We Now Return to Our Regularly Scheduled E-Mail Address

As I have said previously, I very much appreciate all of the support I've received throughout this deployment, especially via e-mail. There were many times when I would be having a tough day, and an e-mail from someone would put a smile on my face and make my day.

Some of you have been sending e-mail to my .mil address, and I also appreciate that, as I don't have access to gmail during the day over here. However, once we leave, my @afg.usmc.mil address will no longer be valid, so please go back to sending all e-mail correspondence to my gmail address. That way, I'll be sure to get it.

The official Transfer of Authority (TOA) was yesterday, and we are officially no longer the general support engineering battalion in this AO. Today was quite relaxing--I taught a martial arts class to my Marines, cleaned my gear (man, that stuff is dirty), and watched some TV and a movie. It's been the most relaxing day I've had in probably two months. Tomorrow will be much of the same, except I might also do some shopping at the bazaar on base.

Love you all! See you soon.

Five Kernels of Corn

So the story goes: in their leanest winters, the pilgrims came to a time where each person was allocated only five kernels of corn for their subsistence each day. So for as long as I can remember, before my family eats Thanksgiving dinner, we put five kernels of corn on each person’s plate and go around the table and list five things we’re thankful for. Two years ago I was at OCS and unable to discuss over the dinner table, so I caught my platoon while we were waiting for PT (Ha! You’re in formation and not allowed to talk! No choice but to listen to me!) and told them my five things I was thankful for. This year I am again lacking a dinner table, so you all have to endure my list. Of course, the standard "I’m thankful for my friends and family" applies. But that goes without saying, right?

1. I am thankful that neither myself nor anyone from my platoon has sustained serious injuries while we’ve been here. Sure, we’ve had the odd set of stitches, smashed thumbs, and some bumps and bruises from IEDs, but nothing that required anyone be sent home.
2. I am thankful for my nephew (Photo credit to Juanita. Thanks for the picture! Hope you don't mind me using it without your permission...). I haven’t met him yet, but I’m sure he’s the coolest 4-month-old alive.
3. I am thankful for all the friends I’ve made on this deployment: Wanda, Carmella, Tim, Sherry, Tanya, Joshua, Kim, Jay, Miguel, and Bill.
4. I am thankful for all the support I’ve received from my friends and family back home. Your cards, packages, and e-mails made a huge difference to my morale.
But, most of all:
5. I AM THANKFUL THAT I AM COMING HOME SOON. Yes, I know that all caps means I am shouting. I don’t care.

Happy Thanksgiving!

3

Mph. Yes, three miles per hour. That was our average rate of march last night, for 75km, as we returned home from our last mission. Making for a grand total of 15 hours on the road. And here's the real kicker: we left at one in the afternoon. (Side note: Yes, this was our last mission. For real this time. As in, by the time we get the pre-requisite rest time between missions, the transfer of authority will have already happened, and someone else will be in charge of our missions.)

Our first vehicle to break was one of the trailers carrying a TRAM (Tractor, Rubber-tired, Articulated-steering, Multipurpose). Now, TRAMs are a handy thing to have when you're trying to build a new patrol base, as they're quite good at scooping up dirt and dumping it into HESCO. Which is what we spent most of our time doing on this mission. So there were no regrets that we'd had the equipment, resulting in a broken trailer that cost us two hours while the drivers unloaded the TRAM and removed the broken axle. Excuse me, axles. I'm still not quite clear on the details of how you can break 1.5 axles, but that's what happened. Did I mention we were still within sight of the base we'd just left? Yeah, not good.

The next vehicle broke about 5 clicks out; I think the one after that was 15. Considering that there were 140 clicks total between the base we left and the one we were trying to get to that night...well, I already gave it away. We ended up stopping at a different base, halfway home.

We brought six towbars with us on the patrol when we left. Around midnight was when our sixth vehicle broke, and we had no more towbars left to tow vehicles with. But even as we were still hooking up that sixth vehicle the call came over the radio--another vic was having problems with its brakes. We called the mechanic instead, and after another hour wait, we were Oscar Mike again. (This is the military, we can't just say "on the move". No, we have to abbreviate it to OM. Then, because it might get garbled on the radio, we have to say it phonetically. So we say we're "Oscar Mike". When you think we're talking in some strange and useful shorthand, really we're just thinking of ways to make simple things more complicated.)

The seventh vehicle to break wasn't going to be so easy a fix. It wouldn't start--the alternator was suspect--but it wasn't something we were going to be able to fix on the fly. So we hooked for tow with chains. The mineroller on the dead MRAP went to a third MRAP. Turns out it had been on the third MRAP originally, but the original MRAP was having problems with the all-wheel drive, and the extra weight of the mineroller might have caused it to get stuck. So we had moved it. Now we were moving it back. The dead MRAP was hooked to mine; the lead driver has never towed with chains before. It took them a while to get the hydraulics for the towed vehicle hooked up so the brakes would work. I thought the stairs hanging off the back of my MRAP were toast.

