53. Fair Trade?

Written: June 8 - 9, 2003

Sunday June 8th
Worked on creating a file folder with threat pictures from Iraq. Chad, Billy and Phil helped me. Didn’t get all the way through it but we got a good chunk completed.

Helped the new platoon leaders conduct their equipment inventories.

112 degrees outside. It is hot. 103 degrees in our tent today.

Fred returned from a flight to the Gardens of Babylon. He and Kenny took a lot of pictures. Pretty cool! Fred brought back a book of Iraqi and Iranian money for me. I will send a bill to each of the people I write letters to.

Kenny said that while he was flying the Ambasador to Iraq-Paul Bremer-the barrel fell off of his M-60. When it fell, the aircraft behind them saw it and marked the position with their GPS. They dropped the Ambassador off then returned to the position and had 2 aircraft searching a grassy field for a 2 foot metal barrel. SGT Almeda saw two civilians waving so they decided to investigate. The men were holding up the barrel. SGT Almeda, being the smart guy that he is, traded 2 MRE’s for the barrel. Mission accomplished.
The air conditioner and power is still messed up and is working on and off. It is a pain in the ass and goes from hot to cold.

I waited at Battalion for a call from Stefanie that I was supposed to receive at 6:15pm. The lines were down and I never got the call. Maybe someday soon…

Worked on mission for tomorrow to fly the AAFES General Manager for Iraq to a few different sites.

Tonight there is a large attack going into ACP Riverbend which is just northwest of the airfield. It is a small peninsula just out of the town of Balad and intelligence believes that there are some Ba’ath party leaders hidden in there. They are going to seal the peninsula and close it off from the land and water and infantry soldiers are going to go in and cuff everyone there. They will then go through with the help of Iraqi informants and look for the people they are looking for…it is speculated that there are 5 people who are on the most wanted list there. This mission will kick off around midnight tonight and should be wrapped up by noon tomorrow. We shall see. The word is that Balad is the hottest spot in Iraq as far as enemy activity is concerned.

Operation Peninsula Strike has begun.

Monday, June 9th
Woke up at 6:30am for a show time of 7am. The tent came to life and we all went out to shave, brush teeth and then got dressed.

At 7am we conducted a quick briefing of what today’s overall mission was so the crew chiefs could go out and preflight while the pilots finished gathering final information on the mission.

The sun was just coming up and it was already getting warm out. It was supposed to be a high of 112 degrees today.

We departed at 8:50am—on time—and flew down the route to Baghdad. On the way we flew over some SA-2 missiles so we decided to circle and take some pictures to add to our own Threat ID file that I am working on with the help of all the pictures people are taking. We found some launchers and missiles in the open and then Fred found another group hidden in some palm trees under some high tension wires.

We continued on and flew over the western side of Taji Airfield where we found many more vehicles. We took pictures of tanks, infantry vehicles, missile carriers and artillery pieces then continued on in to pick up our passengers.

We arrived at 9:30am—on time—and picked up 3 AAFES employees and headed to Al Asad Airfield. One of the employees, Mrs. Clift, is the AAFES, Iraq, General Manager. Her group is surveying military locations to place AAFES PX’s at their locations.

We arrived at Al Asad at 10:50am and shutdown. We waited for an hour and a half for transporation to come to get the AAFES people. Meanwhile, SPC Vazquez, SGT Weaver and I walked around looking at old S-60’s, MiG-23’s and 25’s and other enemy equipment. We also walked over to the M1A2 Abrams Tanks and were able to get a tour from the tankers who use them. I went down inside the turret and got to handle a Heat and Sabot round! Pretty cool!

Because the ground time was so lengthy, we had to cancel part of the mission to fly to Kirkuk. We loaded up and returned to drop the passengers off at Baghdad. Along the way, we flew over the Tigris River. It was extremely blue and there were all kinds of people swimming and jumping into the river. They were waving at us and showing off as they jumped in off of piers and old aqueducts.

It was extremely hot and the high temperature held true to what was forecasted. We just sweat in the aircraft and there was no break from the heat.

Today was SGT Almeda’s birthday. We sang him Happy Birthday and Billy gave him a cake that he robbed from the chow hall.

We also heard two rumors today: 1) We may be required to stay 9 months. This is based on a memorandum that said all units in country will stay for 9 months. 2) We may be back on the redeployment list. Fred went to the TOC to look but could not find it. Hmmm…

We dropped the passengers off in Baghdad then headed home. We took a few more pictures along the way then landed and shut down.

Heard that the attack last night into Balad went well. There were 4 American’s wounded in action (WIA) and none killed. I believe there were 398 Iraqi’s captured. I will have to gather more information and write about it when I do.

We watched, “The Gangs of New York.” It was a long and twisted movie that seemed hard to follow at times. It seemed to jump from point to point and it is hard to believe that there was any shred of truth to that story.

After the movie we were all outside grumbling about the air conditioning. We found out that Benny and Phil took the splitter apart in an attempt to get more air to their tent. Instead, they messed up the entire flow and severely degraded what we get. Fred, Chad, SGT Lemke and I worked on fixing the problem. We were all pissed because it was 1am, but in the end, it seems like we may have evened the flow out. We shall see tomorrow.

Went to bed at 1:30am.