Daily history

Good morning,




Quote of the day:



“Life is not waiting for the storm to pass; it is learning how to dance in the rain.”

Anonymous



Instead of digging out news tidbits I am going to give y’all a letter sent to me by a friend of my daughter while he was on active duty in Iraq. Be warned, the language gets a little salty at times.



Letter from LT. Dan





Hi Mr. Al,

I had a few free moments, so I figured I'd drop you a line. I'm sure your beautiful daughter, Leslie, has informed you of my current location in one of the world’s great cess pools, Baghdad, Iraq. What a complete dump this place is. I'll give you a rundown of my first three weeks here. It started at Camp Virginia, Kuwait. The reality check for me happened as soon as I left Camp Virginia. I had been riding in a transport vehicle down the highway in Kuwait for about five miles, just staring out the front windshield at the barren desert. I noticed a large, armored truck, what use to be called a "deuce and a half" coming toward us doing about sixty miles an hour. There are large sand dunes down both sides of the highway so it is hard to see off out into the desert. As I watched this big, armored two and a half ton truck coming toward us, a camel jumps off the sand dune right in front of the truck and the truck didn't even slow down. It hit the camel broadside and it exploded sending blood and camel guts flying all over the vehicle I was in. I couldn't help but exclaim "HOLY SHIT" in a loud voice. The driver didn't bat an eye and slowly reached over and turned on the windshield wipers to clear the blood and bits of flesh off the windshield. I think I saw an opossum get run over once when I was a kid, until then that was about it. I flew from Ali Al Saleem Air Base in Kuwait to BIAP (Baghdad International Air Port) in the cargo hold of a C-130 USAF transport plane. I was packed in with about sixty Army soldiers and it was extremely hot and cramped. No windows and fuel fumes don't make for a very pleasant ride, its about an hour and a half trip. I arrived at about 2300 to pitch black darkness in Baghdad and not one Navy person to guide me in the right direction. An Army Master Sergeant who dwarfed me took pity and decided to give me a ride to the transient tents, where I would be staying. While in full "battle rattle" (Helmet, Elbow Pads, Knee Pads, IBA (Interceptor Body Amor or "Flack Jacket") your mobility is limited and it is extremely hot. Being six feet two inches tall and weighing 250 pounds, I am over 300 pounds with all the gear on. I can literally feel the ground give underneath my boots when I walk on softer earth. Anyway, I hadn't been in Iraq twenty minutes when I mortar hit while I was walking with the master sergeant to the truck. The concussion from it caused me to stumble into some razor wire, slicing my hand open, "welcome to Iraq" I thought to myself as I laughed. I was lead to a disgustingly filthy tent and shown a rack made of nothing but two by fours with a wire spring mattress that some of the springs were protruding through. At the time, I didn't care. After hitting the rack at about 0130 and sleeping a few hours, I reported to my new position as the Detainee Ops Officer for Task Force Troy. I can't go into the details of my job here, but part of it is what I call, "herding assholes." Tracking detainees and making sure the bad ones get prosecuted and not released. Since I had little sleep, I was allowed to only work half a day and return to my tent. At about 1600 that afternoon, I heard what I can only describe to those who have not heard it as a Blue Angel Aircraft flying very low, right overhead, except not as loud and with more of a hissing noise as it passes. It was the unmistakable sound of an Iranian made 120mm rocket coming into camp. It exploded near the Al Faw Palace where I work, but no one was hurt. One of the fellows in the tent started raising hell. He said he had just come from Camp Echo where they had been hit 32 times that day and he was hoping to get some rest at Victory. The second night the springs sticking through the mattress began to give me issues as well as a huge rat stuck in a glue trap right in between my head and the tent. I freed the rat by beating him senseless with a water bottle. I guess this pissed him off because the next night as I lay fast asleep in my rack at 0246 I felt a tingling sensation in my hand. In my semi conscious state, it seemed like a