Good Morning Everyone,
Here is the email everyone has been waiting for. Please keep in mind that date/time may change but I will keep you posted should that occur. Alpha Company Marines/Sailors are scheduled to arrive on Camp Pendleton on Friday, 28 May 10.
All family members that will be present can begin to arrive at the 4th LAR Reserve Training Center between 12:30 and 1:00 PM. We expect the company soon after; however, please keep in mind the actual arrival time will depend on traffic, flight time, and other factors.
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Leaving Hell....
Mom,
All sounds good to me. We leave tomorrow morning for Dwyer then to Leatherneck then to Manas then home. I’ll try to get another email to you when I can but not sure if I’ll be able to.
Love you,
ws
FYI....
His tomorrow morning is our tonight. It is getting close.
All sounds good to me. We leave tomorrow morning for Dwyer then to Leatherneck then to Manas then home. I’ll try to get another email to you when I can but not sure if I’ll be able to.
Love you,
ws
FYI....
His tomorrow morning is our tonight. It is getting close.
Monday, May 10, 2010
Article pdf
Bro….I thought you’d like to add this article to the blog spot. Our FAC’s (forward air controller….he tells the pilots where to shoot bad guys and where to drop bombs) sister saw the blog site….she was just doing a search…she like it a lot. Funny how someone in Pittsburg can see what’s going on and her brother and I share a tent!
Small world,
ws
computers down
Hello All,
So our computers have been down for various reasons for the past 4-5 days. If you’ve sent any emails since then please resend them because I didn’t get any but now the system is back up.
So what’s been going on out here….well a lot of things. Some things I can say…..other things I cannot. It’s hard to know where to start telling you the events of the past week. A lot of it has been blur to me and I’ve not gotten good sleep so I’m dragging my butt and pushing on.
So let’s start with some high lights. My Marines captured a ‘low level’ TB leader last week. “Low Level” for us is a big deal. He has been a supporter of the TB and was they ‘commander’ of the TB underground in our area of operations. He supported terrorism by distributing the IED making materials and harassing the locals (delivering death threats). He won’t be making anymore threats and will be in jail for a long time. You know these guys don’t play by any rules….he looks like a teenager….maybe a Senior in HS! You would expect him to be older….have a full grown beard and some fat on him. But like most of the people in the area he was thin and frail looking. Bad guy none the less. After we caught him he was shaking like a leaf! I might have felt some pitty for him if he hadn’t been involved in killing Marines and innocent civilians….but he was so screw him! Or at least someone will in prison.
We’ve had a few bad sand storm w/ rain the past week. The first one was as tall as a New York City skyscraper! It was amazing to see, I wish I could have taken pictures. Never seen anything like this in the states. “OH SHIT” just doesn’t describe what you’d say when you see it coming towards you! If we didn’t have good shelters the I’m sure I’d move past the pucker phase and right into lose my bowels stage….yeah it was that bad. We had another one last night. We were sitting in a meeting and the winds and rain had already been blowing for a good 15 minutes. Hot rain and winds that blow it sideways…just unreal. Marines were walking around with their goggles on and after being outside for 10 minutes you looked like a sugar cookie. I had to (twice now) recall my squad that was out on patrol. They had to hold on to each other to get back…..good thing for GPS because they navigated in the blind….and it was still day! In the meeting the winds were so bad that it knocked over part of the tent we were in. (It’s an older tent unlike the new ones we are now living in. Our new ones are very cool and more like Quonset huts….almost indestructible by weather and they are climate controlled….but the generators go out often and that turns them into ovens during the day.) So all of a sudden in the middle of the storm it just stops. It was like we were in the ‘eye of the storm’ or something. But two minutes later we were back in the storm. Amazing weather.
But today it’s nice out again. Like the storm never was here. Blue skies and it’s not too hot….yet. I’m sure by noon it will be back in the 100s, as per usual. But we are short timers here. Our replacements are coming today and it doesn’t get much better than that! We fly out of here on the 18/19 and will be home a week after that…more or less. Hopefully less.
I hope you are all doing well. Me I’m fine.
Semper Fi,
ws
So our computers have been down for various reasons for the past 4-5 days. If you’ve sent any emails since then please resend them because I didn’t get any but now the system is back up.
So what’s been going on out here….well a lot of things. Some things I can say…..other things I cannot. It’s hard to know where to start telling you the events of the past week. A lot of it has been blur to me and I’ve not gotten good sleep so I’m dragging my butt and pushing on.