But did I mention that my Marines are awesome? Sure, there were a few jerks and false starts. Sure, we got bogged down in the sand--for a second. But we made it through, and the stairs were in tact.

We pulled in the lot at 0400. We'd had someone on alert to come get us in case too much more should break, and we weren't able to make it in ourselves. We were--just barely. The Marines set up cots and passed out. It was that time of the night where for the past week I've been waking up and unable to go back to sleep because of the cold. I volunteered to watch the BFT, our only communications link to our Battalion, and to half-hourly communications checks. Turns out we ran the heater, so I was warm and able to get in half-hour cat-naps between checks until I was relieved.

Last mission. Last set of HESCO. Last bucket of fill. We're working on the last manifest right now. (Manifest: document detailing all personnel and vehicles on a trip. The form we have to fill out has redundancy on top of redundancy. No, I am not kidding. I wish I were.) Soon I'll be saying "last day in-country", and then, "first day back in the states".

Tomorrow we cover those last 65 clicks back to base. We're starting out with vehicles already in tow; we'll see how many we're towing when we finally roll through the ECP. (Entry Control Point, or gate. See what I said about the code is really just a complicated way to name a simple concept?)

There's one thing I do know, though. Whatever needs to be done, my Marines will do it. And we'll roll through under our own power.

Happy Birthday!

November 10, 1775 is a day that is impressed in every Marine's brain housing group from the moment they enter Boot Camp or Officer Candidate School, as it is the day that the Marine Corps came to be. Of course, back then it was the Continental Marines, and as the story goes, it was founded in a bar (Tun Tavern), an aspect of the story that many Marines take full advantage of during their celebration.

Marines celebrate our birthday regardless of where we are--great lengths are taken to ensure that every Marine, regardless of how remote they are stationed, gets a piece of birthday cake. Back in the States, the Marine Corps Ball is the one occasion Marines can count on to wear their dress blues. Out here we're still having a ball ceremony, we'll just all be in cammies for it. Alcohol is forbidden in country, but some commands will fly in two beers per Marine for the birthday (and only the birthday, other holidays aren't as important). I don't think we'll be getting that this year, and I don't really care, but it shows you how big a deal the birthday is.

My first Marine Corps Birthday, I was still at OCS so I hadn't even earned the title of Marine yet. But our battalion held a formation outside the chow hall, we had a cake-cutting ceremony, the tables inside the chow hall were set nicely, and we got extra time for lunch that day. There was even birthday cake. Last year we got a half-day at school. This year? Well, there's work to do. But there will be cake.

Happy Birthday Marines! Here's to another 235.

Rain!!!

This morning, when I was returning from the head, it was raining! Okay, just sprinkling, but in Oregon that counts as rain. And since I'm from Oregon, it'll count as rain here as well.

Unfortunately, by the time I had put my uniform on and dug up my jacket so I could walk to the chow hall, the rain had stopped.

Let us all pause for a moment of silence in memory of the rain.

It's getting pretty cool here, finally. This weekend the highs are supposed to be in the low to mid-60s. And there might be more rain!!!

Ahem. You may now return to your regularly scheduled programming.

One Up, Two Down

It started probably a month ago, when one of my Sergeants told another unit on base that they could have our pull-up bar when we left. Unfortunately, they didn't hear the "when we left" part, or they thought we were leaving right away, because they took it right away. So that meant that the closest pull-up bar was with the supply section, about twenty feet away. No big deal, except you have to duck under a barbed wire fence to get to the bar. Really, no big deal.

Sometime thereafter, our Supply Chief, a Master Sergeant (MSgt), saw me ducking under the fence to do pull-ups. He asked me about it that night, and I told him that I've been trying to improve my pull-ups. So he invited me to come out with the Marines in Supply to work on their pull-ups--"One up, two down".

Basically, for every pull-up, you do two push-ups. We do pyramids--first set is one, second set is two, all the way up to six, repeat six, then back down to one. Since there are usually at least ten Marines out there doing it, you get plenty of rest time between sets. In the beginning the line is usually for the pull-up bar, after you get to the middle of the work-out, it shifts to the push-up handles (keeps our hands clean and easier to grip the bar).

I've been doing this for three days now, and just about everywhere on my back and arms is sore right now. MSgt helps me out with the pull-ups; I can usually do the first two or three sets without assistance, and were I to take a few days off, I could probably do the first four sets without assistance, but I still need a boost up. We do it twice a day, once in the morning and again before evening chow. I'm eager to train for a couple of weeks and see how much better I get.

The Battalion replacing us started arriving yesterday. The advance party to replace my company should get here today, and then the main body gets here next week. Our official change-over (Transfer of Authority) is either Thanksgiving or the day before. Can't wait!

