NUKE's war diary.

[NUKE_CLEVELAND]

It's really good to see that our higher headquarters is finally sick and tired of our guys getting hit out in sector. Yesterday we did a major sweep through the Sunni area ( we always, ALWAYS get shot at when we go through there ) with a few hundred guys. Didn't turn up anything incriminating while searching houses but we did discover and neutralize 2 IED's in the roads and we also killed 2 more boneheads. One of the guys we smoked was, we think, a trigger man for the IED's because he ran from the site where they were found when he saw the swarm of humvees coming at him. The other guy took a shot at one of my trucks and the gunner finished him off with a couple of quick bursts. When we drove by at the end of the day we could still see his sorry ass hanging out the window. Kinda funny really.

 

Today should be quiet for us. Maybe tinker with the trucks a little bit and that's about all really. More fun stuff coming up here in a couple of days. I'll be back with details when it's all over with.

[NUKE_CLEVELAND]

Yesterday we did the second sweep through the ville. It was a long day to say the least. We pulled guard on one of the outposts for 24 hours, then went into preperation for the mission and then went at it. We went through the eastern half of “cache strip” ( named that way because of all the weapons cache's and gunfire we encounter there ) yesterday and searched a mosque and a bunch of houses. The house search didn’t turn up much in our sector but one of the other platoons found a bunch of IED stuff, ammunition and fake uniforms. After we were done searching houses, we were given word to go clear a bunch of mud huts. Before we did it, we got stuck waiting on word from higher to actually go do it. So, me and 3 other guys went up on a roof to look for sniper activity. We ended up getting shot at from across the highway so we opened up on the guy. I think we hit him too because he staggered off the roof and down some stairs dragging one of his legs behind him. Once we went through the mud huts, we made it about a quarter of the way through when we ran across a half buried wire stretching across the open field. We traced it to a white car, but didn’t get too close because we thought it led to an IED. We called in EOD to blow it and then raided the house where the wire led back to. Nobody was home except for a dog ( which we shot ) so we turned the place upside down. The command wire led to a breaker switch. We took video of it and then destroyed it with our shotgun. After that, we exfilled the area and returned to base. I then proceeded to sleep for the next 14 hours cause I was so gassed.

 

Next few days look fairly quiet. Aside from that, it looks like we're going to take over a new sector. The area immediately north of our current one is where we're going and it's plenty hot up there. Every time we have guard on the outpost nearby here we can hear gunfire coming from there almost constantly. Looks like a fun time! More to follow.

[NUKE_CLEVELAND]

Things had been quiet for the last several days but today was different. It's not that we took contact today but someone else did. We were taking a bunch of new guys around this morning. These are the ones that are taking over our sector so we can move to the one immediately north. While we're out cruising around we hear this large boom. We come to find out that there was an EFP ( those explosive formed penetrators ) that went off right outside the Iraqi Police compound on the main highway. The blast killed a soldier from another unit, one that we always used to see around here. We had rolled past the blast site not 30 minutes before it went off.

 

This whole deal pissed us off royally because even though we can't prove it, we're all absolutely sure the Iraqi Police were in on it somehow. Either they did it themselves or they purposefully turned their heads the other way while someone else did it. It's pretty much unanimous in our platoon that these guys should be lined up and shot. We always knew they were more crooked than a barrel of snakes but this is just off the charts. What does it say about things when the ones that are supposed to be our allies do something like that?

[NUKE_CLEVELAND]

Boy, we really made the terrorists s*** their pants today ( sarcasm ). There is this really dangerous area outside our sector and a house was identified that was a potential terrorist hideout. So we get called out to set up in observation of this place while the artillery guys launch a special kind of round at it to blow it up. So we head out and they're screaming at us on the radio to hurry up and get there because they want to shoot early. Fine. We haul ass out there, set up in our positions and wait. Once we get out there the PSYOPS guys start yelling over the loudspeakers some speech about " now see what happens when you mess with us ". Well, it didn't exactly turn out like that. First they start having problems with the round itself. It's a precision weapon and it was designed to drop through the roof and detonate. Well the 1st round failed to fire, so they tried another one........IT failed to fire. Some problem with the round holding data. So fine, they settle on a regular fire mission. Well, that didn't work either.......now the gun had problems of some kind. Finally, after an hour and a half of waiting around and talking s*** to the locals over the loudspeaker our commander pulls the plug and tells us to return to base.