So let’s start with some high lights. My Marines captured a ‘low level’ TB leader last week. “Low Level” for us is a big deal. He has been a supporter of the TB and was they ‘commander’ of the TB underground in our area of operations. He supported terrorism by distributing the IED making materials and harassing the locals (delivering death threats). He won’t be making anymore threats and will be in jail for a long time. You know these guys don’t play by any rules….he looks like a teenager….maybe a Senior in HS! You would expect him to be older….have a full grown beard and some fat on him. But like most of the people in the area he was thin and frail looking. Bad guy none the less. After we caught him he was shaking like a leaf! I might have felt some pitty for him if he hadn’t been involved in killing Marines and innocent civilians….but he was so screw him! Or at least someone will in prison.
We’ve had a few bad sand storm w/ rain the past week. The first one was as tall as a New York City skyscraper! It was amazing to see, I wish I could have taken pictures. Never seen anything like this in the states. “OH SHIT” just doesn’t describe what you’d say when you see it coming towards you! If we didn’t have good shelters the I’m sure I’d move past the pucker phase and right into lose my bowels stage….yeah it was that bad. We had another one last night. We were sitting in a meeting and the winds and rain had already been blowing for a good 15 minutes. Hot rain and winds that blow it sideways…just unreal. Marines were walking around with their goggles on and after being outside for 10 minutes you looked like a sugar cookie. I had to (twice now) recall my squad that was out on patrol. They had to hold on to each other to get back…..good thing for GPS because they navigated in the blind….and it was still day! In the meeting the winds were so bad that it knocked over part of the tent we were in. (It’s an older tent unlike the new ones we are now living in. Our new ones are very cool and more like Quonset huts….almost indestructible by weather and they are climate controlled….but the generators go out often and that turns them into ovens during the day.) So all of a sudden in the middle of the storm it just stops. It was like we were in the ‘eye of the storm’ or something. But two minutes later we were back in the storm. Amazing weather.
But today it’s nice out again. Like the storm never was here. Blue skies and it’s not too hot….yet. I’m sure by noon it will be back in the 100s, as per usual. But we are short timers here. Our replacements are coming today and it doesn’t get much better than that! We fly out of here on the 18/19 and will be home a week after that…more or less. Hopefully less.
I hope you are all doing well. Me I’m fine.
Semper Fi,
ws
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
it's been a while
Well I apologize for not writing more to all of you. It’s been a busy last couple of weeks and I almost don’t know where to begin writing and I may not include a lot of details but I’m sure you can understand the reason is because of operational reasons….but ask me when I get home and I should be able to talk about it.
So we were on our way to the shura yesterday to meet with the Council of Elders…again and as per usual on a warm Saturday morning. I tell you I’ve never been to hell and I only plan on going if, after I die and check in to serve God…because if you didn’t know all Marines have to check in for duty once you get to the ‘pearly gates’….I’m sure he’ll give me a platoon of badass devil dogs (those would be Marines in Heaven…..can I say badass devil dogs and refer to them in heaven?....kind of an oxymoron if you ask me but whatever) so we can be the first ones into Hell and defeat Evil on its own turf. Anyways I was talking about hell and how I’ve never been there…..well Afghanistan may be the best place to prepare for ‘War in Hell’! To say that it’s hot out here is an understatement…..I’ve never been to Iraq and even though my Marines who have been say that it’s hotter there I still don’t enjoy it here. But maybe it’s good to say that in the middle of the day, with 75 lbs of extra gear on and this shit is getting heavy by hour 6-8 of patrolling let me tell you, I don’t notice the 100+ temperature……probably because my feet hurt, my shoulders are aching and I’m more focused on looking out for someone who wants to be brave enough to shoot at us then the pile of shit I just stepped in….LOL.
So the shura goes as I expected it to with a few minor differences from the normal. The elders do their complaining about the detainees we captured over a week ago and the one we detained a few days ago. (Just to get some of you up to speed we did a ‘cordon and knock’ (some might consider it a raid but it’s a little different….kicking down doors and destroying things happens in raids and you see this in movies all the time but it destroys evidence and get’s people shot and killed and I’m not all about that at this point in our deployment…thus not a single Marine was injured during this 16 hour operation.) We detained 22 people…..we knew not all of them were shitheads….excuse me bad guys….but yeah shitheads. But since the ‘code of honor’ that the Pashtu people are so well known for doesn’t exist in this part of the Helmand Province I made the call to detain them all…..it was either you tell me the truth or I take everyone to jail. (just so we are clear I don’t make threats…..I make promises……I told one guy if you lie to me I’ll turn you over to the ANBP and they’ll beat your ass……this is where the part of operational discretion comes in because I didn’t see anything) So needless to say he spilled the beans for me and he went to jail.
