Hello everyone

Here i sit and i dont feel worth a flip.I dont have a blog but i want to touch base with you’ll.I hope your all well and feeling blessed of God.

Im still gone but ill be back in better shape soon i hope.

Lee Pitts Article, Update on the 278th. 1-23-05
 
Soldiers recall close encounters with bomb blasts
By Edward Lee Pitts
Military Affairs
 
JALULA, Iraq — Spc. John Belcher with the 278th Regimental Combat Team
heard but never saw the roadside bomb blast that knocked him unconscious.
 
The early January explosion by an improvised explosive device left a crater
21’2 feet deep but caused only minor paint damage to the fully armored
Humvee in which Spc. Belcher rode as a turret gunner. Spc. Belcher fell down
the gunner’s hatch in the Humvee’s roof and landed in the arms of the
interpreter riding inside the vehicle.
 
An estimated 10 such explosive devices have detonated on 278th convoys
during the Tennessee-based regiment’s first month inside Iraq. The unit
conducted its 1,000th mission last week.
 
All soldiers involved in the roadside explosions have escaped injury, but
they said the experiences served as loud reminders that they are in a war
zone where people’s lives are at stake. The bombs are the Iraqi insurgents’
main weapon against U.S. forces.
 
“This stuff is for real,” said Spc. Belcher, 20, of Athens, Tenn. “It isn’t
training any more.”
 
BLAST AFTERMATH
 
Spc. Belcher, who returned from basic training just two months before the
regiment began its deployment at Camp Shelby, Miss., in late June, suffered
a concussion and hearing loss. But he said the incident left him with a
week’s worth of nightmares.
 
“I kept waking up to (bombs) going off,” he said. “I kept hearing that same
noise, and it would wake me up.”
 
One of the most difficult moments of the experience was telephoning his
mother, he said.
 
“It took me awhile to get her to stop crying and tell her I was OK,” Spc.
Belcher said. “She kept saying, ‘I want you to come home.’ She was acting
like any mom would.”
 
Capt. Matthew Smith, commander of Third Squadron’s L Troop, said the
explosion beside Spc. Belcher’s Humvee is the only roadside bomb to hit L
Troop. The incident motivated his soldiers to corral Jalula’s insurgency.
 
“We did some serious knocking on doors the next day,” said Capt. Smith, 35,
of Nashville.
 
“I want to see justice served,” he said. “I am looking at trying to get the
big fish.”
 
He said L Troop already has captured some area bomb makers and is using
these detainees to track down others in an ongoing investigation with both
day and night raids.
 
BOMBINGS ON THE RISE
 
The entire regiment has seen an increase in improvised explosive device
activity as the scheduled Jan. 30 election draws near, officials said.
However, not all bombs hit their intended targets. Recently elements of the
regiment’s Third Squadron found two insurgents who had blown themselves up
while trying to set up a bomb on the road near Jalula.
 
Spc. Belcher said riding safely in Humvees exposed above the waist as a
gunner for two weeks before the Jan. 3 explosion made him confident and
relaxed just as if he was working a normal job back home.
 
“It is just beyond belief when it happens to you,” he said.
 
Sgt. Chris O’Barr, 41, survived a bomb attack on his Humvee from the same
gunner’s spot. While on a supply convoy with elements of First Squadron’s
Service Battery, Sgt. O’Barr’s vehicle came under attack this month outside
a small town north of Camp Caldwell.
 
Sgt. O’Barr said the bomb went off and sent him flying through the air soon
after the Humvee slowed to make a sharp turn. The Humvee’s right side came
completely off the ground before crashing back down, he said.
 
“It picked me up off my feet and slapped me around,” he said. “I was
bouncing around the turret like a pinball.”
 
Sgt. O’Barr landed on his right arm and shoulder nearly upside down inside
the Humvee. He said he checked to make sure he still had all his limbs and
began to feel better when he didn’t see any blood.
 
“The first thing I am thinking is ambush,” he said. “I needed to get the gun
back in the game.”
 
But the Humvee’s driver, Spc. Blaze Crook, already had hit the gas pedal.
 
“I didn’t freak out,” said Spc. Crook, of Cleveland, Tenn. “I was calm the
whole time. ‘Is everyone all right?’ and ‘Let’s get out of here’ were the
only two things on my mind.”
 
With ears ringing, the three soldiers in the vehicle had to give each other
the thumbs-up sign to signal they had no injuries. Nearly a week after the
explosion, Sgt. O’Barr said he still felt as though he was listening to
people while underwater.
 
The Humvee that Sgt. O’Barr and Spc. Crook rode in had been upgraded with
steel doors and ballistic windows. Parked in the motor pool a week later, it
had no visible signs of the attack.
 
