Stick Day!!!

Been doing some pretty good training the past couple of days called Combat Lifesaver training. The topics include casualty evaluation, opening airways, treating chest trauma and decompressing a tension pneumothorax, controlling bleeding, and starting and administering an IV. Pretty good stuff. Most of it was taught by the school here, but our medic, Sergeant First Class (SFC) Tim Frock filled in a lot of the gaps and gave us a bunch of supplemental stuff.

The best way to learn is by doing. So yesterday we stabbed each other repeatedly until we found veins and got IVs started. I got mine on the first stick, which is a good thing. The guy who stuck me, Captain Ryan Watson, our personnel guy, got it in but made a bit of a mess. I'd rather get stuck than stick somebody, but confidence will build over time. Doc says he'll have us being able to stick someone at night under NODs (night vision goggles) in a vehicle before long.

Sweet. Bet that's gonna be messy.

Today we have the hands-on test, then another three hours of Arabic tonight from 6-9.

We get a 4-day weekend starting this Friday! I am going to be able to make it home Friday night, which is a good thing. Looking forward to seeing the family; first time since July 27th.

Hope all's well- take care.

Ron

I went to Fort Riley and all I got was this crappy haircut

So I went to the PX to get a haircut... It was closing time. When she asked me how I wanted (what's left of my hair) cut, I said "short..." Before I could get out the rest of the phrase "...on the sides and trim the top" she had already initiated what I would describe as a reverse mohawk, straight down the center of my head.

At that point, there was no turning back. So my head is now 'buzzed.'

I did not tip her. I should have tipped her with some carreer advice: She isn't very good at her current occupation, and perhaps she should pursue a career in garbage collection or maybe in asphalt application. Or maybe as a crash test dummy. Or window licker. You get the idea.

Inshallah, as the Arabs say.

I am going bald over time, but this may have expedited the process. I haven't had it this short since Basic Training at Fort Benning (The Land That God Forgot), which was 20 years ago.

Hope it grows back.

What do you think? Is the Uncle Finster look for me? It works for Bruce Willis, right?

Home sweet home

Me and my 39 new best friends. It could be worse. In fact, it probably will get worse in a couple of months.

Mac's Marauders hits the books

Interesting day. Today we learned about Counterinsurgency. I have had a lot of it before, but the instruction was actually pretty good. It was taught by an Iraqi guy and his insight was invaluable. There was a lot of discussion as to which phase of an insurgency we are in (there are three: Latent and incipient, or recruiting, guerilla tactics, and all out war). I think we have kind of bounced back and forthe between one and two, and it's different all over the country. They usually lose the third phase, as they did in Karbalah and Fallujah II (November 2006), but it is easy for them to revert to Phase I or II, so says Chairman Mao.

Too bad we didn't get this stuff back in 2004.

We talked a little bit about Information Operations (IO). IO is sort of like marketing-- the things you do to get your point across or to sell your product. We aren't very good at this, and the bad guys are really good at it. We are particularly bad at it with the Transition Team assignment: We say that "MTT" (acronym for Military Transition Team, or 'MITT') is supposed to be the priority for the Army, as it has been identified as the strategy to get us out of Iraq by "getting the Iraqis to develop Iraqi solutions to Iraqi problems." But we still don't take it seriously or weight it with command emphasis. Fort Riley is a temporary location for the training: All of the buildings are temporary, and if you ask a Brigade Commander in theater in Iraq, he will tell you he is the priority, because he is the "battlespace owner" and everyone in his back yard is just freeloading in his zone. So since it's his land he's free to try to win the war by killing his way out of the insurgency. You would have thought that by now we would have figured out that's impossible. Some have figured it out, but others, well, not so much. MTT leaders don't get the same quality of evaluations that others who serve in the Brigade-- Brigade Commanders save their "top blocks" for their own internal officers serving as operations officers or executive officers cuz "that's the way it was when they grew up." MTT is the priority, but next year we are going to move it to the Armpit of the Army at Fort Polk in Louisiana-- who the hell is going to volunteer to go to Polk to either train or sign up to be an instructor? Sometimes it seems like one step up and two back. Not much I can do about it other than go to Iraq and be a MTT.

My apologies for being more skeptical than optimistic.

On a much more positive note, the longer you stay in the Army, the more folks you run into. Today it was First Sergeant (1SG) Scott Hess, one of my former HHT First Sergeants. It was good to see him.

Somebody asked me about the barracks.... I'll try to get a picture up later.

The fellas are doing well so far. The last guy is inprocessing this week. Then we'll be off and running.

Tomorrow: A little Crossfit, more counterinsurgency, and a meeting with some Iraqi guys. Good stuff.

Take care.
Ron

The Life of Riley

The patch above is the shoulder sleeve insignia for the 1st Infantry Division, which is the unit that currently trains advisors to serve in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's got a pretty good history, and they are quite proud of it here. http://www.1stid.org/history/index.cfm


As soon as we got back on Thursday night from our Iraq trip after spending 40 or so straight hours traveling, we were told we had to get out of our current barracks and move in order to make room for the next class that was right on our heels. So we packed up and moved to another part of Fort Riley called Camp Funston and occupied our new barracks. They are in pretty good shape, but the living conditions were a change from the previous accomodations-- I now have 39 roommates. Communal living at its finest!!! We will be here for about 8 weeks. You get a bed, a wallocker and a footlocker. I'm thinking of it like summer camp...