So the elders complain about the detainees and want us to let the rest of them go (we released 11 of them sent the rest to be interrogated and the ‘bigger fish’ are going to spend a few years in prison….if they make it out alive. Just a note for the kids….. ‘don’t sell drugs, don’t hide weapons and bomb making materials, and don’t lie to the Marines….we will catch you. And just like I promised the detainees……if it happens again, I will kill you.’ That’s not part of my joke…..remember this is war and I don’t work for CNN so I won’t blow smoke up your ass!) So the elders are upset and I just break it down to them….I tell them how dishonorable the men in the compounds were and that they lied to me. They say they won’t vouch for the dishonorable ones and I can do whatever I want with them….but they ask for a few of them by name. They say their women (Mothers, sister, wives…..etc etc) are crying and complaining to them that their men are gone and they want them back….they say that the CoE (Council of Elders) is responsible for vouching for them and getting them back. So they ask me about them. I’ve answered this before and I’m tired of telling them the same story so I’m a little more blunt this time because I have an audience and some new elders to make an impression on…..so I say, “they are criminals and have no honor and have disrespected you the CoE……they are in your governments hands now…..you can tell their women I took them to jail and I will arrest anyone who breaks the law…….oh and so and so you are asking about on behalf of his mother….You can tell her he is a criminal just like his father who was detained months ago. She will not see him ever again he is going to jail for the rest of his life. (don’t quote me on that because I had a few better lines that I won’t say here). So just to keep you in the loop we captured the IED cell that killed our Sgt. Major Cottle and his driver LCpl. Centanni.
Okay remember I’m writing this after the fact so I’m safe…..so no freaking out when you read this. A few days ago some (what we call little Taliban or lil T) shot some rockets at us…..again! Yeah I know what all the guys are saying because it was the first thing to come out of my mouth…..motherf**kers! You have to have big……well lot’s of courage or be a coward who ‘shoots and scoots’ to shoot 107mm rockets at my base. It doesn’t bring fear to me (but some Marines puked…..fear does that to people and it’s a normal reaction….still Marines are going to make fun of you if you do it) it just pisses me off and make me very upset. But I have to keep my cool and try to locate the direction the rockets came from so I can ‘walk my squad on target’ to go investigate…..we don’t just shoot rockets back because we could hit innocent people and that’s not how to win hearts and minds in a COIN (counterinsurgency environment). So I send a patrol to the exact coordinates (they didn’t get there because I’m that good we have technology that helps…..don’t ask me here and now about it wait until I get home, I can talk about it then but it’s like the stuff you see in movies). And we can see who and where this happened because we have an OP on the ruins which is a few 100 feet on a hillside and we remote controlled aircraft with cameras on it..we have all kinds of cool ‘toys/tools’ at our disposal oh and a 120’ tower with multiple cameras on it…yeah your tax dollars hard at work. So the Marines get there, again as per usual no one has seen or heard anything but one guy wants to be an a$$hole about the situation….so I tell the Marines to detain him….mess with my Marines I’m going to mess with you….cuz I’m the law! So we get him and he goes to jail. So this comes up at the shura too and the hard part is that his dad is on the Council! Yeah tell me about it…..so I just tell it like it is…..you shoot rockets at my base,,,, everyone lies to me and has no honor…..I can see this with my OP, camera, and plane = someone is going down for this, ‘any takers?’ no…..okay then I pick you, the jerk we’ve been watching who isn’t being cooperative! There was more to it than that but you get the idea.
The sad thing about the shrua is that I don’t want to talk about any of this. Really on my agenda is building a school, finding teachers to get accredited this summer and the free wheat seed that the DG (district governor) wants us to give out but instead I have to deal with this mess. I’m never going into politics……people would hate me because once you press all my buttons I’m going to murder your case and show you what kind of idiot you are….I won’t deal with the lies that these people keep telling us and I put it back in their face…yes the elders. One tells me, again, that Marines put a knife to his throat and threaten to kill him. I tell him he has no honor and is a liar……this is an typical TB scare tactic and Marines would never do this. ( We don’t use scare tactics…..we don’t have to. We make promises…and we keep them…..that should scare people enough because we keep our word.) I watched the entire event with my camera that he knows can see him….he didn’t say another word and the rest of the elders looked at him like he is a turd….which he is. Then they complained because we searched their compounds…..so I told them that we did like they’ve asked….we got ‘the elder’ to go with the Marines and we used the ANBP….and it’s not like we didn’t have a good reason: SOME A$$HOLES JUST SHOT ROCKETS AT MY F**KING BASE TRYING TO KILL US! Unbelievable isn’t it? We are here to protect these people, we fix the bridge the TB blew up last year, we bring local government representation by helping establish a CoE (because they can’t do it themselves), we shoot back at the TB that shoots at them who murdered a guy less than a week ago and killed an innocent woman a few weeks ago when they shot at both the Marines and the ANBP…….but none of the people see any TB…they keep telling us they are all gone or not here. Being out here my sense of smell has gotten much better and I’m not happy about it….but I can tell the difference between cow shit, camel shit, goat shit and dog shit. Human shit has a very unique smell to it and I can tell the difference between that and the bullshit that the people are shoveling me too.
