Memorial Day

It is Memorial Day. Team Centaur extends its deep sense of appreciation to the families and loved ones of those who have paid the ultimate sacrifice in the service of their country, and in the cause of freedom.

I can't speak for how the day is being commemorated in other parts of Iraq, but in our little corner it is just like any other Monday, or Wednesday... or any other day. I had heard that there was some sort of ceremony this morning, but we were occupied with pre-mission preparations so were unable to attend. It isn't as if we really need to attend another ceremony. This battalion has lost so many soldiers in recent weeks that a holiday dedicated to their memory seems ridiculously superfluous. Portraits of the recent fallen adorn the plywood walls of the operation center. KBR, the primary service contractor to the military, has constructed a clever frame for all the photos with a nifty hidden feature: The frame can easily be expanded and enlarged to accommodate future portraits. Here every day is Memorial Day. The price of freedom is never taken for granted.

Honor the fallen; those who will never reap the rewards of for which they fought. Cherish the freedoms and ideals for which they and their forefathers sacrificed so much.

Just Some General Concerns

Sometimes it feels as if events conspire against you. There could be no other explanation for yours truly finding himself seated at a conference table surrounded by brass, and being the first called upon to present an ad hoc brief to none other than the Commanding General of the 3rd Infantry Division. The general attributed my poor tactical decision in choosing the seat at the end of the table - and therefore the default first position in the round-robin briefing process - to my lack of military experience. Lesson learned! How I ended up in this position is truly a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and then having my command realize that keeping me in the wrong place will get them off the hook! (Okay, that may not be entirely fair. They were all in the meeting as well...)

It was quite entertaining witnessing some of the manic preparation that takes place in advance of a visit by a two star general. At one point our command received word that the General prefers Diet Coke. So, we needed a couple of six-packs for the meeting. No problem, right? Waltz over to the dining facility and snag some cans. Wrong. Our commanding officer is stopped cold by a senior NCO who says that he cannot release any Diet Coke from the stockroom without a properly signed memorandum! So, can he just go around the front and grab some from the service line? No, only two drinks per soldier are allowed to leave the dining facility. But... this is for the Commanding General! Yes. Right. Need a memorandum. But... it is only a dozen cans of Coke! Yes. Right. Need a memorandum.

We got the memorandum.

The general never got around to having a Coke.

There Goes Lunch

This has been a relatively uneventful stretch for Team Centaur, as we're largely occupied with administrative duties. It has also been pretty somber as our supported unit has taken some heavy hits in the past couple of weeks. Additionally, the headlines about the missing soldiers has a lot of us on edge. It isn't that we're necessarily concerned about getting ambushed and captured ourselves. It is mostly a desire to do more; to be more active in assisting the search.

Had a heart stopping moment on a mission not long ago. It is common knowledge that the reliability of the Iraqi police is sometimes suspect. So, as we were driving out of large housing complex past a police checkpoint, I was alarmed to see the police guard sprint away from our vehicle just as we pulled along side. I was sure that we were about to get hit with something that goes boom. What I didn't know was that Bob was up in the turret tossing soccer balls to the kids off the back of the humvee, and the policeman was preparing snatch one of the balls up for himself.

Duane and Bob were assisting one of the maneuver units on a mission that was supposed to have them back at the base in time for lunch. However, on the way 'home' an IED on the opposite side of the road erupted beneath the cab of a dump truck. According to Bob, the first thing that went through his mind was, "Damn. There goes lunch." Our guys stopped to render assistance to the driver of the truck who was pretty badly shaken up, but probably didn't have any life threatening wounds. Another highlight of this trip for them was watching our soldiers launch a UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) smack into a telephone pole in front of an audience of enraptured Iraqi Army troops. Nice.

Centaur Gallery

Received this in the mail a couple of days ago, and decided that I had to share! Good job, kiddo!

Memorial

It has been a relatively quiet couple of days. Last night was pretty somber, though. We attended a memorial service for two soldiers killed in action over the weekend. This is the third one I've attended. There have been one or two others since we've been here, but we'd been out on missions and unable to attend. I hate these things. Back home these two guys were probably reported as just cold numbers in a steadily increasing death toll. I guess that's okay. I suppose we can't reasonably expect to have a meaningful personal connection to every death in this war. I didn't know either of these guys either. However, I saw the grief in the faces of buddies of mine that did know them. And I listened as their voices cracked when they spoke of the quality of their character. You didn't have to know these young men to feel deeply that something very special was lost.  I remember one of the speakers at the memorial service asking almost rhetorically, "Why is it always the good guys that get taken from us?" I don't remember what he said after that, but I remember looking at the sea of faces around me and thinking, "Because that is all we've got."

