I just finished my first 'Ranger pudding.' Sitting in the back of the Bradley fighting vehicle, I followed the recipe instructions I received a few days ago from one of the guys in the battalion: 'You take the cocoa powder pouch in the MREs [combat rations], add a pouch of instant coffee, fill the cocoa pouch…
About 30 minutes after a suicide bomber killed four soldiers from the 2-7 Mechanized Infantry Battalion, Operations Officer Maj. Rod Coffey stood before the maps lying on the table of the battalion operation tent absentmindedly but violently smashing his plastic water bottle on the table. Coffey managed the front-rear coordination of the operation to secure the checkpoint on Highway…
SOUTH OF BAGHDAD – The much awaited ground offensive toward Baghdad began at 2 a.m. Wednesday. By sundown, the US forces had decimated the Republican Guard Medina Division's 14th Brigade and moved within 50 kilometers of the Iraqi capital and into the 'red zone' defensive cordon, US military officials said. US forces from the 3rd Infantry Division…
Air attacks target Iraqi artillery near capital SOUTH OF BAGHDAD – As I sat with US Air Force Master Sgt. J.B. Bruening in the shade of his humvee, the voice of a special forces operative came over his satellite radio calling in F-14 air strikes against a weapons cache and artillery pieces in Karbala. Bruening, 36, a…
NORTH OF NAJAF, IRAQ – Twenty-four hours after the suicide car bombing that killed four US soldiers on Highway 9, some 30 kilometers north of Najaf, the air still reeks of the explosion. The force of the plastic explosive blast not only completely destroyed the taxi cab used for the car bomb, it also charred a pickup truck and a…
30 KM. NORTH OF NAJAF, IRAQ – 'Handling threats posed by civilians is a new situation for the US Army [in Iraq]. Precedents are being set today by the guys on the ground at the battalion level.' So ruminated Lt.-Col Scott Rutter, commander of the 2-7 mechanized infantry battalion of the army's Third Infantry Division's First Brigade, hours after four…
WITH THE 3RD INFANTRY DIVISION IN IRAQ – Specialist Julie Albrecht is the first woman I have spoken to (and the third I have seen) since joining up with this division's Third Brigade. Albrecht, 19, from Joliet, Illinois, is a Humvee driver in a chemical weapons company. She joined the army to finance her college education, and she…
NAJAF AMMUNITION STORAGE FACILITY – The winds and the sands of the Iraqi desert began swirling at around noon Tuesday but it didn't seem so bad. Two hours later, the storm was still passable as we set out for the suspected chemical weapons storage facility and the largest weapons storage facility in Najaf, Iraq, to meet the army weapons inspection…
SOUTH OF BAGHDAD – In the midst of a sandstorm that turned the landscape into moonscape, day into night, and night into pure blackness, a US Army sensitive site team arrived at the ammunition storage facility at Najaf Tuesday to investigate suspicions the complex had been used for chemical weapons. The team – Site Survey Team 4 – from Fort…
150 KM. SOUTH OF BAGHDAD – US forces continued to secure the suspected chemical plant in Najaf on Monday, as 12 civilians were caught attempting to transport a truckload of AK-47 rifles to the site. The 12 were added to the 54 Iraqi officers and enlisted men – including one general – who surrendered to the 2-7 mechanized infantry battalion…