Nemont
Well-known member
Here is an email I recieved from a buddy who I served with during the Gulf War. I thought some here might enjoy a first hand account from an enlisted man.
[ 06-01-2004, 14:43: Message edited by: Nemont ]
From: michael.bur****DELETED***
To:Brian Messner; Dave Koch; JP Stahl; Jeff Cole; Kelly Hefti; Matt %26 Mary Miller; SSG P Pena; Toby Floyd
Hi guys,
Sorry about the mass e-mail again, time is a luxury that I am finding harder to get all the time. We got back in from our roadside bomb search early last week and was supposed to have some down time. Of course, that never happens in Iraq! Started my week by flying to a place called Scania in central Iraq. The insurgents blew one of our bridges on MSR Kiev (the Russians named this route). Anyway, my job is take a platoon down there and destroy another section of this bridge so the Marines can rebuild it from the center out. I know how to blow a bridge, but when we do it, we destroy the whole bridge, they wanted 1/2 of it saved and could not damage the adjacent bridge 20m south. This is an engineers nightmare. Got all my figures and took my recon team back to BIAP. Wednesday morning we loaded 1200 blocks of c4 explosives on 4 Black-hawk helicopter and south we went.
After three calculated blows, the bridge comes down, mission accomplished with no major incidents. I was a happy man, then came the sand storms and grounded our birds. Of course, this is a one DAY mission, so we never packed our night vision, we were out of water and food and our satalite radios were about out of batteries. On the west side of the bridge, we had the Polish Army, the east side was the Ukrainian Army (they don't get along very well!) I found my guys a trench, we dug in, put out our machine gun positions and hoped for the best. About 3am, the Ukrainian Army opened up with all their big guns, not sure who they were shooting at, but it was rather hairy. I am not sure, but I think they get drunk and shoot their guns for fun. Made for a really long night and sleeping in a trench was not much fun! At 11am, 4 helicopter came in and picked up my crew. This is were it gets interesting. We still had high winds and lots of blowing sand, so the ride was rather rough. We l
oaded all our extra demo in one bird and it was supposed to follow us to BIAP. When we arrived in Baghdad, the demo was gone and so was the bird. I had about 400 blocks of explosives that I was signed for on that helicopter, that made me a little nervous! 6 hours later, we found the explosives in Balad, 70 miles north of us. Nothing in the army is ever easy.
Yesterday, we packed for another week of recon patrols in the lovely country. Of course, Murphy's Law takes effect. One of our semi trucks hauling supplies to BIAP rolled over in Baghdad. They sent my platoon in to do security on the site. Just happens to be the roughest part of Baghdad and we were told to hold the ground through the night or until we can recover all our lost supplies. Of course, good goes to bad quickly, we got ambushed by insurgents. What else can go wrong!!! We got our supplies back and everyone made it back safe. That was a slow week for us.
We did get marching orders again. The first of July we will be moving south to link up with a multi national division. Not sure what our job is, but I am sure that it will be interesting. Don't really care where we go, just as long as we get out of Baghdad. The airport is pretty safe, nothing happens on the base, but the second you leave the base, something always happens.
Need to keep running, need to pack. Thanks for all the e-mails and the support. As of yesterday, I have been in country 100 days, only 265 days to go, but who is counting?
Take care.
Michael
Here I am in the Helo flying to Scania to blow the bridge.
[ 06-01-2004, 14:43: Message edited by: Nemont ]
