The Rock, U.S. Sniper

Stories from back home

2004-12-30T21:17:00.000+03:00

Lately the media has run two stories about my platoon, Scouts of 1/303 and Task Force Tacoma who we now serve. The first story is about John West, our brother and a great American who is still sacrificing today for his country. Please keep him and his family in your prayers.

A proud soldier's battle back (must create account to view)

The second article was written by a journalist from Washington state who spent a week with us. He included quotes from many of my fellow soldiers, including my good friend Lucas Litowitz (who my wife Debbie knows) and my roommate Huss.

Soldiers live with boredom, danger, death

Merry Christmas!

2004-12-25T20:49:00.000+03:00

Merry Christmas everyone! Have a safe and joyous holiday. Thanks for all of your support and God Bless America! We are thinking of you and the great people of our nation on this day. Click on the "play" button below for a video message from Iraq.

Getting ready for Christmas

2004-12-14T21:05:00.000+03:00

Just 10 days until Christmas! My brothers and I are getting ready for the holidays here in Iraq. Robin Williams actually came to the base this month to perform for us. He was great! And here is a picture of my buddy "Sexy" preparing to hand out nice stocking stuffers to all of the terrorists. He's really in the Christmas spirit this year.

Seriously, the bad guys are as committed as ever to causing us trouble during the holidays. This second picture shows the damage from one of the IEDs that exploded near a truck from our task force. Luckily only one soldier was wounded -- the gunner was hit by shrapnel that entered the truck from where the window and frame meet. Our prayers go out to him.

In the meantime, I'm trying to stay safe. Here is a picture of me in a sniper hide... if you can see me, that is!

Band of brothers

2004-12-01T09:55:00.000+03:00

Here are more pictures of my "brothers" in Iraq. The first is of my roommate Huss. He is pointing at two bullet holes shot in his vehicle when some bad guys tried to ambush us. How dare they shoot our cavalry sabre insignia! But rest assured, we sent plenty of lead and 40mm grenades their way. They'll think twice about disrespecting the Cav again, God bless her soul.

The second picture is of my brothers Huss and Curtis getting ready to go out in the bush for yet another wonderful night. As you can see, the weather has made a complete U-turn on us over the past weeks. These days we can not get enough snivel gear on ourselves! (For the non-military folks out there, "snivel gear" is personal comfort gear issued to protect against bad weather. We use that term because any solider without snivel gear is going to end up snivelling and whining about how cold/wet/etc. he is.)

Have a nice day

2004-11-27T07:45:00.000+03:00

Here is a picture of the front door to our base in Iraq. Yes, that is a M1 Abrams tank greeting visitors at the gates -- just in case anyone is having thoughts of starting trouble.

But they start trouble anyway. Here is a picture of a large chunk of shrapnel from an IED (improvised explosive device) that the insurgents detonated on a nearby road. All I can say is thank God for armor!

Thanksgiving in Iraq

2004-11-26T06:38:00.000+03:00

Here are some pictures of my Thanksgiving Day dinner in Iraq. Later on I spent the night in the bush, but getting to take a break and have a real Thanksgiving dinner was great. The food was surprisingly good. But it was nothing like Mom's cooking!

Versatility

2004-11-20T10:19:00.000+03:00

These pictures are of me and my big ol' guns! Seriously though, they also represent the versatility a soldier has to show in this war. In any one day I might be a:

MK19 or .50 caliber M2 gunner on a Hummer vehicle

Dismount with an M4, an M240B or an M249 SAW (squad automatic weapon)

Sniper with an M21 or Barrett rifle in a hide (my personal favorite)

Traffic control points, raids on towns, convoy security, overwatch of prior launch sites, sniper hides... You name it and we do it!

Got the bad guys

2004-11-17T08:35:00.000+03:00

Two of my buddies in Iraq, "Sexy" and Hartman (I'll let you decide who is who), shot a truck after we saw it shoot a rocket at our base. We hit it with a 50 caliber bullet from 1.5 klicks away and ended up catching the bastards.

Baby camel spider

2004-11-17T08:28:00.000+03:00

Here is a picture of a baby camel spider we found one day. Isn't it cute? Boy how I love Iraq...

Pyromaniac

2004-11-17T07:44:00.000+03:00

Pyromaniacs are all we are out here...

My mission in Iraq

2004-11-17T07:41:00.000+03:00

People often ask me what I do in Iraq. My mission is really very simple. I am a scout and a sniper. Our base gets attacked on a daily basis with mortars and rockets -- in fact the base I live on experiences more attacks than anywhere else in the entire Iraq theater. Our mission is to find the cowards who "shoot and scoot" and bring them to justice. The first few weeks were slow and monotonous but our nature is to patrol aggressively and never to let up. We have disrupted their rhythm, denied them terrain, and forced them to scale back their attacks on our base and use more of their resources on us. Below are two pictures of the damage that the insurgents do when they use artillery rounds as mines to booby trap our vehicles.

Close call

2004-11-16T09:09:00.000+03:00

Just came back from 3 straight days in the bush. Our team was hunting pockets of insurgents who fled the assault on Fallujah. We heard quite a bit of rockets and gunfire but we couldn't get eyes on any bad guys. This picture shows a "spray and pray" bullet that actually hit one of our Humvees. Luckily we have bulletproof windows, but it was still a close call.