Our house thanks to our neighbors

Today we flew from Denver to Seattle and then rode a bus to Ft Lewis. The scenery here is beautiful but the humidity in the air makes it feel cold. It reminds me a lot of Ireland. Upon our arrival we were not surprised to see that the 1st Army has reserved only the best accommodations for the activating reservists (Joke). We are living in very old wood buildings that look like they were built sometime around the Second World War. We didn’t do much today but tomorrow we are scheduled to begin our processing, which is one of the big tasks for us at this place. Not much else to report today, I’ll write more soon. Thanks to everyone for all the support. I’ve attached a photo of what our front yard looked like after our neighbor Brian somehow got all the scout flags for our area and put them on our lawn. This was really cool and I am very grateful for our wonderful neighbors these are the types of things that make this experience easier for us.

day three

3 Down, 397 to go!!!
The past two days have been somewhat of a waste of time. We arrived on Monday and have had several briefings and some classes that do not really pertain to those of us who have been deployed before. I was a little disappointed to find out that not only will I be in charge of one of the toughest missions, but also my original team was pilfered by some of the other teams. In speaking with the commander I was told that "I had to put strong people (meaning the 68X mental health specialists) with this officer or that one as they need help and we knew you could handle your mission with whoever we put you with.” Not sure if that is a compliment. At any rate, I was able to talk the commander out of one of our SGTs, who I get a long with pretty well and am happy to have as my team member. My other team member will apparently be some soldier from active duty who is being activated with us and none of us have met yet. We leave for Ft Lewis tomorrow and will be there for about a month or so. I'm excited to find out that I'll be getting a pass while there and that Liz, Jacob, and my mom will be coming up to Seattle to spend time with me. I appreciate all the comments of support. Thanks especially to Carrie and Jim Miller; your comments are much appreciated.

one down, 399 to go!!!

Today Liz and I got up at Hotel Monaco in downtown Salt Lake City and drove the short trip to the airport where my deployment officially began. To say this experience was tough would be an understatement but it was sure nice to see my mother, brother Eric and sister Anna and her family one more time before leaving. It's touching to see the Olsens drive the three hours to be at the airport by 7:00 AM. Saying goodbye to Jacob was excruciating as he lay there smiling, not having a clue what was happening. I guess its better that way. I'd rather him not have any memory of this horrible time. I'm proud of what I do but the sacrifice seems unimaginable some times. The only way this seems possible is through the support of close family members and friends who step up when we need them the most. I remember sitting in my hotel room in Denver in April of 2004 getting ready to go to Iraq for the first time and remember seeing the death toll in Iraq was 760. It's sobering for me to see the headline in most newspapers reporting this morning that the number of brave U.S soldiers killed in this conflict to over 4000. Once I arrived, I rented my car and was surprised to see that CPT Shea and I were upgraded to a big black Lincoln Town Car at no additional cost to us. Once we arrived at the unit, I found out where I'll be stationed in Iraq and a little about what I'll be doing. Nothing to report now due to operational security but I'll let everyone know after it has happened. That's all for now.

NICE!!!

The following is an excerpt from an email I just received. As usual, the Army's timing is impeccable.

Classification: UNCLASSIFIED Caveats: NONE ALCONThe Landstuhl Regional Medical Center (LRMC) is in dire need of 60Ws(Psychiatrists) 73Bs (Clinical Psychologists) and 73As (Social Worker).The Medical Treatment Facility in Bavaria, Germany may require one ortwo Behavioral Health Specialists as well. See below further details.1. Duration may be 2-3 weeks, BOG or 12 - 18 months. Pendingindividual availability and previously assigned FY08 training.

Lets see, Iraq or Bavaria, that's a tough one! Somehow, I don't think the Army will let me choose.

MOUT

One of the things we had to train on out at Hunter Liggett was military operations in urban terrain or MOUT. This is basically interacting with the local people and attempting to do our job, while wining the hearts and minds. We did several days of classes on various subjects from clearing buildings, setting up cordons, using interpreters and negotiating. The training center at Hunter Ligget has hired a Hollywood production crew to use some of the same things they do for the movies to make our experience more life like. The culmination of our MOUT training was a graded practical exercise where we were to enter an Iraqi village that is suspected to have a weapons cache, locate and negotiate with the Sheik and hopefully find the weapons without too much trouble. Our commander asked me to be in charge of this operation as the Platoon Leader, which meant I had to plan the mission, assign the personnel and lead it the following day. I came up with a good plan, which called four our 4 HUMVEEs and one LMTV to roll into the village and three of us would get out and negotiate with the Shiek. For this task, I chose my good friend and battle buddy Captain Shea, our clinical psychologist from up state New York to do the talking with the villages top religious leader. So our HUMVEE stops, Captain Shea and I get out accompanied by SSG Kolar, our detachment SGT who is going to pull security for us and operate our radio. We left our gunner in the HUMVEE on the 240 B and I asked "Stress Four" (the next closest HUMVEE) to send one of their soldiers up to help our gunner with the vehicle as there were a lot of real Iraqi civilians, whose job it was to distract us wandering around; and oh by the way, they had the Mosq music playing from the loud speakers just like it is in country. Anyway, there is a saying in the Army that no plan survives initial contact and ours came fast. No sooner than Captain Shea, SSG Kolar and I get inside the Sheik's house our HUMVEE is destroyed by an IED and our gunner is killed. I left Captain Shea and SSG Kolar to do their thing and I went outside to try to coordinate the chaos. To make a long story short, the Sheik gave us permission to search some of the houses and I ordered my two search teams out of the LMTV and directed them to the house the Sheik had identified. All hell seemed to then break loose and were were shortly in a fire fight with really cool special effects. My teams ended up finding the weapons cache as well as the booby trap and we got most of our people out alive. Boy was this a stressful day for me. Not likely that I will actually be doing this for real but having practiced it gives me some confidence.

