Christmas 2009....Ho Ho who cares, get back to work!

Explanation: I have been moved to a different FOB and have not had reliable internet, and when I have had internet it is too slow to upload any pictures. I have good internet right now as I am at another FOB for the elections, so I am going to update from Dec-Mar. Thanks for your patience.


Here is my Christmas haul. I got a lot of great stuff from a lot of great people, so I thank you all!!! I loved the book Jane made for me with pictures and well wishes from so many of you. I look at it at least every other day. I also need to give a shout out to Sadie Jensen who sent me a couple bears full of her home made honey from her own bees. You have all been very kind and your country appreciates your support of this soldier.

Here I am with my Santa hat and First Lieutenant rank on it. You can see our office Christmas tree. That is about all the Christmas decorations we were able to fit in our containers and bring to FOB Delta. In the background you can also see the C company chicken. He hangs there with our company motto written on his chest I2WI2, or "It is what it is." It is tradition to squeeze him and listen to his rubber chicken yell before going out on missions. These little things keep us sane in the sandbox.

This is a view of me shooting an approach (pilot talk for landing) into FOB Kalsu on Christmas day. We didn't get Christmas or any other day off, but I guess that's the cost of freedom.

I got out to use the bathroom while we were getting "Hot gas" and took this picture. Hot gas means the blades are still turning and engines are at 100% while we are being refueled. Warm gas means the engines are off, but the APU (auxiliary power unit) is still running, and cold gas means we have shut down completely.

This picture is from our Christmas mission. As you can see there is no snow in Southern Iraq. The temperature was about 65 degrees and it was fairly sunny. Most buildings are just mud brown, but every now and then you see some like this one that are brightly colored. The favorite bright colors tend to be this tangerine orange and lavender. They are nice for us because if we see something we can reference the colorful building to talk the other aircraft onto the target like, "Target is 200 meters due south of the orange building."
So nothing else really happened on Christmas, but New Years was exciting. I was flying a mission on New Year's Eve and had some cool stuff happen. The following is a narrative from my Air Medal citation. It will explain it better than I could. "1LT Miller’s effort saved lives. Despite marginal weather, on the night of 31 December 2009 1LT Miller’s team launched to check out some local areas of interest near FOB Delta due to an elevated threat of New Year’s Eve rocket attacks. While airborne his Area Weapons Team (AWT) was dynamically re-tasked to respond to indirect fire that had been fired on FOB Kalsu, 66 miles away. Despite the marginal weather the AWT redirected toward Kalsu. Three rockets had already hit the FOB and intelligence pointed at several more to come. Upon check-in the AWT was given the Point of Origin coordinates for the rockets, and although it is extremely difficult for aerial platforms to find such small items as rocket rails from altitude the AWT found six rails next to a canal. Incredibly, two of the rails still had rockets on them with timers attached. Working with his wingman, 1LT Miller talked the Explosive Ordinance Disposal (EOD) unit onto the rockets in the dark through the muddy fields. The remaining rockets were disarmed and no further rockets hit FOB Kalsu that night. This is just one example of the difference 1LT Miller’s efforts made while in Iraq."
We were frustrated because we wanted to blow these two rockets up before they launched. We almost had the ground commander talked into letting us shoot them until EOD came over the radio and complained about getting to do their job. We talked them onto the site and they deployed their first robot to disarm the rockets and the robot stopped working. When we heard this over the radio we were excited that we would be able to blow the rockets up (and the stalled EOD robot), but then we heard EOD say, "deploying the second robot." I can't believe they have two! No luck for us, as the second worked properly. So after we watched EOD blow up the rockets we did not have good enough weather to return to base so we had to land at FOB Kalsu and spend the night in a transient tent. We landed at about 2345 (11:45 pm) so we did the ten second countdown to the new year in the housing office with a Pakistani KBR employee who was jamming out to some Pashtun rap music, while picking up linens for our cots. Memorable for sure, but not the ideal New Years.