The food is again pretty good. It's actually kind of nice to not have to decide what to eat... You just go in there and get it. The Army has made great strides in the right direction in terms of food quality and service-- probably because they aren't in charge of it anymore, as it is handled bya contract. There is a gym close by, there is wireless internet, washers and dryers, and a big screen TV in the barracks. Today is a refit day, so I am sure the TV will either be on football or the Olympics.

Our team of 11 is almost all here; one guy arrives this weekend. They come from all over the Army and all bring a different specialty to the team. We even have a team name now!!! The fellas like the pirate theme, so they named us the Marauders before I got back, and ever since then, the pirate jokes have been flowing. Gotta get me a big Jolly Roger flag....

This week's upcoming training includes a lot of cultural awareness and Arabic classes. More on this later. Hope you are all well. Take care.

AKA: Marauder 6
Ron

Made it home

Despite the best efforts of many, we made it back. The return trip could have been called Pee Wee Herman's Big Iraq Adventure. It even included a ride in the back of a Japanese Self Defense Forces C-130. I'll betcha didn't even know Japan had an air force, did ya? Well, they do.

It was a bit warm... The picture is of a thermometer in Kuwait as we were waiting to fly out. Yep, you see it right: A brisk 128 degrees...

Saw lots of folks over there, among them Rob Kaderavek and SSG (RET) Murray from 2-12 CAV days, Bill and Steve from CGSC, Chris Evans from UT. Even though it's almost half a million, it's still a small Army.

Overall, a good trip. Lots of insight. Now it's back to Mickey Mouse fun at Camp Funston...

Take care,

Ron

PS it was HOT.

Greetings from Baghdad

It's been a busy week. I'm waiting to catch a flight out of Baghdad and head to Kuwait, then continue the trip back to Fort Riley. Pretty good trip, though. I got a very good perspective for the environment we will be operating in. Overall, things look pretty good; violence is down, and the Iraqi Army is taking charge of security in all of the places I visited. Despite our best efforts, this thing may actually work...



I spent some time on Camp Liberty and Camp Victory... Quite big, and I wish I would have invested in Iraqi cement companies about 4 years ago, as there is a lot of cement here. Ther eis also a lot of people with a lot of "good ideas." I am happy to say we have successfully exported excess and bureaucracy to Iraq.



I also spent a lot of time down in a lovely town south of Baghdad. Ok, it's really not that lovely.

Well, all right, I'll admit it-- it's a dump.


But for now it's a fairly peaceful dump, which is good, because it will be our home in the coming months. I will live on an American patrol base inside an Iraqi Army compound- a compound within a compound, if you will. With a lot of cement. On this compound will be my team plus the division team, a total of about 20 guys, plus a bunch of interpreters and maybe some coalition augmentees to help with the day to day stuff. The good thing about it is that it is away from the super FOB of Camps Liberty and Victory, so we can do our own thing. The other good thing is that the Iraqi unit we are advising will be on the same compound, so that way we don't have to commute.


One of the things my unit will be involved in is detainee operations. When I heard this, I was uneasy, given the past examples of Abu Gharaib. I toured an Iraqi Army Brigade Interment Facility and I have to say it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. They did not know wew were coming. It was a bit overcrowded, but the unit was aware of the problem and was taking steps to either try the detainees for alleged crimes or by moving them to facilities that weren't overcrowded. They knew who was there and how long they had been there. The place was actually pretty clean (except for the smell of a bunch of detainees who are living in chain link cages in a warehouse), but it was well lit, and very orderly. The detainees are regularly, had all the water they could drink, slept on mats, had clean clothes, and weren't beat to a pulp, as they would have been under Saddam. There were no hooks on the ceiling, either, which the prisoners seemed pretty happy about. The guards appear to get it now-- you actually have to treat humans like....humans. But, then again, when we left, all hell could have broken loose.


Got a much happier, less oppressive (and less odorous) tour of al Faw Palace last night from Steve Chong, my CGSC battle buddy. al Faw is one of eight presidential palaces built by Saddam. I think this one was built in 1991. We used the main entrance; the other one had an unfortunate run-in with a JDAM in 2003. The whole place is surrounded by a series of lakes and ponds Saddam used to swim and fish in. (I wouldn't recommend that, though...) The base camps here were built on land that Saddam used as a hunting preserve. The palace is grand, ornate and impressive, and like many things here, it looks good from afar, but not so good up close. And now it houses the Corps HQ that runs the show. Pretty neat, though.


As always, I ran into lots of folks from assignments past, among them the former SSG Murray (a former 2-12 CAV tanker, now retired working as a contractor), Rob Kaderavek (former 2-12 CAV, now the S3 for 6-8 CAV), Chris Evans (former UT Cadet, now an MP Platoon Leader), some other folks from CGSC now working in CJSOTF in al Faw, and a couple of guys I knew or worked with when I was in 1-7 CAV. It really is a small Army.


My team has arrived at Fort Riley and they are inprocessing. Everybody who was supposed to show up is there, and they are ready to begin the Riley circus. More on this later; I'll also get some pics on this thing. Time to go bake on a C-130...



Hope you are well. Take care.



Ron

TEKNAWLUDGY IS KUUL

Still figuring out this blog thing, but I found a way to add some pictures.

Gonna be road trippin' for a couple of days, so see you soon.

-Ron