 

Score one for the good guys.

[NUKE_CLEVELAND]

Internet has been down the last couple of days.......again........so I haven't been able to be around very much.

 

Anyways, we've been in something of a transition period the last several days. We handed off our old sector to another unit ( more to follow about these losers ) and started checking out our new sector. Nothing really crazy happened to us but that's not to say crazy stuff hasn't happened.

 

The guys that replaced us in our old sector are FREEKIN RETARDED!!!! I have never seen a unit so chewed up in my nearly 9 years of service. They can't navigate, they can't communicate, they wouldn't listen when we would tell them stuff about the place.......hell, they can't even stay together when they're moving!! I had the misfortune of riding along with them a couple of times and I was utterly appalled. The 1st time was when their guys were escorting a supply run to one of the outposts in the area. Despite the fact that their destination was a mere 2 miles up the road ( and they had been there before ) they still needed me to find it for them. Before that, though, it took them over an hour just to get outside the gate from the parking lot. They had to go back once cause they forgot something, then they drove around aimlessly for a while, then they spent like 15 minutes outside the gate just sitting there before they moved. Coming back was the best though. We were returning to base from a little side trip that we had to make and on the last turnoff there's a nice wide hole in the median where they can cross over and make the turn. I guess that was too easy for them, though, because they missed it and went over the 2 foot tall median. Their Strykers barely made it over but the one humvee in the convoy ( their commanders humvee ) got high centered. I then got to watch them do their vehicle recovery drill ( which looked more like a Chinese fire drill ) for like 20 minutes until they got him loose.

 

The second time I had the misfortune of riding with them I thought for sure I was done for. I got sent out with one of my guys to ride with them on a 7 hour mission at night to look for IED emplacement activity and just patrol the area. We see this car out after curfew coming at us. He turns off his lights and flips a u turn real fast so we fire warning shots with M4. He still doesn't stop so these guys decide to light him up with their 50s. Normally that would be cool, except for the fact that there was an IP checkpoint right in their line of fire and the results were predictable. We go up there to assess what happened, all of us get off the trucks and now there's 30 US soldiers staring at 30 IP's. Everybody's armed to the teeth and there was just a friendly fire incident. All I could think of was "Mexican Standoff". These morons didn't bother to bring a terp so they can't communicate with the IP's. I guess the IP's said something along the lines of "f*** this s***" cause they grabbed their guy that was killed and their wounded and hauled ass somewhere ( presumably the hospital ). I personally have no love at all for the IP becuase they're all crooked motherf***ers and I'm still pissed over that EFP that went off a week ago, but after this all I could do was shake my head in disgust. I could go on and on about their many f***ups but Im really rambling now.

 

The new sector they have us going to is really dense, really s***ty, and really Sunni. I can totally see us having a fun time up there. I drove through there yesterday with the unit we're replacing and the place is a total s***hole. Half the paved roads there are torn up. The story was that the guy they hired to repair the sewer lines was really an insurgent so he tore everything up and then disappeared ( with our money ). Now there are holes in the road that would swallow a humvee whole and at least a few miles worth of torn up asphalt. Another beautiful sight to see was the kids playground. I guess at one time it was really nice but as we drove by the place was torn up. To add to the ambience, we saw a dead guy laying face down off the side of the road. It looked like somebody knelt him down and shot him in the back of the head based on how he was laying. Must have been a few days ago too because he was all bloated from the heat.

 

Ahhh fun times in Baghdad. Im just thanking God we're done handing off our old sector. Those guys are going to have a REALLY long year here if that's how they do business. Im taking a ride through the new sector tomorrow so I'll get another good look at the place.

Edited May 16, 2007 by NUKE

[NUKE_CLEVELAND]

Well, we've had a little while to get used to our new sector and so far as I can see it has been VERY quiet. It's also quite small. The area we have to cover is barely 2 square kilometers. At any rate, the people seem very friendly, at least for the moment, and the biggest issue in the area is trying to get them more power ( they only have between 3-6 hours of electricity each day ). That's going to be a really big issue as it's already intensely hot out here ( north of 100 every day now ).

