Hello from Iraq! This letter is being written as a general synopsis of what the Charlie Company "Raptors" are doing in Iraq. It also contains some personal messages from some of here to some of you at home.
Please ensure the C Co. FRG gets this as some people couldn't remeber email addresses to send to.
Attached you will find 4 pictures:
-(top left) was taken at Camp Udairiis a picture that was taken on the flight line at Udairi just prior to us departing for Iraq. It is not a full company picture because some people were off flying missions or doing other things at the time.
-(top right) was taken in Iraq and is a picture taken during the beginning of the dust storm. Our Guidon was planted by CPT Hester here in Iraq upon arrival. It withstood the dust storm.
-(bottom left) was taken on 30 March and is a picture of most of the Raptors (with much less hair) in Iraq. There are a few people not in the photo who were off on other missions but that is the largest group we have had together in a while.
-(bottom right) was taken in Iraq and is a picture of Jim Hester, Fred S., Gordon Cimoli and Kenny Somkovic taken after the nasty dust storm that you will read about in this letter. As you can see, we hadn't shaved in 4 or 5 days and we were happy for it to finally stop.
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We have now been in the desert for nearly 2 months(nearly 6 months for some of us...says Shawn Holmes). Things have been interesting to say the least.
We started off with some great training, at night, using night vision goggles under zero illumination. It certainly challenged everyone and took a total crew effort to fly the aircraft.
We have a CBS reporter who is assigned to our Battalion. We have become pretty good friends and he is kind enough to get news for us off of his satellite connection and keeps us in touch with the War and the world.
As you may have read (definitely an article in the Washington Post), the Apaches that we are assigned to thought they would get into the fight early by conducting a Deep Attack. As you may have read, that did not go so well and to put it as the paper did, "the Apache attack helicopters came limping back to their staging base." That was our first day/night in Iraq.
After that the morale was pretty low but after hearing the news that the other units are slowly kicking some ass, our morale is back up again and we are ready to continue on.
We flew up here in MOPP level 1--with our chemical suits on and haven't taken them off since. For the first few days we were even sleeping in them, but now we have them right next to us if we are in the tents relaxing.
The weather is about 70 degrees during the day but there is still a cool breeze to help out. At night it is cold--45 degrees last night.
For 2 and a half days we endured (and I mean endured in the most dyer sense) the worst sandstorm that this area has seen in decades (again, a quote from the papers). The sand began to blow and visibility got down to less than 25 feet for most of the following days but one night, something very eerie happened--it was 4:00pm and the sun was blocked out by the sand. So much so that the only thing you could see was red light. It looked like we were on Mars. I have pictures of this that you can see when I am able to send another CD home to Stefanie. It was amazing. After that, the wind just stopped and it was calm for about 10 minutes before the direction changed and we got beat again and this time, the sun was completely blocked so it was dark and it was still 2 hours before sunset.
We made it through all that a little worse for wear. We hadn't shaved in 4 or 5 days and no one, not even the Command, cared because we didn't have any extra water other than what we had to drink. Prior to leaving Kuwait many of us had decided that we would go to war with a new look, so between times of suspected GAS attacks, when we were all in MOPP 4 (full chemical suits and masks) we shaved some heads. There were a few of the guys who were reluctant to get into the spirit, but after trying to dig the sand and mud of 4 days in the desert out of their hair pretty much everybody is completely bald. So now Chad Fenner and Matt Sheridan don't feel so left out. There is still a small group of non-conformists though led by CPT "Team B that's you Smitty" Smith, the Kurdish Guerilla Fighter Kamran Gardi and their band of minions to include Ed Jewel, Todd Peterson, Kenneth Martin, Christopher Robinson, Brandon Urell, and Benito Belgrave. Even Sam "The Don / Wookie" Denardi has lost his curly locks. Now to make up for the loss of hair on the head most of our crews are sporting some wonderful (slightly out of regulation) mustaches; although SFC Rodney Harris' looks a bit like pre-pubescent peach fuzz.
So, now we sit, poised in the heart of Iraq, continuing on with the War. We can see battles going on and hear rockets, artillery and tanks firing especially at night.
Keep an eye on the news and especially CBS. Our reporter is Bob Martin so if you catch anything that has his name on it, you can know that it is all being reported from where we are. Also, if you can check the archives of the Washington Post, Fred S. (my other pilot) and I (Gordon Cimoli) were in an article written about the "Raptor" mission here in Iraq. It was on page A16 on March 20th (Anabelle's birthday). It was a pretty good article and talked about our mission as Personnel Recovery pilots. From what I understand, she has written more articles about the 12th Aviation Brigade so look for them too-Mary Beth Sheridan is the reporters name and she is assigned to 12th Aviation Brigade.
I will not talk about specifics here but I will tell you that we are still continuing on and doing the best that we know how. We are all ready to come home and all miss our families more than you know.
As many of you have seen, I have been taking pictures with my digital camera, but it has finally succumb to the assault of sand and won't open because sand is caught in the lense. There are other cameras here and Stefanie is sending me a replacement so I will keep the pictures flowing. If you haven't seen any pictures of the Raptors yet, get with my wife, Stefanie, and she can burn a CD for you if you provide a blank disc. You can email her at mama2bea@hotmail.com
The S-1, CPT G. C. says that our pay problems have been fixed so look for the extra pays to finally kick in (except for those guys who deployed here in October, there is still some sort of problem that they (Finance) are still working on).
Finally, a bit of humor (although it may not seem like it from your perspective): Last night we were all performing various missions and some of us were relaxing. The sun was down and it was almost fully night. There was a light breeze blowing but it was pleasant. Kenny Somkovic and I were standing outside when we saw a huge explosion. We saw a wall of sparks fly up in the air and could see the splash from the explosion. Within a second we heard the blast. We also felt the shock wave as it hit us. From what we could see it was no more than 100 meters away. With that, we ripped open the door to our tent and saw 5 people scurrying to gather their helmets, protective masks and body armor. Kenny's bed is closest to the door but there were others (who do not live in this tent) trying to get out. SFC Cross had a canteen cup of coffee in his hand and was trying not to spill it. I was trying to push past Eirc Baucom and SFC Cross so I could get to my mask. It was like the Dr. Suess book where the two guys travel on the same path and neither will move out of the other's way...anyhow, I could see that he was holding his breath (so not to breath chemicals) so I let him by. SFC Cross's coffee was spilled and he was scattering to the end of the tent as I passed by. I gathered my mask, put it on and saw that everyone else had theirs on too. Fred S. and I helped each other get our body armor on and we were all preparing to head to our bunker...with our full chemical suits on...finally, SFC Harris yelled that it was explosive ordinance disposal (EOD) detonating something. So, we took our masks off and started telling War stories about where we were when the explosion happened. It was interesting and I know it doesn't sound funny, but to see everyone scattering for their gear was pretty funny...Eric Baucom said he tripped 3 times on the way to his tent.
So, never a dull moment here...Take care and keep on praying for us. I think we have a long way to go in our mission and it seems like we will be here for many more months.
Sincerely,
Gordon Cimoli