Category Archives: Troops

Combat lesson

Back in Iraq from home leave, Teflon Don counts the ways combat has changed him:

"I own the ground I walk on, and you’ll have to go through me if you want to take it. I’ve made it through nine months in what was once called the ‘triangle of death’; that area of Iraq that last year saw nearly thirty percent of those serving within it earn the Purple Heart. I’ve learned, as I think most combat soldiers do, to truly ‘not sweat the small stuff’. If a situation doesn’t threaten death or injury, I can’t trouble myself to care too much about it."

Why we fight

The action on Teflon Don’s R&R from Iraq revealed by Badger 6.

Groundpounders

I cringe everytime I hear about another bunch of American soldiers or Marines getting wiped out by an IED exploding near their vehicle on patrol.

"Roadside bombs in Iraq now cause over 70 percent of the U.S. casualties. Moreover, most of the bomb casualties  now are combat troops…"

Why are they driving, I wonder? Have they forgotten how to walk?

Via Instapundit 

The Wild West

Passionate reporting from Michael Yon–who is throwing in his lot with Gen. Petraeus–who says a big US offensive is underway in Iraq, one that is so far largely ignored back home. "It’s like the Wild West out there," one commenter quotes her infantryman brother who is moving in with the Stryker Brigade.

A pittance of time

How many Army wives play World of Warcraft to keep in touch with their deployed husbands (who seems to be home on leave)? Katana does. How many Army wives can’t stand "Army Wives" on the Lifetime Channel and prefer Netflix? Katana and probably a whole lot more.

Running al Q to ground

Wretchard says you can tell a lot about what’s going on with the big offensive in Iraq just by glancing down the long list of Multi-National Force-Iraq press releases and their titles, a lot more than usual.

Home leave

Teflon Don is blogging his home leave. He seems to have arrived, but mentions this stop in Dallas:

"After another long stretch in the plane, we landed in Dallas. The people in Dallas are great–my first glimpse of America included a fire truck spraying an arc of water over the plane to welcome us home. Inside, the terminal was almost bare, but there was a still a small crowd that went to the airport at 6 a.m. to greet us."

Some veterans groups, particularly Vietnam veterans, organize these welcomes. Glad to see they’re still doing them at DFW. I guess the firetrucks were organized by the airport. "No one was rude," he writes, as if he expected some might be.