CADUDE and Team 4, newly rechristened "Landshark" took a little trip to the Green Zone/International Zone/Whatever you want to call it. We took the obligatory pictures of the famous crossed sabers, of which there are actually four sets.





Some Blackhawks were kind enough to land in front of them and make for a pretty nice picture opportunity.






Most of the areas inside the Green Zone are off limits to photography. Still, there is some pretty architecture and some truly unforgettable sights.






There are several of these amazing golden domes throughout the grounds. Even up close they are quite ornate.











Perhaps a little more mundane but these were also throughout the grounds. Many were used for Iraqi air defense early warning in the Gulf War and the opening of OIF.









My terp told me that this was a monument to the fallen Iraqis in the Iran/Iraq war. A war, incidentally, many Iraqis were surprised to find out had not been a total coup for Saddam.







We've also been doing our regular missions in Tisa Nisan. We attend meetings held by Iraqis. They have come so far, it's really remarkable. The meetings are completely planned and executed by the local Iraqi government with very little input solicited from us. Less than a year ago, we were not even invited to these meetings. Now we are welcome and attend them regularly.

The Iraqis are now discussing how much security has improved thanks to Iraqi National Police efforts. Very little mention is made of Coalition Forces. Though that may not sound like a good thing, it's a great thing. Average Iraqis thanking an Iraqi institution, like the National Police, for the security improvements is huge. It is the face of legitimacy. It is how this thing will start to end.

There are some things that we have become quite accustomed to seeing during our patrols.





Dogs. Everywhere.













Kids. Everywhere. The children are one of my favorite parts of what I do. A huge thanks to my wife for sending all of the stuffed animals. The kids love them.









The kids will take just about anything we offer them. Of course, the boys prefer soccer balls. I don't think an Iraqi boy can have too many soccer balls.








And, unfortunately, garbage. Trash is still a big problem here. Of course, our job is to help out with that and there is nothing I'd like to do more than post another picture of this area in a few months... but completely clean. On the other hand, we can't drive down a normal city street without seeing street sweepers and military age men cleaning up trash.




Garden update: The local Iraqi stuff I replanted completely died. The other seeds have not come up yet. They were supposed to take a few weeks to germinate so I am hopeful still.

We're trying to catch what we can of the NCAA tournament from here. It looks like Duke squeaked by. I'll be driving around with my Duke magnet on my HMMWV for the next few days. Maybe that will help?

CADUDE does some gardening

As I might have mentioned, my room stinks. There is a poorly capped off bathroom in my room and it used to be a hospital room so there is a variety of stinks, smells and olfactory delights in my room. No amount of cleaning has really changed it. Plus, the dry dusty smell that prevails in Iraq is ever present.

So, my wife sent me some seeds so that I could start a little garden and see if maybe I could get some plants to help me deal with the stink in here.

I live on the second floor so I couldn't really plant a garden in the ground. And, of course, I can't just run out to the nursery to get potting supplies so I had to get creative. I consulted with my wife, since she is blessed with a green thumb.

My gardening supplies ended up being: four empty water bottles, two iterations of coffee grounds, a box of dirt and sand, seeds and some plants I dug up when I was getting the dirt from outside.

I mixed some sand from the horseshoe pit outside in with the dirt, busted up the dirt clods and removed the larger rocks. Yes, I put it all right on my floor. It's covered in dust/sand no matter what I do so I didn't see too much point in worrying about some dirt on the floor.

I cut the top 1/4 off of each bottle to make my planters. I also bored some holes in the bottom for drainage.
Then, I filled the bottles up with the dirt and put the coffee grounds on top for fertilizer. I labeled the bottles and then followed the directions for planting the seeds. Then, I covered everything up with a 1/4" of soil. The seeds are Lavender, Rosemary and Blue Fescue, along with whatever the heck the plants that I dug up are.

Here is the finished product outside on my "balcony". They'll get good sunlight during half of the day. We're supposed to have thunderstorms here on Thursday but, after that, I'll be watering them every day. Except for the plants I got from outside. I daresay that they probably don't need a lot of water or they really wouldn't be growing here.
After digging around in Iraqi dirt, I thought it would be prudent to protect myself. It would not be cute if I picked up some sort of ear -deforming bacteria in my gardening.I'll take pictures as seeds sprout and I transplant everything. Hopefully, I'll be giving Iraqi sheiks some of my homegrown Rosemary as a gift... and destinking my room with lavender.

Rockets obey the laws of gravity

Someone pointed out that my room looks pretty good, but that it is missing any Duke paraphernalia. Well, not quite... there was a Duke calendar hanging up and I have a Duke magnet on my locker, you just couldn't see either of them. Thanks to my amazing wife, I now have my Duke flag from my first tour back in Iraq with me. The only thing better than CARE packages are CARE packages from Gretchen with Duke stuff in them! For the record, I hung the Duke flag after they lost to UNC. Poop on Tyler Hansbrough. Oh well, we'll just have to beat them for the NCAA championship.

