Posted by
Saint Michael on Monday, January 22, 2007 8:38:10 PM
This is from an email that I received from a childhood friend who is serving in Iraq with the MN National Guard and has just been extended as part of the troop surge.
Dear Friends,
My team and I have enjoyed great progress with the Iraq Battalion that we coach, teach, mentor, and advise. When we arrived in June, 60 percent of the soldiers had not been paid since joining the Iraqi Army between November 04-February 05. Over 90 percent of the soldiers being paid were being paid at the level of trainee pay (below private). Currently we have 6 pay issues out of the hundreds we had when we first arrived and the issues are self inflicted by the soldiers themselves.
The living conditions for the soldiers were terrible. They didn't understand or practice basic hygiene as a group or as individuals. Some examples of these, and I won't be to gross about it, are as follows; kitchen established next to the wash room/bath room/garbage piles, food storage not organized just all over the floors where people walk (yes, next to the bathrooms), soldiers not using bathrooms just utilizing the location of their choosing, no personal hygiene at all, no AC, no management of supplies such as drinking water, food, and fuel. The soldiers would continually ask/beg U.S. soldiers for supplies and equipment no matter if they had it or not. Since that time in June the supply management has been organized and is well managed, hygiene issues have been addressed and have greatly improved to the point that they will get on each others case about keeping clean, the locations of the food preparation area, garbage, and bathrooms are well separated. The soldiers and the officers take pride in their jobs and have gained some self respect and dignity as human beings and have begun to take the initiative to make their situations better (not just waiting for it to be done for them). They have stopped begging (for the most part) for items and now request items through their chain of command the proper way.
The operation of the Battalion as far as getting bad guys was none existent. Currently we daily are cleaning the local streets of bad guys. The Iraq Officers have established themselves as the leaders in the area, the long arm of the law. They have involved themselves in the process of standing up local government, leadership and local justice. This includes civilian representatives, Iraqi Police, and local businessmen. In most cases the information that they gather is way better than our own efforts. They love learning the new technology and give briefs by power point better than some U.S. units. Yes, we have been busy. Everyday we move the 1st down marker means we are that much closer to getting into the end zone. Right now, the guys we work with are in the red zone and they won't just settle for a field goal.
We are very proud of the results/development that we have seen with the guys we work with. My team will be done with this portion of our mission in the next 6 weeks and it has gone pretty quick in some respects. I think the longest and hardest period of time was during the holidays but it has always been that way.
My family and I had been looking forward to March when my unit would return home. We had talked about things we would do and made some tentative plans. You may have heard some things in the news lately about a serge in Iraq. The bottom line is that my unit has been extended. My family and I make contact once a week by phone or by IM. It just happened that we were IM'ing when the first news of a four month extension that included our unit was released. We stayed on line with each other until it was confirmed that we wouldn't be home in March but the plan at this point is August. We both feel blessed that we were able to share the news of this together. Needless to say the news was difficult to take by family friends, myself and my soldiers.
Our mission working with the Iraq Army will end as planned and we will return back to a base that has better living conditions and to many friends that we left prior to heading out on this mission. I want to thank you again for your support, thoughts, and prayers. If you didn't know this about Sue and I, we are actually members of the St. Cloud Optimist Club.
Take care,
Wade
I can validate for you that progress is being made in the area that I'm in and it is happening much faster than projected. The other day a Special Forces training group came to evaluate our group and several times it was stated that this Battalion was the most advanced(professional)that they had seen and that didn't take into consideration that it is the youngest in the country that's not to shabby.