WOW 102

Subject: Cobra

Hi,

I hope everyone is doing fine. I’ve gotten settled back into things here at FOB Cobra since returning from leave. It was kind of warm when I first arrived back in county. Kuwait was super hot, it felt like standing behind a M1 Tank while it was running. After processing in at Kuwait, they took us over to the airfield to board a C-130 transport plane. They told us that the flight from Kuwait to LS Anaconda would take roughly 2 hours. Once we boarded the plane, they started up the engines. We sat there for at least 30 minutes when all of a sudden the engines started winding down. They told us
that there was a starter problem with one of the engines and that it would take roughly an hour and a half to fix. Sure enough, after about an hour and a half they told us to get back on. This time we were able to take off. After about 2 and a half hours into the flight, we heard one of the engines shut off, except this time it was on the other side of the aircraft. We flew for a n hour and a half more when I heard the landing gear start to lower. I was next to the window and noticed that the place didn’t look like Anaconda, no trees just several bombed out hangers and sand. It actually looked more like Kuwait. When we landed and off the plane, it didn’t take but just a second before we knew exactly where we were. We were right back in Kuwait. They told us that we couldn’t land in Anaconda due to having the mechanical problems. They finally got us out on another plan about two hours later.

I only stayed in Anaconda for one day when one of our units from Cobra showed up to transport us back. About an hour into the trip, we ran across where a car bomb went off destroying four cars. It looked to have occurred about 2 hours before we got there. Then when we were just about 45 minutes from Cobra an IED hit our convoy only causing minor damages to one vehicle. I guess that was our welcome back from the insurgents. But we made it without anyone being hurt.

It’s been relatively quite here since returning. SSG Bobby Lee and I have been able to go on a couple of raids since returning. Our latest raid with Troop L occurred this past Tuesday night and was very successful resulting in detaining 3 individuals. Just as we were driving into Jalula the lights
went all over town. Was it a signal or just a fluke we’ll never know, but I’m not ruling out anything. We had about twelve Iraqi soldiers with us on the mission. When we got to the first house, there was a gate that had to be blown. We were stacked up waiting for the engineers to blow the door.
The moment the charge went off we immediately heard machine gun fire. From the report of the weapon, it was obvious that it was an AK-47 that had discharged. We raced in and began our search of the house. Once inside and after things settled down some, we started questioning some of the Iraqi solders about the discharge of the weapon. Of course no one would fess up to having fired it, but we kind of figured that one of them had their finger on the trigger and when the bomb went off he jumped, squeezing the trigger. It’s happened before, more than once. After searching that house, we went next door to search the house that belonged to a fellow that was arrested the day before. No one was in the house, but there were tea cups sitting on tables with chi tea still in them and I know they didn’t have them fixed for us. I found a safe under a stairwell that had two keys in the locks. I called Bobby over to shine the light while I opened it up. By the time I got it opened there were a couple of more there to see what was inside. When I opened up the door there laid a pistol holster. There was small drawer in the bottom of the safe so I opened it up. What happened next kind of freaked a couple of guys out. Out rolled a nice pretty hand grenade, some 9MM rounds and several documents. Knowing we couldn’t leave the grenade I picked it up and carried it out. It got
lots of attention but people kept their distance, figure that. I took the grenade over to the hummer and told our gunner who was in the turret manning a M240B machine gun to keep an eye on grenade and not to let it walk off. You should have seen his eyes when I placed it in the seat, shut the door
and went back to continue the search. About 45 minutes into the raid the lights came back on in town.

Last night was kind of interesting too. We had a 57MM rocket hit one of our hummers striking just behind the passenger seats. Luckily the warhead failed to detonate, but the fuel cell was ruptured causing a fire. The fire was quickly extinguished and there was minor damage to the vehicle and no
injuries. It did create a hole in the back of the vehicle about the size of a grapefruit.

In case your wondering how warm it is here, the daily highs are averaging around 118 in the shade. One day it reached a little over 126 and we’ve seen several days where the temps reached 120. But believe it or not, you do adjust to the heat over a period of time. One can only imagine how hot it’ll get the next couple of months. Dust moves in at times and kind of misses up things. To kind of give you a image on how the dust is here, you know when it gets real foggy in the mornings and you can hardly see? Well that’s the way it get here at times, except it’s not fog it super fine dust that just hangs in the air. If there’s no wind the dust doesn’t move either, it just hangs.

Well I better go. I hope you all have a good 4th of July and we’ll see you soon.