 

Anyway, between all the time off we had during our transition to the new area and the fact that things have been quiet here so far we're all doing really well and actually getting enough rest for a change. Hopefully things stay this way for a while.

[NUKE_CLEVELAND]

Well, I've had some close shaves so far in my time here but today was the closest yet. We were driving down the main drag in our sector with my truck in the lead and we got hit by an IED. It was a rather large one and it went off no more than 10 meters from my vehicle. My gunner got the worst of it and all he had was a mild concussion so that's a relief. I was a little shook up but I was unhurt. Same goes for my driver. As for my truck all that was wrong with it was some piece of junk or something shot out from the blast site and took a good little gash out of my windshield. ( Picture posted below ) .

 

Needless to say we were VERY lucky today. Things could have turned out MUCH worse than they did. Im going to be away at an outpost the next 3 days so hopefully nothing happens out there and I won't be posting till I get back.

 

 

Bottom line is we're all good and that's all that matters

 

 

 

 

Edited May 23, 2007 by NUKE

[NUKE_CLEVELAND]

As I write this, it's 3 AM in the airport in Shannon, Ireland. Im on my way home for my 2 week break and as a result, I will be taking a hiatus from writing in this thread until I return to Iraq. It's kind of a wierd feeling I suppose. It's a little too early for me to be going anywhere ( I've barely been over there 4 months ) and I really, REALLY hate to leave my guys behind, even for the shortest amount of time. However, I am very excited to be getting home and hope to have a really good time.

 

Anyways, that's about all for the moment. I'll resume here sometime toward the end of June.

[NUKE_CLEVELAND]

Well. As I sit here writing this I'm back in Baghdad at the airport waiting for a chopper flight back to my FOB. I had a really great time while I was on my break. I drank a lot of beer, saw MB notch his 100th win in person, hung around with my friends and partied hard!

 

Playtime is over now, though, and Im really looking forward to getting back at it. On a down note, though, bad news does not take vacations during wartime. When I called into my unit yesterday to let them know I was about to return I was informed of the loss of 2 more soldiers from my troop, one of which was in my platoon. This is a tough pill to swallow for me cause I knew both of the guys very well and worked with them daily. There went any post-vacation hangover. There's a couple of more guys that got banged up really bad and are still in the hospital ( they're expected to recover ) as well so my return can't come soon enough for the guys back here.

 

That's about it for the moment. To borrow a quote from Hawk........."Time to cinch it up and hunker down" cause 10 more months of fun await.

Edited June 19, 2007 by NUKE

[NUKE_CLEVELAND]

Once again my internet has been on the fritz, so that explains my lack of entries for this amount of time. Nothing really going on that merits discussion though. I know the news has been all lit up with action in and around Baghdad but fortunately for me and my troops in the last 10 days nearly all that action has been limited to northern Baghdad and Diyala province. That's fine with us, I guess.

 

Coming up this week we have a shift in missions. Instead of running around during daylight hours and talking to people we're trading out with the unit that does overwatch and curfew enforcement at night. So with that, the prospects for us to be able to party just went up a lot. We'll just have to see how things go.

[NUKE_CLEVELAND]

Back again. Last week or so has been very quiet. Basically, command has come to the conclusion that there needs to be U.S. forces in our sector 24/7. This seems to be paying off for us because since we've started this our sector has been about as quiet as can be. Meanwhile, the sector about a kilometer west of us has seen multiple IED attacks and complex ambushes during the same period.

 

One thing that really sticks in my craw about this situation, though, is the fact that the Iraqi security forces are nowhere to be seen. We're doing all the patrolling and they do little more than man a few checkpoints and sit on their asses at their base. They claim they're "scared" to go out into the neighborhoods. Well s*** dude, I'm sorry if you're scared but you need to do your f***ing job! So yeah, if we have someone out there 24/7 we can keep a lid on things but this is no way to get us to where we need to be and that's with the Iraqi's doing everything and us heading home.

