Hey Dude, what's up with that cake?

Actual Crime Scene Photo

From the Cop side:  What happened to that cake? Every once in a while somebody will do something that just blows me away. I don’t mean the knucklehead criminals I deal with at work, or the “average citizen” who’s just having a bad day. What I mean is sometimes one of our own does something that makes this old Sergeant think he’s working with children.


I’ve always tried to treat the officers and soldiers who work for me as adults. I guess I’m lucky in my military roll by having some really bright and highly motivated soldiers who always strive to do an outstanding job. Most of the cops I know do the same, very smart and the ones I have now want to do good work. They are some of the BEST!

However, there are some cops who somehow slip through the hiring process…which in our State is very long and difficult to get through…but some still slip through and get hired only to leave some of us in awe at their level of maturity.

Let me be blunt. You see in police work, we try to hire adults. These adults have to know how to work with others and understand that they are not the only person in the universe. They need to clean up after themselves, show up for work on time, and remember at all times that there are other people who work in the same space that they do.

Many years ago I became what we call on Police work a “Field Training Officer.” That is the officer who takes the rookie, who’s been to the police academy and tries to train them to be a real live honest to God cop. I have learned over the years that there are little bits of wisdom I have to include in my training…bits of wisdom that are not in any book or training school, but bits of wisdom to keep the new copper alive. I’ve also learned that, in a few cases, I have to add training on how to be an adult and work with others.  Most of the new cops are good, but every few years we get one who seems to be a little retarded or something.... Like the one who tried to eat the cake. 

Most of you who were in the military learned these basics of life. But, in our business there are lots of new cops who’ve never been in the military. Too bad. The military might have taught them some of the basics of life.

Some things I’ve had to add to the list of shit I teach new cops….(keep in mind that many of these new cops are barley over 21 years old.)

1.) Clean your litter, equipment, garbage and empty Power Drink cans out of the patrol car at the end of you r shift. Nobody else is going to clean up your crap.

2.) Wash the patrol car and put gas in it for the next shift.

3.) If you work out, or get sweaty, take a shower before coming to work. Don’t go to the gym before work,then show up, put on your uniform and smell like shit.

4.) If you use the lunch room, clean up your empty plates, cups and empty power drink cans for the next shift. Wipe out the fucking micro wave oven when you blow up your lunch in it.

5.) Don’t be a hog. You don’t need to take all the blank forms with you on patrol…I doubt if you are actually going to use up 50 copies of a form in one shift where you normally might use one a week. But if you take all the blank forms, just in case, nobody else will have any.

6.) And if a nice fellow employee takes the time to bake a birthday cake for somebody, don’t try to eat the entire thing because you are a fucking retard…then leave a half eaten cake in the lunch room. Cut off a slice.

These are all things that your parents, DI or Drill Sergeant should have or would have taught you when you were growing up or in Basic Training.

Stress reducers...

From the Soldier and Cop side: One of the questions I have been asked many times in my police and military career is: "How did you deal with stress?"


I mean in Bosnia we had a little bit of stress. In Iraq we had a little bit of stress and in police work, every once in a while, we have a little bit of stress.
I found the best ways to reduce stress are:

1.) Find a "happy place." Put your mind in a place you'd rather be at that moment. (Unless assholes are shooting at you or trying to kick your ass, in which case return fire with better tactics. )

2.) Make sure you have had the best training and know WTF you are doing. Not knowing what to do in a bad situation will add to the stress. Also, being clumsy and a duffiss will not help. If you’re the type who can’t walk and chew gum, then in most cases you won’t be able to draw your pistol from your holster quick enough to make a difference in a gun fight—for example.

3.) Use humor whenever you can. Not just dumb shit, but you must work on being truly funny whenever the need arises. Some examples might include having little premade signs for walking out on patrols on places like Iraq, the signs would be put on the back of fellow soldiers and might say things like: “Kick here” or “Will patrol for food.” Or whatever you think will get a good laugh and won’t piss off somebody with a loaded weapon.

So, thinking of humor, I found a friggen funny ass sight at http://nobodys-corner.com/

This it the kind humor we could have used in Iraq.

Ask about this cake damage....

Possible future stories:  Let me know what you'd like to hear about by leaving a comment. 