“The armor did its job and deflected everything,” Sgt. O’Barr said. “We were
lucky.”
 
The vehicle’s gun turret took minor shrapnel damage, and the explosion
nearly blew off the Humvee’s canvas top and allowed smoke to pour inside.
 
“It was like being in a big dust cloud,” Sgt. O’Barr said.
 
TRAINING AND WARNINGS
 
During the regiment’s nearly five months of training, instructors used
simulated explosions to familiarize the soldiers with the sights and sounds
of improvised bombs. The unit also watched videos about the various types of
bombs. All that training has not stopped other members of the regiment from
asking the bombing survivors to recount their experiences.
 
“Everybody is asking me what it’s like,” said Spc. Crook, who kept a piece
of shrapnel as a souvenir. “I tell them it is just like the videos they
showed us, but it’s surround sound.”
 
Several survivors of roadside bombings declined to be interviewed for this
story. Some have yet to tell loved ones back home about their experiences.
But they said they are more than willing to talk to fellow 278th soldiers
about what happened in the hope their observations will help others who must
venture outside the bases to conduct missions.
 
Sgt. O’Barr, a Cobb County, Ga., police officer, said he remembers thinking
something was not right when the crowd of people gathered on the roadside
began to thin out as if they knew something was about to happen. It was a
warning sign he will act on in the future, he said.
 
Still, those who have lived through such an attack said bombs go off every
day in Iraq, and with so many convoys driving around the country the odds of
getting hit are too low to worry about.
 
“It is like a lightning strike,” Sgt. O’Barr said. “Sometimes I think I have
been shot up more at home than I’ve been here.”
 
Spc. Belcher said he still pictures what happened during his close call, but
it will not keep him from doing his job.
 
“Every time we go by that spot, I duck down until we pass,” he said. “The
driver usually speeds up for me.”
 
 
BY THE NUMBERS
 
* 10 — IED or roadside bomb close calls
 
* 50 — roadside bombs discovered
 
* 56 — weapons caches found
 
* 70 — insurgents captured
 
* 1,000 — missions conducted
 

I really dont feel like being on the computer these days .Maybe soon again. But i wanted to post this up date from the boys and girls in Iraqi.This post come to me from my friend Barb. Joshua’s and bj’s Mother

Treasure hunt turns up mines, machine gun
By Edward Lee Pitts
Military Affairs
 
CAMP CALDWELL, Iraq — Under the shadows of snow-capped Iranian mountains,
the 278th Regimental Combat Team’s Deacon Company digs for hidden weapons
caches with the help of the Iraqi army and U.S. Special Forces.
 
Iraqi soldiers shovel at the bottom of a man-made 15-foot crater in farmland
as U.S. troops peer anxiously down at what once may have been a well but now
holds weapons instead of water. Iraqi police and National Guard soldiers in
the 278th’s sector long have gone out on patrols with U.S. forces.
 
“I feel like Indiana Jones,” said one of the Special Forces soldiers.
Special Forces soldiers do not wear name patches or ranks to keep their
identities hidden.
 
The men are looking for explosives because a local informant said insurgents
are hiding weapons in sink holes. Soon an Iraqi soldier uncovers a mud-caked
anti-personnel mine and slowly brings it up, balancing it on the end of his
shovel.
 
“Careful, it’s about to fall off of your shovel,” said Lt. Joseph Minarick,
forgetting the soldier doesn’t understand English.
 
The U.S. soldiers gather around to identify and photograph the mine and call
in its map coordinates so members of the Explosives Ordnance Disposal unit
can destroy it before it becomes the key ingredient in a roadside bomb.
 
In its largely rural sector near the Iranian border, Deacon Company has been
busy putting a dent in the materials insurgents use to kill U.S. forces and
pro-election Iraqis.
 
In less than a month in Iraq, Deacon Company already has found more hidden
weapons caches than its predecessors did in almost a year of searching.
 
The company has uncovered two mortars, one heavy machine gun, 115 mortar
shells, 28 grenades, 25 rocket-propelled grenades, 45 boxes of ammunition
and nine artillery rounds.
 
“We want to find the stuff and get it out before somebody else grabs it,”
said Spc. Matthew Shipp, 25, of Knoxville. “We would rather dig it up and
explode it than have it sitting on the road someday.”
 
The Deacon Company soldiers said they are in a treasure hunt race against
the insurgents who craft the improvised explosive devices, often called
IEDs, responsible for most U.S. deaths on Iraqi roads.
 
“Anything they can find that has explosives in it, they can use,” said Sgt.
Walter King, 25, of Jefferson City, Tenn.
 