slight electrical charge, I guess it was the rat's whiskers going over my hand. Then I felt the unmistakable feeling of an animal bite. I jerked my hand very hard and sent the rat flying. I was very angry, as you can imagine the fear of rabies and shots in the stomach made me furious. Blood was pouring out of my hand and I soaked it in rubbing alcohol and bled it as best I could. I went to medical the next day and all is well. The conditions in the tents are filthy as you can tell. Camp Victory is very busy, very crowded and very dirty. The air is acrid with dust and smoke, everything is covered in a thick, fine dust. I mean everything. October 10th was the biggest rocket attack since I've been here. It actually made CNN and the others. I was standing in the palace waiting for shift change when the place shook, a loud explosion, and then one followed by another in quick succession. I later found out that we had 14 107mm Iranian made rockets come in to Camp Victory. I hurriedly made my way out of the palace toward my tent. I immediately saw smoke rising up from the area of my tent. I take a back path that goes really down in the dirt, but is a shortcut to my tent. The path comes out on a sidewalk near a bus stop. When I came up to the sidewalk I saw two humvees, a humvee ambulance and several medics. I saw the medics loading two bloody and badly injured soldiers into the Ambulance humvee. The soldiers on the litters weren't moving and no one was helping them, I feared that they were KIA. As I said, they were really torn up. I asked one of the medics if I could be of assistance and he just said don't let anyone take pictures. I was the only officer on the scene at that time, but it quickly filled up. The injured were taken away quickly and I was relieved by an Army Major. I found out the next day the amount of rockets that came in and that two were killed and I believe 36 wounded. I feel confident that the two that were killed were the soldiers that I saw. The truck they were in was badly mangled; the street and small bus stop were torn up as well. We continue to take small arms fire and mortar rounds on occasion, not with any sort of schedule or frequency. The incoming alarm sounds almost daily, mostly in the middle of the night, but then nothing ever happens. No alarms go off when its a real attack. H-60 helicopters fly overhead constantly and some nights they sound like we can reach up and touch them. I continue to learn my job, I have been here three weeks today. I do a lot of business up at Camp Cropper, which I heard was also on the news lately, its a "detainment facility" which is what we call POW Camps now that we are trying to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people. We can't put the murderers AKA Insurgents in POW Camps, its not kind and gentle enough! My days are very long, over twelve hours per day, at least six days per week, sometimes seven and are exhausting. I've lost 15 pounds since I got here. The food is okay, for Army chow. I am what is called an "Individual Augmentee" which means I'm a Navy Officer working for the Army. Anyway, the D-FAC or dining facility is pretty damn nice, by Iraq standards. I think they spent all their time and money on the D-FAC and ran out of money for the tents and other accommodations. The porta potties are filthy, a long way away from the tents, the shower trailer is small, dirty, no water pressure and most times no hot water. Having to take a leak in the middle of the night is an ordeal and give you an eerie feeling as you stumble through the pitch blackness and then realize where you are and whats going on. In the shower trailers, you have to shave over someone else's shoulder to see a mirror. Everything is contracted out to a company called KBR and its mostly people from the former soviet union that man everything at the tents and TCNs or Third Country Nationalists that work at the DFAC and other areas. They are from India, Morocco, Sri Lanka, places like that. Anyway, I have to go now. I thought that you would be one person who may actually be interested in hearing about it. Leslie is a God Send to me. I don't know what I would do without her. Her emails and phone calls are truly what keeps me going. You did a damn fine job with her and you should be very proud of her, I know you are. Take care of yourself, I hope all is well. Drop me a line when you can. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Take Care,

