you would never notice the difference. But very different is a fobbit from a normal man. Not is strength, nor in character, but in service. The places where men go to live, in Iraq, while they fight against the evil men who lie in the sand waiting for there opportunity to kill, are called FOB’s, and a FOB is nothing more then a base with a fancy name, Forward Observation Base.
And so there is where you get the name of the hideous thing we call fobbits. They are men who are not given the opportunity, or who are too scared, to go out of these sand mounds which protect us. And before my very eyes I was being transformed into this nasty varmint. But thanks to the power of darkness (the night) and the need of light I was renewed back into my old self. We were going on a night mission to provide illume support for one of our teams which was to go in and search for an insurgent. As we drove though the gate I could feel my normal human strength being given back to me. We went out and set up and waited. Then they decided they needed illume support in another part of the our AO so we moved out again and then finally at the break of day they said our help was no longer needed and we moved back the FOB to get some rest after a long night. We never got to shoot, but at least we had left the FOB, if only for a short 7 hours and I was no longer in the fobbit transformation stage. And the guy they were after they found and brought back for questioning.
Then a couple of days later another mission was planned and this was one in which we knew we would fire. For this one we headed north to an area outside of Dakuik. It is a smaller city then TUZ, but still of decent size. We set up and were ready to shoot. We had some problems with the communication so it took longer to shoot then we would have liked. The purpose of the mission was to train and to hit an area close to the training camp of some who we don’t like. They have not yet done anything warranting a full blown attack but we wanted to send some TNT their way to let them know we are watching them. I think when they heard the explosion—they got our point.
The location we were at was a nice place and I was unfortunate in not having my camera with me on that day. Because of the dryness of the land a huge waterway has been built. I don’t know the correct name for it, but it looks like an aqueduct from what I know of them. It was about 20 feet wide with embankment that could be walked down. It didn’t look to deep, but I was wrong. After sitting in one place for so long our large size gained the notice of some local youths. Three kids, ages 13, 14, and 15 years old, came up and started talking to me. They didn’t speak well but knew the words for the stuff they wanted. All they did as we sat there was ask for water, food, candy, and American money. If these kids have learned anything from America it is greed. But I doubt it is an American thing since all of the Iraqi Army guys I have worked with do nothing but bag for stuff too. But they were good kids and then eventually went swimming in the waterway. I said early that I thought it shallow but I was wrong, and I saw that as the younger two started diving into the water.
Well, after a short swim, which I wish I could have enjoyed, we started talking and I finally gave in and gave them some water to drink. See, when we are sitting in a place we can’t give stuff out because we don’t want a crowd to gather around us, not even children. In this country it is no odd thing for them to use children as a means of killing Americans. I was weary of having the children come close to me but I thought it better for them to be near me then to be near any of the others tracks. But once they got up close to us, and even more so after they went swimming, I could see that they had nothing to cause me any damage.
Now it was time to fire the guns. I told the youths to hold there ears as it got ready to fire. It was pretty loud and the youths enjoyed the show. They were waiting to hear and see the explosion, but since we were shooting at a target about 25000 meters away seeing and hearing was not going to happen. But we were using a rocket assisted round which at about 20 second after firing you will hear a loud hiss sound as the rocket kicks in, and the kids like that. The one gun raid had finally finished firing its eight rounds and we were ready to move out. The children after seeing the show were ready to return home receiving nothing. So as they were leaving I climbed down and got a MRE for each of them and they returned running fast. I handed then out to them and they were pretty happy and thanked me and they were off.
On the same day that we were out firing an explosion happened in Tuz. Some one had made a VBIED (Vehicle Borne IED) and had hit the mayor’s office. From the stories I got four people had died and some were officials of the mayor’s office. The mayor himself was not hurt but some 9 people were. From a friend of mine on location, blood was everywhere. He is a deputy in the civilian world and he said it was one of the worst things he had ever seen. The group that he is apart of missed the blast by only a few seconds, thankfully they hadn’t left any earlier then they had. No US Forces were hurt in the blast, and the VBIED driver was killed in the blast.
A couple of days later another mission came down. One of the longest ones yet, it lasted from 0200 to 1000. I was not one of the lucky ones who got to go on this one so I don’t really have much to say about it but that as they were entering the FOB an explosion happened to the southwest of the FOB. It wasn’t that big of a deal for me but that it came from the direction of Tower One, one of our towers. I saw that the SOG, Sergeant of the Guard, was up there at that location so I wasn’t too worried about it. Come to find out the explosion was an IED that had been set up on the road to our south. Thankfully, our group was coming in the north side of the FOB this time. The IED that blow up didn’t hurt anyone but did destroy one of the Hum-V’s.
A day or so after that a solder was killed. I don’t know the full extent of the story because it happened not in Peacemaker Territory but in Warrior Country which is 1st Squadron AO. The story I heard is that a Hum-V was traveling down the road and a taxi stopped in the middle of the road and made a U-turn right in front of them causing the driver to slam on the breaks and turn to try to avoid it. As he was doing so the Hum-V started to tip till if finally flipped all the way over. The soldier who died was the gunner and the impact of the Hum-V on top of him as it flipped over was too much resulting in him loosing his life. I don’t know the soldier, and if I did I wouldn’t but it on here, but I do ask that you pray for the family that is grieving over their loss.
Then this last Sunday I was at church and one of the Majors was telling the Chaplin that another IED had hit that morning and one of the soldiers was hit with shrapnel in either the arm or leg. It wasn’t a major problem and one of the local docs took care of the problem and he was good to return to duty.
Later on that day I was on Tower Five pulling my duty and I heard a small explosion to the back of me. I couldn’t tell what it was or from where it came but I was waiting for one of the Towers in the Southern sector of the FOB to call it in. So as I was looking back monitoring the radio-BOOM- what I thought was a mortar landed about 300 meters from my location. I called it up to the Main Gate and Peacemaker X with is the main guys in charge. All of a sudden a Hum-V shoes up and tells us we have to go do crater analysis. My new Chief, SGT. Linebarger, and CPL Crawley take off and go to the site. They get there and send in the info. It turned out not to be a mortar but a rocket fired from about 3 miles away. The blast didn’t hurt anyone as it landed a good ways away from any thing. But I must say it was the most excitement I have had since I got here. Getting hit with rockets and mortars was something common at Brassfield-Mora, but here, those things don’t usually happen. As weird as it is to say, it was kind of fun. It made my day a little better having some excitement that didn’t hurt anyone.
That was a couple of days ago and not much has happened since then. Sorry it took so long to write, but for a long time there wasn’t anything to say, and once the stuff started coming, I just didn’t have much time. I’ll try to be better about it from now on.
DISCLAIMER: To all who are fobbits-no disrespect meant.
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