Well my mission at FOB prosperity ended and my command didnt want us sitting around for the next month or so, so they got us a new one which required us to move to a new FOB. I am currently living and operating out of the VBC http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_Base_Complex . The place itself sucks cause there is no trees or shade producing anything here so it gets amazingly hot. Plus since VBC is a highly targeted place almost every mission conducted buy us troops requires us to wear full body armour which makes the intense heat even more taxing on our bodies.
Me and most of the soldiers on my shift go to bed shortly after our shift. When we wake up in the mid afternoon we go to the gym and then shower before changing and heading off to our ready room for our shift. By the time we get to the showers the water tank outside has been in the sun long enough that turning on only the cold faucet produces almost perfect temperature water for showering and shaving. Turning on the hot water knob aint even a possibility cause it would just burn the crap outta you.
My first sunday here I didnt go to the gym since its my rest day so I set about sweeping and mopping my room. Afetr the sweeping was done I was contemplating the best place to get water for my mop bucket, and I figured that the pallet of bottled drinking water just outside my room would be warm enough to mop with. So I go grab a 12 pack of 1 liter bottles and bring it back to my room and I start pouring them one by one into my bucket. After the third or fourth one my hands couldnt take it anymore. The water was so hot that I had to give my hands a few moments to cool down before I could open and pour anymore.
I am back on the night shift again which makes life a little more pleasant but also includes us in a lot more missions cause it falls on the times that insurgents are prone to attacking. Plus trying to sleep during the day is hard enough to do without apache and blackhawk helicopters flying directly over top of our CHU's along with the KBR hacks coming in and doing inventory of our rooms or testing out the smoke detectors and checking the fire extinguishers. Im not even gonna get started on ranting and raving about the KBR pukes cause it just pisses me off.
Anyways our new mission has three parts to it. 1. QRF 2. Tower guard 3. Brush back.
QRF(quick reaction force) for us is basically sitting in our ready room waiting for something to happen on VBC such as mortars/rockets that have landed inside our walls or providing security/overwatch at an ECP cause of a suspected item/person/vehicle.
Tower guard is just what it sounds like. We sit in a tower with a Uganda, African on top of the wall seperating our base from the rest of Iraq. There is a road just on the other side of our wall that is used frequently buy US forces and Iraqis as well and a wall on the other side of that for an Iraq village. We are keeping an eye out for suspicious activity such as insurgents digging in either walls or the ground trying to plant an IED which they have successfully done as recently as a month ago. We also keep traffic flowing by not allowing people or vehicles to dawdle for more than a few seconds without putting our ROE(rules of engagement) into effect. We are also in place for IRAM( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lob_bomb ) mitigation by scanning our sectors as far out as 700 meters. A FOB not long ago had 4 soldiers killed by a 240mm IRAM cause the towers then were only manned by Ugandans and they didnt fire a single shot till after the IRAM was launched. Because of the Ugandans hesitancy and lack of training no insurgents were killed or captured and now this is why we are in the towers with them making sure they stay awake and do their job.
Brush back means we patrol the road adjacent to our wall outside the wire looking for IED's or signs of someone trying to prep an area for an IED. We patrol the same section of road that a month ago 2 uparmoured humvees were blasted with an EFP(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosively_formed_penetrator) and killed 2 northern Idaho soldiers. We will also dismount our MRAP's and me and another NCO will take our squads into the villages as a presence patrol as well as IRAM mitigation by talking to the local people trying to get intel on unknown/known or suspicious people in their village trying to launch ordnance into our base from there as well as searchign their village for signs of insurgent activity.
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