Okay I’m off my soap box but you see what I deal with. I’m glad we are counting down the days…..less than two weeks and we make our retrograde back to the stats. I’ll be home already by this time next month. And I look forward to it. I have some unbelievable stories…..I wake up some mornings thinking to myself, ‘did that really happen or did I dream it?’ So we’ll talk about them then.
Right now I have work to get done……it never ends.
Semper Fi,
ws
So we were on our way to the shura yesterday to meet with the Council of Elders…again and as per usual on a warm Saturday morning. I tell you I’ve never been to hell and I only plan on going if, after I die and check in to serve God…because if you didn’t know all Marines have to check in for duty once you get to the ‘pearly gates’….I’m sure he’ll give me a platoon of badass devil dogs (those would be Marines in Heaven…..can I say badass devil dogs and refer to them in heaven?....kind of an oxymoron if you ask me but whatever) so we can be the first ones into Hell and defeat Evil on its own turf. Anyways I was talking about hell and how I’ve never been there…..well Afghanistan may be the best place to prepare for ‘War in Hell’! To say that it’s hot out here is an understatement…..I’ve never been to Iraq and even though my Marines who have been say that it’s hotter there I still don’t enjoy it here. But maybe it’s good to say that in the middle of the day, with 75 lbs of extra gear on and this shit is getting heavy by hour 6-8 of patrolling let me tell you, I don’t notice the 100+ temperature……probably because my feet hurt, my shoulders are aching and I’m more focused on looking out for someone who wants to be brave enough to shoot at us then the pile of shit I just stepped in….LOL.
So the shura goes as I expected it to with a few minor differences from the normal. The elders do their complaining about the detainees we captured over a week ago and the one we detained a few days ago. (Just to get some of you up to speed we did a ‘cordon and knock’ (some might consider it a raid but it’s a little different….kicking down doors and destroying things happens in raids and you see this in movies all the time but it destroys evidence and get’s people shot and killed and I’m not all about that at this point in our deployment…thus not a single Marine was injured during this 16 hour operation.) We detained 22 people…..we knew not all of them were shitheads….excuse me bad guys….but yeah shitheads. But since the ‘code of honor’ that the Pashtu people are so well known for doesn’t exist in this part of the Helmand Province I made the call to detain them all…..it was either you tell me the truth or I take everyone to jail. (just so we are clear I don’t make threats…..I make promises……I told one guy if you lie to me I’ll turn you over to the ANBP and they’ll beat your ass……this is where the part of operational discretion comes in because I didn’t see anything) So needless to say he spilled the beans for me and he went to jail.
So the elders complain about the detainees and want us to let the rest of them go (we released 11 of them sent the rest to be interrogated and the ‘bigger fish’ are going to spend a few years in prison….if they make it out alive. Just a note for the kids….. ‘don’t sell drugs, don’t hide weapons and bomb making materials, and don’t lie to the Marines….we will catch you. And just like I promised the detainees……if it happens again, I will kill you.’ That’s not part of my joke…..remember this is war and I don’t work for CNN so I won’t blow smoke up your ass!) So the elders are upset and I just break it down to them….I tell them how dishonorable the men in the compounds were and that they lied to me. They say they won’t vouch for the dishonorable ones and I can do whatever I want with them….but they ask for a few of them by name. They say their women (Mothers, sister, wives…..etc etc) are crying and complaining to them that their men are gone and they want them back….they say that the CoE (Council of Elders) is responsible for vouching for them and getting them back. So they ask me about them. I’ve answered this before and I’m tired of telling them the same story so I’m a little more blunt this time because I have an audience and some new elders to make an impression on…..so I say, “they are criminals and have no honor and have disrespected you the CoE……they are in your governments hands now…..you can tell their women I took them to jail and I will arrest anyone who breaks the law…….oh and so and so you are asking about on behalf of his mother….You can tell her he is a criminal just like his father who was detained months ago. She will not see him ever again he is going to jail for the rest of his life. (don’t quote me on that because I had a few better lines that I won’t say here). So just to keep you in the loop we captured the IED cell that killed our Sgt. Major Cottle and his driver LCpl. Centanni.
