FRG Newsletter. Battle Company. B Co. 3/69 AR Fort Stewart, Georgia

Transcription

1 FRG Newsletter Battle Company March 2005 Vol. 2 Issue 1 B Co. 3/69 AR Fort Stewart, Georgia Samarra pictures. Top: Bradleys rolling through the streets on patrol. Left: 1LT Hudak and members of 2nd PLT converse with Iraqi civilians while on patrol in Samarra. Bottom Left: 1LT Hudak gets searched for candy by children during a school visit in Samarra. Bottom Right: Ready for action (also a view of the city). More pictures on the following pages. 1

2 Battle Company in the News Reporter Mark Mooney recently spent some time with B Co. at the Patrol Base Uvanni in Samarra, Iraq. His articles were published last month in the NY Daily News. Mr. Mooney s articles may be found on pages 4-6. A big thank-you to Mr. Mooney for sending the text to us and giving us permission to include both news pieces in our newsletter. New Address Format Example: PFC John Doe Platoon/Company/3-69 AR, 1 BCT FOB Brassfield Mora APO AE FRG Meeting Recap Taxes All W2 forms are available at the battalion. You may also get one off your soldier s My-Pay account. You will need his pin number. There is free tax service available on post in building The phone number is , and they are open M-F from 9-5 and on Saturday from 10-2 (after March 12, they will not be open on Saturdays). You must have a power of attorney to do taxes. Internet A 24-hour Internet cafe in building 628 is available for family members with deployed soldiers. For our soldiers, there are 32 computers at FOB Brassfield-Mora, 26 at Camp Uvanni, and 12 at Camp Razor. Do Remember Our soldiers have little control over their time. Schedules vary from day to day, and time for communication to family and friends (via phone and ) is limited. Occasionally, this communication is not available. Instead of becoming frustrated when you ve not heard from your soldier, choose to be patient. They look forward to calling/ ing as much as you anticipate hearing from them. Future meetings They will be held on the second Tuesday of every month at The 2 CDC is offering free childcare for the meeting. You must register your child ahead of time and have a reservation. This month s FRG meeting will be March 8, at Rumor Control Please know that all information is unofficial unless it comes from the FRG leaders or Rear-D. If you have concerns, please contact FRG or the Read-D to find out. Do not share information you hear until you know that it is official. It can cause a lot of confusion and needless worry. 1st Platoon 1st Platoon is now at Camp Uvanni. They arrived at the end of February, much to the delight of the rest of the Company. After several weeks of being apart, the whole Company is once again working together as one team a great team. 1st Platoon has already started on patrols, and is doing a great job. Family Care Teams We need volunteers for the Family Care Team. This group would assist families after casualty notification. It would not be notifying family members. However, it would be providing support after the notification has been made. Two ways to volunteer are 1)making meals and 2) being available to assist families by taking care of children and helping at their home. Please be realistic about your involvement. It will be important that we are consistent. Before volunteering you might want to consider: who would take care of your children while you are helping? who can help transport the families children to and from school? what information will you give your children and when? This service will only be available to local families in the Hinesville/Savannah area. Please think about it and let me know. First Annual Eco-Challenge One sunny morning last November, B Co. gathered on the Tybee Island beach for the first annual Eco-Challenge, an event that challenged both mind and body. Each team of four competed in a series of timed events: kayak race, infantry knowledge test, log presses,

3 sit-ups w/a log, POW run (each team was to run a specified distance while 3 men were tied together at the ankles and the 4th team member blind-folded), stretcher race, Arabic phrase quiz, and the Urban Land Navigation course (a.k.a. scavenger hunt ). The winner would be determined by which team completed all these events in the least amount of time. After a fun and exhausting day, soldiers reunited with their family and friends for a barbeque dinner and the announcing of Eco-Challenge winners. First place went to the Master and the Puppets (SSgt. Dove, PFC Boone, PFC Dunscumb, and PFC Harper). Also a big thanks to the Headquarters group and the others who made this event such a success! to our lives, as we now must juggle all the responsibilities here on the home-front. Do plan some time for yourself every now and then. A trip to the coffee shop, set aside time to read a book, pick up a magazine, go for a walk, splurge on a small container of specialty icecream. Little to no money is needed, just a few moments to relax and call your own. A bit of time away from all of life s to-dos can be very refreshing. Happy Birthday to... Amanda Harper (March 1) Shannon Jones (March 9) Hannah Knudsen (March 11) Sarah Narron (March 17) Angela East (March 23) Jennifer Evans (March 26) Alicea Beatriz (March 27) Happy Anniversary to... Marlon and Lilly Salce Palma (March 18) And a happy congratulations to all whose birthdays and anniversaries we missed in December, January, and February! Kayak races attybee Island Volunteers Needed The Spring Special Olympics is only a month away (April 8). It is a great opportunity to lend a helping hand or cheer on the athletes as they compete. Volunteer opportunities include: Encouragers, Event Officials, Score Sheet Runners, and an enthusiastic audience. To pre-register or for questions call: DMWR, Army Volunteer Corps Coordinator, at /5059. Treat Yourself A special word to wives: No doubt that the time our husbands are away adds much strain 3 SGT Correa and SGT Wilbanks from 3rd PLT pose next to a cache of weapons they discovered while searching vehicles during a hasty traffic control point.

