Stryker Brigade News

JSS Mushada with the Manchus

Aug-30-2007 » Filed Under: 4/2 SBCT

Wesley Morgan has published another dispatch with the 4-9 INF, 4/2 SBCT. Excerpt:

After a few hours of rest and writing, I rejoined 1st Lt. Lowe's third platoon, A/4-9 Infantry for their rotation to the joint security station just outside Mushada, a major overwatch point for protecting Main Supply Route Tampa from Sunni IED teams based in the Tarmiya area. We rolled out sometime after midnight and arrived at the JSS not long afterward, with time to spare, after moving supplies and gear in from the Strykers and posting watch in the rooftop fighting positions, for sleep.

Most soldiers seem to hate combat outposts (COPs) and Joint Security Stations (JSSs) with all their hearts (understandably). They hate them because the living conditions are often like something out of World War II – dust, fleas, cold food, cramped quarters – but mostly, I think, they hate them because they are mind-numbingly boring. At a given time a small patrol may be out, which breaks the tedium, but for the most part, the soldiers at the Mushada JSS spend their time either manning the sandbagged machine gun bunkers on the roof, being frustrated by the insurgent-riddled Iraqi Police detachment living with them, or doing absolutely nothing. On FOBs, there are things to do: internet and phone centers, movies, and gyms are all available to the soldiers there, in addition to the endless menial tasks required to maintain a unit’s equipment and readiness. Not so at most JSSs (although some of the nicer ones, I have heard, do have computers) – the platoon’s job, for the three, four, or five days that it spends at the outpost, is simply to be there, showing a presence. Some soldiers – Sgt. Wojo, for example – seem to deal with this by sleeping through every unoccupied hour, but that’s more sleep than most have in them, even after a few exhausting days of patrolling, so they have to find other ways to pass the time.