If it's Thursday, it must be Iraq

I've received all kinds of advice - frequently contradictory - regarding how and what to communicate to family and friends back home. Obviously, there are lots of things that I can't talk about because it would violate operational security, and I try to be very careful on that point. I know some soldiers write that it is very boring here, that nothing ever happens. Their perfectly justified rationale is that they don't see any value in causing loved ones to worry any more than they already do about those of us over here. Truth be told, it is a fact that life IS very boring here for a lot of soldiers. I am of the opinion, however, that it is not just the soldiers that are making sacrifices. Our families, friends, and loved ones are making sacrifices as well for us to be here. If we as soldiers are going to honor those sacrifices, then we owe them some return on their investment. It is incumbent upon us to lend value to the disruptions in the lives of our families and to the worry in their hearts, and to communicate to them as much as can prudently be told about our experiences.

 

I've been told that an involuntary physiological reaction to one's first combat experience is a sudden urge to defecate. (I would love to hear the anthropological explanation for this phenomenon.) This occurred to me a couple of nights ago as I was lying in an open field watching a farm house through night vision goggles, and the commanding officer crept up next to me and whispered in my ear, "...the enemy is right behind us." What followed were a series of instructions for movement and security. However, my mind was suddenly preoccupied with a rather complex and unwieldy plan to poop. (Yeah, well... see what happens to you the first time you find yourself the target of an al Qaeda ambush!) Fortunately, the sensation passed quickly and I was able to function as instructed. A notable exception was when I stumbled, fell into a full irrigation ditch and got stuck. While I managed to keep the cursing to a hoarse whisper, the flailing and splashing surely violated noise discipline.

 

The exfiltration from the mission brought a surreal moment. I was walking through a large field of waist-high wheat with a platoon of soldiers. We were moving slowly and widely spaced, scanning for movement in the palm groves abutting the field because we knew al Qaeda were out there. Our field of vision was limited to the circle of phosphorescent green provided by our night vision goggles, and the only sound was the rustling of the grain against our uniforms. It could have been dogfaces moving through hedgerow country in Northern France more than half a century ago, or it could have been grunts moving through rice paddies in Vietnam. Then a loudspeaker popped, and a call to prayer rippled across the landscape from a nearby mosque. It is one of those moments when a big part of my civillian brain suddenly stands up and shouts, "What in the world am I doing here?!"

 

The only other moment of note was when our guys did a controlled detonation of an IED that the bad guys had placed near the entrance of the base we were at. I missed the announcement, and was walking nearby on my way to talk to the Iraqi Army commander when it went off. Suddenly the universe cracked open, the sky went black, and it started raining debris. I dove for cover, then noticed the Iraqi soldiers just lounging around, talking and smoking. A quick glance around revealed that nobody witnessed my dramatics, so I brushed myself off, shoved my hands in my pockets and continued on my merry way.

 

Mostly these past few days have been exercises in soul-crunching boredom and tedium. When you wake up in the morning knowing that you have absolutely NOTHING to do until after sundown, and it is going to be hot, with precious little shade, it totally drains your energy and motivation. That said, when we did go out on missions, they physically smoked you. Duane and Bob went out on the first one, and returned in the early morning looking like they'd been dragged across Iraq from the back of a humvee. Then Duane and I got suckered into going out the next night, and returned in similar fashion. Duane took a beating on this trip. In addition to his standard equipment load, he threw on an addition 40 pound pack with our specialized equipment. Humping that kind of load over some of the worst terrain I've ever seen was quite a feat. Of course, he did do a couple of spectacular full-throttle face-plants (one of which broke the mount for his night vision goggles), but he came out of it with little more than a few muscle aches.

 

I'm sure more anecdotes will occur to me as time goes on, but for now it seems to me that this posting is pretty lengthy, and this is as good a time as any to pinch it off. God bless, and, in the words of the immortal Dan Rather, Courage.