I’m sure all of you recall my riveting post concerning the antenna ball on my vehicle. If you are a visitor to this blog, you can search for “antenna ball” in the sidebar to find the post. I know everyone else has already saved a link to that post in their internet favorites or bookmarks.
Mugs automatically understood my distress at being forced to display an antenna ball that looks like a sailor. Sensing my discomfort, she quickly jumped to my aid and sent me a new antenna ball. So in a small, intimate ceremony, Sailor Antenna Ball was replaced by USA Flag Antenna Ball. The photo below captures the moment in the ceremony when the outgoing and incoming antenna balls changed positions.
Notice the smile on Sailor Antenna Ball’s face as he anticipates being reunited with Mrs. Sailor Antenna Ball.
I went on another site visit recently. For this mission, I went first to Erbil, a city about 50 miles east of Mosul with a population of approximately 1,000,000. The entire city of Erbil is experiencing a construction boom. Among other projects, USACE is involved in the re-building of the Ministry of Interior government buildings, as well as the construction of the Erbil Police Academy. After spending the night at the office compound in Erbil, I went to Dahuk the next day. On the way to Dahuk, I visited a major electricy construction project in Akra. This USACE project involves the building of a power sub-station to receive electricity from Turkey and distribute it to transformers in various communities throughout the region.
After reaching Dahuk, I took a look at two sites for upcoming projects. The first is a road construction project, and the second is another well project. Gee insisted that we go see a palace after visiting the project sites. On the highest peak in the area, Saddam Hussein built a summer palace. Many families and villages were completely decimated during the construction of this palace. I don’t have any before photos. As you can see from the photo below, the palace didn’t hold up well against Allied bombings!
Part of the plan was for a cable car linking the palace at the top to a village at the foot of the mountain. This was one of three means of access to the top. The other two were the winding road and the heliport. Here’s the view from the cable car tunnel at the top.
The view is breath-taking. I wasn’t allowed to walk around on the grounds surrounding the palace because Saddam had the entire area covered with landmines. Due to the rocky terrain, it’s too dangerous to remove the landmines, so they are left in place with warning signs posted all around. Access to the site is completely restricted. But since my security escorts in Dahuk are Peshmerga, we had no problem getting in. Here’s the whole gang.
I went on another mission to Dahuk. That sounds a lot cooler than saying I took a trip to Dahuk. BG Walsh, the commander of the USACE GRD was visiting my office as part of his farewell tour. BG Walsh is my bosses boss. BG Walsh leaves command next month. As part of his visit to my office, I escorted him up to the Dahuk office to visit a couple of projects. In the morning, we looked at two schools that are currently under construction. Then we visited the governor of Dahuk. Actually, BG Walsh and COL Pfenning, the Commander of GRN (my immediate boss) met with the Governor. I waited in the hallway with the security detachment. After that meeting, we went to lunch at the Zheyan Hotel in Dahuk.
Our host for lunch was the Deputy Governor for Dahuk, Gurgis Shlaymun. He is on the left side of the photo below. BG Walsh is in the middle, and on the right of the photo is Engineer Masood, one of the Project Engineers who works in my Dahuk office.
Mr. Shlaymun is an Assyrian Christian. In his conversation with BG Walsh, he made reference to the second coming of Christ. It was very interesting listening to his conversation.
Life outside the wire is very different!
Yesterday I went to the Post Exchange (PX) and bought a digital camera. I got the Canon Cybershot DSC-W200. This thing has 12.1 megapixels! Here’s the first picture from my new toy:
I am the Officer in Charge (OIC) of the Mosul Area Office (MAO) for the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE). This picture shows the USACE flag flying proudly over MAO. The Blackhawk helicopter in the photo just happened to be flying by. MAO is part of the Gulf Region Division North District (GRN). We (MAO) are responsible for reconstruction efforts in 3 provinces: Ninewa; Dahuk; and Arbil. In the map below, look at the 3 most northern provinces. Ninewa borders Syria; Dahuk borders Turkey; and Arbil borders both Turkey and Iran.
