Well, a little background here.
The Norwegian government didn't wan't to be on the list of evil nations, so they desided to support the Iraq war.
Desided to send one squadron down there to help Bush.(one!)
The squadron was located in Basrah, southern Iraq.
We have 6 months tours. The first one was done by the armoured engineer squadron from our high reaction batalion.(Telemark batalion)
In that squadron the machinery & construction squadron had ap 20 guys with machinery and some craftsmenn.
In the secound tour a squadron was recruited from all over, with mainly machinery and construction as the main job.
After the second tour, there was an election, and we where withdrawn from Basrah.
We worked as a squadron inside the British engineer regiment, solving misions all over the southern part of Iraq.
I spend time there in both tours.
So the storie that u like:
In the border city to Kuwait the main road went straight throug the city.
Houses on both sides of the road, and a lot of people around when u drive trough. Typical market street u got to pass.
Mix this with ap 20-30 convoys pr day, and u got trouble.
One day a US convoy drove over a small girl inside the city. And they didn't stop, just drove on.
From that day it was al hell in the town, stone throwing from all the kids.
Stealing from the mowing trucks and so on. The kids jumped up on the trailers moving and stealed what they could.
So the road was laid in the outskirts of the town.
Stealing was less but they throwed stones at us.
One day a US soldier in a Hummer was unlucky and drove over the border without his convoy.
He found out, turned the vehicle and when turning a guy came out of a house went over to the hummer and shot him straight in the head.
The guy was never taken.
Next the stone throwing stopped, problems weren't as they had to.
My guess is that the family of the girl was happy, they had killed a guy for their child. Problem solved. An eye for an eye.
This is how simple it works in Iraq.
A couple of weeks lather we got a mission in the same city.
Repair and refurbish the main training area in the city to improwe the way they look at soldiers.
So we went down there and removed a lot of scrap from the area.
Filled it up with good sand and levelled it out.
Then it was handled over to the local outhoroties with a simple seremony.
Kids where very happy, new and fine fotballfields and basketball area.
At the same time we handled out a number of footbals from our storage.
All problems with the kids and locals desappered after that job.
First pic: some of the stuff we removed.
2. Our guards, with a borrowed bike. Check the armament.
3. We are finnished and ready to go.
