New year, new pictures

Well, 2006 can only be better than 2005. Not too much news, more of the same old missions. We've gotten some new people, I'm working on getting pictures of them all. And since the old pictures page was full, I started a new one. Check it out!!


Later,
Trey

Merry Christmas/Happy New Year...

...back to Iraq for me. Tomorrow I fly back to Iraq, but in the meantime, I've posted a bunch of pictures on the other site. Sorry for not posting when I first got back, but I've been spending lots of quality time with Linds!
Steph: I'm ok. If you don't hear from me, that means that I'm ok!
Later everyone
Trey

Suicide attack?

Two saboteurs came into our compound tonight. They were small furry creatures determined to kill us and destroy our way of life. The two cats crawled under a transformer and bit through the wires killing all the power at Camp Justice. And that's when one of the cats caught on fire.

Our dog buck started barking, and that's when we noticed that the large transformer was engulfed in flames. We put the burning cat out with a fire extinguisher...three times. It just kept catching on fire. After the third time, the other cat crawled out and ran off, quite literally, still smoking. Other than that, not too much going on. Thank you everyone who has sent stuff. Anything I haven't needed has been given to other soldiers who do need it. Thank you everyone for your support.

Later,
Trey

Elections be gone!

So Iraq can go back to a dictatorship now. I'm JOKING. But seriously, these things involve quite a bit of work, and we get to do it all over again in two months. Oh boy. I think we're all still coming up for air, and since there were no major attacks, we think that they're still looming on the horizon. There could well be a big one in the next couple of days even! So we'll be careful and stay as safe as possible.

Sgt. Evenson renlisted today. Congratulations, I guess. We all joked with him that he was "taking one for the team". The pictures have been posted, hope you like them.

Lindsey's birthday is nearly here, and I won't be there. Which sucks. So I'll eat ice cream for every meal this Thursday in her honor. Aside from that, not much is going on.
 
Later, Trey

Constitutions and such

Well, here we go. Getting ready for the referendum has been a major full time job. I'd estimate that we were working something like 80 to 90 hours each week for the last couple of weeks just to get ready for this stupid thing. So once life settles down to a more normal (whatever that means) pace, I'll try to update this site more often. I really would like to post more often, but I have to have at least 5 hours of sleep each night or I'll fall asleep on patrol! I posted 4 more pictures today on the other site. And I'll post more here as soon as I something newsworthy happens.
Later,
Trey

Laundry and poop

If you're still reading after a title like that, I'm impressed with your fortitude. More pictures are on my other website. A quick warning, stop reading this posting at any point in time. It gets grosser by the line, only read what you can handle. That said, on to the laundry. I'm out of the clean stuff, and living in the dirty stuff. My laundry is done, but we've been out so much that I can't get to the laundry place while it's still open to reclaim my clothes! Oh well. It's not like they're going to stay clean when I wear them...

And now for the poop. This is a two part story. The plain gross will be first, then the funny part. We went to a part of town that had so much sewage in the road that it lapped up to the base of the doors on our trucks. And it wasn't just a small puddle, it was a series of puddles that were from 50 feet to 300 feet long, and were up to 24 inches deep. It was all bright green like antifreeze and had floating matter in it. I'm am SO grossed out. I don't know if anyone reading this is familiar with the story of the sand I dug up in Nice, France, but this smell was even worse than that one. (Mom, Dad, Rachel and Jim, now you know I'm serious!) I nearly puked off the roof of my truck.

So here's the funny part about poop. There was this little naked baby playing beside his house, and he squatted down to pick up a rock. As he squatted he pooped right there between his feet. Like it was an afterthought while he was busy playing. He stood back up with the rock, and dropped it...right in his pile of poop. In order to pick it up, he moved over to the side, stepping in his poop. Then he picked up the rock, wiped it on himself, and walked through the poop. It was SO gross and SO funny. His parents were horrified. I wish I had some baby wipes with me to give to them. But it was funny. Now we know why babies wear diapers.

Know what? While we're on the subject, I'll throw in a freebie! This story is a true story from Sgt. Herrera who was in Afghanistan a year or so ago. They were out at this distant camp in the middle of the mountains. The place had like 2 porta-johns, and they'd been out in the hills for weeks. So he gets all excited about sitting on a toilet seat and gets in line. Once he's in and seated, that's when a mortar attack starts. The rounds started landing VERY close to his location. So, in order to save his life, he pulled up his pants and ran from the crapper...without wiping or finishing his work. There was poo spread all over his butt, leg, back and thighs. He ended up not being able to change clothes for several weeks after that. He was wearing his only T-Shirt, and cut off the entire bottom of it to clean himself off with. Now THAT is a war story! You can't make that stuff up.

If you're still reading and actually laughing, your name is Nick or Ox. Laters,
Trey

Pictures, dogs and packages

I got the digital camera!! Jim and Rachel helped me buy it to post pictures for everyone to see, and it arrived in the mail from Lindsey today! So here's the most recent pictures, I'll keep posting the new ones to my "We Rock Out" site as I take them.

Some of the pictures are of Buck, the dog. Sgt. Huff chose the name, since he loads his shotgun with Buckshot. While technically a stray (due to Army policy), we're going to make sure that Buck is a well cared for stray. He's still really tiny, but didn't seem to mind us kidnapping him from his mother at all.

