April 21, 2003. Tallil to Samawah. A Combat Engineer unit that was set up next to us had lots of extra food in their chow tent, so we had what is called “hot A’s” or A rations for breakfast. Bacon, eggs, pancakes, etc, instead of MRE’s. Cool. After eating, we were on our way. Back out the way we came in. Miles and miles of salt, sand, and bones. This time, however, the locals were out. All dressed in black, they were scooping salt out of the stagnant water puddles that were left and putting it in big piles. Women would then form it and wrap it in plastic, paper, rags, whatever they had and presumably take it home or sell it. Back out onto the main road, after several miles the highway went right through a small town. There was a huge billboard on the side of the road with a hand-painted sign in prefect English, to the effect of: “Americans! Thank you for liberating our country from the dictator Saddam Hussein. Please do not become occupiers but leave our country as soon as we are able to fend for ourselves!” I was struck by the eloquence and the forethought that it took to write that sign.
Southern Iraq between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers is an open air greenhouse once you get past the now-extinct marshes. Our column was passed by an almost endless line of trucks taking produce to market. I’ve never seen so many juicy, big, red tomatoes in my entire life. And they have three growing seasons. And this is Shiite country. Saddam was a Sunni Muslim and drew his power base from the Sunnis that make up only 20% of the country. Shia Muslims make up 60% and live primarily in the south and along the border with Iran. Kurds make up most of the rest and live in the north. When we got there, the country also counted around 1 million Christians, descendents of the ancient Chaldeans and Assyrians. Anyway, the Shia were brutally suppressed by Saddam, especially after Desert Storm. So they were very happy to see us!
In fact, it is an urban myth that we were not welcomed as liberators. We were. At one point during this day, our column had to drive off of the shoulder of the highway. An ambush had occurred just prior to our arrival on the road. A heavy ammunition vehicle was on fire. We couldn’t stop since that is tactically dangerous and didn’t see anyone that needed our assistance anyway. So we edged off the shoulder of the road and began to push past the incident. But along the shoulder stood hundreds of waving Iraqis men and boys, literally stopping out column in its tracks. They were running up to us shouting, “God Bless America”, “God Bless George Bush”, “ America good, Saddam Ali Baba!”. Trying to kiss us. Our column came to a complete stop and we were mobbed. We had some Iraqi-American interpreters with us and they managed to explain to the elders of this well-wishing mob that we had to get through. So they parted for us and waved us off. The rest of the day was uneventful and we needed to find the next fuel point to get topped off and find a place for the night. Luckily, we found the best run military fuel point that I’ve ever seen in the Army. It was run by the Puerto Rican National Guard. They had a Puerto Rican flag flying from the top of a rusted out crane that was located on the site. Huge fuel bladders that looked like deflated, army green hot air balloons were laid out on the ground. They were circular and you drove around them in a counterclockwise fashion and stopped at one of a dozen fuel pumps that were extending from the bladder. We asked the PR’s if we could spend the night there. No problem. We moved off away from their fueling point and set up camp. We also had a truck with a flat bed trailer that had our palletized gear on it. I set up my cot on the trailer – off the ground, good visibility. That night, COL King set up his laptop computer on the back of a Hummer and we watched “Kelly’s Heroes” until his battery died. Behind us on a berm that surrounded the fuel point sat some Iraqi kids watching the movie along with us. They were quiet and polite, so no worries. We’re guessing that they’d probably never seen a movie before, let alone a laptop.
Southern Iraq between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers is an open air greenhouse once you get past the now-extinct marshes. Our column was passed by an almost endless line of trucks taking produce to market. I’ve never seen so many juicy, big, red tomatoes in my entire life. And they have three growing seasons. And this is Shiite country. Saddam was a Sunni Muslim and drew his power base from the Sunnis that make up only 20% of the country. Shia Muslims make up 60% and live primarily in the south and along the border with Iran. Kurds make up most of the rest and live in the north. When we got there, the country also counted around 1 million Christians, descendents of the ancient Chaldeans and Assyrians. Anyway, the Shia were brutally suppressed by Saddam, especially after Desert Storm. So they were very happy to see us!
In fact, it is an urban myth that we were not welcomed as liberators. We were. At one point during this day, our column had to drive off of the shoulder of the highway. An ambush had occurred just prior to our arrival on the road. A heavy ammunition vehicle was on fire. We couldn’t stop since that is tactically dangerous and didn’t see anyone that needed our assistance anyway. So we edged off the shoulder of the road and began to push past the incident. But along the shoulder stood hundreds of waving Iraqis men and boys, literally stopping out column in its tracks. They were running up to us shouting, “God Bless America”, “God Bless George Bush”, “ America good, Saddam Ali Baba!”. Trying to kiss us. Our column came to a complete stop and we were mobbed. We had some Iraqi-American interpreters with us and they managed to explain to the elders of this well-wishing mob that we had to get through. So they parted for us and waved us off. The rest of the day was uneventful and we needed to find the next fuel point to get topped off and find a place for the night. Luckily, we found the best run military fuel point that I’ve ever seen in the Army. It was run by the Puerto Rican National Guard. They had a Puerto Rican flag flying from the top of a rusted out crane that was located on the site. Huge fuel bladders that looked like deflated, army green hot air balloons were laid out on the ground. They were circular and you drove around them in a counterclockwise fashion and stopped at one of a dozen fuel pumps that were extending from the bladder. We asked the PR’s if we could spend the night there. No problem. We moved off away from their fueling point and set up camp. We also had a truck with a flat bed trailer that had our palletized gear on it. I set up my cot on the trailer – off the ground, good visibility. That night, COL King set up his laptop computer on the back of a Hummer and we watched “Kelly’s Heroes” until his battery died. Behind us on a berm that surrounded the fuel point sat some Iraqi kids watching the movie along with us. They were quiet and polite, so no worries. We’re guessing that they’d probably never seen a movie before, let alone a laptop.
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