War, non-fiction

I recently returned back to my home at Speicher. The aforementioned chimpanzees at another base were having some serious issues, and I went to offer some assistance. I had originally intended to catch a helicopter down to see them, but extenuating circumstances prevented me from getting on the flight request. So I caught a ride with one of our combat patrols heading south. Flying is the fastest and safest way to travel here, but I suppose we all can’t get our way. The trip was about a three hour jaunt south of here to a base near the city of Balad. Most of our trip was spent on a major interstate of sorts which ran parallel to the city of Tikrit and other satellite villages. The traffic was fairly bustling at first, but Military convoys take precedence on the roads here and it wasn’t long before vehicles scattered to the shoulder. I was in the lead vehicle and our driver laid on our puny horn which was more embarrassing than authoritative, a real clown honker. The landscape here is scattered with countless half-built homes, many with scaffolding still up. I often saw the same thing in Ramadi and wondered the circumstances for so many unfinished homes. Did they just give up? Did they run out of money, or was it the war? Zombies? We eventually turned off the interstate onto a much smaller, more dilapidated road filled with potholes. Potholes have become the bane of safe driving here because they are so often used to conceal roadside bombs. In addition to the potholes, the road meandered through a good amount of shrubbery, creating blinds that could be used for an ambush, terrific. We passed several Iraqi police/army checkpoints, manned by Iraq’s finest. They would jump to attention as we passed and rendered a salute of sorts. Some of them looked on rather contemptuously, as if we were no longer needed. They were a ragtag looking bunch—and tactically they were just sitting ducks. Which makes one think, how much incentive do they have to play both sides of the War? It would be too easy for them to cooperate with Coalition forces and then turn a blind eye to some insurgents planting IEDs. They have nothing to lose; they get a paycheck from the coalition, and they don’t get there heads chopped off by the insurgents. Who knows, but facts most often promote my assumption.
PART TWO COMING SOON