Finally, thank you EVERYONE for the packages. I have more mail than everyone else in the entire Squadron. It's GREAT. Thank you so much for your support, letters, cards, books, candy, rags, and all sorts of stuff! I'm going to try to write thank you notes to everyone...but that may just be good intentions that get squashed by the realities of being in a combat zone. I'll try.

Laters,
Trey

Soap opera?

Well, we've been here a while, and the novelty of it all is wearing off. Actually, it's long gone. But the good news is that the weather is cooling down, and time is passing. Slowly.

The story of the day is about an Iraqi man who is in the Iraqi National Guard. His wife is in the same unit. As I was exiting the laundry facility today, he came up to me and tried to tell me something, but without an interpreter, we got nowhere. So he called over a boy who speaks about 5 words of English and I heard this exact phrase from the young man: "Durka Durka man work Durka Durka Sgt. Major No Good Durka Durka work here Durka Jihad." In other words I understood NOTHING.

Fortunately (or very unfortunately) a real interpreter was walking by at the time and we waved him over. The man spoke rapidly to the interpreter for about 10 minutes without pausing to breathe. When the interpreter finally stopped him, he explained to me that the man had beaten his wife (acceptable by Arab culture, shocking to me) and was very upset that a high ranking officer was interfering with his personal life. This particular Iraqi Colonel had seen her bruises, and used them as an opportunity to start an affair with his wife. When the upset husband had gone to his office to tell him to stop, he was confronted by his wife and the Colonel. His wife told him that she wants a divorce (presumably to be with the Colonel) and the Colonel told him that he must give her the divorce and never tell anyone about the incident or he'll throw the man in jail on charges of being a terrorist, or have him killed in an operation.

Now how do you explain to a man who's just told you all of this information that you're just a Private. You can't make anyone do anything, and you're lucky if you get your own work done without getting yelled at? So I dutifully wrote all the names down on a sheet of paper and presented them to my Section Sgt. He laughed and said that he was NOT the man for the problem, because his solution would be to shoot the Colonel. I don't need to tell you in which part of the body he planned to shoot the man, but I can assure you that the Sergeant was more that willing to do it. And I can't really say that he's wrong. He sent me to our Captain that advises the Iraqi National Guard, and hopefully everything will get resolved. Strange story about abuse of power. A strange thing to get involved in while dropping off laundry. But the real question is if a man will abuse power for sex, what will he do for money or for more power? Is this a passionate mistake, or just a piece of a life of corruption? And the guy is supposedly our ally.

Later
Trey

Birthdays, things and stuff

Yesterday was an unremarkable birthday, fortunately my cousin Julia vindicated me by having an exciting wedding. Congratulations! Hope you all have a GREAT honeymoon!

Everyone has been asking what we do all day that keeps us so busy, and I really can't give details about that. I can say that we drive around all the time! And you can't even imagine the amount of time we spend on vehicle maintenance. I guess when you drive like it's a demolition derby, you can expect to spend all of your free time working on the vehicle. Our policy is to drive like we have a death wish, then maybe they'll leave us to our own devices.....

As for the "uproar" about the British attacking the Iraqi Police, I can't say I blame them. There are some great Iraqi Police out there, but there are plenty of crooked ones as well. The police are aware of nearly half of the roadside bombs that get placed in Baghdad. The insurgents just pay them off. So I would not be the least bit surprised if the British found the police opposing them. On the other hand if you read the account of the British, you will quickly see that they were up to something suspicious. I'm sure that after a solid investigation, both parties will be found to be at fault. Enough of that.

Linds emailed me an AP article about more prisoner abuse. It should be noted that CNN chose NOT to post the article. Apparently it is at least somewhat suspect of being fake. It claims that soldiers of the 82nd Airborne Division abused prisoners near Fallujah on a regular basis with their chain of commands approval. But it also refers to them as "elite" and says that smoking a prisoner means beating him until he passes out. The 82nd Airborne is not an elite unit, just an Airborne Division (we call them the 82nd "Airplane"). And anyone who has spend more than 15 minutes in the Army can tell you that smoking someone has NOTHING to do with physical beating, it's just being forced to exercise until it hurts. I'm sure that there is some small element of truth to the claims, there usually is in these matters, but it's time to quit adding to the truth to make news more sensational. The truth is news enough.

Most importantly I would like to say that the claim that the abuse in Abu Graib was carried out by "military police and military intelligence personnel" is a complete lie. It was ONLY the military police. Everyone wants to blame the interrogators because they're an easy scapegoat, therefore I will repeat myself...

Quit adding to the truth to make news more sensational.
The truth is news enough!!

Short nights and crazy days

First I'd like to apologize for not finding time to post something sooner. We've been SO busy lately that I've been getting 5 hours of sleep or less. We're not out the entire time, but we work like 16 hours, then it takes time to wind down, let the adrenaline die down, shower and then finally sleep. But I'm going to try to make updates a priority, it's only fair to all of you.

Bad news first. Lindsey was hospitalized yesterday, she had extreme abdominal pain, and it turns out it was from a cyst. I didn't even know about it until about an hour ago. I feel so powerless and like a deadbeat husband. I'm out running around Baghdad and my wife can't even get hold of me to let me know that she's sick. She's getting better now, and they're going to try to figure out what caused it.

Now for the good news! I'm starting to get packages! The APO address does in fact work, and thank you everyone for sending stuff! I've been getting books and food and rags (very important, I need them to clean weapons and stuff!). So thank you to everyone who's taken the time to send me stuff. I promise to share with the other guys.

Well, it's late, and I've got to get some sleep. Later,
 
Trey