Road tripping in Iraq

Hello Everyone,
I know I said I would update the BLOG about every two weeks and it has been more like a month, that is probably going to be par for the course. Sometimes there will be two updates in the month and sometimes there will only be one. No excuses sometimes I just don't get around to it as often as I want to.

I'm not going to talk a whole lot about my work with the Iraqis this last month. Let's just say that it is frustrating. You start to get the relationship with your counterpart built and to the point where you can start getting some things done that you want to do and then poof! They are off on leave for 9 days and you can't get anything done because his assistant doesn't want to make a decision in fear of making his boss mad. AAAGH! My fine young Marine assistant Cpl Mafou has made some strides in the last week getting one of the Mulazeem's (Lieutenant) in HSC to help put the Iraqi jinood (soldiers) where they are supposed to be slotted and that's what I'll be going over the next week or so while my counterpart is on leave.

Now on to more interesting things. Road tripping Iraq. One of the reasons that there are not as many IED attacks on Coalition soldiers in areas outside of Baghdad or other cities is that you fly on helicopters to go from city to city. Gone are the days of the Mad Max runs we used to do in 2003-2004 when it was pedal to the metal, Taji to Tikrit or wherever we were going, changing lanes frequently to avoid being along one median for too long. Those of you who have been here know what I'm talking about. Instead, as I said you fly everywhere. That makes for some interesting travel stories, none of which have happened yet to me of course, but my boss has been a victim twice. My team leader has had to attend a meeting at Al Asad which is about 2 hours away by HMMWV and he has also tried to do a recon of our future battlespace out by Rutbah, which required him to stop and change helicopters at Al Asad. Both times he was delayed by weather (dust storms, rain, snow) and even bumped by a Marine general whose entourage took up both helicopters in the flight. He has spent almost as much time at Al Asad the month of February as he has at Ramadi. So even though it is safer it makes for a lot of wasted time if the pilots decide not to fly because of "crappy" weather, causing my boss to not to want to fly anywhere.

While the team leader was stuck in Al Asad I did get to do a little HMMWV road tripping in the Ramadi area. The pictures are from that road trip. I was taking our Iraqi Brigade Commander Staff Brigadier General Sabah to do a recon of a combat outpost he was told to put our 2nd Battalion in when they returned from a 4 month mission in Diwanyiah, somehow we got diverted due to a misunderstanding over who controled the battlespace (that's an interesting story, just not for a blog), needless to say the confusion involved individuals who outrank me and I got caught in the backlash. What happened though is we never got to our original destination and ended up crossing the Euphrates on a ferry made from a span of a pontoon bridge. That's what the first picture is from. Pretty interesting experience.

The last two pictures are of Iraqi Police F350s that they use to patrol the roads with. It's very interesting to see a 1-ton American truck come barreling down the road weaving in and out of all of these little Bongo trucks (bongo truck can be seen just to the left of the F350 in the second picture, notice the size difference). Not only are these trucks bigger than anything else on the road but they are typically driving like a maniac with some guy holding on for dear life to the machine gun that is mounted in the bed, head scarf flying in the wind (The last picture illustrates this a little bit from the stationary position, they drive so fast I can never get an action picture). At times it kind of reminds of Missouri during deer season, without the fully automatic machine guns of course. Although I do know some people who would hunt deer with machine guns if they could. You know who you are, admit it!

OK that's enough for now. I hope everyone enjoys this.

Happy Valentines Day

Macen got his first real Valentine and he loved it. He puts everything in his mouth but he just carried the Valentine around for about 20 mins and didn't even attempt to mouth it. He was so proud!

We love you Macen!

Standing in rocking chair

He's too young for this already! But he listens well ;)

More walking

Its short but full body walking. He can now make it all the way across the living room, turn around and head back to his next destination before falling or bending for a toy.

Walking

Here is Macen walking last night. It's short so I will try to get another video with feet included shortly.

9 months old

Macen has had another big month. He started off the new year by saying dada. A couple of weeks later he started saying mama and a bunch of other sounds. Usually he just plays and jabbers but when he wants to have a 'serious' talk with toys or books, he uses a deep grunt with a very serious face.

He got his two top teeth this month and those were not fun. They brought more pain than the bottom ones. Around that time, he realized he could use his teeth to eat. So I got him baby mum mums and he loves them. He also started refusing solid food so we went to puffs and cheerios only. He has enjoyed feeding himself. I've slowly started to reintroduce solid food again. I have finally accepted that he is just a snacker. I thought that would change when I got him sleeping thru the night (Yipee!) but no such luck. So he eats all day it seems. On a positive note, I have finally stopped pumping. I have enough milk frozen for him until he is a year old, maybe longer. I had forgotten what its like to not be attached to a machine every 3 hrs.

Macen has gotten brave in the tub and has started playing on his tummy occassionally. I've started a little bit of sign language with him which he thinks is funny. I probably should have started it when he was 5 months old and mimicing itsy bitsy spider but I didn't. He does try to mimic some gestures I do as well as words I say.