Tim

Sent: Friday, May 13, 2005 8:01 AM
Subject: Mission

I hope everyone is doing well. SSG Bobby Lee I just got in this morning for another very successful mission with Troop L. We always go out with these guys whenever possible. They’re aggressive and very professional at what they do. It’s never a boring moment when you out with them. This morning we brought back five detainees. Things around here have been very active the past couple of weeks. I’m sure you all have seen by now on CNN the mass grave site that was located in our area a couple of weeks ago. A local civilian showed it to one of our units while on patrol. According to the locals, the site had been there since 1998 and it’s still undetermined
exactly how many are buried there, not much left. We’ve also had a spike in attacks around FOB Cobra too. Several IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices), a couple of VBIED (Vehicle Born Improvised Explosive Device) that usually consist of artillery rounds placed in the trunk of cars and indirect fire, no major injuries to any of our soldiers. The insurgents recently fired Chinese made 107MM Rockets at the FOB, two within the past 6 days. From the results of the impacts that we’ve seen over time, it appears that rockets aren’t near as dangerous as artillery rounds. Rocks have a tendency to splinter out in big chunks when they explode and a lot of time remain pretty much close to the impact area, but a mortar round fragments out into several smaller pieces and covers a larger area which makes it much more dangerous. When the rockets fly over head, you can hear the buzzing sound from the motor. The motor has several holes cut in angles that cause the missile to spin in flight. A mortar round makes the whistle sound from the fins while in flight. Yesterday morning Troop L went out and found out what appeared to be the launch site from the recent attacks, so hopefully we can catch the guy next time he moves in and sets up.

This past week, we conducted a shooting match for the pistol, M16/M4 with Iron sights, M16/M4 with Optic, M203 Grenade Launcher and Sniper. Due to the number that signed up, we had to spread it over two days. We had the Barrett caliber .50 Sniper rifle out there. That’s a very impressive weapon. I was fortunate enough to fire off ten rounds and it was awesome. You would think something that fired a round that’s about the size of a cigar would kick, but due to the weight it wasn’t bad. The worst thing about firing it was the concussion from the round. And firing the M203
Grenade Launcher with actual high explosive rounds was neat too. Not too many have had the opportunity to do that before. The events were held on the same day as our monthly Friday Night Fights. And from the feed back that we received, it’ll probably be a monthly event. It also helps maintain their marksmanship skills too.

We’ve been blasted with dust storms lately too. It’s kind of funny, it’ll get dark like it’s going to rain and the wind will kick up then all of a sudden hold on here comes the dust. It’s hard to describe just how dusty it does get when it hits. The stuff gets into everything. Well I better go and finish packing up. I’ll be heading out tomorrow for the long journey back home for leave. I should be there in about a week if all goes well.

Subject: Hot in Iraq

   Well I guess you could say summer has officially arrived here at FOB Cobra. The past two days, it’s been 109 degrees in the shade and today it reached 114.8 in the shade. The digital thermometer that I have goes up to 160 degrees. I’m wondering now if it'll survive that. It also measures the
humidity and it’s been hovering around 39% so there is some humidity than adds to the heat index. I guess the best way to describe today was it was like standing in front of a hair dryer. The wind does kick up every now and then and that helps some. Luckily I’ve still been able to continue running
a little over 3.5 miles everyday since I’ve been here. Normally it’s been around 1630 hrs when I get to run then I go back to work for a few more hours. Well today the heat really zapped me. I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to keep it up before it gets just too hot to run. I may have to reside to running either real early in the morning, which I have never enjoyed doing PT early, or running late at night. The green grass that was growing along the hill side is all brown now. The sheep are still out there grazing in the dirt too. They must be part camel because there’s no water to be found. We’ve had a few real bad dust storms the past two weeks too. Several satellite dishes blown down again. There’s no way to keep the dust out. It’s so fine and the wind blow so hard it gets into everything.

