Tuesday, October 30, 2007

All is well in North Central Iraq

An Army 105mm Howitzer is fired from FOB Kalsu (not Matt's FOB) Click on image to enlarge
All,
For the last few weeks it has been rather hard to check email, part due to lack of time and the other due to lack of connection. See, you have to wait in line for a computer usually, and then you find out it is slow as hell and takes you the better part of your time (30 minutes per session) to even load a page, let alone get an email out.
So here we are now with a connection in our command post...still not available whenever you want to, but connection all the same.
Hope everyone is doing well. We are approaching 2 months done with our 15 month deployment. A long way to go, but keeping busy with my duties as Fire Support Officer for an infantry company. Actually, I have very little to do with fire support and much to do with operations, admin, information operations, etc. I try to keep things running when I can and take the bullet when I have to.
I've been "outside the wire" quite a bit considering my actual duties. I mostly assist the company commander with engagements of local leaders and the population of the many villages we are responsible for. I rather enjoy it. I've met a lot of interesting people so far.
My duties here are not what I expected, and certainly much different that I would have done in the Air Force, but in the long run the right choice.

I'll write more when more happens.
Warm regards to all.
Matt

1 comment:

DrewM said...

This is an amazing photo. I was an artillery forward observer and subsequently an artillery liaison officer for an infantry battalion in Vietnam. I am writing a novel about that war and the photo here would make a wonderful concept for a cover for my novel (we used a different, older 105 -- the M-102 -- of course).

How can I get the rights to use this photo as a prototype for my cover art?

Many thanks and good luck.

Drew Mendelson - former 1Lt. Artillery 4/3 Infantry, 11th Brigade, Vietnam

916-288-4528
drewmendelson@surewest.net
or drew.mendelson@gmail.com