[NUKE_CLEVELAND]

Back again. I've been out guarding this U.S/Iraqi compound the last few days but just before that I had a little fun. The night before we went out on guard, we rolled up 2 high value targets in our area. We got some intel that a bomb-maker was living and operating in our area. So, we roll up on his house at 3 AM, crash the door and catch him asleep. After questioning him for a little while he rolls over on his buddy across the street who has been paying him off. We go over there and he has this big metal gate closing off his house and it's locked. No worries though. We backed up a humvee, attached a tow cable and ripped the sucker off it's hinges, THEN crashed the house. We caught that guy trying to pull his pants on and run out the back. It's probably better for him that he didn't run outside because my truck was behind the house and I ordered my gunner to blow away anybody coming out the back.

 

So, all in all it was a really good night. Took a couple of major players out of circulation without firing a single shot.

[NUKE_CLEVELAND]

Now that the board is back up I suppose I better get back to work here.

 

Since my last entry there hasn't really been a lot going on out here. Now that we're patrolling at night we have no contact with the locals........unless we're raiding houses looking for bad guys.......and most of the time it's so quiet you can hear a pin drop. Most nights we'll either just park on the main road and keep a lookout or if we're feeling frisky we'll get a bunch of guys together, pick out an abandoned house with some height to it and set up a dismounted overwatch of area. Kinda funny to watch some local crap his pants when he steps out on his rooftop and we shine a green laser in their face from 4 blocks away.

 

When we're not playing laser tag with the locals or sitting on a screen line, we're raiding houses. Every night we get with the intelligence guys and try to figure out where these people are staying. In recent weeks we've really managed to really keep Al Queda off balance in the area. Our platoon alone has netted 5 dudes involved with them in the last 4 weeks and the squadron as a whole has wrapped up more than 30. Many times we end up with bad intel and hit the wrong house or just miss the guy but when we nail one of these pricks it's really cool.

 

Anyhow, that's about all for now. Since things have been so boring lately there hasn't been too much to write about. I kinda hope it stays that way.

[NUKE_CLEVELAND]

Lots to talk about today.

 

Last night we got some intel about where the Al Queda cell leader in our area was living as well as where one of his lieutenants was staying. Word came down right before we left for the evening that we had a couple of hits laid on and while we were out there we got the final word to execute. Having done that, our CO, my platoon leader, myself and a small security team took over an abandoned building to plan out the raid. Once that was complete, we went in. We used the hit on the lower level guy as sort of a dress rehearsal for the big fish. The 1st hit went off without a hitch. We snuck into his front yard, popped the lock and then crashed the door. Our boy was sleeping right there in his living room and we cuffed and questioned him, then stuck him in the back of one of our trucks. On the second hit, we were expecting trouble. This guy was a big shot and we expected him to have some sort of security around his house. Turns out he wasn't quite so scrupulous about his safety so getting in was a snap. As before, we caught the bastard sleeping and rolled his ass up as well. So. That's 2 more really big fish off the streets. Not bad for a nights work if I may say so.

 

Now comes the really fun part. There's a guy in my section who was caught having instant message communications with a local national who lives in our sector. This local national is known to have friends who are part of the local Al Queda cell that we've been taking apart over the last 2 months. There's no way to really know what was discussed because nothing was archived. It could have been perfectly harmless or maybe not. One thing that is for certain, though is that last night while we were talking to a source of ours, this guy ran into his IM buddy and in the course of conversation, started making suggestions about what type of driving behavior will arouse our suspicions out on the roads. You see there has been a huge problem with car bombs lately and when alarm bells get set off, triggers get pulled. So, yeah. This guy is getting ready to have the whole world come down on his head and I have absolutely no sympathy for him whatsoever. Every time he opens up his yap or types on a computer he endangers us.

 

That's about all for the moment. We have more fun and games possibly lined up for tonight so we'll see what happens.

[NUKE_CLEVELAND]

Back again. Nothing really much happening on our watch lately. There's been a rash of car bombs and IED's during the daytime, though. Fortunately, through 5 attacks since my last entry there has been only one man slightly hurt. Guess you can chalk that up to good luck. We've been continuing on with nothing but night missions and spending a lot of time targeting members of the Al Queda cell in our area. Unfortunately, we've nailed most of the major players in our area and now they're starting to come over from the REALLY bad area next to ours. I guess that takes the pressure off of the unit next to ours but it's a pain in the ass for us because we can't do too much about it. The bad guy's latest thing is to try to hit us with car bombs. As a result, we keep a nice wide buffer between civilian traffic and ourselves. Just this morning some jackass drove right up near our patrol and my gunner stitched his ass up with machine gun fire. It was pretty sweet.....he laid 7 rounds right across his hood. One of these days the locals are going to learn to give us our space........and then they'll come up with some new way to mess with us.........and the cycle will repeat. SIGH. One good thing, I guess, is that in most areas there has been a sharp drop in attacks so I suppose that's good news.