One of the videos from our IED class

home from california

I flew into Salt Lake this morning at around 0900 following my three weeks at Ft Hunter Liggett. We had a lot of good training but it is nice to be done. During the last week I ended up getting a cold, which sucked. The weather was great for the past few days and we all had some fun at the end. I now have about two weeks off before leaving for Ft Lewis WA by way of Denver. At this point they are telling us that all our training will transfer to Ft Lewis and we won't have to repeat any of it, but I am sceptical. I ended up turning off the security feature on the blog as I could not even log on myself. We got our usual OPSEC briefing yesterday and we were all reminded to not announce details about movements and locations etc. Some of it makes sense so I will likely talk about things after they happen. Hope everyone is doing well. I'll add some photos later.

hand to hand combat

Today's training was what the Army calls Combatives, which is a form of Brazilian Jujitsu and is based around an alternative to the conventional way of fighting.  The idea is to get the enemy in close and to the ground as soon as possible and then to finish the fight with one of several blood choke techniques, which are designed to induce unconsciousness in about 4 seconds.  After learning all the techniques we paired off and practiced them at full combat speed for four hours.  The training was pretty cool but I am now sore in ways I haven't been for  along time.  So far we have learned every weapon system that can be fired by one to two soldiers and we have fired all of them in the day time and at night with night vision sights.  We have also learned to render the enemy unconscious in a few seconds and to break arms; not things that mental health professionals typically learn.  We are about half way finished with our training here and I am looking forward to getting back home and spending the remainder of my time with Liz and little Jacob before we go again. 

machine guns

The past three days have been spent in the classroom learning everything there is to know about the four most common machine guns used by the U.S.Army.  We started out with  the 240 B, which replaced the M-60 (Rambo's gun) and is a 7.62mm belt fed open bolt light machine gun.  Next, we learned about the SAW (squad automatic weapon) a 5.56mm fully automatic machine gun, which also fires from the open bolt  position.  After those two we moved to the M-2 (.50 Cal), which I knew a lot about from my Field Artillery days.  Today, we practiced on the MK-19 (Mark 19), which is the fully automatic grenade launcher effective out to 2200 meters.  I remember seeing them mounted to the stryker vehicles the first time I was in Iraq.  It always seems weird to say "my first time in Iraq", like any soldier or soldier's family should have to endure two combat tours, while the rest of the country sits comfortably by with no chance of being drafted (truly pathetic).  Tomorrow we fire all the weapons mentioned above.    

today

long day... We spent most of the day out on the range shooting our weapons.  I ended up qualifying "Sharpshooter", which isn't bad.  I finished at around 0900 and then had to wait for the rest of the detachment to finish.  Tonight we shot the targets with the night vision monocular mounted to our helmet and a laser device mounted on our M-16, which paints the targets with a white dot.  It was really cool to see the targets and shoot at them in complete darkness.  The sights use some ambient light and tonight's lunar eclipse wasn't a big help.  Anyway, it seems like we have one long day after another but the training is really good.  We're working together as teams pretty well the bonds that we are making will probably be tested in the near future.  Tomorrow is Reflexive fire and then on to the machine guns.

new intel

late word this evening that our teams will be covering (sorry, for opsec purposes, I remved the places) and one other.

California

Here I am stuck out here at Ft Hunter Ligget near Salinas California. Once I got here we have been going non stop ever since. Internet access is very poor here but I did find somebody’s un-protected wireless service that I have been able to get on. We have nearly all the detachment here with the exception of a few of out mental health providers. As for now, there is me, Bryan Shea, Lt Coldren, and Major Goodwin, the psychiatrist for providers. We have been very busy doing soldier training on all the tasks that we will need to survive in combat. So far that has been mostly small arms training and will soon include machine guns (light and heavy), grenade launchers, and the Mark 19. After that we will do urban operations, convoy ops and others. We are also doing a lot of night firing. The training this go around has so far been much superior than what I had back in 2004. I have been able to go to the gym but I basically have to skip diner to do so. I miss everyone a lot and can't wait for my two weeks off in March.

It's now the 12th of February and I only today received my orders for AT (Annual Training). I leave on Friday the 15th and will be gone for three weeks. One week longer than the old traditional commitment of one weekend per month and two weeks per year. I remember thinking about that during my last tour to Iraq; boy that was one long weekend. These AT's can always be a drag as they seem way too long for the amount of training. One year ago I had never heard of Ft Hunter Liggettt and this weekend will be my third trip there within 7 months or so. It’s not a bad place, about 2 hours drive from San Jose CA right in the middle of the wine country of that region but the Army base is a small little place really all by itself. I'm anticipating three weeks as being a very long time there. Earlier this week I also got my "big orders", the ones to Iraq. It's never fun to see: Purpose: Operation Iraqi Freedom (Iraq) on your orders. They also state the duration as 400 days. In addition to gathering things together, I have also been doing my credentialing packet for the deployment, which is something all medical providers have to do in order to do their job... I had to stop there for a minute as Jacob's binky fell out and he was crying very loudly in his swing. I was thinking of all the things that are different from civilian life to an active duty deployment in the combat zone and am thinking that my next post will be a description of trading this for that so to speak.

New Info

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/iraq/balad-ab.htm

New information is coming fast and furious. I'm limited to what I can say but those interested might check out the above link.

testing one two three four five

hopefully this works too.

Rhett Larsen
CPT, MS,
Licensed Clinical Social Worker
1835th Medical Detachment (Combat Stress Control)

testing one two three four

trying to see if I can post comments from my email

Testing one two three...

Just trying this out to see if it works and am thinking about using it to communicate my thoughts on my upcoming deployment to Iraq.