Macen is still as active as ever. He likes when I lay on the floor and he can crawl over me and then back the other way. A couple of weeks ago he started taking steps. It was always just a few steps to reach me or the sofa. He wasn't showing any interest in actual walking on his own but last weekend he started walking. James and I were both early walkers so we were thinking Macen would follow in our footsteps. And he hasn't wasted anytime taking on more than he can handle. He thinks he is ready to run. He falls often as he gets in a hurry and starts breathing heavy thru his nose and mouth in excitement.

He gets to hear a story from daddy every night. James recorded stories before he left (thanks for the idea Misty) so we listen to one every night before bed and I go thru the story book with him. He recognized James' voice when we started about a month ago. I also got a poster of James for Macen to say goodnight to. He has always smiled really big when he sees "daddy" and last night he leaned toward it for James to kiss him.

This is such a fun age as Macen continues to learn at leaps and bounds. We are so amazed with him.

Settling In

Well January is coming to an end and we are getting settled into a routine finally. I'm staying busy working with my Iraqi counterpart, taking care of my duties as the Team XO and trying to work out regularly.

I'm working with the Iraqi G-1 section, for those of you who don't speak Army, that is personnel and Admin, not exactly what I thought I was going to be doing when I began training for this mission. As I have been observing the G-1 section I have noticed several areas that I think I can help them, Pay, Promotions, and Personnel Manning. Today I'll just talk about the Personnel Manning. One of the complaints from the Iraqis is that they don't have enough people to do all of the jobs, well its all a manner of how you look at things. From an American perspective they are way over strength. The brigade headquarters is supposed to have 189 people and they actually around 330. The actual number makes sense when you understand that at any given time 30% of them are on vacation (mujaas). Leaving only 200 or so available for work at any given time. The Iraqi Army has a very liberal vacation policy every soldier gets 9 days off a month, this is mainly in order for the soldiers to take their pay home since the banking system here is undeveloped and not really effective. I've been working with the G-1 to assign all of the "extra" soldiers so that things don't crawl to a stand still when the primary personal go on leave. Give me a couple of months and we'll see how I do.

I have been busy working with the Navy SEABEES providing input into the design process for the compound they are supposed to be building for us when we move to western Iraq at date to be determined. I'm trying to make sure that our compound is as nice as it can be but still falls within military budgetary constraints. That's pretty hard considering the budget is set by people who are living in palaces in Fallujah and Baghdad and have all the amenities they could ever want. I am having some success though, sometimes the squeaky wheel does get the grease.

I stayed up 23 hours straight the other night to watch the Dallas Cowboys playoff game. The picture shows me at the start of the second half when the Cowboys were still winning. The clock on the wall shows 3am, the game started here at about 1am and was over at about 430am. I was useless the next day. That wasn't too bad though because the guy on the far left of the picture, sitting on the couch, is my boss and he was up all night watching the game too and he was as wiped out as I was. The bad part about that is that he is a Giants fan and I had to listen to him gloat all week about the Cowboy's loss.

The first picture is a photo of the whole team minus MAJ VanAlstine, who had wandered off somewhere, with Santa Claus during the Christmas day dinner we had at Taji, that is me just to the right of Santa with the bald head . The Iraqi cooks really went all out and the head cook is the one dressed as Santa. It was a pretty good time.

The third picture is me out and about at one of our subordinate battalions outposts in a small village just outside Ramadi. The Iraqi Brigade Commander is addressing the Iraqi platoon in the background. Amazingly enough the Brigade Commander sounded just like an American Brigade Commander would have upon inspecting an American platoon outpost, talking about all the good things the soldiers are doing, making sure they do maintenance on their vehicles, and keep their area picked up.

The last picture shows the cooking area of our 1st Battalion, recently the Iraqi Ministry of Defense canceled a feeding contract that the Coalition Forces had arranged for them. The contract cooks were kicked off of the Iraqi bases and the Iraqi Army soldiers took over feeding themselves. No big deal right? An Iraqi solution for Iraqis, not one provided by the Coalition. Despite the rickety look of the grill here, this is a success story. This cooking area along with another that is just to the right where the rice (timmon) is prepared feeds over 750 Iraqi soldiers three times a day. There is a cooled semi trailer that has two freezers for chicken (dejaaj) and fish (simach) and holds vegetables that are purchased daily. A typically Iraqi lunch or supper for the soldiers meal consists of chicken, rice mixed with raisins and nuts, some cooked vegetables and two pieces of bread. Not all Iraqi units were able to maintain this standard after the contract was terminated. This battalion came up with it on their own and continues to run it and take care of their soldiers and the soldiers were very proud of it making me sample a little of everything that they had cooked that day, and it was all quite tasty. I also sat down for a meal afterwards that was prepared by the soldiers in the picture and once again suffered no ill effects.

Well that's enough for now. I hope everyone enjoys this update from Ramadi.