Blogotional

Friend Jared Leinhart sends a missive from Iraq describing his days:

Saturday, March 12, 2005

Family and Friends,

Greetings again from Iraq. It is pitiful that I almost say that things are going pretty much the same and that includes bombs, explosions, fire fights, suicide vests, and sniper attacks. At least we have gotten into a pretty routine schedule. 1st Platoon now gets three days of Task Force Bullet/IED missions and three days of recovery time. We are getting ready to go back on missions again tomorrow but we were glad to have the last few days off.

On Wednesday, we received a call that a vehicle-borne IED (car bomb) had been placed next to an apartment building. As we arrived, we found that the car had already exploded and it and the building were still on fire. As we talked to the infantry unit that had arrived on the scene, they informed us that the car exploded before they got too close but that they had evacuated all people out of the back door. The car bomb had had about 10 artillery rounds and mortars inside before it blew up and several of the rounds had not detonated and been kicked out when the car exploded. We sent the robot up with an explosive charge and placed it next to a round that we saw near what was left of the car. When we detonated that blast, we started taking small arms fire from a warehouse about 200 meters to our right. The platoon returned fire while I worked with EOD to find and blow up a few extra rounds. While preparing another charge, we had three mortars land behind us with one being only about 25 meters away. We decided that we needed to hurry up so I had the EOD technician jump in my vehicle while we took a charge up and drop it next to the unexploded ordnance. We drove up and placed the charge next to a mortar round that had kicked out from the car bomb and then drove back to the group until it blew up. While waiting for it to blow, we started taking small arms fire behind us. While we returned fire, we saw an artillery rounds that we thought we had blown up with the first charge. For some reason it had not blown up. We quickly drove up and spotted it and another round not far away. Not wanting to spend any more time getting charges and blowing them, we decided to collect them up and take them back to our base for disposal. The EOD technician and myself got out of our vehicle and proceeded to collect up these rounds while my gunner on my HMMWV was returning fire. The round I was collecting was the larger of the two it weighed about 75 lbs. I checked the nose to make sure it would not blow up in my hands and found that it was an empty shell that did not have any explosives left in it. As I picked it up, my gloves started to smoke as it was burning hot. As I got to my vehicle, the round rolled down my hand and the tip landed on my forearm making a nice sizzling sound. I tossed (and I mean literally tossed) it into the floor of my vehicle and turned to help the EOD tech gets his loaded into the vehicle. As we loaded up and linked up with the rest of the platoon, I remembered some of the first aid classes I had learned from Boy Scouts, college, and the Army (with Mom being a nurse, she instilled a good sense of first aid in me). I grabbed a bottle of water and poured it on my forearm and hands. The fingertips and palms of the gloves had burned holes in them but by God’s grace, had only minor burns to my forearm. The medic stated that it was good that I had poured the water on it our it could have blistered up really bad. We also later found out that one of the gunners in a turret on top of the HMMWV had a round that grazed his hand. God was truly looking out for us that day.

The rest of the battalion is doing more “engineer� type missions to include putting barriers up around local politicians homes, schools, etc. They are also building a blast wall around and in the dining facility to help prevent the type of attack that happened in December. For those that are not aware, this forward operating base (FOB) has not had a dining facility since December when a suicide bomber got in and blew himself up, killing a large number of soldiers. Since then we have eaten MRE’s (meals-ready-to-eat) for lunch and a hot dinner served out of portable containers. The guys of 1st platoon are looked upon as the brave cowboys of the battalion as we have had enemy contact about 15 times compared to their one or two. The guys know that God is looking out for them with only the minor scrapes and cuts and burns that we have received. Please continue to pray for the safety of the platoon!

I too was sad to hear him say that things are about the same, but then it occurred to me that like a doctor might think everyone was sick and a cop think everyone was a crook, Jared's job will put him closest to every problem. Pray for Jared and pray for his colleagues -- Daily.