Task Force Troy

"Making Bad Things Happen To Bad People"



That’s right folks…This is an eye witness to some of the things that happen over there. Dan has been back two years and he ain’t over it yet.



This date in history August 9



1969 On this night four people named Tex Watson, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkle and Linda Kasabian have dinner at the El Coyote Mexican restaurant near Los Angeles, California. After dinner they drive up into the Hollywood Hills and stop at a house at 10050 Cielo Drive. It was a house that was previously owned by a record producer but now it was being leased by movie producer Roman Polanski and his wife actress Sharon Tate. Polanski was out of the country so Sharon had a few of her friends over that included Voytech Frykowski, Steve Parent, hair stylist Jay Sebring and coffee heiress Abigail Folger. Tex Watson and company break into the house with Tex wielding a long barreled .22 caliber pistol and the three women with long knives. For reasons not truly known, Tex and the girls begin slaughtering everybody in the house. Two of them make it out into the front yard trying to escape but Tex runs them down and dispatches them with a shot to the back of the head whereupon one of the girls jumps on the corpses and begins repeatedly slicing and stabbing them. In the meantime inside the house even more horror is committed by the women when they begin stabbing and strangling the 8 month pregnant Sharon Tate and the other two. All five of the occupants of the house are killed and disfigured. The next morning the house keeper shows up and sees the bodies on the lawn and calls the LAPD. No one can imagine the reason for all of this because two days later supermarket executive Leon LaBianca and his wife Rosemary are found cut to pieces in their Hollywood home. Both the Tate and LaBianca murder scene had words like “Death to pigs” and “Helter Skelter” written in blood on the walls so the cops knew the perpetrators of these murders was the same. The Prosecutor assigned to this case, Vincent Bugliosi, determined that the murderers were members of a cult led by a man named Charles Manson that lived on the Spahn Ranch out on the California desert. The ranch was not a ranch at all; it was just a bunch of buildings that were used in movie sets from time to time. Anyway, eventually the entire cult was arrested except for Tex Watson who had fled to, you guessed it, Texas. Listen to this ya’ll. Prosecutor Bugliosi struggled to find a motive and here is his theory: Charles Manson wanted to commit random murders hoping the public would believe it was blacks that were the killers and the mother of all race wars would erupt and he and his little group would stay hidden in the desert and would be on top after it was all over. Manson somehow arrived at this conclusion by listening to the song “Helter Skelter” on the Beatles “White Album”. How could this jackass believe this and be sane? The answer to that is he ain’t sane. He is crazy as a shit house mouse. Anyway, the whole thing blew up when Susan Atkins was arrested on a stolen car wrap and chose to brag to her fellow inmates about her participation in the Tate and LaBianca murders. Susan scared the hell of the inmates and they passed on the information to the cops and it was all over. All of the participants are still in prison to this day except for Linda Kasabian who eventually rolled on the others including Charles himself in return for a shortened sentence.



1945 At 1:49a a B-29 named “Boch’s Car” departed the island of Tinian piloted by Major Charles Sweeney. The normal pilot of the aircraft was Paul Boch but Major Sweeney was selected to command this mission. As with the “Enola Gay” a few days before, Boch’s Car met up with a weather recon aircraft and an instrumentation plane over Iwo Jima and they all headed out for Nagasaki which was a few hundred miles north of Hiroshima. The nuclear bomb being used this time was a plutonium bomb named “Fat Man”. The bomb was nearly spherical with tail fins. This bomb did not operate on the same theory as the bomb used on Hiroshima but the nuclear physicists that designed it were sure that it would work. Boch’s Car released “Fat Man” at 11:06a on this date and a few seconds later a light brighter than the sun lit up Nagasaki from and altitude of 1,200 above the ground. Nagasaki is surrounded by hills and mountains and therefore the effects of the explosion were contained in a smaller area and the devastation was more complete. As with Hiroshima, nearly 120,000 civilians were vaporized immediately or died from radiation poisoning later. As I stated before, the Emperor demanded that Japan accept the terms of the Potsdam Resolution which called for the unconditional surrender of Japan. The Emperor also stated that if they did not it could mean the end of the Japanese people because a few days earlier Russia had invaded Manchuria which was just across the Japanese Sea, Japan could not fight a war on two fronts and everybody knew it. The war was over.



1862 As a result of the timidity of US General George McClellan, his Army of the Potomac was sitting on their hands after receiving several ass-kickings at the hand of CSA General Robert E. Lee during the so-called Seven Days. It became obvious that McClellan was not going to make further attempts at capturing Richmond. The exasperated A. Lincoln organized another army around US General John Pope and called it the Army of Virginia. Pope was tasked with capturing as much of northern Virginia as he could. Lee found out about this change and sent CSA General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson and an army of 18,000 to cut off Pope and his army of 8,000. The two armies met at Cedar Mountain, Virginia. In spite of being outmanned Pope and his army was able to push the Confederates back and it appeared that victory for Pope was on the horizon but at the last minute CSA General A. P. Hill and his army arrives on the scene and Pope’s fortunes are reversed and he and his army are routed. This is one of the few times that Stonewall Jackson had miscalculated.



1968 On this date Arthur Walker is convicted of espionage by selling United States military secrets to the Russians. His arrest and conviction ended one of the most damaging espionage rings in American history. The kingpin of this ring was John Walker, a US Naval officer who recruited his brother, son and a neighbor into his labyrinth of espionage. What did John Walker and the others in was John was going through a bitter divorce and his wife went to the FBI and told all that she knew about the actions of John and his entourage. The FBI admits that the Walker group set the American espionage community back by years and probably cost several American spies and moles their lives. All of the members of the Walker spy ring are in prison for life. In my opinion they all should be executed by hanging. There is a lesson to be learned here. Do not get involved in a “bitter” divorce.



Born today:



1548 English writer Izaak Walton. He said “Angling is so much like mathematics that it is doubtful it will ever be learned.”



Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow