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One week ago today, on 2 May 2008, MAJ Rick Biddle walked over from the Operations trailer and told me that SET 8 had been hit by an IED. SET 8 is based out of COB Speicher in Tikrit. The team had taken some USACE personnel on a project site visit along the Bayji to Baghdad Pipeline Exclusion Zone north of Tikrit. Among the personnel was Jim Lockard, a Project Manager working at GRN. At approximately 1000, Jim’s vehicle was hit by an IED and came under small arms fire from insurgents. The Aegis SET repelled the attack, pushed the insurgents back, evacuated the USACE personnel, and returned to COB Speicher. Jim died at the CSH as a result of his injuries sustained from the IED blast.

When I arrived in Mosul in August 2007, Jim was the Project Manager for the GRN healthcare clinics. For a couple of months, I spoke with him every Sunday during the weekly healthcare clinic conference call. I finally had the pleasure of meeting Jim in October 2007 when I went to COB Speicher for the Engineer Conference. I immediately liked Jim as everyone did when they met him.

On Wednesday, I traveled to COB Speicher for a memorial ceremony in honor of Jim. COL Pfenning spoke of his admiration and respect for Jim. Several other of Jim’s colleagues also gave remarks during the ceremony. They each consistently mentioned his love for his wife Maria and his two teenage daughters Danielle and Nicole. They also shared stories of his sense of humor. One of the speakers shared Ecclesiastes 3:1-8. In this passage, the Preacher says:

There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under heaven:
a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain,
a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.

I reflected on those words of Solomon as the bugler played Taps at the end of the ceremony. I along with everyone else that had the pleasure of knowing him will miss Jim dearly. Each night my kids pray for the safety of everyone deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan and other places around the world. They mention me by name as well as others we know that are deployed. In Mosul, we will continue to honor Jim’s sacrifice every time we go outside the wire.

Rest in Peace, Jim Lockard.

Soldiers tend to have an odd sense of humor. Sometimes they’re amused by seemingly insignificant things. Since all of my security personnel have been in the military prior to becoming contractors, they act just like soldiers most of the time. On our vehicles, we have signs warning civilians to stay back. I noticed this “unauthorized” patch on one of the team member’s uniforms.

I guess the custom patches attracted a little too much attention. Within a couple of hours after returning from the mission where I took that photo, then team leaders were reminding everyone that only official patches are authorized on their uniforms.

If you click on the photo above, you’ll notice that I’ve added an image popup tool to load a fullsize version of the image.

In an email today, I was reminded by the Editor that I haven’t posted in the last few days. I’ve started and deleted about 4 different posts today. This was the best I could come up with today.

I did get a new mattress today. Maybe I’ll blog about that tomorrow!

I had the opportunity this week to take a ride in a Black Hawk. I love helicopters and will jump at every opportunity to fly in one. For some reason, I don’t get motion sickness in a helicopter like I do in a boat. My stomach still gets quesy when I think about the underwater demolitions range mission when we were stationed in Hawaii. That was not a pleasant experience for me. It was quite a humorous spectacle for all of the Army dive soldiers that got to see me lose it on the open water! But let’s not think about that anymore because I’m already starting to get a little seasick just sitting here.

One of our ongoing projects is the building of a water distribution network with wells and pumps for the Sinjar district in western Ninewa province. This project is worth about $17.2 million and includes approximately 116 kilometers of water pipes, 95 wells, and 60 water storage tanks. The geographic extent of the project makes it quite difficult to fully appreciate from the ground. So I have been trying to arrange a fly-over since I’ve been here. When I say that I have been trying to arrange this, I really mean that MSG Curt Kaseman, the Mosul NCOIC, has been trying to arrange this. This was our fourth attempt at the mission. The previous three missions had to be cancelled for various reasons. Although I think I’m important, the flight operations folks don’t regard me as a VIP, so I’ve been bumped a few times!

But on our fourth attempt, we finally got the dedicated flight time. Two Black Hawk (UH-60A) helicopters were tasked with flying 14 personnel from my office over the Sinjar district to get an overview of the project extent. The helicopters picked us up from FOB Marez, and we began our flight out to the Sinjar district. Sinjar is about 120 kilometers west of Mosul.

On our way out to Sinjar, we made a pitstop at FOB Sykes. The Black Hawks for this mission are based out of FOB Sykes. On the original itinerary, we were scheduled to refuel at FOB Sykes after the mission before heading back to Mosul. So I assumed that we were just going to refuel before instead of after.

Here’s a photo taken during our stop at FOB Sykes. Margaret, the USACE Resident Engineer in charge of the Mosul Project Engineers, is standing next to Vic, a security detachment member, while Sarah, the office admin specialist, looks on.

CPT Christian, the pilot, informed us that we were stopping so that she could get the final clearance before heading out. As luck would have it, when she came back, she told us the mission was scrubbed due to deteriorating weather conditions coming in from the west. So we loaded up again and flew back to FOB Marez. I’ll try again next month.

Abby attended her second birthday sleepover since school started. With two sleepovers in a month, I made a comment that she must be a Brien (whose family motto is life’s a party). She replied that if she was a Brien, she would have two parties to go to on the same day. That is true. So, she went to her sleepover on Saturday night and I told her I would pick her up at 0830 Sunday morning to attend Sunday School. When I picked her up she was looking exhausted and as the morning progressed, her fight to stay awake got harder and harder. I did think, “I should just bring her home and put her to bed, or I should tell her to go sleep in the car.” But I couldn’t escape the memory of me as a teenager, having stayed out too late on Saturday night, wearing my crumpled outfit from the night before trying to stay awake during church. It is a bit humorous to watch your child do something that you have done yourself. It’s a bit like being in the Twilight Zone. It kept Josiah entertained for sure. Another thing that has kept Josiah entertained is the Science Fiction block in Literature. On Friday, they watched an episode of the Twilight Zone at school. My brother Rob and I loved to watch the Twilight Zone when we were kids. It was on late at night and we would watch it trying to pretend that we weren’t scared. One night the episode where the monster disguises itself as someone you love was on. We finished watching it and I went to the bathroom and Rob went upstairs to bed. Howie was a baby at the time and his crib was in my room. I walked into my room, didn’t turn the light on so as not to wake up Howie and then saw the blanket in Howie’s bed begin to rise. I don’t know if I’ve ever screamed louder or ran faster in my life. Unbeknownst to me, my Mom had Howie in her room. Rob had hidden under the blanket and stood up to scare me. Scare me, he did. I think I’ve finally forgiven him, but I never watched the Twilight Zone again.