Thursday, October 20, 2011

A Day Down Range (part 4)

Holiday times in Iraq were celebrated as best we could, here is a 4th of July cookout. We were able to come up with some meat and have a cookout.



 In the early stages there was the ICDC which stood for Iraqi Civil Defense Corps. They liked having their picture taken. I did not trust them and I guess the higher ups did not either as they were not allowed weapons at first, later they were and there were cases where the same weapons were found in the hands of the enemy.







A picture of a warning sign around our armory where we could receive our ammo. I could walk up and draw ammo without any questions, not like stateside.
Wish I could do that today, it was good quality stuff. 
Basically the writing in Arabic said stay out or we will kill you and feed you to the pigs.  
 National Guard units brought their own vehicles like many units did. Many times these units did not have the latest and greatest in equipment. Here is a Viet Nam era 2.5 ton (deuce and a half) we used for a while around base camp borrowed from a Army Guard unit we were working with.

4 comments:

  1. oh Duke - i would love to say that i "feel" your pain - but i cannot - i can only empathize!

    i originally was supposed to be trained as an intel Arabic Linguist...and then somebody switched me to Korean and North Korean...the North Korean i learned in the US of course...

    we are still using the deuce-and-a-halfs up here as if they were new...'nuff said eh?

    man i am lovin' your blog...

    your friend,
    kymber

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  2. Kymber, thank you sis, always good to have you stop by.
    Thanks, John, appreciate it.

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  3. At least that M35A2 has the turbocharged LDT-465 powerplant. What a sweetie.

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