Veteran needs help

ALERT

For anyone still checking this blog I need a favor for another Veteran who is suffering and needs a support group.

We are looking for a support group of former battlefield medical personnel who are suffering from PTSD and a related condition which is being called "moral injury" near Bethesda, MD.

Message me at sergeant.grumpy@gmail.com if you've got a lead or someone I should follow up with.

Catching up

I had lunch with my old Team Sergeant this week. It was good to see him and we spent a good deal of time discussing where everyone was and what they were up to. Some times I really miss the camaraderie and all the cool stuff like jumping out of planes and shooting shit.

When he told me about all crap he was dealing with though I remembered why I'm out. I think there is something fundamental wrong and broken in the Officer/Enlisted class structure, but I don't really have a recommendation to fix it.

Cinco de Mayo is coming up, and it will be the 5th anniversary of the day we got on a plane in Baghdad and left Iraq. I thought this year I would finally get to writing about the Battle of Basrah (or BOB as we affectionately called it), but I guess it was too soon.

The following is the last entry from my journal while in country, and nicely illustrates the kind of characters we had on our team.

Word comes at 0730 that we are supposed to be SUPCEN at 1000. We are all on the bus, in uniform, at the same time as our morning meeting. Smith comes be-bopping over in PTs and our Team Sergeant flys off the bus to intercept him. We can't hear the dialogue but there is a lot of animated hand waving and we can see Rod's forehead getting red. But Smith is used to this and he is back in less then 5 mikes and in uniform. Rob, our jester provides a voice over of the conversation from the bus and has us all cracking up - “Don’t be mad at me for being 10 minutes early to the meeting!"

The B Team

The following is a concept pitch I was working on with a publisher, but it went nowhere so I am just going to put it out there for your enjoyment. This is a work of fiction.
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The scene opens with the team’s convoy of vehicles under heavy machine gun and RPG fire, driving at full speed through the streets of Basra during the Battle of Basra 2008. Three American Humvees with their Iraqi partners in Chevy pickups bear down on an insurgent safe house, fighting their way thru the burnt out buildings and wrecks of Iraqi vehicles. Winding their way thru the battle-scarred streets they find their target – the convoy splits and forms a perimeter that nothing can escape, everything trying to get in or out gets killed. As the insurgents frantically call for help on their Motorola, the Iraqi paramilitary troops – the “Black Scorpions” – along with their American Advisors, burst through the door, taking out the security, racing thru the house to clear it of fighters. The Americans with them begin looking thru the house, looking for any sign of the insurgent leader. There is shouting everywhere, somewhere in the house a woman is wailing, and the acrid smoke from the gunfire hangs in the air. Outside, forces are on the move trying to surround this small band of men, but they have hit too hard and too fast, the insurgents were not ready and as the first elements engage the cordon of vehicles, a newly trained Iraqi Private is following a trail of blood upstairs and into the room where the women are. Realizing it leads behind a cabinet, he quickly shouts out in Arabic, “ihna, ihna, ta’al inha!” and men quickly pour into the room. The lone American with them says something in Arabic and two Iraqis pull back the cabinet to reveal a cutout and the murderous leader hiding, in woman’s dress and crying, as he is thrown to the floor and cuffed. Cut to the front of the building as he is rushed out and pushed into a waiting Humvee. In perfect coordination the vehicles move out of the cordon and into convoy at full speed, just as more fighters are arriving only to be cut down by the steady, melodic rupture of the 3 .50 caliber machine guns on the American vehicles...

12 months earlier, as the sun rises across the edge of the Great Plains an unlikely group of warriors gather in the shadow of Pikes Peak. Their silence and hard stares are punctuated by the vapor of their breath and the occasional shuffle of feet on the dew dressed grass of Fort Carson. Strangers with little trust for each other, this group of mis-fits and stone-cold killers could little expect that they would play a pivotal role in the battle for legitimacy of the struggling Iraqi Government.

Over the next year as they face trial and misfortune, they slowly come together, take what was looked upon by others as the worst mission on the deployment and throw themselves into showing all their doubters that they had the goods, and along the way turned the regional Iraqi SWAT team into a critical element in the fight for Iraq’s future.

Notice from google

I wonder what the hell the Chinese want with my e-mail?

Damn Commies!

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Sergeant,

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42

Tomorrow, all across the Nation people will run, walk, and remember Pat Tillman during the annual Pat's Run. The main race is in Arizona State University’s Sun Devil Stadium, but there are shadow runs in many other cities and I will be taking part in one of those. The race is 4.2 miles in honor of Tillman's college jersey number.

I decided last year that since this is my 42 year that this run would be a step in getting back in the saddle. Getting it together. Getting things right. As much as I hate running I am going to stick with it, because I like the way it makes me feel.

So that's it. Tomorrow please honor Pat and all the fallen, if just in your hearts.

Maybe next week I'll write one of those Bosnia post Widge keeps bugging me about. Then again maybe I won't.

Writer's Block Sucks

Been so long since I've logged in, the colors on my blog look faded?!

Update and such

Well it has been a long time old friends. After getting prodded, cajoled, threatened, etc I am going to try to get to this a little more often. More often than never I suppose is setting a low bar for myself, but what the hell it's my blog.

For anyone who is interested, things have been pleasantly normal for the most part. I have had a few health problems not least of the shoulder for which I had surgery in 2008, but most of you already new that. I have also been diagnosed with Reactive Airway Disease from what I can only guess was expose to all the crap in the air in Iraq. Sounds worse than it is and seems easily treatable. I also came down with some bad abdominal issues late last year - I had been having some trouble during Iraq and upon my return, but then I also had to go to India for work about a month before things got really bad.

So after a long slog and nothing clear coming from any of the tests, the docs says I have Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Nice, what part of me isn't irritable? No matter. Enough blabber, next up I am going to work a little humor related to my Bosnia tour. I figure I few posts on that shitshow should warm me up for some Iraq stories. And I'll trust CI Roller will keep me honest about it.