TwinMom7
Proud Mom of a United States Marine
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Mail Chief Actually in Charge of Morale
DESERT DISPATCH
By FRED DODD
CAMP CHESTY, Iraq -- Mail is the biggest morale booster there is out here (outside of the eventual announcement of when the South Bend Marines are going home). Whether incoming or outgoing, all mail passes through the hands of Staff Sgt. Aurelio Campos, 37, of Amarillo, Texas. Campos, normally stationed at Camp Pendleton, Calif., is the postal chief here at Camp Chesty.
"My job is to push the mail up to the units. Some of the forward units have been without mail for a month. That's our biggest priority right now. Other units have received some flat mail (letters) but no packages." He gestured to pallets stacked high with mail that was about to be loaded onto trucks and taken farther north.
"We've been swamped," he said. "We received 178,500 pounds of mail yesterday alone and another 73,000 pounds already this morning," he said. When a letter from home is mailed to a service member in Operation Iraqi Freedom, it heads either to San Francisco or to the joint military postal agency in New York, Campos said. It's then flown to either Kuwait City or Saudi Arabia. From there it moves on a truck the rest of the way to the unit and to the recipient.
"It's definitely a morale booster for our Marines," he said.
On Sunday, Marines from Engineer Company B hauled stone for a third straight day from a gravel pit a few miles away to improve Camp Chesty's dusty roads. The gravel pit is located at what used to be a concrete factory.
There are several abandoned buildings and warehouses on the site. When the first trip of the day is made, a squad of Marines searches the buildings to make sure the area's secure. The squad then takes up defensive positions around the perimeter to make sure no one enters. Front-end loaders load the stone on dump trucks, which make several trips each day. Very close to the gravel pit is what Marines have been told is an unfinished Iraqi military base. A couple of dozen barracks, mosques and other buildings were under construction before the war began.
Several Marines had looked through some of the buildings days earlier and wondered why they weren't bivouacking in them instead of in the middle of a dusty field. Sunday's work crew had a bit of excitement from that direction. Around midday only a handful of Marines were at the gravel pit. The trucks had been loaded and were en route to the base.
Marines sat around eating their lunch and talking when gunshots were heard -- a few at first, then more, including machine-gun fire. Everyone strained to see what was going on. The shots were coming from the direction of some of the barracks. At first, most Marines thought the noise was coming from several kilometers away. Then explosions could be heard -- concussion grenades. The explosions sounded closer. Green smoke, from a smoke grenade, started pouring up from between the buildings just a few hundred yards away. Then red smoke. It appeared that a firefight was going on in the buildings.
Another unit that had been gathering stone at the gravel pit received orders over the radio to leave -- and it did so very quickly. South Bend Marines stayed and took up defensive positions facing the sound of gunshots and exploding grenades. The firing continued for several minutes. It seemed odd that Iraqis would attack so close to such a stronghold and that no helicopters were rushing to the scene to help -- but the gravel pit detail eventually found out why.
A call over the radio finally told them that a Marine reconnaissance unit was having a live-fire exercise at the site. The message hadn't filtered down to all the units it should have reached. For hours afterward Marines were talking about the firefight that never happened.
DESERT DISPATCH
By FRED DODD
CAMP CHESTY, Iraq -- Mail is the biggest morale booster there is out here (outside of the eventual announcement of when the South Bend Marines are going home). Whether incoming or outgoing, all mail passes through the hands of Staff Sgt. Aurelio Campos, 37, of Amarillo, Texas. Campos, normally stationed at Camp Pendleton, Calif., is the postal chief here at Camp Chesty.
"My job is to push the mail up to the units. Some of the forward units have been without mail for a month. That's our biggest priority right now. Other units have received some flat mail (letters) but no packages." He gestured to pallets stacked high with mail that was about to be loaded onto trucks and taken farther north.
"We've been swamped," he said. "We received 178,500 pounds of mail yesterday alone and another 73,000 pounds already this morning," he said. When a letter from home is mailed to a service member in Operation Iraqi Freedom, it heads either to San Francisco or to the joint military postal agency in New York, Campos said. It's then flown to either Kuwait City or Saudi Arabia. From there it moves on a truck the rest of the way to the unit and to the recipient.
"It's definitely a morale booster for our Marines," he said.
On Sunday, Marines from Engineer Company B hauled stone for a third straight day from a gravel pit a few miles away to improve Camp Chesty's dusty roads. The gravel pit is located at what used to be a concrete factory.
There are several abandoned buildings and warehouses on the site. When the first trip of the day is made, a squad of Marines searches the buildings to make sure the area's secure. The squad then takes up defensive positions around the perimeter to make sure no one enters. Front-end loaders load the stone on dump trucks, which make several trips each day. Very close to the gravel pit is what Marines have been told is an unfinished Iraqi military base. A couple of dozen barracks, mosques and other buildings were under construction before the war began.
Several Marines had looked through some of the buildings days earlier and wondered why they weren't bivouacking in them instead of in the middle of a dusty field. Sunday's work crew had a bit of excitement from that direction. Around midday only a handful of Marines were at the gravel pit. The trucks had been loaded and were en route to the base.
Marines sat around eating their lunch and talking when gunshots were heard -- a few at first, then more, including machine-gun fire. Everyone strained to see what was going on. The shots were coming from the direction of some of the barracks. At first, most Marines thought the noise was coming from several kilometers away. Then explosions could be heard -- concussion grenades. The explosions sounded closer. Green smoke, from a smoke grenade, started pouring up from between the buildings just a few hundred yards away. Then red smoke. It appeared that a firefight was going on in the buildings.
Another unit that had been gathering stone at the gravel pit received orders over the radio to leave -- and it did so very quickly. South Bend Marines stayed and took up defensive positions facing the sound of gunshots and exploding grenades. The firing continued for several minutes. It seemed odd that Iraqis would attack so close to such a stronghold and that no helicopters were rushing to the scene to help -- but the gravel pit detail eventually found out why.
A call over the radio finally told them that a Marine reconnaissance unit was having a live-fire exercise at the site. The message hadn't filtered down to all the units it should have reached. For hours afterward Marines were talking about the firefight that never happened.