Now, for the apocryphal title of today's blog... Some of you may have seen news reports that point out that violence is trending back upward in Baghdad. Some are trying to say that the violence is a response to the draw down of troops here as the surge comes to a close. Fair enough. I wonder where they get that though? There are less reporters in Iraq now than there have been since the war began. In fact, I've seen one the entire time I've been here. The truth is, most of the "news" you get in the States comes from stringers here. I have personally been present for events this time and the last time I was here that were covered by these stringers. I will lose no sleep in saying that all reports proved to be factually inaccurate. So, take a deep breath and get your grain of salt when you read these reports. There is often a kernel of truth in them, but they are nothing to hang your hat on.

With that said, my wife had the distinct displeasure of being online with me last night when two rockets flew over my building and detonated. We were typing to each other when it happened but we transitioned to the voice component of our chat program and she, unfortunately, had to hear the announcement of "Incoming, Incoming, seek cover" along with the alarms. Other than a quick trip to make sure my guys were all accounted for and ok, she was with me the entire time. Now, I relate this because I want everyone to know the amazing woman that I am married to. I, personally, cannot imagine what she must have gone through in hearing that. I do believe I may well have lost it. Yet, she handled it with the good grace and compassion of a saint. I am not afraid to admit that it was scary on my end. And, it's hardly the first time I've been rocketed or mortared, but it certainly was a little more real than usual. She stayed with me as I calmed down and would not let me go until she knew that all was well on my end. Then, she took our son out with his friend and had what would appear to most as a normal day.

One of the downsides of being a Reservist is that she is without the support net of concerned wives and girlfriends that exists in Active Duty units. She had no other wives to call. No one to tell her that "Bob has been rocketed a thousand times, don't worry about it..." Still, she went about her business. Keeping her promise to our son and his friend to take them to the mall. Finding time to go and buy things to put in the mail for me.

I am not surprised by any of this, but I am humbled by it. I am married to an incredible woman. Compassionate, intelligent, solid and ever capable.... (and smoking hot!). She is my best friend and I would be a shadow of the man I am without her. I may never understand how she does what she does, but I will never stop being thankful for it. I am not sure that I will ever be able to fully repay her... but that won't stop me from trying.

I had a request to describe an "average day" for me. I imagine that it will not surprise anyone to hear that there is really not such a thing as an average day here. But, I'll give it my best.

I get up around 5AM. I take care of personal hygiene, grab a pot of coffee and spend time with my wife and son online. Around 9 I head to my team room downstairs. It is a small office area with maps, a few tables, my secret laptop, a secure voiceline and a small TV. When not preparing for, or on, missions it is where my team and I spend most of our time. Typically, we are either preparing for a mission or recovering from a mission. We clean our weapons, do paperwork, conduct analysis of the parts of Baghdad that belong to my team and joke around. Around 11:30 we head to the chow hall for lunch. The food is good and the selection is good too. Believe it or not, there are Soldiers coming back from Iraq fat now. After lunch, we spend more time working and generally try to hit the gym. We go back to chow around 5:30 or 6 and then back to the team room for a teleconference with our company commander at 7. After that, I head back to my room to spend more time with my wife. I have internet in my room but it is achingly slow. It will take me about an hour to post this blog, for example. I'm typically in bed by midnight.

That's a day with no mission. On mission days, we tend to meet in the team room two hours before it's time to go. We make sure all of our weapons are working, get our maps and communications stuff together and head to our vehicle. Once there, we make sure our vehicle is in good working order, turn on and test all of the different electronics in our vehicles and then go to the mission brief. We leave the FOB and head for wherever we are going. The missions vary greatly and most of their contents do not belong in a public forum but it's safe to say that we are always out to engage the Iraqi people, understand their problems and find out what we can do to help the Iraqi government take care of their people. And, of course, we throw out a LOT of Beanie Babies and soccer balls. When we are done, we come back to the FOB, refuel, clean our weapons and discuss what went well and what did not.

Our days are always pretty busy. We wouldn't have it any other way... a bored team is a sad team.

I'll post again soon. Anyone who wants to know anything, just let me know.

In Iraq

I'm here. Or, to be more accurate, I should say I've been here for a few weeks. We hit the ground running here and it's been nearly daily missions with very spotty internet access.

I'm finally settled in with a room. It's nice to stop living out of a bag after everything I "need" fitting into a few duffel bags for the last three months. My room:
Our team room and our rooms are located in what used to be a hospital on FOB Rustamiyah in southeastern Baghdad. It's dusty, debilitated and more than a little smelly. But, hey, it's relatively safe and, other than helicopters landing outside my balcony at all hours, it's not bad.