Been There and Done That

So this entry is about all the places I've been here in Iraq, but before I get to that here is a nice shot of CW3 Griffin and myself (notice the Y on my helmet) taking a picture with a flag that we are about to fly on one of our combat missions. I have now been signed off as an AMC (Air Mission Commander), which means that not only can I be in charge of my aircraft, but now I have been found capable of being in command of both aircraft on a combat mission. I am the guy that makes all the decisions about how a mission goes, from the planning phase to the execution phase, to making it back home with enough fuel. It is a huge responsibility, usually one reserved for senior aviators, so I am kind of being thrown into the lions' den. For those keeping track I have been in Iraq for about 4 months, and so far have logged over 70 combat missions and about 300 hours of combat flight time. I am second in the Battalion for flight time here, and only 20 hours or so behind #1. I think I can catch him before it is all said and done.

The annual Turkey Bowl. I say annual because just about every year, no matter where I go I either play in or organize a Turkey Bowl. SGT Molles and I organized this one, and my team ended up winning despite not much contribution from myself. I had a few catches and one interception is all, but I am all about the team (not individual stats), and a W is a W.

To kick things off, here I am at FOB (Forward Operating Base) Hunter. We were supporting some Special Forces operations along the Iranian border one day and some really bad weather rolled in despite the weather forecaster telling us 4 hours earlier that it was, "a beautiful day to fly." Last time he has ever said that! We were forced to land at FOB Hunter and spend the night waiting for the weather to clear up. It was actually a pretty good thing though, as we met face to face with the ground guys we have been supporting instead of just knowing them by radio calls. We spent the night getting briefed by them about what they wanted to do in their operations, and we briefed them about how we can better help them with those ops.

My team that day was CW2 Hillhouse, CW3

Griffin, CW2 Glover, and myself. It was pretty spartan out there, and it made us all grateful that we are based at a bigger base with better chow.

Here I am at FOB Echo. This place is awesome. The civilian refuelers will put steaks on the grill if you let them know ahead of time when you will be coming in for fuel. We have been known to plan in a little extra mission time in order to have some down time here at Echo to indulge in their steaks, ice cream, and even Krispy Kreme doughnuts. They get the doughnuts frozen and sent over to them just to give to the flight crews. As I have said before, we LOVE going to Echo for fuel.

Here is an infamous landmark found right on our FOB at Camp Adder. This was the headquarters building for Chemical Ali. For those of you who do not know who Chemical Ali is, let me illuminate. His real name was Ali Hassan Abd al-Majid al-Tikritieh. He was a first cousin to Saddam Hussein, and he was the one responsible for gassing the Kurds in Northern Iraq in the 1980s with nerve gas. It was one of the only large-scale uses of WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction) since WWI. It was also one of the reasons we invaded Iraq in 2003. We knew Saddam had WMD (just not how much), and although several hostile countries have it, Saddam's Iraq had actually shown the proclivity to use it.............against unarmed civilians no less. Imagine dying from nerve agent. Not fun. Overall he is responsible for killing about 180,000 Kurds and close to 100,000 Shi'ite Muslims. I took this picture during one of our perimeter sweeps. You can see the holes in the roof from the bombs we dropped on it during the 2003 invasion. My dad was over here then. Iraq is sort of a family legacy. My dad was one of the first ones in, and I will be one of the last ones out.

Which brings me to the Great Ziggurat of Ur. I know I've mentioned this before, but I actually got to go tour it. It is right outside our base, and I have flown over it many times, but every month one of the Chaplains here organizes a tour for those that want to go, and I went. Since it is "outside the wire" we brought a lot of gun trucks with us and some soldiers provided security while the rest of us got the tour. We all had our personal weapons with us so if we had to shoot it out we could have. I'm sure it wouldn't have been the first battle this ancient city had seen. Although scholars are not totally sure, many believe that this town of Ur is where Abraham was born and raised until his departure to Haran later in life. The Great Ziggurat of Ur is almost 4500 years old, and was here when Abraham was, so it was pretty cool to think that he went up the same steps that I walked up to the top of the Ziggurat.

This brick, and many like it are written cuneiform, which is the oldest known writing system in the world. It was developed here in Southern Mesopotamia (Iraq), and used from 3400 BC to about 100 AD before going extinct. Our Iraqi tour guide had to rinse this brick off with water before we could see the print. He said that between tours he packs mud on the outside because this is the best specimen, and he doesn't want vandals to find it and mark over it. In Iraq there are no protected areas with park rangers. This whole place is just in the desert and anybody can walk through.

