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15 TheBattleofOP2 In February 2006, the 2nd Marine Division finished its tour and was replaced by the 1st Marine Division, which established its headquarters in Fallujah rather than at Camp Blue Diamond, outside Ramadi. cobra to blue diamond The men of Bravo Company, 109th Infantry, did a great job of clearing their sector and killed, captured, or chased away almost all of the insurgents . It was a long hard fight, and they paid a price for their victory. The men had accomplished much, and they had earned a break. The 109th was pulled out of FOB Ramadi. They moved to Camp Blue Diamond, and were given a new battle space. The Danger Element of the Kentucky National Guard’s D/149th infantry took over where the Cobra Element left off. Every man in D/149 Had volunteered for this deployment, and they had spent the first part of the deployment at Al-Asad, where enemy contact was comparatively light. They were fresh and ready to fight. Camp Blue Diamond had once been a palace occupied by Saddam Hussein’s sons, Uday and Qusay. It was considered too much of a prize to leave abandoned. With the Marines’ division headquarters pulling out, the 109th Infantry became the de facto landlords of the entire camp. With this movement to Blue Diamond, everyone needed to figure out how to provide services at both bases. Our own medical platoon detached a small squad to go over and work in a battalion aid station, and Chaplain Lawson, a truly pious man and an excellent preacher, began, providing services on both sides of the ancient biblical river. My old friend Lt. Gunn needed a ride to Blue Diamond and so did the brigade chaplain. I put the two together and gave up my day off—New Years Day—to ferry them both over there so they could set things up. I 154 saber’s edge commandeered our LMTV—the brand new two-and-a-half-ton cargo truck that we outfitted as a mass casualty ambulance—and the three of us headed out. What a strange crew we were: a medical officer driving, a chaplain riding shotgun, and me—a combat medic—as a roof gunner. Fortunately it was only a five-minute trip across the bridge. We did not anticipate just how long everyone wanted to spend at Blue Diamond. It was well past darkness by the time we were ready to leave. What we had not realized was that this brand-new truck had not yet been equipped with black-out lights. All of our military vehicles had factory-standard black-out drive lights, but they were tiny, invented before the advent of night-vision equipment and only designed for a few feet of visibility at extremely low speeds. In Ramadi, we modified all of our vehicles with special infrared headlights, powerful high beams comparable to normal headlights, but visible only through night-vision equipment. Unfortunately, we overlooked retrofitting this truck with the special lights, and we were blind for the ride back. With practically no visibility, we were also traveling over a road known for IEDs and small-arms attacks . Speed was of the essence in order to avoid falling victim. Unlike the weapons carried by the rear-echelon troops, my rifle was outfitted with a PEC 2 infrared laser sight, capable of shining an invisible floodlight beam comparable to a large mag (flash)light. The lieutenant and I wore night-vision goggles, but the chaplain did not. I climbed up into the gunner’s hatch and shined my invisible light at the road in front of us. The lieutenant gunned the engine, and drove like a bat out of hell. The experience was rather unsettling for the good chaplain, riding blind through the night at forty miles per hour over pothole-strewn roads. Although he couldn’t see it, the lieutenant had a pretty good beam of light to see with. “L . . . L . . . L . . . Lieutenant, don’t you think you should slow down a little?” I heard him stutter imploringly in the darkness. “O Ye of little faith,” I thought to myself, smiling. With B 109th moving, and additional Iraqi forces coming online in our area, our battalion was tasked with sending medics both to Blue Diamond and out to work with the Iraqi Army. I went on leave in February while all these changes were under way. When I got back, much of our medical platoon was shuffled around. I found...

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