Sgt. King said the company has succeeded by checking areas other U.S. forces
have not explored in a while.
 
The company’s vast sector is littered with dated unexploded munitions from
the Iran-Iraq war. But the company is finding newer explosives mixed in with
the war leftovers — a sign the insurgents are using the area as a
collection point for their tools of destruction.
 
The rural landscape offers unlimited hiding places for insurgents who don’t
want to get caught with the bombs inside their homes.
 
“This is the harvest ground for a bomb maker,” said Maj. Tim Cleveland, the
First Squadron’s operations officer, as he looked out over Deacon Company’s
sector of mountains, date palm groves and fields. “The enemy is getting
really good at hiding stuff.”
 
The proximity to the border means the company’s area is a breeding ground
for black market weapons activity. Struggling farmers often risk jail by
selling weapons to put food on the table. Weapons brought over the border
can be shipped all over Iraq.
 
“These guys make $300 a year in average annual income,” said Spc. Shipp.
“You can get way more than that smuggling weapons.”
 
The biggest bounty for Deacon Company occurred two weeks ago when a convoy
pulled over to investigate a possible roadside bomb.
 
The more the soldiers spread out over the area, the more explosives they
found, including leftover mortar rounds, boxes of ammunition and grenades.
 
To reach these hiding places, Deacon Company must navigate unmapped goat
trails and abandoned fighting positions where decade-old armies left
everything behind when they fled during the border war.
 
“Walking around in a minefield is not something I like to do every day,”
said Sgt. John McHugh, 35, of Knoxville.
 
Unsatisfied with the single uncovered anti-personnel mine found in the old
well, Deacon Company and Special Forces continue searching. As they peer
into sand dune crevices and ditches built both by erosion and by fighting
soldiers, nearby sheepherders tend their flocks and children play.
 
In another crater several hundred yards away, the Iraqi diggers soon uncover
a second mine, this one so old its paint has peeled away.
 
The Iraqis take pictures of themselves holding the mine, and a few toss the
small white disc around, forcing most of the U.S. soldiers to take several
steps back.
 
“It is kind of like mine Frisbee,” Lt. Minarick said.
 
The Iraqis are more used to explosives in their midst and show less fear.
 
But the unpredictable nature of these mines has Sgt. 1st Class Clay Rader
glad they will be removed for the protection of the local population as well
as U.S. troops.
 
“You could just touch it and it will go off, or you could drive a semi-truck
across it and nothing would happen,” Sgt. Rader said.
 
Before the end of the day, the U.S. soldiers drive closer to the Iranian
border and uncover 10 mortar rounds and some machine gun ammunition among
long-abandoned bunkers.
 
The hardest part of the weapons hunt for Deacon Company is having to leave
the newly discovered caches behind.
 
So many bombs are uncovered here it takes several days for the overworked
Explosives Ordinance Disposal to show up at a new site.
 
The soldiers have a joke that EOD stands for Every Other Day. They fear
leaving the bombs unguarded will give insurgents more time to pick them up
before they are destroyed.
 
“It is pretty frustrating when you have to leave a bunch of stuff that could
wind up killing you,” Lt. Minarick said.
 
The payoff for Deacon Company’s work is when its soldiers get to accompany
EOD to detonate the explosives.
 
Soldiers in the company proudly display on their laptops before-and-after
photos of a pile of explosives wired for destruction.
 
“It rattles your teeth, but in a good way,” said Lt. Minarick, adding that
the best spot for watching the fireworks is at least 300 meters away from
behind a sand dune.
 

 

Hello everyone i dont feel like being on the pc but i wanted you’ll to see the “”pictures from Iraqi that Joshua’s and Bj’s “”mother Barb. sent me .We had a great night at prayer and share last night. One day im going to get pictures of that to.

Keep them in your prayers please things are going to heat up nearer the election they get.

Good morning everyone, Yep it’s Monday lol. I wont be on long I’ve so much house work to do .Sometimes i just dont care for Mondays for this reason lol.

It’s a good thing Sunday is the first day of the week isnt it! With the tile all done in my closet floor i have to put everything back in there today so the bedroom wont seem so messy.

Well happy Monday to all !

Good morning everyone .I hope your all doing well in the lord today, I always just love to wake up and feel God so close , dont you’ll? I went to a funeral yesterday  but he lived in Jesus so i know he went to heaven to await the secound coming. Today im trying to get my strength up to work on this computer lol. I dont have 1/2 the things and programs on this pc i had on my old one and i may just switch back again lol.

I’ll be around to visit today and tomorrow im just a bit slower then normal still.Love you all and miss you’ll a bunch!

From the heart of Fancy