Here is another old writing system, but it is still in use today. It is the welcome sign to the site, written all in arabic. They read right to left, so if you see a book in arabic then it will look like it is backwards to you. You open the cover with the spine on the right.

This is our tour guide in front of the oldest standing man-made arch in the world. It belongs to the temple of the moon god Nana that is beside the ziggurat. Our tour guide is third generation. His grandfather helped a British archeologist dig up this site in the 1920s, and then his father helped some Americans dig this site in the 1950s. Now he gives tours and seems to know everything about all 4500 years of the history of Ur.

This is one of the royal tombs found in Ur. The Sumerian Kings of Ur ruled this area for thousands of years, and this is where many are buried.

This is Abraham's house. According to the tour guide they know this from some ancient writing that was found. It was a large place, but not very efficiently designed by modern standards. It did, however, have plumbing of sorts, which was way before its time.

This is me in Abraham's house. You can see that these walls have been rebuilt recently, but they were built on the old walls (the first foot or so), so this is the exact layout of Abraham's house. I am standing in what may have been his bedroom.....................or a storage room, nobody really knows. The only rooms they think they know are the bathroom and kitchen because they have plumbing, and the kitchen has some shelves built into one of the corners.

The Diggs

Okay, Okay, Okay. Enough already. I shaved off the abomination. Jane really liked this picture from the last post, but said the stache ruined it, so I shaved and took another one, just for her.........and Jeri........and the ten other people that told me how hideous I look. The point of the "deployment stache" is that you aren't around anybody you are trying to impress with your good looks, so might as well grow it out and have some fun (and fun I had). After I shaved it I even had one of my female soldiers tell me that she was really happy I shaved it. I know what to do now if I ever want to get people's attention.

So this is a post about where I live. I know many are curious to see where I live and work, and what Iraq looks like. Well, I can't show a lot of my base for security reasons, but I can show some of it. These pictures are where I work on my golf skills. The one on the left is right beside my office (you can see my A/C unit sticking out of the wall). It is where I work on my short game, and above is our driving range for the long game. Some guy in Pennsylvania sends us boxes upon boxes of golf balls. The field we hit them into has not been cleared by the Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) team so we don't dare go get the balls for fear of stepping on a land mine from the Saddam era, but we still have about 10 boxes of balls left, so we should be good for a while. So far none of the balls have set off a mine, but we keep hoping for the million dollar shot.

This is Joe Camel(spider). He is my pet. He lives right outside my office by my golf trap. He is not the largest camel spider I have seen, but he is about as long as my index finger. This is a nice shot of him eating a beetle, like the ones you see in the movie, "The Mummy." There are beetles everywhere. We also have a lot of scorpions, and killed one the other day that was five inches long. One guy has seen a desert viper, but they must be rare around here because he is the only one. Other fine wildlife we have here are sand fleas. They bite like mosquitos, but are smaller and harder to see. My room has been infested since I have been here, and I have at least ten bites at all times. Jane tried to send me a flea collar to wear (seriously), but the post office wouldn't let her send it as it is poison.

Here is yet another wildlife story. We have a lot of desert foxes/coyotes here on post. I don't know exactly what they are, but they are a little bigger than foxes and a little smaller than coyotes. Anyway, I have had to stop running at night because they have been biting some soldiers while they are running, who then have to get the rabies shots, which are really painful I hear. So I'm flying a mission the other day, and over the radio we hear a call for the MEDEVAC helicopters to come pick up a wounded soldier. Being attack pilots we listen to these calls carefully to find out if if there is anything we can do (like go kill the bad guys who wounded our soldier). Well we heard that the soldier was suffering from dog bites and gunshot wounds to the feet. We put two and two together, and it was later confirmed that he had been attacked by the wild dogs and pulled his pistol (we all carry loaded weapons over here with us at all times), and while shooting the dogs, he shot himself in the foot. OUCH! I now run at sunrise or sunset and have my pistol in hand so I can shoot the dogs BEFORE they get to my feet.

So there is my neighborhood. LA10, or "Living Area 10." We live in aluminum trailers that are surrounded by concrete "T-walls" to protect us from the rocket attacks. We pretty much live underneath the Airfield's traffic pattern so we have helicopters and airplanes flying over us 24/7. Earplugs usually do the trick when trying to get some sleep.

