Iraq: Colby's Diary
By Colby Stuck ~ CAMP ROBERTS, CA: A large group of us Seabees have been at this Army base for qualification and night firing on the M240B machinegun and training on the Mark 19 grenade machinegun and other devices. The 240Bravo is awesome; 650-plus rounds per minute. The Mark 19 can launch up to 60 40mm grenades per minute. We had a little contest to see who could disassemble and reassemble an M240B the fastest. I came in second at 57 seconds; the fastest Seabee did it in 51 seconds. (If you'd like to see a video of this, click here, scroll down to the video of guys in camo and click on the player.)
Our training for shipment to Kuwait and then to Iraq continues in the classroom as well, and we continue to receive the required anti-anthrax injections and other immunizations.
We've been joined at Camp Roberts by another Seabee group, all volunteers, who will be formed into "convoy support teams" in Iraq. Seabees have rebuilt much of Iraq's infrastructure, as this official U.S. Navy story reports: "Seabees attached to the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force (I MEF), Marine Engineer Group (MEG) opened the Kish irrigation facility in Al Hillah, Iraq with local Iraqi contractors who worked alongside them on the project. The facility had been intentionally neglected for three years by the Hussein regime by not allocating funds to renovate the five massive electric pumps. The neglect is suspected to have been used as a way of controlling the predominately Shiite south. With the new repairs completed, water can now be provided to 125,000 acres of land for 400 area farmers. 'The biggest need is drinking water,' said project manager Lt.j.g. Dan Niec of Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 15 attached to the MEG. The drinking water renovation will alleviate an hour and a half round trip to the next available potable water source. The facility also comes equipped with a back-up generator, should there be a problem with its electrical pumps. The Seabees used funding seized from the Saddam Hussein regime to hire a local contractor familiar with the repair needs and 40 Iraqi workers, who did everything from painting to running electrical wire."
Our training for shipment to Kuwait and then to Iraq continues in the classroom as well, and we continue to receive the required anti-anthrax injections and other immunizations.
We've been joined at Camp Roberts by another Seabee group, all volunteers, who will be formed into "convoy support teams" in Iraq. Seabees have rebuilt much of Iraq's infrastructure, as this official U.S. Navy story reports: "Seabees attached to the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force (I MEF), Marine Engineer Group (MEG) opened the Kish irrigation facility in Al Hillah, Iraq with local Iraqi contractors who worked alongside them on the project. The facility had been intentionally neglected for three years by the Hussein regime by not allocating funds to renovate the five massive electric pumps. The neglect is suspected to have been used as a way of controlling the predominately Shiite south. With the new repairs completed, water can now be provided to 125,000 acres of land for 400 area farmers. 'The biggest need is drinking water,' said project manager Lt.j.g. Dan Niec of Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 15 attached to the MEG. The drinking water renovation will alleviate an hour and a half round trip to the next available potable water source. The facility also comes equipped with a back-up generator, should there be a problem with its electrical pumps. The Seabees used funding seized from the Saddam Hussein regime to hire a local contractor familiar with the repair needs and 40 Iraqi workers, who did everything from painting to running electrical wire."
Labels: Iraq: Colby's Diary
posted by Mike McCarville @ 1:10 AM
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