4 Battle Company in the News (con t. from page 2) It s Like the Old Wild West: Attacks Never Cease at Base. by Mark Mooney PATROL BASE UVANNI, Iraq - Lt. Daniel Lawton s Humvee hit a mine this week, blowing off a wheel and the hood. It was the second time Lawton s vehicle has detonated a mine - and he has been at this base only five days. There s just a big boom and you blink real hard, said Lawton, of Savannah, Ga. No one was hurt in the latest blast, one of several attacks the past few days on U.S. patrols and this tiny camp in the heart of Samarra, a Sunni Muslim city 75 miles north of Baghdad that has defied American attempts to stamp out deadly militants. In an effort to quell this sullen city of 200,000, the base was carved out of the heart of Samarra in October and named for Sgt. Michael Uvanni. He was the National Guard soldier from Rome, N.Y., killed during the offensive to establish the base. Patrol Base Uvanni and its 350 troops from the 369th Armored Battalion are within easy range of enemy mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and sniper fire. On a recent morning, the shooting began at 8:30 with a rocket-propelled grenade and a handful of sniper shots directed at the base. U.S. guns stationed on the sandbagged roof immediately opened up on the telltale puff of white smoke from where the grenade was launched. A few minutes later, a second grenade was fired from another direction, and the American guns unleashed a fresh barrage. Two floors below, no one stirred from his prepackaged breakfast rations or his sleeping bag. It s like the old Wild West out here, Sgt. William Taylor said with a smile when the shooting stopped. But the shooting never completely stops at this modern version of Fort Apache, ringed by a wall of concrete slabs and insulated with sandbags stacked along the base of walls and stuffed in windows. Life is spartan with 16 men and their ever-present computer games crammed in a room. There is little water for washing, and only three hot meals a week that sometimes get delivered as late as 9 p.m. Leaving Uvanni for patrols invites even more gunfire. Over a two-day period this week, Bradley and Humvee vehicles struck mines, several mines were discovered, troops were twice fired upon with rocket-propelled grenades and AK-47 rifles, and an Iraqi Army patrol was hit with an ambush that left one dead and five wounded. There were no American casualties. Another day in the desert, sir, said Pfc. Jay Rogers, 20, of Greensboro, N.C., who was writing to his grandmother about running over a mine. How s that for a way to start a letter? he chuckled. U.S. military officers believe they're fighting fewer than 100 rebels, but the militants have enough support to launch daily attacks on American and Iraqi forces and plant bombs on area roads each night. It's tough to measure progress. Patrols block off small neighborhoods every day, put snipers on rooftops and string razor wire to secure the area, and then knock on doors to search houses, seek information on enemy fighters and ask what people need. Wherever we go, they tell us it s a good neighborhood and no bad people, said Capt. Ryan Wylie, who commands Bravo Company. 4

5 Wylie s questions draw lots of shrugs, looks of incredulity when told that mortars are being fired from their neighborhood and conflicting descriptions of bad guys. Sometimes the Americans are simply told to get lost. There are glimmers of cooperation. A tip about a mine on a street this week turned out to be true and led to the capture of several rocket-propelled grenade launchers, grenades, detonation cord and explosives. It was a good day, Lt. Nathan Adams said that night in Patrol Base Uvanni s command center. Nobody got hurt and we took their stuff. Second Time s No Charm by Mark Mooney SAMARA, Iraq - The troops of the 3rd Infantry Division powered their way across Iraq to take Baghdad during the invasion of Now they are being asked to take Samara - alongside the Iraqi Army they fought in the initial invasion. It was easier before. It was an out-and-out fight, Capt. Mike Zopfi said yesterday as he readied for a raid that he hoped would cut down on the number of bombs and ambushes on a supply road into this restive Sunni city. Now you don't really know who the bad guy is anymore. Zopfi and his troops will take over a sector at the edge of Samara today from Capt. Matt Kinkead and his soldiers from the 1st Infantry Division. Such handovers are going on throughout Diyala Province it includes volatile cities like Samara, Tikrit and Baqubah as the 1st Infantry Division has completed its year-long tour and is headed to its home base in Germany. Kinkead led his last raid yesterday while Zopfi and his troops took orders. Kinkead used the preraid briefing and the resulting five-hour-long search to point out to the 3rd Infantry Division some dangerous ambush spots and places where the insurgents have dug in bombs before. One of the biggest changes for the returning 3rd Infantry Division soldiers is that last time here, they fought the Iraqi Army. This time, the Iraqi Army is their ally. Kinkead tried to make that point clear before the force of tanks, Humvees, Apache helicopters and Iraqi pickup trucks headed out. Out here, a guy running around in a ski mask is probably a friendly, warned Kinkead, who is from Monaca, Pa. If you 3rd [Infantry Division] guys were here before, that guy was probably a target. They wear them because they and their families have been threatened. He outlined a sweep along a highway that runs between two canals, trapping the convoys and making a chase difficult. The road is riddled with holes from bombs, and Kinkead s crew watches the road carefully. During the search through fields, several homes, sheds and a mosque, they detained 10 men, including one believed to have slipped into the area after the fighting in Fallujah. One of the Iraqi Army pickups filled up with a dozen AK-47 rifles, bags of ammunition, a flare gun, a box of antibiotics and sedatives the Americans suspected were meant to treat wounded insurgent fighters, a rifle scope and an old American bulletproof vest. Looks like Christmas, Kinkead remarked dryly as he approached the confiscated material. Throughout the day, Kinkead kept up a litany of lessons learned. 5

6 The way back will be more dangerous than coming here, he said. Now they'll be waiting for us. As the convoy turned off the paved road for a muddy dirt road, Kinkead warned, If you have contact on this road, don't freak and hit the brakes.... If you slam on the brakes, you slide right into the canal. He chided someone on the radio for not paying attention, and cursed the confusion as the replacements had trouble finding the right frequency. The Apaches didn't show up on time because they weren't dispatched to the right location, and they weren't available at all to cover the convoy on the trip home. Growing pains, Kinkead said calmly. These articles were used by permission of Mark Mooney, NY Daily News. VITESSE ET PUISSANCE Speed & Power 6 1 B. Company, 3/69 AR 1st UA, 3 ID