Incoming

March 31, 2008

It’s been a busy week since Easter Sunday. Al-Sadr and his militia decided to get themselves knee deep into trouble again. They attacked the city of Basra in full force, stepped up their attacks in Mosul, and basically shut down the streets of Baghdad with strong arm checkpoints and roving bands of thugs who let everyone know that if they were not militia and were caught out on the street they would be killed. Then there has been the daily rocket and mortar attacks on the Green Zone and other government, (Iraq), run areas of the city. Unfortunately for me, the FOB I live on is smack-dab in the middle of a government run area with the Baghdad Police College being right next door, (this FOB is actually on the grounds of what used to be housing for the police college), the Rusafa Prison and Court right across the street, and of course the various ministry buildings that surround us…Interior, Oil, Education, etc. So if this area was a giant bull’s-eye, and the center was in the 5 ring…I’d be living on or about the 4 line. Groovy huh?

They started shelling in earnest around here on Easter and it continued throughout the week. They have a definite pattern…it starts at about 5am, they break for prayer at sun-up, start again at about 830am, run and gun for most of the morning, then break again for afternoon prayer at about noonish. They get themselves situated and then kick back off again at about 330. Every day since Easter I could set my watch to this pattern. The individual attacks don’t last long though. By that I mean they don’t have mortar or rocket platoon’s set up sending a constant barrage downrange and spotters adjusting fire as they go. No, these dipstick’s will pick their spot and throw up a hasty launch, fire off a few rounds, (usually never more than 3-5), and then beat feet because they know if they stay too long in that spot ‘Ol Uncle Sam is going to make it rain shit all over their heads. It may be a few guys on foot or maybe in the back of a pick-up truck. Regardless, they are not accurate at all. But then when it’s raining bomb’s who gives a shit if the guy shooting them knows his ass from a hole in the wall, right? When you hear the “WHUUUMP” of outgoing mortars, (and believe me when I tell you they are LOUD when they launch out of those tubes!), you get your booty to some cover because you don’t want to be the guy who gets hit by Camel Joe’s lucky shot. And I’ve learned that if you can hear the launch you are OK. In these cases they usually zing over head and explode in the distance. I mean you can hear them “Ziiiing” as they fly over head. So far it had been outgoing rounds I’d heard. But this week I got my first taste of incoming. You can’t hear these babies until the BOOM of their impact sends you scrambling for cover. Some hit close and some hit far away. Some were big, (birds dropped dead out of the sky simply because of the concussion), and some were small, (rocks and small debris fell quietly on the roof of the building.) But make no mistake about it…all were a spooky reminder that I’m not in Kansas anymore.

Last Thursday we spent all day at the prison conducting business pretty much as usual. The curfew that the Iraq government has imposed on its citizens, (for their own safety), kept most of the Iraq staff at home. But we went over anyway to check up on things and make sure the men who got stuck at work, (for 6 straight days!), had what they needed. We came back home to the FOB at about 330pm, which was just in time because the shelling started hard at about 4pm. And at about 6pm 2 mortars hit the prison, killing 1 Iraq Correctional Officer and sending 1 Warden to the hospital with serious injuries. (Yeah…can you believe not one single inmate was hurt? Figure that justice out!?) Both of the rounds fell into the tent compound where I work. One fell into R-13, (our segregation unit), and one hit outside between R-11 and R-12. I work in R-11. The one that hit in R-13 impacted and detonated on a fence. It was right underneath a tower that should have been manned. But, thank Allah for Iraq laziness because it saved someone’s life this time. You can see by the pock marks in the concrete walls that this round fragmented high, and by all appearances you’d think someone got killed here. But miraculously, no one got hurt in R-13. The round that hit out by R-11, on the other hand, sent a small piece of shrapnel up into the nearby tower of R-12 and hit the officer working there. He succumbed to his wounds and died some time after. It also sent a piece of shrapnel about 200 feet away into my office. There are three little offices and mine is the middle one. The shrapnel cut right through all three offices like it was slicing through butter. I can stand on the outside of office #1 and look in through the hole and see all the way through to where it exited on the far side of office #3. And the spooky part is that it cut through my office about one foot above where my warden sits. If he or I, or anyone, would have been inside any of those offices we would certainly have been injured if not killed outright.

-Jim Franks