Recently, the Iraqi Army suffered a loss, and my team gained cultural insight. One of the Iraqi Soldiers in the brigade that my team advises suffered a fatal shot to the head. The investigating officer scrambled to determine what happened.
The situation unfolded when investigators discovered that the Soldier had left a voice recording on his cell phone. The Soldier had taken his own life. Read more »
I have received a few emails recently asking me, "What's new? Why have you not written as frequently as you did in the past?" Read more »
Yesterday was a day to smile, hearing about two of my team members trying a new food. Today, those team members made sure to put me in the position that I had to either try the food or be rude. It was as terrible as they described. Read more »
Members of my team tried an unfamiliar Arab food today called shenena (she-knee-na), which is not a food that we will be forgetting anytime soon. Read more »
A few days back, our team welcomed a visitor. The team chief for the team that will replace my team came to get familiarized with our job and area. Our warm welcome had a lot to do with his visit marking our deployment to be about four months away from being complete. Read more »
The Iraqi Army planned and executed all aspects of the security for the 31JAN09 elections. As the elections approached, the Iraqis examined possible threats to the election process. Women being used as suicide bombers was among the threats, because, for cultural reasons, Iraqi Soldiers could not search women voters. Therefore, the Government of Iraq hired enough women searchers to adequately cover each polling site. Read more »
US units sometimes embed junior Iraqi officers into US units for a few weeks in order expose the new Iraqi Army to how we operate. Hopefully, the Iraqi lieutenants take lessons learned back to their units to implement changes. Read more »
In the days after my return to Baghdad, there was a constant haze in the air. The wind simply lifted the dust and sand into a foglike cloud that somewhat decreased visibility. Read more »
On my first day back with the team, we went on a combat patrol to visit our Iraqi Army counterparts. En route, I was quickly reminded where I was, as a herd of sheep traveled down the road toward us, parting closely to our stopped vehicles. Not a common sight in Virginia.
While on leave, I thought long and hard about what to bring back my Iraqi counterpart from the States. What is a signature gift from Virginia and travel well? Liquids and perishables would not travel well at all. I visited a Virginia shop in downtown Charlottesville to make up my mind. Read more »
Stepping off the plane in Atlanta to start leave was like stepping a time machine set for the year 2-0-0-9! Oddly, through the ATL and Richmond airports I had this overwhelming feeling that everyone was staring at me. I was in uniform, but mostly I just think that this was paranoia. Read more »
Rich Connaroe graduated from Northside High School in 2000 and VMI in 2004. Now a Captain in the U.S. Army, Connaroe begins a one-year deployment to Iraq in August. During that time, he plans to make regular blog posts that he hopes will connect readers of the The Roanoke Times to U.S. soldiers who are deployed in Iraq.