This one is mine (97C). Each trailer has three rooms and each room has two soldiers assigned. Sometimes it is hard to sleep when your roomie and you are on different schedules, but again, earplugs help. I have about a 2 minute walk to the shower trailer and about 3 minute walk to the restroom trailer. The bus stop is also only about 2 minutes away, and I can walk to work in about 15.

My sancuary. Actually it is my sand flea torture chamber. Anyway, this is my bed and wall locker with the broken door. Next to my wall locker is my roomie's facing his bed on the other side. My wall locker is so busted up that if it weren't for his pinning mine up against the wall it would fold sideways, but what do you expect from particle board in a war zone?

Here is the office. On my desk to the left you may notice a boxed American flag with a kid's picture glued to it. That it Luke Stacey telling me to "Stay Tough." Andrew and Lauren Stacey (friends from BYU) sent me a package with the picture of their son Luke, which inspires me everyday to work hard and stay tough. The computers above are where the bulk of our mission planning takes place. We receive our missions electronically and then dissect them and plan all the details on these computers. Below is our briefing desk where we hold our mission briefs everyday before our missions. Sometimes we get fancy and use the projector screen, but usually we just sit around the table and brief. It is also a good table for a game of cards, and it even has the markings on it to play craps, although that has only been used once to my knowledge.

To the right is the common room at our Company Tactical Operations Center (TOC). The flat screen TV is where we video conference with CIA agents about intel for our next mission, and get our real time satellite imagery of target locations..........seriously you guys watch way too much TV if you fell for that one. That is where we watch football games on Armed Forces Network (AFN), and movies sometimes.

Well, that about wraps up a lot of the stuff I can show you. There are some other places, but I don't have pictures of them yet, so I'll keep you posted.

The Panther Prowls

Yes, I have been busy. Sorry it took so long to get another post on here, but if you check out what I grew on my upper lip I'm sure you'll agree it was well worth the wait. This is me right after a mission. For all the dudes reading, my gear includes aviator body armor with a front plate, and a flight vest with all my survival stuff (radio, first aid kit, pocket knife, ammo for my M-4 and M-9, signaling devices, and an extra strap with carabiners so I can ride on the side of my wingman's helicopter if we have to do a "self-extraction.") I carry my M-9 (Beretta 9 mm) in a shoulder holster, and my M-4 has its own mount in the cockpit. My breakout/survival knife is a Gerber LMF II that Jane got me for my birthday a few years back, and if anyone is looking for a good survival knife, it rocks.


I have a lot of pictures of my living area and office, etc....... but that will be for my next post. This post is about what I am really doing here. This is me flying a combat mission in Iraq (my wingman took the picture). So far I have flown over 20 combat missions and have over 100 hours of combat time. Our missions include convoy security/overwatch, area recons/patrols, route recons, deliberate attacks, base/perimeter security, TIC (troops in contact) response, and anything else that needs to be done. The other day I was pulled off a recon to go cover a US vehicle that was hit by an IED. We escorted them back to base, and relayed radio communications from the vehicle to their command and back. I have also covered a Special Forces team as they conducted a raid for bad guys and enemy weapon caches. That's the kind of stuff we are doing.

We carry and amazing amount of weaponry. Here is a picture of our right pylon. The more discerning of you may notice all three of those Hellfire missiles are different. We have several different types, and they all have their "specialties" so we are prepared for any situation.

Here is our other pylon with the 2.75 inch hydra rockets. Like the missiles, we also have several different types including illumination, point detonating, flechettes, multi-purpose sub munitions, and more. If you think about it when one of our AWTs (Area Weapons Team of 2 Apaches) goes out, we are the most well armed 4 man patrol in the Army. Not only are we fast, but we have a combined firepower of about 6-8 missiles, 28-38 rockets, 600 rounds of high explosive 30mm, 800 rounds of 5.56mm, and 180 rounds of 9mm. Needless to say, we can put fire down range in a hurry.

