September 12, 2004

It’s heartening to watch the guys from 1st LAR, whom we are replacing. When we first arrived, they greeted us with signs that said “3rd LAR rules!” and cold drinks. They’re being very helpful showing us around base, hooking us up with gear, and giving us all kinds of advice. It’s easy to understand their enthusiasm; they’re finally going home after seven months.

Not seven happy months, either. I heard that only two vehicles from the entire Weapons Company has gone untouched; all the rest have been hit by IEDs and landmines, though the damage varies from popped tires to unsalvageable catastrophe.

The Marines here have been similarly hit. Something like 80% of them are going home with Purple Hearts, though the majority of those wounds aren’t enough to warrant going home or even going to a hospital base. Most of them are out for a couple of days and go right back to work. And still there are Lance Corporals acting as Vehicle Commanders, a billet two ranks above their heads. We are the combat casualty replacements. God knows who will replace us.

Things are weird. Our normal company organization is: a Headquarters platoon, three line platoons, and a Weapons platoon. HQ has the CO’s LAV-25, the XO’s C-squared, a Recovery variant, and a couple of Logistics variants. Each line platoon is made up of four 25s, and Weapons has a mortars section and a TOW (anti-armor) section, with like three vehicles in each.

But just two days ago, a day before we’d be out on our tour of the Area of Operation, they decided to take a 25 from each line platoon and make a fourth platoon. And my vehicle got picked. What this means is that we have a pretty radically different company organization, with a brand new platoon with four vehicles who have never worked with each other. It’s not bad so far, it’s just very sudden, and strange, and we’re not sure yet if this is permanent.

Yesterday the whole company left for our tour of the area, led by a section from 1LAR. Mostly it’s the same old desert I’ve lived in for the past two years, but there was a small section on the banks of the Euphrates River that was mind-bogglingly lush and green. There were cropfields, cows, chickens, turkeys. It invoked vague memories of rural Korea more than anything. We were past that part pretty quickly, though.

I’ve eaten more dust than food in the past day. The vehicle a couple of times kicked up enough dust to block out the very sun. The heat isn’t bad, though. In fact, this morning was actually cold, providing a little taste of the misery to come. This is going to be one unhappy company of Marines come January.

Our purported mission here is to help train the new Iraqi Border Patrol, stem smuggling from Syria, and catch insurgents planting IEDs, but what it really feels like we’re doing is driving around until we get blown up. The thing is: from what the 1LAR guys tell me, you almost never catch anyone either planting IEDs, or triggering them, even though almost all of them are some form of remote detonation. I’m having trouble understanding what the hell it is we’re doing here. What they should be doing is having the CIA in here figuring out where the hell all these explosives are coming from, and tracking sales of the garage door openers and car alarms that are being used as detonation devices, because they must be getting purchased at some kind of bulk, I’d imagine.