 

That's about all for now.

[NUKE_CLEVELAND]

Every time I b**** about how boring this place can be sometimes bad things happen but I simply can't help myself this time. Ever since my unit started doing patrols at night exclusively not a damn thing has happened. This is because after curfew there is nobody around to play with and if they do stick their heads outside they get a green laser right in the eye to remind them of the time. We've pretty much wrapped up all of the people affiliated with Al Queda so we haven't done as many raids lately either. I suppose this has advantages. Not the least of which is the fact that it's a lot safer and also that we get to avoid being out in the heat of the day ( still upwards of 110 every day ). Maybe I should just shut my yap and be happy for a change.

[NUKE_CLEVELAND]

Wow! I looked at this today and saw I haven't made an entry in over 2 weeks! Well, there really hasn't been much to write about since then. My unit is still running night patrols in our sector and it's been as quiet as can be lately. When we go walking around the area the people we stop and talk to all tell us how quiet it's been around there and that makes us feel like we've been doing our job well. Every time the bad guys try to set up an IED or something we always find it right away and dispose of it. The locals have been really cooperative as well. They no longer hesitate to snitch on their neighbor who's involved with Al Queda or whatever else. I wish I could say the same about our old sector. The area we left back in May to go where we area are now has really gone south. We drove through there the other day around sunrise and the place was a total ghost town. In one area every single building was either burned out or blown up and several others were totally pock marked with bullet holes. NICE! I told you guys the people who took over for us were a bunch of idiots. Seems they don't patrol their sector because they went crazy building tons of these combat outposts and all their guys are tied down guarding them. That's rich.

[NUKE_CLEVELAND]

Not a great deal has happened since my last entry. We've been spending a lot of time staring at nothing during our patrols ( all during the overnight hours while another unit works days ). No complaints from me whatsoever. Often times we'll get a foot patrol going and just go walking around checking things out. It's eerily quiet out there in the middle of the night. Nobody is around and anything could happen. Last week we turned up some pretty good intel on a bunch of thugs that had been trying to toss grenades at the unit that works days in our area and damn near nailed em the next night. This came from just talking to random people who just happened to still be up and around when we passed by.

 

One sad thing, though, is that the other day one sergeant in another unit I went to class with back at Ft. Knox last year was killed in action. Another one of these guys tossing grenades got a lucky throw in and killed him. No word on whether they nailed the guys that did it cause I've been away guarding this stupid Iraqi, U.S. compound the past few days.

 

Speaking of that compound that I have to guard a couple of days a week, that place just totally cracks me up. We have this transition team working out of the place supposedly training the National Police to take over security for themselves. I have to laugh, though, cause they kicked the last one they had working there to the curb because they weren't doing much of anything except sitting on their asses. They have a new one in there now but I didn't seen much of them during my most recent overnight stay there ( except when it was time to eat ). Anyway, I went into the radio room the other day to try to get an update on what was going on out in sector ( we were getting ready to leave and needed to check on the roads ) and I caught a perfect snapshot of our working relationship with the Iraqis. All the Iraqi guys were sitting around a conference table watching some Arabic MTV knockoff on their satellite TV while the U.S. guys were scrambling around trying to get a handle on a major incident that just happened. Pathetic. The more bulls*** I see like that the more I agree with those who say we need to drawdown our forces, change their role to counter terrorism ops and securing the borders and critical U.S. assets.

