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The Mudville Gazette is written and produced by Greyhawk, the call sign of a real military guy currently serving somewhere in Iraq. Unless otherwise credited, the opinions expressed are those of the author, and nothing here is to be taken as representing the official position of or endorsement by the United States Department of Defense or any of its subordinate components. Furthermore, I will occasionally use satire or parody herein. The bottom line: it's my house.

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Greetings! You are reading an article from The Mudville Gazette. To reach the front page, with all the latest news and views, click the logo above or "main" below. Thanks for stopping by!
« Lack of Intelligence | Main | Every Day Heroes »

December 16, 2005

A Year at FOB Normandy

Greyhawk

Lt. Col. Roger L. Cloutier, a member of Task Force 1-30 Infantry at the Forward Operating Base Normandy in Iraq, wrote this essay for ABC News' "Where Things Stand" series:

At Forward Operating Base Normandy in Iraq, one of the greatest things about our deployment for me and our soldiers was that we lived with the Iraqi army. For 12 months, our base, located near Al Muqdadiyah, in Iraq's Diyala province, was home to both the Task Force 1-30 Infantry "Battle Boars," a battalion-size U.S. Army unit, and the 2nd Battalion, 2nd Brigade, 5th Iraqi Army Division "Tigers." Daily, we interacted with Iraqi soldiers at all levels. We lived by the principle that we were friends and brothers first, comrades-in-arms second. For all of us, this turned a yearlong combat deployment into something greater than the sum of its parts.

Our year in Iraq was to be spent training our Iraqi friends and combating a terrorist insurgency. Those things happened, but in many ways they were not the most important. Living, fighting and dying together, we became brothers.

Read it all - and kudos to ABC.

Posted by Greyhawk at 05:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) |