Heading to Iraq
Friday, January 16, 2009
Well I am back, its been a while since I've posted on here, almost 5 years to be exact. Alot has happened since then, finished my first tour in '04 in Sept., went to Okinawa for 7 months, then came back and went to Ramadi Iraq again for the 2nd time. Now Im back in Southern Illinois, have a beautiful girlfriend that God gave me, and going to school to get an AJ major and become a cop one day. God has truly blessed me, I need to give thanks sooo much more! Well I will write more later. Stay tuned because this baby is going back up! Hasta Luego!
Friday, May 14, 2004
Well this is my first post in a while. So what has been going on since i last posted. The other day my platoon was on qrf and we heard an ied explode.Then gunfire started to break out from everywhere. We quickly ran to the 7 tons and got on but then i realized that the radio was back at the hooch(no i didnt forget the radio, the whole platoon as in the chow hall at that time) so i had to un 200 meters back to the hooch. At this time rounds were impacting all insiode the base. The guard towers were opeing up and all i could think was" dont get shot in the face or the groin..lol"\." So as i was running i could here rounds hitting around me and i was thinking damn our walls suck bad. I made it back to the hooch and got behind the sandbag barrier and hunkered down. My pal told me to stay put becuase rounds were hitting the sandbags in front of me. But i knew i couldnt because i needed to get back to my platoon so i picked up the radio and halled ass back, trying to keep a low sillohette as possible. By the tiome i made it back they told us to go out the back gate on foot because it was too dangerous to go out on vehicles. We left the back gate on foot and started to search for the enemy. The wierd thing is we believe they all fled, not wanting to come in contact with us.
We are constantly beinh hit by IEDs, and its almost impossible to counter them. We lost a Marine the other day and several wounded from an ied up by nova( ied highway)
I want now to talk about the Iraqi people. My brother levi who is in bagdhad wrote a good blog explaining their position to our being here in Iraq and it makes sense. They for one are scared to death of helping us bcause the enemy lives amongst them . Just a few weeks ago we had one iraqi man show us where an ied was right by a school. He begged us to take him in becuase he was scrared for his life. He wanted us to flexi cuff him and blindfold him because he wanted to look guilty. Well when we let him go from our base he went back to his house, the bad thing was is that the enemy didnt buy it. They beat the crap out of him and almost killed him. His brother brought him back to the base on a strtcher and asked for our help. We helped him out in the best way that we could.
The also dont know how long we will be here, we left them in a horrible position in the first gulf war and now they do not trust us. Also they are trying to survive daily becuase from what i understand there are barely no jobs here in ar ramadi. The Marines here are trying to help out the best we could. We have several contracts out right now with paving roads, cleaning their water and other jobs, but we also have to combat the terrorism and that in lies the problem. For us to be able to provide more for them we need their help but the fear factor is way to present.Well i have to go, you all take care being kicked off..lol
bye
Sunday, April 25, 2004
hello everyone today is the 25th, i just got off of 6 hours of post watching for the enemy. I was talking to a friend and he was talking about the day of the ambush and a army convoy rolled by and some female civil affairs army soldiers jumped out and said to him" gosh,you Marines are hard, you actually go in the direction of the shooting."lol...thats our job isnt it, we dont know what give up means.
We are doing good here, morale is high and we are hunting the enemy down. These people over here seem like they dont want our help at all, all of them know when an attack is going to happen yet they dont want to help us out. Its creating alot of resentment and anger amongst us Marines because we came over to help and these people stab us in the back by harboring the enemy(and being the enemy). It makes me sick to hear people say that we are killing innocent people over here. Listen from a Marine who has seen whats happening over here, the mujarhadeen, Fadayeen and terrorists wear civilian clothing and stage their weapons in an area so they could move from one place to another thinking we wont shoot them( from last firefight we were in.) Mixed in with having your wives and kids run around in front of you using them as human shields( I was about to fire a grenade at this one house but the enemy used women and kids to protect them when he was going to another area).
These Marines over here I have to say are the best men America has to offer.(I will tell the stories when i get home but dont have enough time to write them all, sorry...besides more than likely there are more stories to come) I have seen so many selfless acts from 19 year olds and up.The firefight I was in on the 10th, whenever my srgt gave us an order we executed without question and their were alot of dangerous orders given. When the 3 Marines gaurding the 7 tons and humvees came under fire we halled balls under fire to get back and protect them(thats where we set up on the roofs and surrounding houses and fought the last 30 minutes or so from there)
We are being told now that more enemy have poured into the city, well I say bring it on, if the enemy is reading this we challenge you again just like we did on the 10th.