Edited September 11, 2007 by NUKE

[NUKE_CLEVELAND]

We had ourselves a big night here in sector tonight. Acting on a tip, we went into 2 separate houses and found 2 very large cache's of weapons and other ordnance. The first cache was found by my platoon. We went in and found a water tank that had a false bottom. Inside the bottom compartment we found several hundred rounds of ammunition, 2 submachine guns, 3 grenades, and several fuses for mortar rounds. One of our other platoons went into a house and found enough ordnance to invade Poland with. They found about a dozen AK's, 5 RPG rockets, 3 grenades, several fuses for mortars and about 5000 rounds of ammunition. We also took 4 insurgents into custody. Looks like someone was about to throw down against us or the locals and we stopped em cold with tonights raids. All in all I think we had a good night.

[NUKE_CLEVELAND]

There's quite a bit to talk about since my last entry.

 

In the time since my last entry here, we've found literally TONS of weapons and ordnance in our troop's sector. Looks like our Al Queda friends were planning a Ramadan surprise for us this month but now that we took away all their toys, I don't think they'll be able to play like they wanted to. Good news!

 

In other news........ Just when you think the system is broken and will never work something pops up and surprises you. We have this one staff sergeant in our platoon who is a real cock smoke. He goes on and on with this wanna-be tough guy facade, but in reality he is totally worthless and lazy when it comes to doing his job out in sector. Well, we finally managed to get this guy s***canned. You see, he has this bad habit of treating our night missions as his personal nap time. If nothing is going on he'll just go to sleep in his truck and leave his guys flapping. There was one instance 2 weeks ago where he was totally zonked out when another unit came into sector to talk to us. Their platoon sergeant drove right up to his truck, opened the door and the s***bag damn near fell all the way out. Last week was the clincher, though. Me and my dismount team found a large weapons cache with a whole mess of bomb making equipment. We tried for about a half an hour to raise this guy on the net to relay reports to our HQ but he was asleep at the switch and did not answer. Finally, he got bumped out of our platoon and into a meaningless job supervising the guys who work in the CP. He won't be able to cause any trouble there.

 

So, all in all it's been a really good last couple of weeks for us.

[NUKE_CLEVELAND]

Quiet, quiet and more quiet. Those are the words of the day. Since my last entry it has been more of the same.....many arrests......a few weapon cache's found......no insurgent attacks in sector. This thing is on total lockdown right now and I couldn't be happier about it.

[NUKE_CLEVELAND]

Back again. Nothing has been amiss around here, in fact, it's just the opposite. Things have been so darn quiet around here that there's nothing to write about. Most nights, we just go out and patrol a clean and quiet area and that's about all. About the most intense thing that happens around here are my workouts in the gym or a game of HALO in our building. I don't want to bore anybody with minor everyday nonsense so I won't unless I'm asked.

[NUKE_CLEVELAND]

Back again. Nothing really new going on, just more of the same boring old stuff. Lately a lot of my time has been taken up helping one of my guys get ready to go before the sergeants board. I have one going this month and another next month so that will keep me pre-occupied at least some of the time. Oh well, Im not complaining.

[NUKE_CLEVELAND]

Its been awhile since my last entry but there has been nothing to discuss since then. My unit still patrols our sector exclusively at night and I'm beginning to think it's a complete waste of time to even leave the wire. Since nobody is out during the night ( thank chilly weather and the midnight to 5 am curfew for that ) there's nothing to do out there. Most nights we'll do a foot patrol around the area for a couple of hours to make sure things are on the up and up but the remainder of the time gets spent swilling coffee and cutting each other up with crude jokes.

 

It's pretty safe to say that our little slice of south Baghdad is thoroughly pacified. The stores are all open, homes and infrastructure are being rebuilt, people are moving back to the area in droves from wherever it was they fled to earlier, there have been no attacks of any kind in months and on and on. This current state of things is radically different from how it was when we first got here. As of now we're down to 4 months on our tour so hopefully things stay quiet and we get to hand off a nice area to the unit that replaces us.

[NUKE_CLEVELAND]

Back again. Nothing significant has happened since my last entry, and I'm pleased with that. One bit of news is that the date we're going to come home is getting narrowed down. They now are saying that we'll all be home by April 12th, and more likely during the 1st week of the month. That being the case, our total time gone would be 14 months. That's somewhat of a bargain from what we originally were told. We're all ready to get out of here. The tedium is beginning to wear on a lot of us and since the alternative is the balls out combat of our 1st few months it's just better to make good our exit.