Nov 16th, 2009
On television, actor Jeff Donovan plays a defunct spy who has expertise in explosives and weapons.
Recently, however, at Combat Outpost Meade, south of Baghdad, it was Donovan who took pointers from the Soldiers of 113th Field Artillery Battalion, 30th Heavy Brigade Combat Team.
The complexes of dirt mounds – Tal Aldair and Sobbar Abu Habba – were once Sumerian city walls outside of what is today Mahmudiyah, south of Baghdad. Pottery and clay tablets with the world’s first form of writing, Cuneiform, are known to be in the mounds. The Sumerian culture is the oldest civilization in the world, dating back to the 6th century B.C.
Nov 4th, 2009
“This will be the only factory in the area with fresh frozen chicken,” said Lumsden, a native of Fuquay-Varina, N.C. “Iraqis want very fresh chicken, but their choices right now are canned chicken or chicken that is imported.”
Sep 25th, 2009
The squadron has submitted nearly 40 grant applications with 20 payouts to date that include a fish and dairy farm expansion and an internet and phone center. Grant approval is based on the overall impact the improvements will have in the community. Recipients from these payouts submitted applications back in July.
Aug 31st, 2009
A series of intertwined, water-filled canals create a patchwork of green fields, abundant in crops near the section of al-Zooba, here, in Baghdad.
The intricate irrigation system provides essential water to the local farms but not to its inhabitants.
Aug 11th, 2009
Capt. Sara Woods calls it “sweet water;” the clean, potable ground water that hides under the dusty farmland at a depth of about 20 meters. That sweet water is the key to helping rural Iraqis enjoy greater health and more productive livestock.
Woods is the chief of Civil Affairs Team 31, currently attached to the North Carolina National Guard’s 1st Battalion, 120th Infantry Regiment, 30th Heavy Brigade Combat Team, and her job is to help Iraqis help themselves by setting up wells and teaching them how to operate them.
The civil affairs team, and a platoon of infantrymen providing security, visited well sites near Mahmudiyah, here, Aug. 9, to check on their condition and level of use by local farm families.
“What [a well] does is provide everyone with clean drinking water, for people and animals; for an entire cluster of farm families,” said Woods, a native of Janesville, Minn. “From the well, all the families can come in and get good drinking water.”
Aug 3rd, 2009
Yessenia Morales, of High Point, N.C., and Spc. Felicia Sloan, of Lumberton, N.C., are two military police Soldiers that serve as mine resistant ambush protected vehicle drivers in security details for the command group of the 30th Heavy Brigade Combat Team.
Morales, one of two females on her protection team, looks after Col. Greg Lusk, the North Carolina Army National Guard brigade’s commander, while Sloan, one of three females on hers, protects the brigade’s Command Sgt. Maj. John Swart.
Jul 8th, 2009
During the show, Conklin received a call from his brother, notifying him that he’d been recalled to active duty. Ruecker and Williams were there when Conklin received the call, and have since followed him to Iraq.
“It’s not just a news story, it’s deeper than that” Ruecker said. “Being the first people from MTV [in Iraq], I think that hopefully, we’re going to provide a story that is not typical that is coming out of this region.”
“And not typical to MTV,” Williams added.