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