Copyright 2004, Roadracing World Publishing, Inc.

A dispatch from a U.S. Army Lt. we know in Iraq:

Just wanted to send out a note to all to let you know how things are going. Things are about the same here. I’ve been busy with a couple of things–I was the investigating officer in a 15-6 investigation, after someone lost a pair of night-vision goggles, and I had to go the range to qualify, as it is one of those “everyone must do this before redeployment” tasks. The range is about a 25-minute drive from our living area and is in one of the outer areas of Baghdad. It’s pretty empty out there. The range is at the site of an actual range. It was part of a military compound at one time. Of course, the entire place was bombed to bits.

It is just so sad. There are squatters living in the wreckage–flocks of sheep, little shanty towns, people poking in the rubble. While we were shooting a bunch of little kids came up to us. They barely know any English but they can say “chocolate”, “water” and “money”. They are completely filthy and only half-clothed and completely unsupervised on a Monday morning. I gave them some dried apples I had. The crazy part, though, is that they think soldiers are great. Even though they live in the midst of all that squalor they waved at us and gave us thumbs-up and ran along behind our vehicles as we left.

And I saw an old man in traditional Arab dress poking in the rubble with a stick. But when he saw us driving by he looked up and waved. Apparently they don’t all blame us, which is nice to know. But it just makes me sad to go out.

The worst part is most of these people didn’t live any better before we bombed. It just makes you realize how much of a disparity there really is between the palaces of Saddam and the lives of the ordinary people.

Of course, driving anywhere makes me nervous. I was in an uparmored HMMWV and we still drive like bats out of hell in the middle of the road and stay as far away from the curbs as possible. The day after we were at the range they found an IED on the road right outside the range, right where we were the day before. And even uparmored HMMWVs are no match for certain IEDs. Three soldiers were killed and two were wounded just north of the city a few days ago when the Bradley they were in, which weighs about 25 tons, mind you, was blown on its side by an IED. It blew the turret off the Bradley and blew its tracks off. It was a huge IED.

Well, I am off to dinner so I will close for now. I hope all is well with everyone. Take care until the next time.



And a related message from freelance publicist Dorina Clarke:

Please put a link on the site, for IAFSupport.org

It stands for International Armed Forces Support and it’s a place where people can go and sign up to be a pen pal to a soldier in the Middle East who doesn’t have friends or family to correspond with. It’s something I feel pretty passionate about and would love to see the motorcycle industry get involved with.

There’s also a site called Operationmilitarysupport.com
similar to the other but has more information about sending care packages and needed items that soldiers would love to get while deployed.