"YOU COWARDS, THE AMERICANS ARE HERE, COME OUT AND FIGHT THEM"
Besides all us Marines have is eachother and GOD. He is with us and continues to watch over us.
All I ask is pray for us over here, and also alot of letters( hint, hint)
Well I have to go, have some snoozing to take care of before I go out on post again. (Watch out terrorist I am manning the .50 cal with your name on it)
You all take care and start posting comments please, see you all in a few months
Semper Fidelis
Love
Ian
hello everyone today is the 25th, i just got off of 6 hours of post watching for the enemy. I was talking to a friend and he was talking about the day of the ambush and a army convoy rolled by and some female civil affairs army soldiers jumped out and said to him" gosh,you Marines are hard, you actually go in the direction of the shooting."lol...thats our job isnt it, we dont know what give up means.
We are doing good here, morale is high and we are hunting the enemy down. These people over here seem like they dont want our help at all, all of them know when an attack is going to happen yet they dont want to help us out. Its creating alot of resentment and anger amongst us Marines because we came over to help and these people stab us in the back by harboring the enemy(and being the enemy). It makes me sick to hear people say that we are killing innocent people over here. Listen from a Marine who has seen whats happening over here, the mujarhadeen, Fadayeen and terrorists wear civilian clothing and stage their weapons in an area so they could move from one place to another thinking we wont shoot them( from last firefight we were in.) Mixed in with having your wives and kids run around in front of you using them as human shields( I was about to fire a grenade at this one house but the enemy used women and kids to protect them when he was going to another area).
These Marines over here I have to say are the best men America has to offer.(I will tell the stories when i get home but dont have enough time to write them all, sorry...besides more than likely there are more stories to come) I have seen so many selfless acts from 19 year olds and up.The firefight I was in on the 10th, whenever my srgt gave us an order we executed without question and their were alot of dangerous orders given. When the 3 Marines gaurding the 7 tons and humvees came under fire we halled balls under fire to get back and protect them(thats where we set up on the roofs and surrounding houses and fought the last 30 minutes or so from there)
We are being told now that more enemy have poured into the city, well I say bring it on, if the enemy is reading this we challenge you again just like we did on the 10th.
"YOU COWARDS, THE AMERICANS ARE HERE, COME OUT AND FIGHT THEM"
Besides all us Marines have is eachother and GOD. He is with us and continues to watch over us.
All I ask is pray for us over here, and also alot of letters( hint, hint)
Well I have to go, have some snoozing to take care of before I go out on post again. (Watch out terrorist I am manning the .50 cal with your name on it)
You all take care and start posting comments please, see you all in a few months
Semper Fidelis
Love
Ian
Friday, April 23, 2004
Hi everyone, this is Ian from ar Rhamadi, Iraq. It has been crazy over here. I am with 2/4 Echo Company. We came into this city waving and being nice to the people but they took our kindness for weakness. The mujarhadeen had pamplets being passed around ar Rhamadi saying that the Marines were "soft cakes" compared to the Army.That we would be easy to defeat and on contact we would flee from a fight. Alot of people believed it to they decided to put us all to the test on April 6th, 2004. Thats one day I will never forget. That day I woke up at 3 in the morning because my squad had a security patrol up to gypsum( where the ambush took place that day) It was a routine patrol and it went routine. We took a security halt in the tank graveyard at around 7 in the morning, checking around for enemy planting IEDs on Route Nova. My friend LCPL Callaway heard the snipers give their 6 digit grid over the radio and realized they were in the tank graveyard with us, but as everone knows, if snipers dont want to be seen they wont. So we picked up and headed back to base. At that time the enemy laid in a U shaped ambush for 3rd platoon to come up near gypsum. Then it happened, the whole city of ar Rhamadi broke out in gunfights. I was sleeping but awoke to the sound of medievac choppers landing in our base. I ran out to see what was going on and saw a humvee race into the compound filled with dead Marines. They hit them hard and then hit QRF which was 1st Squad of my platoon.Third and QRF fought the enmy hard and killed alot of them, but we also took dead and injured as well. The 7 ton filled with 1st Squad of my platoon came in behind the humvee and told us to mount up because we were going out to reinforce 3rd platoon in the ambush that was taking place. I remember every moment of it like if it was an hour ago. The first thing I remember echoing in my head was "Crowleys dead."Corporal Smith told us to lock and load and told us we were going into urban combat. He said to shoot anything that moved and to wacth the rooftops because they were everywhere. I said the Lords prayers atleast 5 times on the way to gypsum. As we rolled down the narrow streets there was an earie silence in the area and no enemy could be seen. The firefight was over, 8 Marines died there at the ambush but the enemy was hurting also, we killed atleast 40. At the same time as the ambush was taking place the snipers were in the tank graveyard and the enemy got on line to find them. Their was 25 mujarhadeen looking for them. The snipers picked off some of them and then 1st platoon came in and finished off the enemy.
