My Welcome home and those that fell

If any of you have experienced server turbulence on a flight you might be able to relate. So on the combat flight from Baghdad to Mosul, the pilot is required to do something called a combat landing. So right when you feel the C-130 (which is just a school bus with wings- with all your battle rattle on and cramped up like sardines) start to descend you know its coming, but this one was crazy. the plane will (on purpose) take a dive, shift from left to right and basically fly around like cracked out moth. well the first dive felt like a free fall ride like at 6 flags and lasted about 15 secs. the crazy part was that i heard a big bang right before the pilot initiated the fall so i was thinking that we got shot and that we were GOING DOWN! i remember the guy across from me was freaking out and as we were hovering in mid-air, he was trying to grab anything he could, including my leg. I guess i was freaked out, but what could i do at that point but laugh at the guy across from me (which i did). after we leveled out again, i asked if he needed to change his pants. it was funny.

So i got back to my duty location and sat down my gear and my team said mount up, bc we were going out to conduct some raids. but let me back up...

You may have heard (mom i know you did) about some killings that happened in my area. what happened is that in a base that we go to all the time an iraqi soldier entered a US area and just started shooting killing 2 and wounding many. Now i heard about this when i was grounded in Baghdad with the platoon leader of the guys who got attacked. he was freaking out and blamed himself. And i can tell you that the scariest thing is not to personally get killed or hurt, but actually it is NOT being there when your men or battle buddy does. that's really what i was worried about the most (and especially bc i knew about all the craziness that happening to our team right before i left) before i left on leave. But i consoled him at the time saying that it wasn't his guys and that the area was big with a lot of forces around, and really anything i could say to keep the guy calm. Bc at the time, we only had limited info. But it was his guys and i feel for him.

So right when i got back, my team told me that the Iraqis needed help to role up the key planners and bad guys in that area. Now it seems that it was just one guy that shot those men.... WRONG, think of all of these terrorist acts as an iceberg, where you only see the action take place or tip of the berg, but like ALL operations its way bigger then what you just see.

(Sorry to be so vague, but its for a reason) Knowing what happened and after looking at the Intel i was MORE THAN HAPPY to go get these guys. so hours after i got back into my AO, I was in the back of an Iraqi truck conducting raids on some of the key targets in that area. It was crazy bc this was by far the most dangerous thing i have done yet in this country and i was doing it right when i came back from leave!?!? I mean when i was in Europe, i kinda even forgot i was in the army and Iraq seemed like a distant memory. but i was shoved right back into the mess.

I was working with a commando team and they were all cool, but tired bc they hadn't slept for almost 2 days. so they were a little cranky and ready to kill someone. We hit houses and building all day all over this town, looking everywhere for these criminals. as an example of the stress involved, we hit this one house and rolled a guy who knew our targets and we had to "force" him to show us where the guy was hiding. While that was going on a drunk neighbor started shouting threats to the commandos. Well they were not having any of that. and before my interpreter could tell me what was going on, the commandos jumped the guy's fence and cocking there weapons and wrestling this drunk dude to the ground and searching his house. Now, you need to realize that this entire area are known insurgent supporters and basically the terrorist key leader neighborhood, NOT just a walk around meeting people and asking questions. I mean the area had its own little terrorist army hidden within the local populous. so any threat was taken seriously and squashed on site. Another example is that we went into a house of iraqi police man who knew and had the ID card of this guy we were looking for. We questioned him for a while and quickly found out that his loyalties were not with his country, but the hidden insurgents in the town. THAT is how corrupt this place is; even the good guys are covering for the bad guys. So we tied him up, blind folded him and threw him in the back of a truck for hours traveling all around town, then at the end of the day dropped him off in a field somewhere- serves him right. should have cooperated.

I can only equate the mission as something you would see in the movies and i got to kick doors and detain our targets. Raids are fun and a def adrenaline rush. So this was an all day thing and even into to the night, and i am more then happy to report that we got our guys. so rare is it that a unit has the privilege of getting those directly responsible for attacking and killing them. Usually the guy, after he attacks you, fades into the background and doenst re-appear for while until he does it again- at least the smart ones. but we got all of them and mom that is your Mothers Day present. You can sleep well tonight.

Exusted and sleep deprived, we turned the guys into the Iraqis and my only prayer is that they do the right thing and take all the evidence and guy to get tried and locked away. after all we can only do so much bc of the SOFA. but i think (mostly bc of our high interest in the case) they are seeing justice.

The next day i went to memorial of the 2 soldiers that were KIA. It was truly a sobering experience and will never forget it. i knew one of the guys after working with him on other missions. The CAV (the unit they belonged to) gave a professional and heartfelt service and his battle buddies were able to say goodbye is there way after (seeing them laughing, drinking redbull, and eat pizza in the PX area). The thing i found surprising is that the word got out that our team rolled up those guys and we received many thanks and appreciation for the actions we did the day prior. It was nice to do my part to honor those have paid the ultimate price of freedom.

the pic attached is when we were turning these guys in to the iraqis. "Bad boys, bad boys, what you gonna do, what you gonna do when i come for you...!"