Usually we fly far enough apart from our wingman to where if he takes fire we can suppress to destroy the attacker, but sometimes we like to see how close we can get---------->

Here I am landing for fuel at one of the FOBs (Forward Operating Base) that we support. These guys got rocketed a few hours before this. While here for fuel I got out to go see the tent that was shredded by the rocket, and I spoke to one of the two wounded soldiers from the attack. The Army has a way of determining the POO (Point Of Origin) site from such rocket attacks, so we went to check it out, but alas no bad dudes were there. It is hard to fight cowards.

Here is a look at what I see in the cockpit while flying. From these MPDs (Multi-Purpose Displays) I can access hundreds of pages of information. This is my Tactical Situational Display. I am the helicopter icon in the middle with a compass rose around me. The red things are targets, and you can see I have my ground track turned on so I can see where I've flown. This is so I don't overfly the same place more than once. We keep our flight paths as random as possible.

This is my flight page. I have it overlayed on the video of my front seater's TADS (Target Acquisition, Designation Sight). This way I can fly from the back seat, while also looking to see what my front seater is looking at on the ground with his super powerful camera. Have I told you the AH-64D is the most advanced helicopter in the world? It is, and I love flying it.

This is our flight line where we stable these beauts between missions. With temps in the 120s the sunshades are a must, or when you climb in to fly the cockpit is in the 140s.

Camp Adder is where I am posted. It is near An Nasiriyah, where Jessica Lynch and others were captured when her Transportation Batallion was ambushed during the 2003 invasion. Just outside our gate is the Great Ziggurat of Ur. We fly by it everyday flying in and out of the base. For those who don't know, Ur is where Abraham was from, and I am right here. Reading The Pearl of Great Price here is pretty cool. I know that some of the Lord's commandments are hard to follow at times, but seeing this place, I doubt Abraham had a problem when the Lord commanded him to leave Ur.
WARNING: JANE AND MOM STOP READING NOW! Another story I have about the ziggurat is about two weeks ago I was doing a test flight on an aircraft up on the north side of the base (right by the ziggurat). The aircraft had an intermitent problem with one of the gearboxes overheating. Problem was we could not fix it when it would come back from missions because on the ground the problem wasn't there. My good friend CW4 Mike Ballagh, and I went out to test fly it. Our goal was to break it hard so the gearbox would still be hot/broken when we landed. On our way out to the aircraft our Technical Inspector SSG Scottie Shumate told us to, "go break that thing good." Well, we went up and flew pretty aggresively trying to get the gearbox to overheat. Right by the ziggurat our #1 engine's Np section oversped, which meant our rotor RPM was being driven up to unsafe speeds (if the rotor spins too fast stuff starts coming off). Mike was on the controls so he started increasing our rotor pitch to slow down the blades, while I simultaneously pulled the #1 power lever back to slow the engine.....................well, we were both too effective in our attempts to slow the rotor, and with our efforts combined the rotor started underspeeding, which is really bad (if the rotor goes too slow you lose all lift and fall out of the sky like a 18,000 lb rock). Luckily Mike is a 4000 hour experienced test pilot, and instinctively let out some of the blade pitch while I brought the power lever back up. We came back and did a roll on landing, and while playing with the power lever on the ground we ended up causing a hard electrical shutdown on the aircraft which messed up a generator and some other components. SSG Shumate scolded us and said he meant to just go break the gearbox. We told him to be more specific next time. All in all we broke close to a million dollars worth of stuff, and never did get the gearbox to overheat. We joke about it now as the day we just about low-rotored into a 3000 year old Iraqi National treasure. Even if we had survived the crash we probably would be in an Iraqi jail for the rest of our lives.

This is me passing my PC (Pilot in Command) checkride (yes the stache was still in effect). For those not familiar with aviation, every multi-pilot aircraft has a pilot in command and a co-pilot. It is a big deal when you become a pilot in command as you are now deemed a good enough pilot that you can fly with the rookies and less experienced pilots. I don't want to brag too much, but I am the first and only Lieutenant that I know, or have heard of to make PC. I flew with another Lieutenant the other day, and one of our senior pilots put a NOTAM (Notice to Airmen) in the base's NOTAM service to warn all other pilots that two Lieutenants would be flying together. It was pretty funny.

Al Asad, Iraq

Well, here I am finally on my way to Iraq. My team and I loaded up on an Air Force C-130 and left Kuwait for Al Asad, Iraq.