April 10 2004
That day started off with a raid on a house suspected of harboring mujarhadeen. My squad broke down the door and me and LCPL Brown were the first ones in screaming and pointing our weapons. We were going for complete shock and surprise and we achieved it. We found only a few AK-47s, we flexi cuffed the men of the house and loaded them up on the 7 ton. At that moment our CO had our translator get on the intercom and say " you cowards, the americans are here com and fight them", and they did.As we were heading to another house ak-47 fire broke out all around us. The enemy was all around us but they were hard to see because of all the vegetation in the area. I was unloading with my m203 grenade launcher on the enemy.
Well i have to keep this short becuase people want to use the internet but that firefight is said to be one of the biggest since vietnam. At the end we were up on a roof when a huey and a super cobra came in and opened up on tree line with gatlin guns. I almost got shot several times throughout the fiefight because you could here the bullets wizz by your head. Also when i was shooting my m203 the tree behind me was getting lit up by small arms fire and my fireteam leader got me out of the way. Well i got to go, people want to use the net so i will talk to you later
Tuesday, March 09, 2004
Hello everyone, this might be my last post from Kuwait, but you will never know....The other day we had a terrible tragedy happen in my platoon. Never thought it would happen but it did. We are all shocked by the situation.Do not worry though, I am alright. I will tell you in another post what happened but not this one becuase the family has to be notified. Not much else to report on. Hpefully next post will be from Iraq.
Semper Fidelis Love Ian
Saturday, March 06, 2004
Hey everybody, this is Ian for the kuwaiti desert... we have been training for 17 hours a day. I am so tired that usually when we get time off, me and my fellow Marines just sleep. I saw the 1st Calvary division here today and thought Levi might be here but found out he will be here around April. I am learning some arabic like ah hand ee coo wa eea which is do you have any ID (all phonetic spelling). Our AO has grown form being a tiny 1500 people to 450,000 people, but we could handle it. The biggest problem we will have is IEDs( improvised explosive devices) They said sometimes we will find 6 or 7 a day. If any of my family is reading this i have tried to contact you several times but your phones are always busy.Mom I emailed you so please check your email and email me back. We are supposed to have email and phones up in our AO. Other things we have been doing is "bull in the ring." Where we just pretty much wrestle by using any submission move possible. Its a great way of learning different submissive techniques against your enemy incase you take them down. I have a huge scab on the side of my face because my lcpl grinded my head into the rocky sand.
We also never stop training, we were doing martial arts about week ago in the sand storm, the army couldnt be seen anywhere..lolk...I havent seen the army train at all while i am here, hopefully they realize this isnt going to be a walk in the park especially around July (iraqi people taking over, might be a civil war).It doesnt scare us Marines though because we are better at full scale war then peace keeping anyways, hopefully it wont come to that. Well to my family and friends keep on sending your letters and prayers my way because i will need them greatly.. I am now going to go back to the hooch and sleep my day away(day off finely). Love you all, sorry this could not be more info filled but noting is really happening yet, just wait till I get to my AO...OOORRAAAHH
Semper Fidelis Love Ian
Saturday, January 24, 2004
Its been a week since I posted, I was out in the field this week doing close quarter marksmanship training. The training was awesome and I learned some new things and improved my skills in some areas. The Marines that are in my platoon are top notch at what they do. I am a grenadier for my fireteam so I carry the M203. This coming week we will be heading out to March Airforce base to do some scenerio training for 5 days. It will consist of all sorts of scenerios of what we will run into when we get to Iraq. Well thats all I have for now, just keep on checking in and read up on whats happening in my Marine Corps carreer.
