First Person From Fallujah

This blurb comes from my buddy Chris who is acting as a fire support officer in Fallujah right now. My explanations and remarks are in parentheses.

"We are waxing some serious ass, man. Never imagined we could bring this much combat power to bear insuch a small area. Remember they used to have a "Million dollar minute"? Yeah. that wasn't anything. CAS (Close Air Support; Air Force Jets with precision bombs) , AC -130 (a big airplane with a 105mm cannon in it that fires approximately 40 rounds a minute and is accurate to one meter; it has a 35 meter kill circumference), Rotary Wing (Helicopters; Apaches), Fixed Wing (same as CAS), 155 (Artillery cannons), 120, 81, 60, (these three are all mortars; mortars fire more rounds a minute than artillery but aren't as accurate) TOWs (fiber optic guided missiles), Tanks, Machine Guns, and the occasional AT-4 (what most consider a bazooka) are always exploding. They pushed through the city faster than they expected. You wouldn't believe all the toys they have here. Fuller (the Artillery platoon leader) bet that he wouldn't shoot 100 HE (High Explosive; standard Artillery munition) shells. I told him he needs to plan better. He gave me that condencendng look and bet a hundred dollars. Yeah, they are scrambling for shells now because they are amber (dangerously low), almost black (no mo ammo). We have shot over 30 fire missions and over 200 shells, 120 (mortar) and 155 (Artillery). Gator (my old battery) leveled a Mosque being used as a C2 (Command and Control) node today. 20 EKIA (Enemy Killed in Action) in one shot. Crazy. They even shot about three MICLICs (a rocket with a string of 2200 pounds of C4 dragged behind it used to clear mine fields) in an urban environment. The weird thing is they haven't seen one civillian. Not one. So, that's the update."

The only US KIA from Chris' battalion, the one that I was attached to when we first arrived in Iraq, was the Sergeant Major. I rode up with him from Kuwait back in March. He was a good man.