Okay remember I’m writing this after the fact so I’m safe…..so no freaking out when you read this. A few days ago some (what we call little Taliban or lil T) shot some rockets at us…..again! Yeah I know what all the guys are saying because it was the first thing to come out of my mouth…..motherf**kers! You have to have big……well lot’s of courage or be a coward who ‘shoots and scoots’ to shoot 107mm rockets at my base. It doesn’t bring fear to me (but some Marines puked…..fear does that to people and it’s a normal reaction….still Marines are going to make fun of you if you do it) it just pisses me off and make me very upset. But I have to keep my cool and try to locate the direction the rockets came from so I can ‘walk my squad on target’ to go investigate…..we don’t just shoot rockets back because we could hit innocent people and that’s not how to win hearts and minds in a COIN (counterinsurgency environment). So I send a patrol to the exact coordinates (they didn’t get there because I’m that good we have technology that helps…..don’t ask me here and now about it wait until I get home, I can talk about it then but it’s like the stuff you see in movies). And we can see who and where this happened because we have an OP on the ruins which is a few 100 feet on a hillside and we remote controlled aircraft with cameras on it..we have all kinds of cool ‘toys/tools’ at our disposal oh and a 120’ tower with multiple cameras on it…yeah your tax dollars hard at work. So the Marines get there, again as per usual no one has seen or heard anything but one guy wants to be an a$$hole about the situation….so I tell the Marines to detain him….mess with my Marines I’m going to mess with you….cuz I’m the law! So we get him and he goes to jail. So this comes up at the shura too and the hard part is that his dad is on the Council! Yeah tell me about it…..so I just tell it like it is…..you shoot rockets at my base,,,, everyone lies to me and has no honor…..I can see this with my OP, camera, and plane = someone is going down for this, ‘any takers?’ no…..okay then I pick you, the jerk we’ve been watching who isn’t being cooperative! There was more to it than that but you get the idea.
The sad thing about the shrua is that I don’t want to talk about any of this. Really on my agenda is building a school, finding teachers to get accredited this summer and the free wheat seed that the DG (district governor) wants us to give out but instead I have to deal with this mess. I’m never going into politics……people would hate me because once you press all my buttons I’m going to murder your case and show you what kind of idiot you are….I won’t deal with the lies that these people keep telling us and I put it back in their face…yes the elders. One tells me, again, that Marines put a knife to his throat and threaten to kill him. I tell him he has no honor and is a liar……this is an typical TB scare tactic and Marines would never do this. ( We don’t use scare tactics…..we don’t have to. We make promises…and we keep them…..that should scare people enough because we keep our word.) I watched the entire event with my camera that he knows can see him….he didn’t say another word and the rest of the elders looked at him like he is a turd….which he is. Then they complained because we searched their compounds…..so I told them that we did like they’ve asked….we got ‘the elder’ to go with the Marines and we used the ANBP….and it’s not like we didn’t have a good reason: SOME A$$HOLES JUST SHOT ROCKETS AT MY F**KING BASE TRYING TO KILL US! Unbelievable isn’t it? We are here to protect these people, we fix the bridge the TB blew up last year, we bring local government representation by helping establish a CoE (because they can’t do it themselves), we shoot back at the TB that shoots at them who murdered a guy less than a week ago and killed an innocent woman a few weeks ago when they shot at both the Marines and the ANBP…….but none of the people see any TB…they keep telling us they are all gone or not here. Being out here my sense of smell has gotten much better and I’m not happy about it….but I can tell the difference between cow shit, camel shit, goat shit and dog shit. Human shit has a very unique smell to it and I can tell the difference between that and the bullshit that the people are shoveling me too.
Okay I’m off my soap box but you see what I deal with. I’m glad we are counting down the days…..less than two weeks and we make our retrograde back to the stats. I’ll be home already by this time next month. And I look forward to it. I have some unbelievable stories…..I wake up some mornings thinking to myself, ‘did that really happen or did I dream it?’ So we’ll talk about them then.
Right now I have work to get done……it never ends.
Semper Fi,
ws
Monday, April 26, 2010
COP Taghaz
Okay so this is a view of our COP from the West entrance. On the left are the enlisted barracks/hooches. On the right you see two big bladders that hold the water to the showers.
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