JOURNAL SENTINEL REPORTER TELLS OF LIFE IN IRAQ
Tuesday, June 14th, 2005 -- 3:04 PM
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Meg Jones is returning home after spending weeks with Wisconsin troops in Iraq. Most recently, Meg was at Patrol Base Olson in Samarra, Iraq where members of the 128th Infantry ? including many from our local units ? are stationed. The troops basically have two duties: protect their base and patrol the streets. Both carry a good deal of risk as the troops struggle to discern friend from foe.
"Charlie Company members are driving around the city and seeing people on motorcycles or driving tanker trucks. 99-percent of those people are going about their business, but there's that small percentage that are out there that are setting off bombs or doing suicide bomb attacks," Jones explains.
Patrol Base Olson is named after late Staff Sergeant Todd Olson of Loyal who was killed in December by an improvised explosive device. He died only weeks after Charlie Company arrived in Iraq. A week after Olson?s death, two other Charlie Company soldiers were shot and injured in Samarra; since then, no one has received combat injuries, but Jones says there are incidents almost everday.
"You hear on the radio of weapons caches being found or people being stopped and finding weapons on them or roadside bombs going off," Jones says of her time in Samarra. "Sometimes you'll hear mortars, rocket-propelled grenades - that type of thing."
Jones describes the soldiers? work as ?tedious and treacherous?, but says their morale is still high.
[b]Extra content[/b]
Meg's Weblog from Iraq -- [url=http://www.jsonline.com/news/site/weblogs.asp?id=61]http://www.jsonline.com/news/site/weblogs.asp?id=61[/url]
Meg talks about the tough conditions in Samarra, Iraq -- [url=http://www.1075therock.com/news/inc/uploads/pck-meg.mp3]Click to hear[/url]
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