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A Soldier’s Story First Sgt. Robert Jennings |
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Soldiers from Alpha Company continue to practice their medical training. Here Pfc. Michael Mullen, from Boston, gives Pfc. Earnest Wentwoth of Dalton, Ga., an IV as Staff Sgt. Eric Guffey of Russell Springs, Ky., looks on.
Plucking out bad seeds
takes effort on both sidesMachine gunner sees progress 14 Jun >> A large portion of Alpha Company rolled out of the gate in support of a larger mission.
We have been conducting some of these missions to catch the really bad seeds in the community. The end result: The target was wounded severely, a lot of ammunition expended, one friendly slightly wounded.
We continue to press and corner the enemy this week. We are finding, fixing and destroying them where they live, work and try to relax.
They are figuring out that the 1st Battalion, 21st Infantry Gimlets are not a force to take lightly. Over the last month we have emptied this town of a lot of trash in preparation for the June 30 handover.
16 Jun 0811 hours >> Automatic fire is heard a couple hundred meters from the patrol base. Immediately the reports are coming in from our observation posts. We notified the police and sent them to the location. Within minutes, a squad was mounted and rolling out the gate. At the scene, one man was killed and another injured.
The man killed was identified as the oil company security chief, and his bodyguard was the one injured. This seems to be the new tactic of our cowardly enemy. He has shifted his focus away from coalition and is concentrating on his own countrymen that work with coalition forces.
On a higher note, we were able to finally open a refurbished school in Amu Shabi. Before the contractors came, the building looked more like an empty storage room than a school.
Three weeks of hard work from the citizens, and we were able to hand over the repaired school. In a world of killing and vying for power, this is a small victory. I've said it before, and you will continue to hear it from me: The children are the future. What we do now will pay heavy dividends in 10 years.
Everything here seems focused toward June 30. What many people are failing to realize is that we are not leaving July 1. This is an interim government. I wish they would change the name to practice government.
As we get closer, the majority of the country is embracing the idea. It's the former regime garbage and radical extremists that seem to be causing most of the problems. We continue to gain information on them, and they continue to send more people to town. Eventually I think they are going to understand it's not happening here.
But I think the most frustrating thing for the U.S. forces here is the Abu Ghraib situation. On one hand you have over 300,000 soldiers that have served honorably in this country for the last 16 months. Then on the other, you have a few buffoons who wouldn't know what the word "honorable" means if they were tied to it naked.
Yes, these Iraqi men were bad seeds, but each soldier is taught in basic training the rules of the Geneva Convention, let alone have some common sense on what is right or wrong.
I yet have to hear or read where these so-called "soldiers" have admitted any wrong. All you hear is how nice they are and how they would help you out if you needed it. I'm sorry, but to me this is unacceptable behavior. In my opinion, they deserve everything they get.
But the fallout does not end there. If you watch the news you've seen prisoners being released from Abu Ghraib as a gesture of goodwill. Well, the same guys you see on the television smiling and waving are the same garbage thrown in there for attacks against coalition forces.
It took coalition forces the last 16 months to round up and incarcerate these guys, and this is now going to cause us to use the next 16 months putting them back in. Hopefully, the new jail will be ready soon. I'm sure there will be a bed waiting for them.
God bless and aloha.
First Sgt. Robert Jennings is deployed in Iraq with 4,000 25th Infantry Division (Light) soldiers from Schofield Barracks. He writes a weekly column for the Star-Bulletin.
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Machine gunner
sees progress
This week meet Spc. Jacob Baggett, an M-240 machine gunner for 2nd Platoon. He is from Dalton, Ga., and has been in the Army for 20 months.
He has also pulled duties as a rifleman for 2nd Squad, 2nd Platoon, when no machine gun is needed.
Baggett said that when he got here he was expecting the worst.
"The first couple of months my expectations were met," he said. "It seems like there was rockets or mortars every night. But lately, things seem to be calming down. The people are starting to clean up the city, and things seem to be moving in the right direction."
He added, "There are some things that still get to me sometimes, like when a person gets in the line of fire that wasn't supposed to be there."
I asked Baggett what the most enjoyable part of the deployment has been.
"When Bravo Company came over and took our posts for a few hours," he answered. "It was nice to have the whole company together for the first time in five months. I have a lot of friends in the other platoons that I haven't seen for a while."
I asked him what the most challenging part of the deployment has been. He said: "Not understanding the language. You have someone come up to you and you can't understand anything they're saying. That, and there are times when you only get a little sleep and then add this heat, it just puts a drain on you."
He finished his interview by saying hi to his dad, David, in Dalton, and his mother, Sherrie Cummings, in North Richland Hills, Texas. "I love you, miss you and hope to be on leave the 23rd."
First Sgt. Robert Jennings
