These past few days have been very busy with many opportunities to provide support to our troops. One night last week I spent some time with some of our security folks who took small arms fire near our perimeter that one person said came to close for comfort. Yesterday I was once again at our medical facility watching as the medivac gently touched down. Our litter teams went straight to the bird and began taking off wounded from an IED attack in the city. Once again our troops were fairly fortunate. While they were hurt, it could have been much much worse. Once again I have to say that our medical folks form a great and efficient team.
News has reached us that one of our forward operating bases has once again suffered a death of one of our army troops. I've spent some time encouraging our army chaplains as they once again are called on to provide comfort and encouragement to their troops.
This week we visited a number of sites around the base we had not gotten to yet. We went out to the ammunition bunkers, a place I feel at home in given my prior service as a torpedoman in the Navy where I worked quite often in similar bunkers. These Iraqi bunkers have interesting character though. On the surface they look like something out of the civil war era with walls composed of large rocks and cement. But walking inside they penetrate deeply into the earth into cavernous rooms. None of their weapons are stored there now. In fact in areas around the ammo storage area one finds piles of collected and destroyed weapons from mounted machine guns even up to a couple of obsolete and destroyed armoured vehicles.
Visitation and counseling continue to be high priorities. Already one month has passed and it feels like it has flown by.
