Greetings dear readers. As you have no doubt noticed, there was no update last Friday. This is because the regularly scheduled DONSA was shanghaied, hornswaggled, and hog-tied into submission. Hopefully this week will prove better. The days since have been not filled to the gills per-se, but enough so that I could not get all my feces collinear for coherent posting. I did get the photos picked out and photoshopped on Saturday, but then life intervened and here we are. No real highlight for any of our team this week, just some class photos and an interesting series of an inbound dust-wall.
We had another class. After the ‘everybody was late’ fiasco of the previous lesson, we showed up a half hour early expecting to have to round up the jinood (plural of jundi, an Iraqi soldier if you haven’t caught that yet). Lo and behold, what should we find when we get there but:
On with the class then! SSG(P) Moncree knocked out the “Actions on” portion of the class, with the help of one of our interpreters.
We then moved out to the ‘lane’ portion of the class. CPT Stangle shadowed the IA LT who was the officer in charge, but since he’s one of our more squared away counterparts, he didn’t need much help playing his role on the lane.
The Juggernaut and I shadowed the two ‘squad leaders’ during their runs, the first of which was a bit of a pain. We were doing an IED class, and of course since they had just gotten the classroom portion, Everything on the back 40 became an IED, to include some random pipe, a water pump, and a bunch of c-wire.
Afterward, while waiting on the small demonstration by EOD, we got the usual ‘jundi-swarm’.
God help you if a camera comes out, because then EVERYBODY wants to have their picture taken. It’s worse when out in the population with kids around, but not much so.
Of course it wouldn’t be a complete week without a patrol, and this week was as normal. However, while out on the checkpoints we noticed that the weather was beginning to turn, and that the southern sky was darkening pretty rapidly. We rolled back in at the FOB just as the reason for the dark sky made its presence known. Upon seeing this as we rolled up at the fuel point, we thought discretion the better part of valor, and decided to top the truck off later. I got the 240 down and buttoned up the hatch just as it started raining mud. I wish I had shot these 3 from one spot so I could stitch them together, but I barely got them snapped as we were pulling into the fuel point, and couldn’t waste any time taking more shots. Oh well. They work pretty well as a series too:
[FEB 2015 Update:] I am going back through and re-uploading a bunch of these old images since the links broke when I transitioned away from jim-n-mandie.com. With several generations of Photoshop having been developed in the interim, and my skills in said program being MUCH better than they were in 2008, here’s a complete panorama shot:
Hay does look like a mess to be out in. hope you got in side before the sand paper works on your face.
Dad