TwinMom7
Proud Mom of a United States Marine
- Joined
- Feb 16, 2000
- Messages
- 1,479
Today's report sounds like they have received both mail and packages from home!!!! There's also a paragraph telling about how they feel having Fred Dodd with them.
Mail Call Makes Crummy Bivouac Bearable
WAR ON IRAQ: DESERT DISPATCH
By FRED DODD
Tuesday's convoy to an area about 100 miles south of Baghdad brought good news and bad news to the Marine reservists of South Bend's Engineer Company B. When the Marines unloaded at their designated bivouac area, about 50 yards east of a major highway, they discovered a dusty, brushy area littered with camel manure and infested with camel ticks. The good news was that there was a big bag of letters and dozens of packages waiting for the men. The Marines were happy.
The night before the unit headed farther north, Lance Cpl. Kevin Cassel, 26, of South Bend, spent a four-hour shift watching the western horizon as he manned one of the company's machine gun nests. "You hear a lot of weird noises that make you perk your ears up," he said. Cassel used night vision goggles (NVGs) to watch firefights several miles west of the camp. "I tracked a Cobra (Marine Corps attack helicopter) as it traveled from north to the west and watched it fire off its turret guns and a rocket. With the NVGs you could see the entire firefight." Little, if any of this, would've been visible to the naked eye. "You can see outlines of people real well -- you can see anything coming toward you from way out," he said as he tore down his two-man tent in preparation for Tuesday's move.
Riding at the end of a convoy traveling through dusty dirt roads here is no fun. That's especially true for the poor young Marines riding in the back of dump trucks and in the back of open Humvees. It's hard to tell if they gain weight or lose it on those 12-hour trips. They probably gain a couple of pounds of sand and grit but at the same time they might sweat off an equal amount of weight sitting under the hot sun all day. After a few hours riding in a Humvee the seats start to feel pretty uncomfortable -- they're riding on sandbags in dump trucks. The Marines are unrecognizable when they finally reach their destination -- they're completely covered with dust except where their goggles were.
The Marines here seem happy to have a hometown reporter with them. Back at Camp Betio, Kuwait, they even built a storage shelf to hold my equipment. A few days later some Marines had a chance to call home during a visit to Camp Doha. Several came back excited that their family had seen their pictures in The Tribune. Most of them call me Gunny, a reference to the rank I held when I retired from the Corps -- a gunnery sergeant. Several come up to me after particularly nasty days and ask if I'm still glad to be here. The answer is always a variation of yes.
Others thank me for being here and say that even though mail is slow, they know their families know how we're doing because of the reports I send back. That's what makes it worth it for me to be here.
I heard a funny story the other day. Several weeks ago, back at Camp Betio, several of the senior enlisted Marines were walking to another camp when Gunnery Sgt. Jerome Rohyans, 41, of Buchanan, said, "We saw a big lizard laying out in front of us. It looked all wrinkled so we thought it had been run over. 'It's dead,' someone said. So I kicked a little dirt toward it to see, and it turned, hissed and came at us. We looked like the Keystone Cops trying to get away from that thing."
Mail Call Makes Crummy Bivouac Bearable
WAR ON IRAQ: DESERT DISPATCH
By FRED DODD
Tuesday's convoy to an area about 100 miles south of Baghdad brought good news and bad news to the Marine reservists of South Bend's Engineer Company B. When the Marines unloaded at their designated bivouac area, about 50 yards east of a major highway, they discovered a dusty, brushy area littered with camel manure and infested with camel ticks. The good news was that there was a big bag of letters and dozens of packages waiting for the men. The Marines were happy.
The night before the unit headed farther north, Lance Cpl. Kevin Cassel, 26, of South Bend, spent a four-hour shift watching the western horizon as he manned one of the company's machine gun nests. "You hear a lot of weird noises that make you perk your ears up," he said. Cassel used night vision goggles (NVGs) to watch firefights several miles west of the camp. "I tracked a Cobra (Marine Corps attack helicopter) as it traveled from north to the west and watched it fire off its turret guns and a rocket. With the NVGs you could see the entire firefight." Little, if any of this, would've been visible to the naked eye. "You can see outlines of people real well -- you can see anything coming toward you from way out," he said as he tore down his two-man tent in preparation for Tuesday's move.
Riding at the end of a convoy traveling through dusty dirt roads here is no fun. That's especially true for the poor young Marines riding in the back of dump trucks and in the back of open Humvees. It's hard to tell if they gain weight or lose it on those 12-hour trips. They probably gain a couple of pounds of sand and grit but at the same time they might sweat off an equal amount of weight sitting under the hot sun all day. After a few hours riding in a Humvee the seats start to feel pretty uncomfortable -- they're riding on sandbags in dump trucks. The Marines are unrecognizable when they finally reach their destination -- they're completely covered with dust except where their goggles were.
The Marines here seem happy to have a hometown reporter with them. Back at Camp Betio, Kuwait, they even built a storage shelf to hold my equipment. A few days later some Marines had a chance to call home during a visit to Camp Doha. Several came back excited that their family had seen their pictures in The Tribune. Most of them call me Gunny, a reference to the rank I held when I retired from the Corps -- a gunnery sergeant. Several come up to me after particularly nasty days and ask if I'm still glad to be here. The answer is always a variation of yes.
Others thank me for being here and say that even though mail is slow, they know their families know how we're doing because of the reports I send back. That's what makes it worth it for me to be here.
I heard a funny story the other day. Several weeks ago, back at Camp Betio, several of the senior enlisted Marines were walking to another camp when Gunnery Sgt. Jerome Rohyans, 41, of Buchanan, said, "We saw a big lizard laying out in front of us. It looked all wrinkled so we thought it had been run over. 'It's dead,' someone said. So I kicked a little dirt toward it to see, and it turned, hissed and came at us. We looked like the Keystone Cops trying to get away from that thing."
Glad to hear that mail/packages reached them.