Our missions are conducted mainly in a part of Baghdad called Tisa Nisan. The people that live here are a mix of Shi'a, Sunni and Christian. There is very little in the way of sectarian violence that you probably hear about on TV. The truth is, the surge worked, and the bad guys are on their heels. Attacks are down across the board. Metrics that measure quality of life tend to be up overall. There are still bad places... and bad people that need to be killed. But it's a much different Iraq than the one I left.

When we go out, I keep my camera handy and I love taking pictures of kids and dogs. Make no mistake, Baghdad is on the mend. Attacks, when they happen, tend to happen in more affluent neighborhoods. In fact, the attack that took place yesterday was in Karadah and that may well be the nicest part of Baghdad. The bad guys are in despair and the only real tactic they have left is to try and dissuade the people in charge from working with Americans and the rest of the international community.

Yesterday, we passed the Baghdad Iraqi Theater Company:
They are open for business and doing theater from Iraqis and foreign shows as well.

Everywhere I go, I see the problems inherent in a country that is getting back on its feet. There are police everywhere. In fact, the biggest difference between this tour and 2004 is that I hear sirens all the time. Police, fire trucks and ambulances... it's really amazing.

I should be able to post more now that I've got a semi-reliable internet connection and my team is starting to find it's battle rhythm.

I've been in the field... or, the desert to be more accurate.

Odd that living in a cruddy tent in the middle of nowhere doesn't really count. We had to move to a different cruddy place to do convoy training and close quarters marksmanship. The training is run by the civilian company I work for and I was pretty impressed. It's nice to work for a great company. I know those guys make good money but it's not just money that would convince a bunch of guys to live out in the middle of nowhere so they can train Soldiers.

So, the plus side of the training is that there are lots of camels. I had forgotten how big they are. They stink too. A special kind of stink where you wonder how anything could smell that bad and then you remember that things that live in the desert can really stink.

Everyone keep me on my toes.... I have vowed to not once use dessert when I mean desert.


There are bedouins out there and the romantic notion of them riding camels across the desert is not the case anymore. It's hard to tell in that picture but that's the back of a big truck. Some of them had generators running outside their tents, no doubt so they could watch TV. It is an interesting collision of thousands of years and the modern world.





The last thing I want to say on this Valentine's Day is for my wife. She has suffered these deployments with incredible grace and amazing strength. The Army has taken from her far more than it has ever given her. This Valentine's Day is yet another in a long series of holidays and special days that my wife has had to miss with me as I do my job.

So, I want to say that I love her. I love her and I'm not entirely sure I could do what she does. I owe her so much and I remember that every day. She is my light and my strength. Hold strong wife, this will be over before we know it and I will be there to begin to make this up to you.

A small update. Pictures!

This is inside of the tent where I live. It holds 60 dudes and all of their stuff












This is a very small part of tent city where I live. Imagine this times about a hundred... and you'll get a general idea of the size of the camp where I live.











More to come soon.

We are in Kuwait.

Our flight left Fort Bragg and we arrived in Shannon, Ireland. It was dark outside so I can say that I've been to Ireland but I can't say that I've actually seen it. I managed to resist the urge to buy Guinness memorabilia and made no silly comments about how lame it was to be in Ireland and not able to drink. Still, I look forward to the day when I can visit properly. Besides, I felt more than a little guilty being in Ireland without my wife.

After our short layover in Eire, we flew into Kuwait. The airport looks remarkably similar to the way it did in 2004. It was a bit disconcerting to see as many old Russian aircraft there as American. Interesting how times have changed.

A few hours later we moved to our temporary home, a base southeast of the Iraqi border.

It occurs to me that I should mention that this blog will always be intentionally vague on certain points. We have something called Operational Security (OPSEC) and it makes the bad guy's job a little harder by not inadvertently divulging intelligence. Contrary to popular thought, most intelligence is developed from "open source" intelligence, like blogs. Intelligence is really a big puzzle and I'm not going to give the bad guys any pieces.

Anyway, we'll be here for a while training and acclimating. It is pretty cold here at night with day time temperatures in the 60s but with a very stiff wind. The standard of living isn't bad. There are coffee shops (including, believe it or not, a Starbucks), Taco Bell, Baskin Robbins and all sorts of little boutiques run by Filipinos, Pakistanis and a handful of other nationalities. Funny, after so much study of the Arabic language that none of us have needed it yet. We live in 60 man tents and have Port-O-Johns and shower trailers. The water is always very cold but there is no such thing as a bad shower in the desert.

Clearly, internet is available. I am writing this sitting on my cot in our tent. The connection is slow and very spotty. Still, I cannot complain. Any communication is good communication.
And now, duty calls. Perhaps my next post will have something more interesting...