Catching up.

Things have been hopping at Besmaya lately. Hence my absence from the blogosphere. Let's do a quick review of the last few weeks.

The big event around here is the troop surge into Baghdad. Big news back there as well. I'm particularly pleased to see the House of Representatives so judiciously using their time and energy. But I digress.

As you may recall, we're a big part of the training piece for this surge. We were tasked with building a base camp for two battalions of Iraqi soldiers and putting together a training plan. We built the camp in about 75 days and we also had the plan ready. We thought we were ready, anyway.

The first battalion arrived 24 hours early. No problem, we're flexible. We got them in an bedded down. 36 hours later the next battalion arrived. We went from ~500 at Besmaya to 2300 in 36 hours. Yee haw!! Let the games begin.

In addition to that, we also had a company of tanks arrive to train. Its an Iraqi tank unit. They use T 55 tanks, old Soviet era beasts. I have some pictures to share later. As a Lt., we trained to ID and shoot artillery at these things. Now I'm training Iraqis to shoot them. And naturally, when tanks arrive here it rains.

And just to make life interesting, we've been picked as a site to house one of the new US units coming to Iraq. We'll have a large number of US soldiers here very soon. The base camp construction starts in a few days.

Oh, did I mention the VIP visits? It appears that we've been "discovered'. We've had Iraqi general officers here 3 of the last four days. And not just some flunky one stars. We're big time now. First up was the commander of all Iraqi ground forces, three stars. Today we had the commander of the Baghdad security plan, also a three star. And two days ago, the big dude visited. General Babiker, the Chief of Staff of the Iraqi Army, THE senior guy was here. He was very impressed with Col Abbas, Besmaya Range and the training we're doing here.
We also had my boss, Brig. General Wolff. And another US one star and a British two star. I think there was another Brit one star but I've bloody well lost track by now.

Here's the bottom line: Iraqi soldiers, who will be fighting in Baghdad soon, are getting trained here. It's not perfect, and not up to our standards, but they're firing their weapons and learning some tactics and no one has been injured or killed. My team has been amazing. Col Abbas is very short of officers, so my team picks up a lot of the slack. I'm so proud and so humbled to serve with these great Americans. They are consummate professionals and I've been blessed beyond measure to serve with them.

There are so many stories and anecdotes I wish I had time to share. Some of it is impossible to capture, it's so contextual. We have a standard joke when we see something that makes us scratch our heads: "you couldn't write this stuff if you tried". I'll try, but right now, I'm going to do some operational checks on my new bed. I forget to mention that in all this, our new furniture finally arrived. We all have new beds, desks and wardrobes.

Tomorrow, we go back to Zatia and the school kids. The battalions leave tomorrow as well.
A few days of resetting and we start again soon, hopefully wiser and more well prepared.

David