Private Ray

29 May 07
20 years ago today my dad drove me over to the Military Entry Processing Station at Ft Jackson, SC and spent the day with me as I enlisted in the U.S. Army. I was excited but scared...seems like a million years ago now!

You might know that I'm a proud Sandlapper. It really bothered me that I had been to Baghdad twice before but didn't have my camera to get my picture taken in front of the SC flag. I wasn't going to miss it a third time!


Nor was I going to leave without adding my John Hancock to the list of South Carolinians that had already served in Baghdad!

Rules Change

27 May 07
Happy Anniversary, honey! I’m off to Baghdad today.

The militia has been caught off guard by lots of changes in the Coalition/British rules of engagement and increased capabilities. As I mentioned earlier, after Abu Khadir was killed the insurgents attempted to retaliate against numerous MNF targets. We found out later that 26 British soldiers had been surrounded and in jeopardy of being overrun by over 100 militants when the F-16 I mentioned strafed their attackers and saved the trapped soldiers. Additionally, the Basrahwis are accustomed to seeing remote controlled/unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) in the skies over Basrah. However, the aircraft they are accustomed to seeing don't fire missiles so they’ve never seen a UAV fire missiles before. I’m sure the militia must have been shocked/horrified when an MQ-1 Predator UAV fired several Hellfire missiles into their vehicle.

What makes the Predator kills even more incredible is that the crews controlling the aircraft are connected via satellite from their control center back in Las Vegas. These guys from Basrah have no idea that some guy in Las Vegas, NV, just reached out and touched them before he went home for dinner with the family!

Missing Iraqi Soldier Part 2

26 May 07
Abdul Raheem returned from Baghdad today. He was with our deployed operation up there. I asked him about Jasim, the missing Iraqi Army soldier and son of his neighbor. He said the young man’s family went to Baghdad’s Medical City based on the info I gave them but was unable to find him. They believe he is dead. I called all around the Coalition hospital system and found no information about him. I also believe he is dead.

It’s been a bad few weeks for the guys in our squadron. While he was on his time off after the deployment Abdul Raheem’s cousin was killed so he had to go back to Baghdad.

One of the pilots, Saad, recently lost three of his brothers—two in a car bomb and the third was shot and killed. Saad inherited responsibility for their families. He moved them from Baghdad to Basrah so he could care for them and recently took all the kids tubing on the Shatt Al Arab. Not many people go outside for recreation but Saad said the kids needed to get their minds off of their fathers.

Faras is a maintainer in the squadron. His father was recently abducted in Baghdad. He has been on leave for over a month now searching the city trying to find him. Sami gave him time off but is now concerned that he has been gone so long. He reported his absence to MoD.

Exceptionally interesting 24 hrs for us with Abu Khadir, the local head of the Mahdi Army, being eliminated. They retaliated against the base and paid a heavy toll. Everyone on our team was proud of the USAF guys working so hard to protect us and were relieved to hear there were so many teams eliminated.

Adnan's Bull

23 May 07
Adnan is from Basrah but was stationed in Baghdad in the years before he married his wife. After the marriage was arranged his parents were obliged to throw a party. They called him in Baghdad and told him to bring a bull home to slaughter for the party. He went to a local farm and bought a bull. He intended to transport the bull in the back of his Toyota pick up truck so loaded the bull in the truck and tied it to the roll bar behind the cab. The bull went in easily enough but throughout the ride the bull bucked around in the back of the truck. About halfway to Basrah the truck tipped up on two wheels. Adnan looked in the mirror and saw that the bull had jumped out of the truck but had not immediately come loose. He dragged the bull for some 40 yards before it broke free.

The bull had been hurt in the accident but not seriously. However, the bull ran like a mad cow deep into the field beside the highway with Adnan in pursuit.

A crowd gathered to watch as Adnan spent the next 5 hours chasing the bull around the fields. Try as he may to catch the bull it never let him get within 35 yards. Finally, he decided he needed to wound the animal to slow it down. He shot the animal in the leg with his pistol but it didn’t slow the bull. He chased the animal for another hour and shot it 3 more times in the same leg without any affect. He saved the last bullet to shoot the animal in the head intending to kill it and butcher it on the spot.

Just as he was about to shoot the animal in the head a small boy, maybe 8 yrs old, walked out in the field and said he would catch the bull for 5 dinars (about 5 cents nowadays but big money in those days). Adnan shooed the boy away but another adult said the boy could do it. Adnan agreed and the boy walked away. A few minutes later the boy returned to the field herding several cows, sheep, goats, and other barnyard animals. He walked out to the bull, let the animals circle around the bull and then herded all the animals plus the bull back to the barnyard without ever laying a hand on the bull. Adnan paid the boy 25 dinars and set off to get married.