Here is a mosque that is on the base at Al Asad. I never saw anyone going in or out, but I heard some of the TCNs (third country nationals) that work on post who are muslim use it. TCNs are usually from the Phillipines, Bangladesh, or other Asian countries. They come here to do work that US soldiers don't do like give haircuts, work in the chow halls serving food, clean the latrines, trash service, etc...

Here is the ramp we used at Al Asad. My unit is based out of and flying in Southern Iraq. Al Asad is in Western Iraq. The reason my team and I came up here is because all of our helicopters were being flown in Air Force cargo jets (C-5s) to here. My job was to pull the helicopters off the C-5s, put them back together, then send them down to our bases in Basra and Tallil. It was a crazy 3 weeks worth of work. There were several days with no sleep, but my longest was 52 hours straight. We had no tools or parts. We had no place to sleep and no transportation. My job was figuring all this stuff out so my guys could fix the helicopters to get them out of Al Asad. I spent a lot of time just driving around the base finding the right person who could help us with the current problem. There was no help directory or 411, and most the base was Marines and Air Force, so they weren't too eager to help the Army guys.........................until they found out who I was. Everyone knew that some Apaches had been dropped off, and when they found out I was the Apache Guy, they bent over backwards to help. I traded tours for favors, and before we knew it we had ice chests with cold water, transportation, etc... I became known around Al Asad as the Apache Guy. Since I didn't have an office there, if anyone from our Battalion or elsewhere wanted to get a hold of me they had to call Base Operations and they would call me on a 2-way radio they gave me. My call sign was "Apache Guy 06." (06 is the number in the Army that signifies command) Besides the tours another reason they wanted to help out was a lot of them had been outside the wire and had been attacked. They knew that when they call for support and the Apaches show up the shooting stops. Most insurgents just stop fighting and run when Apaches show up, and those who choose to keep attacking, don't get the opportunity to do so for long. Several Marines even confided in me that they were way happier when Apaches show up than when their own Marine Super Cobra attack helicopters show up.

This is sort of what the helicopters looked like coming off the C-5s. The main blades were folded and the stablilator and wing store pylons were off. On this one we had already put on the stabilator and pylons. After we unfolded the blades we had to do track and balance test flights. While most of the aircraft "woke up" ok, some had other maintenance issues we had to deal with such as bad gearboxes, hydraulic problems, etc... Again we had no Apache parts or tools due to some logistical issues (our logistic guys are not very squared away), so fixing these problems required cross country coordination with a bunch of other apache units, etc... Like I said, I was pretty busy, but I learned a ton.

Once we got things figured out and started rolling we got hit by a Shamal. It is a sandstorm caused by strong winds. Another type of sandstorm is a Haboob, which is like the one from the movie "The Mummy." You see a huge wall of sand coming your way with heavy winds, but it only lasts a few hours. Shamals can last for days, and this one lasted about 3 days. This was the beginning of it.

When the Shamal gets real bad the whole world turns orange. This is not a special effect from my camera. Behind this helicopter is a hangar and other helicopters, but you can't see any of them. At this point sand gets into everything. You have a rag or balaclava over your face and keep you mouth shut and sand still gets into your teeth. It is miserable. Sand is literally everywhere! You can imagine how dirty the aircraft were after.

This is Spaceman Bob during the Shamal. Before we left Fort Hood a few of us were eating at TGIFs, and they had this little 3 foot astronaut in the restaraunt as decoration. We thought he was awesome so we told the waitress we wanted to take him to Iraq with us. She talked to her manager who called corporate and they called us a few days later and said it had been approved. We are just supposed to take a bunch of pictures so TGIF can document Spaceman Bob's deployment to Iraq. During the Shamal it looked like he was on Mars. We shipped him over sitting in the front seat of one of our Apaches.

Here are the last two Apaches finally leaving Al Asad. It was good to get them out of there. While in Al Asad our motto was "No tools, no parts, no problem." My guys worked very long hours with no break from the 115 degree heat except for a 30 minute lunch break at the chow hall. My best soldier got a rare and cool reward.

Here is the aerial view of Al Asad as I was leaving it in a Blackhawk helicopter. The hawk took me straight down to Tallil where I am currently, and I started flying real missions........finally.