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Veteran's Day
 Posted 11/11/2009 11:04:00 AM
This is a day just
like any other in Iraq. I just came off a 3-day mission driving around
Iraq, meeting with bosses and stuff that officers do. This is a
picture of me with my 8-day-old 'stache while we were stopped at a
military gas-station. Now it's 11 days old and looks like a fuzzy
little caterpillar has decided to rest on my uppper lip. I'm hoping
that I will have something to actually write home about by the end of
November.
On a different note, today is Veteran's Day and I got to thank my
sergeants and Soldiers for volunterring to serve their country, even in
a time of war. I'm not writing this to get a 'thank you' or anything
from you all folks, I'm just saying that when I told those guys "Thank
you" they looked at me as though I had a third army growing ...
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Lt. Jeremy Jones
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Mo No
Posted 11/9/2009 2:22:00 PM
So it's been a while since I've written. I have been quite busy -
we've nearly completed 24km of gravel road and will soon be starting on
a large berm project. For those of you who don't know what a berm is
and aren't sure how to use wikipedia, a 'berm' is a wall of dirt that
we in the Army construct to restrict mobility and provide defensibility
where none previously existed; just think of a 3-meter high wall of
dirt that is so steep you can't drive a truck over it and so thick that
it will negate the effects of a car bomb blast - all in a lovely shade
of brown.
I would love to attach some pictures but this tour is different
from Afghanistan in many ways, not the least of which being that I
cannot connect thumb drives to this gov't computer any more, ...
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Lt. Jeremy Jones
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Update from Iraq Part 1
Posted 9/1/2009 10:36:00 AM
So it's been a little while since I've updated anyone.
In July I was given an office in an old Iraqi Army building.
Someone who never knew me painted on my wall. As you can see (sweaty
office) it fits me quite well.
At the end of July my platoon and I moved south of Baghdad to a
little base called FOB Delta (near Al-Kut, Iraq for those of you
looking for a travel destination). We had to get our vehicles ready to
roll (18JUL). For reference, those vehicles weigh around 68,000 lbs
and can survive most anything you can throw at them. They're also
bigger than the regular semi-tractor you see driving on 465. Gas
Station is one of my guys while we were stopped at a heavily-fortified
US-only gas station on the way from Baghdad to FOB Delta. Nasariyah is
the view from one of these beasts of ...
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Lt. Jeremy Jones
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Update from Iraq Part 2
Posted 9/1/2009 10:23:00 AM
It gets hot down here. Hot enough to make road tar turn into
liquid and pool up on top of the ground (hot tar). I found a picture
of Saddam and did the obligatory "stand on Saddam's face and smile"
picture (mural). We had a cookout a couple of weeks ago but realized
that we didn't have any utensils to grill with - everything from the
chow hall is plastic. We had to use a putty knife and a sharpened
wooden stake to flip our burgers and hot dogs. We also have what
everyone refers to as "near-beer", non-alcoholic beer bought by the
Army for us to drink and grit our teeth to; it's only good for
seasoning burgers.
So we'll be down here for another couple of months. The extreme
heat (think hotter than 135F every day) is killing our equipment. We
live in an open-bay barracks. For those ...
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Lt. Jeremy Jones
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