Iraq: Colby's Diary

By Colby Stuck as told to Mike McCarville ~ Greetings from warm Port Hueneme, California. We are in training. I will be careful in what I say because of security. Having just arrived, we are getting situated and going from the Naval Reserve to the regular Navy and will do weapons qualification and other things before we move to Kuwait, then on to Iraq. I don't know yet where I will be in Iraq or to what unit I will be assigned. I expect we'll be told that soon. I am an "individual augmentee." That means I am being individually assigned rather than being sent with a full unit. Ten us flew out of Oklahoma City together. #

After the first post here on The McCarville Report Online about Colby's deployment, Terry Lippman and the good folks at the "Hugs" program, which sends care packages to our military members, emailed that Colby and his mates will receive packages as soon as we have an address for them. Thanks to Terry and all the good folks at Hugs.

Others who wear our uniforms also blog about their experiences through diaries. Army Captain Lee Kelley, writing from Al Anbar Province, is among the best known and he writes words worth noting, quoted here in Time Magazine: Kelley says he and other soldiers are disappointed by how the media portray the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. "If you looked at all the coverage, you'd think the whole thing is a huge mess waiting to blow up. I sometimes wonder where these reporters are. I guess it's not exciting enough to write about schools being built." Kelley and his fellow mil-bloggers aren't just writing letters to their families. Unlike generations of soldiers before them, they're writing for history. "If they are archived, blogs will give the best account of this war," Kelley says. "No one knows what's going on better than the soldiers on the front lines."

(Mike's Note: As Colby trains and prepares to depart for Iraq, I will supplement his diary with official Navy information such as the following report on Navy and Seabee operations in Iraq.) "In addition to filling its traditional maritime security role, the U.S. Navy has been performing different missions on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, shouldering a larger part of the burden in the war on terror.

"Seabees assist in working to develop the Iraqi security forces, facilitate the development of official rule of law through democratic government reforms, and continue the development of a market-based economy centered on Iraqi reconstruction.

"Currently, more than 11,000 sailors are deployed at sea in the Middle East, and 12,000 sailors are deployed in U.S. Central Command countries, said Navy Lt. Trey Brown, a Navy spokesman. About 4,300 sailors are on the ground in Iraq, he said. Sailors are performing many different missions in the war on terror, Brown said. Some are traditional Navy duties, such as those being carried out by Seabees conducting construction missions and Navy corpsmen deployed with Marine units, Brown said. But Navy units also are doing very nontraditional Navy missions: customs inspections, medical operations, civil affairs and detention operations, among them, he said.

"'This war to defeat terrorism is not something that is put directly onto the Army or Marine Corps; it’s put onto the military as a whole,' Brown said. 'It’s up to the military as a whole to win. With that in mind, our sailors have a lot of skills that are very useful and are very sought after by the commanders that are in Central Command and in Iraq.'

"This week, a group of 520 sailors is redeploying after running a detention facility in northern Iraq, Brown said. This unit is being replaced by another Navy unit, which will do everything from commanding the facility to overseeing its laundry operations, he said. In Afghanistan, about 180 sailors are working on six provincial reconstruction teams working directly with the provinces, teaching the leaders how to work with the national government and local governments, he said.

"Many sailors who deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan go as “'individual augmentees,' which means they are pulled from their home units to support the war on terror, Brown said. The 520 sailors coming back from Iraq this week, for example, are from more than 100 different Navy commands. Every sailor sent to the Middle East goes through specialized training to prepare for the mission, Brown said. The level of training depends on the mission they will perform, he said. Those who will be in a staff position do two weeks of weapons and cultural training at Fort Jackson, S.C., and the sailors who work with detainees go through three months of training, he said. 'We’re using the Army facilities and we’re using a lot of Army personnel to help train them, but this is a Navy training set-up,' he said. Only sailors go through the training.

"The numbers of sailors on the ground has increased continually since the start of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, and has steadily grown to its current strength, Brown said. Future levels will depend on the requirements of the commanders on the ground, he said, but he added that he expects the Navy to continue to be a valuable contributor to the war on terror. 'Certainly we anticipate that our sailors are going to continue to be in high demand; the skills that we have will continue to be wanted over there,' he said."

To read all of Colby's diaries, just click on the label.

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