   The Charlie Daniels Band came here a couple of weeks ago to perform. That was very nice of them to show up at a little place like Cobra to perform for a few hundred people. He played hard for about two hours then signed some autographs. You could tell the heat was taking its toll on him,
but he hung in there. Everyone loved the performances. Attached is just one of several pictures of Charlie Daniels that I took. Due to the size of the photographs, I’ll have to send them later.
   It’s been very active around here the past few days. There’s been several IED’s planted along some of our routes. A few have gone off and some were located before detonation and destroyed. There were no serious injuries, really just one person had his bell rung a little from the concussion and he’s returned to duty. This morning around 6, we had some indirect fire on Cobra but the round failed to detonate. We’ve been expecting it due to the full moon. Things usually pick up around the full moon because they, the bad guys can move around more freely at night with it so bright. Tonight the illumination suppose to be around 100%, so it’s really going to be bright.
   We’re finishing up with our individual weapons qualification this week. It’s a bi-annual requirement so we wanted to wrap things up before it got too warm. In a couple of weeks, we’re going to hold a little shooting competition. There will be a combat pistol course, a M4/M16 with optics course, a M4/M16 iron sight course, and a Sniper course. They will be held in conjunction with our monthly Friday Night Fight. That’s a monthly boxing event that’s very enjoyable to watch. We usually have about 7 to 8 matches and have several people come up from Caldwell to watch too. We usually have
some local officials as special guest come over to watch. They really get into it and the men really enjoy relaxing a little and having some fun.

Well I guess I’ll close for now. I’ll see you all around the 20th of May.

Subject: FOB Cobra

Hello Everyone,

We are all OK here at FOB Cobra. We just finished up gunnery, both Convoy and Bradley here on Jacobs Range here at FOB Cobra. The range was just recently established and dedicated to the late Colonel Stan Jacobs who was the Regiment’s 5th Colonel of the Regiment. We are able to fire weapons ranging from 5.56MM up through 25MM. With the Convoy Live Fire Exercise, the crews were evaluated on Troop Leading Procedures, Tactical Road March, Identify and React to an IED (Improvised Explosive Device), and Engage Targets while stationary and moving. Everyone that went through the course really enjoyed the course, especially the live fire portion. Engaging targets on the move was a challenge, but the crews improved tremendously with a little practice. They fired both day scenario and a night scenarios. At night we would put IR chem lights on the targets and the crews used their night vision goggles to engage the targets. Every morning about an hour prior going to a hot status, Randy and I would have to go down range and run the sheep herders off. You could set your watch by what time different groups of sheep and herders would appear. The range lays to the east and there are mountains that we use as back stops. Around 0830 every morning we would start to see flocks appear on the horizon. Initially we would have to go down there and try to explain to them that we are firing and for them to move their flocks away, always giving the herder a bottle of water and something to eat like muffins. After about day three they realized that if they saw our vehicles moving toward them, they immediately move to either the north or south. You talking about a boring life, the life of a herder is about as boring as it gets. They usually bring their flocks out around 0800 hrs and stand over them all day in the desert until around 1800 hrs (6PM), then move them back to their stables. The flocks that came over the mountains would cross back over the ridge line around 1600 hrs (4PM). The Convoy Live Fire Exercise lasted about three weeks, and then we started up with Bradley gunnery firing Bradley Tables II, VI and VII. You talk about getting their attention, when we started firing the 25MM chain gun on the Bradley, the herders got out of the area real quick. We fired HE (High Explosive) and would tear up jack. The Bradley has a thermal sight on it and since the troop and truck targets that they were engaging did not give off a heat source we had to develop an alternative way to heat the targets. Back in the states we use generators and thermal
blankets but over here we don’t have that luxury. So what we did was dig holes behind the targets and place metal cans filed with diesel (JP8) in the cans. Just prior to it getting dark, Randy and I would run down range and light the cans. We used gallon metal cans for the troop targets and 5
gallon metal oil cans for the trucks. The 25MM firing the HE was so destructive that we woul
d have to replace the 5 gal cans every day because there were holes through the bottom of the buckets, even though the buckets were buried below ground level, shrapnel would still penetrate the buckets. Every two days we would have to replace the truck targets because they would be literally shot to pieces. There are plenty of old trucks around here so we would hook up and drag them to the specified distance in the gunnery manual and drop them off. The crews loved it, actually firing service ammunition at real truck targets. It actually looked like a fire works display when the HE would make contact with the trucks.

Our units are really working close with their IA (Iraqi Army) counterparts, and the local IP (Iraqi Police) getting them up to speed so they can provide security for their own area of responsibilities. We recently conducted another raid that resulted in detaining three personnel. Just to give you an
ideal how active our units are in patrolling and policing up their areas of assignment, the 3D Squadron here at FOB Cobra has captured more people in three months, than the unit that we replaced did for the entire year they were here. And it’s starting to show around this area. Things have been relatively quite for the past several weeks. When we get word that there are insurgents in our area, we act immediately. We want to get the bad guys off the streets as soon as possible. We’re getting great assistance from the locals in obtaining information that eventually leads to us apprehending suspected terrorist. Well it’s getting late so I better go. I’ve attached some pictures of Jacobs range and the Bradley’s firing Bradley Table VII. I hope to see you around the week of 20 May.

Tim

Letter From Tim West received 3/13/05

Sent: Sunday, March 13, 2005 9:01 AM
Subject: Mission

I hope everyone is doing well. The rain finally stopped yesterday and things are starting to dry out now. The desert is really greening up now. The sheep can now enjoy a little green grass while it last. I'm sure it won't be too long before everything starts to turn back brown. The new Iraqi Army is really starting to take shape. We're starting to work more with both the Iraqi Army (IA) and Iraqi Police (IP). We are integrating both the IA and IP into our missions more and more now. They are really catching on and are taking a real invested interest in capturing the bad guys in their areas. We recently conducted a mission that involved the IP, the IA and one of our units. The raid resulted in 15 detainees which was the largest hit we've had to date. There was one house that was huge. It had one room that was five yards wide and 22 yards long. And as usual there was no furniture, just rugs to sit on. The locals are starting to trust the local IPs' and IAs' in their areas and are turning in the bad guys into them. They are seeing the IPs' and IAs' act on leads that went untouched before. We've been very pro active in detaining the bad guys from day one. In our first two months of operations, we detained over 75% of the total number detainees compared to the unit we replaced detained for the entire year. The credit goes to our units being very active with working with the locals showing them that we do act on leads. When the locals see that your out there trying to catch these insurgents they are willing to give up
information. Without the help of the local citizens, it would be impossible for us to capture these insurgents. I've attached a couple of pictures from the raid that resulted in 15 being captured. One being of some of the
detainees and the other of the large room that I mentioned.

See You Soon.

Tim

Letter From James Kyle received 2/28/05

Subject: Pictures from Iraq

Friends of our United States Soldiers and the Phantom Raider Squadron:

Please keep the prayers coming for all of us! Just knowing that all of our friends support us and the flags will be waving when we return home makes are jobs much more worthwhile while we are here. I do not want to send too many pictures and load your computers down, but every so often a picture needs to be sent home for all our friends to see. We all wish that the good positive missions we perform daily could just be shown or told in the newspapers more often. All we see here is the international news showing the dead or wounded daily. We are doing good things in the communities here, many of our Iraqi friends said they did not think that the elections would be held. All of the people in our area of operations are now taking part in local village meetings held each week now, they are seeing the power in numbers. They are planning now for better communities, freedom of religion, better schools for their children, and a free and democratic society here. We all are proud of what we have accomplished in such a short time here. We should be getting close to the Iraqi Security Forces controlling the security issues here by the time we rotate back home. All of our soldiers are making TN and the USA proud! Please stay in touch with us. THANK YOU for your support! Raider Seven

JAMES B. KYLE CSM, USA

Command Sergeant Major - 3/278th Regimental Combat Team

james.b.kyle@us.army.mil

mailing address:

CSM James Kyle

HHT(-) 3/278th RCT

FOB Cobra

APO AE 09374

Letter From Tim West received 2/18/05

How's everyone doing? It's been beautiful the past three days, sunny and warm. Things around here have been real slow since the elections. We had a couple of mortar rounds fall outside the wire around 10 days ago and a couple of IEDs hit two of our units not causing any major injuries or damage. A couple of guys got banged up a little, but nothing bad. About 30 of us went up to Halabja on the 16th. That's the village that Saddam hit with chemical weapons on 16 March 1988. According to one report that I read this morning, more than 12,000 people died from the attacks. He bombed them with mustard, nerve and other agents. That place is without doubt the most beautiful spot in Iraq. There was snow on the mountains, green grass and trees. It reminded of of the smoky mountains. Clear streams, but there no way I would get in the water. But it was very clean looking. We toured the memorial that was very impressive. After the tour, we went to a short meeting in town. When we first arrived there were a few people around our convoy. Once we returned from the meeting that lasted about 30 minutes the streets were full of people wanting to see the Americans. The children were well mannered and dressed well. Very different from the other areas that I've been to. There was no trash laying around the streets or raw sewage running through the streets. These people take pride in their country and their heritage. We know now how the Americans felt when they went through the streets of Paris in World War II. These folks lined up along the streets waving, clapping and cheering at us. It was very heart warming to say the least. After we left the town, we went up to a hill side to be fed lunch. From the top of the hill you could see the village of Halabaj and around us was snow covered mountains, breath taking! Seeing the pictures of the victims and hearing the stories from the survivors you quickly realize we are over here to save a country from torture most cannot understand or comprehend. If anyone has any doubt as to why we had to remove Saddam, they should see what these people have gone through. Halabja wasn't the only village bombed by Saddam, there were over 24 others that we never heard of. I didn't know of them until this morning when I went on Goggle and done a search of Halabja. Halabja had the most casualties though. When we left Halabja we stopped by an Iraqi armor base. They had T54/55 and T62 tanks. To our standards there were a piece of junk, but the the Iraqi's they were very proud of that they had. They cranked them up for us and let us look at them. They are very old tanks that were manufactured back in the 50's and early 60's. That part of the country is Kurdish and they really appreciate what we are doing to help rebuild their country. It's amazing how different the country is. The further north you travel the prettier it is and the friendlier the people are. I took several pictures but due to the size of them I'll only send three. One of me shows the snow covered mountains, another picture is of the
memorial and the last one shows some bombs that failed to explode that they just recently uncovered in the village.

Well I guess I'll close for now. Sorry for taking so long to write. Hopefully it'll start to warm up back home.

Tim

Letter From Tony Miller received 2/05/05

Subject: Update from Iraq

Hi everyone...I am back at Caldwell for a few days fixing to head back to Bernstein. Here are a few pictures for Bernstein that I got from some of the guys there. Bernstein is 2/278's Area of Operation. It is a compound primarily of bunkers, hangers and an airfield. I seem to think that it was probably used by the Iraqi army as an airfield with bunkers and hangers surrounding it here and there. We live in the bunkers and work out of most of the hangers. Some of the hangers have CHUs in them for housing as well. This keeps everyone a little better protected from mortars or rockets. To date there have been no mortar or rocket attacks at Bernstein since 2/278 Peacemakers took over the A/O. In one of the pics you can see a hanger that was made into a MWR facility with a weight room and two tents in the back with a PX and internet center. Water has to be trucked in for showers etc...and the mess hall only cooks to meals a day. However, we get some good supplements such as canned drinks, hotpockets, and little frozen pizzas to heat up in a microwave.

I just wanted to drop you a quick note to let you know that we're all OK after surviving the suicide bomber attack in Khanaqin Saturday. It's amazing how quick stuff makes the news. It was on CNN within an hour of the explosion. The attacker detonated the device within 35 steps of where we were working at. There were five of us operating the TAC inside a building on the lower floor when the explosion occurred. The force was amazing and luckily there were no US casualties. There were 8 Iraqi's killed and 11 wounded. The Iraqi Army had a check point outside the entrance of our TAC. When the soldiers wouldn't let the individual inside he blew himself up killing 3 Iraqi soldiers and 5 civilians. We ran down to the entrance but there was nothing we could do for the Iraqi soldiers or contractors. The contractors had just finished installing taller hesco barriers the night before. The barriers stand about 6 feet tall and are filled with dirt. Due to the graphic details I won't discuss them, but the barriers definitely saved our hides. It looked like someone shot the barriers with buckshot. There were holes all over them, but they contained the ball bearings. The ball bearings the bomber had strapped to his body were a little bigger than a pea. It was determined that the attacker was not an Iraqi and the attack was a well detailed, complex attack involving several people. The attacks throughout the country did not slow down the voter participation that took place the next day (Sunday). It was reported that over 70% of the registered voters turned out to vote. Hopefully that will send a strong signal to the terrorists.

See You Soon,

Tim

Hello Everyone,

       I hope all is well back home. Things here are just fine. Everyone here at FOB Cobra is doing an outstanding job. We successfully completed the transfer of authority a few weeks ago and our troops have performed flawlessly. Everyone back home can be very proud of how the soldiers of the 278th RCT have performed. That's the beauty about the National Guard over the active duty, there's so much diversity in the Guard. We have doctors, lawyers, construction workers, electricians, plumbers, students, teachers, etc. So we're in a situation that we can adapt and handle just about any task asked. Things seem to have picked up the past week or two and we expect as the elections draw closer for the insurgents to be more active. They are trying to either stop or postpone the elections, and that's the worst thing that could happen. Our hats and thanks goes out to the students and facility at Martin Elementary. They sent us 15 packages of various items that could not have arrived at a better time. We have a small PX here and the unit that we replaced had not stocked it for quite some time. Some people were starting to run short on personal hygiene items and other accessories. The items that Martin Elementary filled the void until we were able to make a run to stock the store. I passed the boxes out to the soldiers from Crossville that are stationed here and at FOB Caldwell. Everyone was surprised and tickled to receive items.

                                                                               Thanks again for everything.

                                                                                         Tim