Well, I made it back from my fourth trip to Iraq a few days before Christmas. It really came down to the wire if I was going to get home in time or not, but luck stayed with me. My fourth trip was much like the 1st three. I guess I have gotten "used to" Iraq as much as a person can be "used to" a war. One thing that I was never able to adjust to was being in an environment surrounded by people who wanted to kill you. Now, from my experience, most Iraqis' I came across were good people. But, you could always pick the ones out of a crowd that truly hated you and would love to see your head on a platter "quite literally".
Recently, I referenced a list of soldiers that I have trained on CROWS with a list coalition forces killed in action. I came up with 18 CROWS trained soldiers that have been KIA'ed. I knew there had been CROWS soldiers lost, but never knew quite how many. There have been countless more that were injured. Some of the students I knew well and kept up regular correspondence with, others I knew only during the brief time they were trained. I am having a memorial in their honor painted at the main CROWS fielding site at Camp Anaconda Iraq. There are some pictures in the below gallery of a draft of what will be painted. I will also be listing their names and BIOS on this site. Pictures from my fourth trip are below.
Fourth Iraq
Below is a recent interview and article that were done in Iraq on CROWS. The interview is currently airing on the AFN and Military TV networks, and the article appears in the Anaconda Times.
Interview Video (2 MB)
Article
Here are some videos of some of the daily activities in Iraq. Some are long and some are short, but they will give you an insight to what it is like to be there. Some of the videos were taken/made by me, and others were made by other soldiers I served with. Some of these files are very large and could take a while to load based on your connection speed. The files sizes are next to the link for reference.
Videos:
A day in Baghdad (8MB)
Baghdad2 (6MB)
Baghdad3 (5MB)
CROWS in Action (8MB)
101st (14MB)
3rd ID-American Soldier (6MB)
Here is a video that I made while on my second tour in Iraq. Since I made it, it features me a lot :).
myCROWS (19MB)
Night engagement (4.4MB)
IED's (improvised explosive devices):
These are some videos of IED's that were found on the roads and EOD was called in to destroy them. Once one was found, we would have to secure the area and it often took EOD hours to arrive on site and destroy the IED. Some of these videos are from the Thur site video in the CROWS station.
IED1
IED2
This shows one of our escort helicopters on the ground due to taking small arms fire. We are going to look for the ones responsible.
Helicopter down
Galleries:
Here are different picture galleries from my three tours in Iraq.
The first one is of a rocket attack on our fielding site. The rocket hit early in the morning. We were on the way to the fielding site to prepare for a mission when it hit. Luckily, no one was in the building at the time and no one was hurt. A few minutes later and it would have been a different story.
Rocket attack
This is one of my missions to Baghdad. On this trip, I had the chance to take a tour of the AL FAW palace. Once I was done playing, I had to get back to work.
Baghdad
This is a series of photos that follow a typical CROWS fielding class from beginning to end.
Class
The next few galleries will be of miscellaneous photos of Iraq. I literally have close to two thousand pictures from my three tours, so most of them will have no caption.
Iraq General
Me in the Media:
This is a clip from Newsreel Anaconda. It was shot during a mission to Range Hawaii, Iraq.
Newsreel Anaconda
A few articles about me.
Article1
Article2
06 June Incident
This is about one of the attacks on our convoy. This attack took place on 06 June 2006. You should first read the incident report about the attack by clicking the links below. For those of you that don't know, in the report I am referred to as the Truck Commander or TC.
Report page one
Report page two
After reading the report, you can then watch the video of part of the attack by clicking the link below. The video was taken from the thur site video on the CROWS system on our vehicle. So, you are seeing the same thing the CROWS gunner sees. The attack happened at night, so the video is in thermal. The hot objects will show up in the video as black.
06 June attack video
You can view pictures of the damage done to the lead vehicle by clicking the link below.
Damage
Death and Destruction:
I had to think long and hard about putting this gallery up. This will be a restricted gallery and in order to gain access you will have to request a username and password by emailing me by clicking HERE. This gallery contains some very graphic pictures of images that are seen everyday in Iraq. I had a lot of requests for such images and decided to put some of the ones I have here so that people, who want to, can see some of the harsh realities of war that they will never see on the news.
Death and Destruction Gallery