CLP

CLP, pronounced "clip", or Combat Logistics Patrol. The generic term for "we can’t fly there so we’re going to drive", because most of the CLPs we do don’t directly provide logistics for combat units. We do have some direct support patrols, where we escort trucks with food, water, and other necessities to units deployed throughout the AO, but most of the patrols my company does are to provide transportation or security for engineering missions. This past mission was my first experience as a patrol leader, responsible for transporting Marines and heavy equipment over 250km to their work site and back.

This mission had two distinct phases. Our first mission was to replace a bridge. The Medium Girder Bridge is a standard piece of equipment used to bridge small gaps (think: canals and streams, not the entire Helmand River). They are designed to be replaced after a certain time span so that microfractures do not grow and cause the bridge to fail while something heavy is driving over it. They fit together like a lego set, so that a team of twenty or so Marines can go out, pull a small bridge, and replace it with a new one in a day, or a night. The only heavy equipment required is a forklift to move the pallets on and off the trucks, and a 7-ton truck used to pull the bridge from the gap or push the new one into the gap. All the disassembly and re-assembly is done with pure muscle, and it’s a treat to watch a trained bridge crew at work.

The heavy lifting (literally) was done by another platoon; my platoon provided security. It was a pretty quiet night; the only problems came up the next day when the locals wanted to use the bridge before we had cleaned the site. One gentleman on a motorbike produced a laminated identification card and explained that he had to be at work at a certain time. Our plan was not to let any local nationals into the bridge site, but we rolled with the circumstances and escorted several local nationals on their bikes across the bridge and through the work site. Other than that, the mission went off without a hitch. We returned to the nearest FOB, about a click away, and crashed for the day before we ate dinner and then crashed again for the night.

For the next leg of the mission we dropped half the Marines and the heavy equipment off at a small patrol base and took the security trucks on a reconnaissance, looking at three more locations in the southern part of the AO where we could potentially put in additional bridges. Again, the other platoon commander was doing the heavy lifting; my job was just to get him where he needed to go. For the first two sites, this was pretty easy. I took us down to a COP (Combat Outpost), and then the grunts* responsible for the AO took the other Lt out to the sites they wanted him to look at.

The third site? Of course it wouldn’t be that easy. The grunts gave us a secure route we could use to reach the site, but we were responsible for getting there. The first part of the plan went well. We reached an outpost where we left two vehicles we wouldn’t need for the recon and continued on. The grunts advised that they didn’t normally take minerollers through the city. Minerollers are contraptions with wheels that we push in front of the vehicles to trigger IEDs before they hit the vehicles. They work. We don’t like rolling without them. We elected to take them against the grunts’ advice.

My first clue should have been the part where I saw a vehicle’s wheel start to dip into a canal as it tried to make a tight turn with the mineroller on it. I did my best not to have a heart attack, and all our vehicles made it past the turn safely. All the vehicles made it through four tight turns without rolling over or falling into a ditch, and then we reached a turn over a bridge where the bridge was too narrow for the mineroller. Yeah.

So we ditched the minerollers and flew down to the site with just the vehicles. It felt like riding a bike without gloves on--I feel naked when I do it; an essential piece of equipment that I rely in to keep me safe is missing. But we got down there, and back, without incident. After that, we got to go through those four tight corners again, and then it was open desert back to a really bumpy road to a slightly less bumpy road, where we could spend the night and then head back the next morning. Except...

We were headed back in open desert when I received a call over the radio from the Marines that owned the AO asking if we had a wrecker, which is used to recover vehicles that have gotten bogged down in deep sand or fallen into canals. We had a wrecker with us, so they asked if we wouldn’t mind heading about 600m out of our way to recover two of their vehicles that had gotten stuck earlier in the day. I thought about it for a minute—there was the possibility that we could get stuck in the same sand, and we were already behind schedule from the tight turns that afternoon. But few units have the recovery assets that we have, so we went out there to help them out.

I was glad we did, too. I found out later that the Marines had been out there since morning, and it was around 1800 by the time we caught up to them. We got one of our vehicles stuck getting out to them, but by the time we had recovered their two vehicles, we had also recovered ours, so our mission was accomplished fairly quickly. We didn’t make it as far as we’d planned that night, but we did make it to a FOB around 2300, so we decided to rest and move out again the next day.

There’s more to come. Thanks for all the e-mails and messages while I was gone. I have received a couple questions about whether I’m planning on doing National Novel Writing Month again this year. Unfortunately, I have decided that I will not be able to. I love writing, but I don’t forsee myself having the energy and free time this year to write at the level that I expect of myself. So I’m sorry...I’ll try again next year, but I’ll definitely be thinking of you all as you do!

*Grunts: Infantry Marines