Convoy

This morning started with a mortar attack at 6:30. It actually came pretty close to where I was, about 150 meters or so. Definitely an early morning wake up call. Of course that meant that the chow hall had to close and we couldn't really run any of our errands. Dang insurgents ruining my morning routine.

We moved back from Camp Anaconda to Al Kisak today. Today we made our 200 mile run north thru scenic Iraq. It was a pretty interesting, but thankfully uneventful trip. The only sticky point came when we passed a dead animal in the road. Dead animal carcasses are often used by the insurgents to plant IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices). An American gun truck had arrived on the scene just as my vehicle was approaching the point (I was in the trail vehicle), and tried to get us to stop, but by that time we were within about 25 meters of the carcass, so I made the call to blow thru and remain with our convoy. We found out later that an American convoy headed down the same road in the opposite direction had taken some small arms fire, but that was a supply convoy. We had been told that we probably wouldn't get hit because of the nature of our group, however the insurgents will hit anyone with an IED so it wasn't totally safe. We arrived back at Al Kisak late in the afternoon. It is very nice to be home, sleeping on a cot for two weeks isn't very enjoyable. Sure, the daily hot showers were nice, as was the food, but it is great to be back with familiar faces and familiar surroundings.

I took a lot of pictures on this convoy and will be posting them tomorrow as long as I can get the software to work effectively.

Also, if you care to check out www.dbsoxblog.blogspot.com, my blogging mentor James has written an entry on there that is about this site, and it is the 14 January entry. I appreciate his thoughts and his support.