As a continuing series here is part 3 of a day down range.
Troops like to do activities which take their mind off the stress of combat. Shown here is a group playing baseball. Some of the Marines had painted one of the concrete blast barriers around the field in honor of a fallen comrade.
Note town in background is Ramadi......very bad place. Also note kneeling guy in right of picture, the concrete culvert behind where his head is, this is a concrete culvert used as a bunker during attacks (which happened often) These were found all around base camps. We had one poor guy the last week we were in country slept in one of these to ensure he went home in one piece.
In between missions or convoys we would sometimes grab a quick nap especially if you had been up all night and had to go back out with no rest.
These 2 pictures I took from a second story porch on a building which housed our Headquarters. The convoy commander was receiving a debrief and new mission assignment while the rest of the squad grabbed a little much needed rest.
I had written in an earlier blog about mortar and rocket attacks. Here is a picture of out internet center with a chunk of concrete blown from the eve. No one was seriously injured from this blast but I can tell you from experience it will shake you up if you are inside when this happens.
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| Hummer hit by RPG | |
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Kind of ugly mess.
Duke - thanks so much for this series - i and hubby are really enjoying them! i love the idea that they honoured their comrade by naming a baseball field after him - such good men those marines!
ReplyDeletei can only imagine what it must feel like to have been in the building during the attack - and i truly hope that no one was hurt when that hummer got hit!
again, Sir, thank you for your service. and i love these updates and hope that you will do more of them. there is much we can learn from these posts!
your friend,
kymber
Another good one, Bubba.
ReplyDeleteKymber and Stephen, Thanks for the kind comments.
ReplyDeleteKymber, I don't really know the story behind the Hummer, things like this would show up at base camp and with many units operating out of there we sometimes never knew what happened. In my observation I don't think it would have been fatal except to the vehicle, although it would have caused many bad words to be uttered by the occupants.
Definitely another great one.
ReplyDelete