Another Brother Goes to the Big Sandbox

From the Soldier side: As most of my regular readers know, I have a good number of friends and acquaintances in other military units scattered around the country and the world. One of these “Joes” who I’ve never actually met in person has just arrived in Iraq.
His blog is known as “Citizen Soldier” and although he’s in from another state National Guard unit, as far as I am concerned he’s a brother. I have to hopes of him and the brothers and sisters in his unit:

1.) They all are safe on their tour
2.) They are led by better leaders than I had for my tour
3.) They have nothing but good stories to write about and nothing bad happens to them

Citizen Soldier’s blog is at http://citizensoldier65.blogspot.com/

My home National Guard unit just had our monthly weekend training session. I was assigned a few new soldiers to my platoon. They are all combat vets and after talking a few minutes, it turned out that we knew a lot of the same people. You see, the US Army Mess Kit Repair field is a very small group…so, if you stay in long enough, you will know a lot of good folks.

                                                                             The CI Roller with Ivan
Now excuse me while I get back to watching the Olympics and stuff.

The Winter Olympic Games in Sarajevo

From the Soldier side:
26 years ago Sarajevo had honor of holding the Winter Olympics in 1984

The 1984 Winter Olympics, officially known as the XIV Olympic Winter Games, were a winter multi-sport event which was celebrated in Sarajevo in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which was at the time part of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
I remember watching these games on TV. I thought the mountains and area looked so beautiful.... Kind of like Truckee, California.

When I was deployed to Bosnia in 2003-04, On a Peace Keeping Mission, I had a chance to go to Sarejevo. It was a mess. Most of the buildings were still shot up or destroyed from the battle and siege of Sarajevo from 5 April 1992 to 28 February 1994.

The total number killed in the war in Bosnia was reported to be over 200,000. Some asked why there is not exact count to this day…because so many were buried in mass graves or fled the country and were never accounted for.

I remember driving through some of the neighborhoods that had most of the homes destroyed. One of my security team members asked me why the owners had still not returned and rebuilt. I told him because they were either dead, or living in another country now.
One thing I have learned from wars, we should never have another one. It’s one thing to end a war that some asshole started, but it’s so wrong to start a war. Even after talking to many citizens in Bosnia, I still can’t understand why in the hell they started to kill each other.

Well, Bosnia still looks like Truckee, California, but with about half a million land mines still scattered around.

Enjoy the Winter Olympics.

SUPERRRRRR BOWL SNUNNDAYYY SIRRR, HICK UP ,...EXCUSE ME...SIR

From the Soldier Side: (I told this story last year and the year before, but it’s one of my favorites) Super Bowl Sunday, Jan 2005! There I was, in Baghdad, Iraq. My team had just flown in that day from some shitty mission.... (I think it was Mosoul/ Telafar). We were worn out and tired. We had been sent to Mosoul to help after the Army mess hall had been blown up by a suicide bomber. Still, after all these years, I think one of the hardest things to investigate is something where the primary suspect has killed himself. In that case, I really wish he had made a mistake with his fuse and blown himself up outside the camp.

But the biggest hinderance in that investigation was not the insurgents, but the idiot Sergeant who had put herself in charge...she had no idea what to do. 


Anyway, after we got off the Blackhawk chopper in Baghdad, we were trucked back out our rooms. We dropped our gear and headed for dinner….

We walked over to the mess hall. After clearing our weapons, grabbing a tray of chow, I saw that they had a bunch of ice cold beer. I thought it was a celebration for our safe return.

Nope. It was Super Bowl Sunday 2005. This is the most important holiday in the US Army. The Marines have the Marine Corps Birthday, I'm not sure what the Navy and Air Force have, but the Army has Super Bowl.

Now, I figure a lot of you won't understand how important beer was....because General Order #1 said we could not have anything with alcohol in it...unless a General authorized it. But, even with a General's approval, there could only be a 2 beer limit per person.

Now, to be honest with you, I don't normally drink that much any more. But that time of the deployment, a cold beer sounded really good. 2 cold beers sounded even better. They went down quick.....ice cold, yummy.

Then, my #2 guy looked around and found all the Islamic Terps and the Mormon soldiers. We convinced them that they should get their ration of beer and bring them to us.....only 2 at a time.

I lost count of how many beers I had. And wouldn't you know it, walking out of the mess hall (really kind of staggering) there was the battalion commander and the sergeant major. They were assholes, and I just walked by and said: "Gentlemen, dinner is on me."

We made it back to our rooms and passed out. I never did watch that game and I have no idea who was even playing. But the 2 beers were sure gooooood!  I admit.. I was a bit ripped.

Note: For those of you who have a direct feed, I do look forward to comments...that's the only way I know what to write about.... Thanks-editor.

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Rock Stars I worked with

From the Soldier side: Over the years I’ve been in the Regular Army and the Army National Guard, I have worked with some really great soldiers (and a few civilians). I still remember my squad leaders and platoon sergeants from when I was stationed in West Berlin, Germany long ago. They were all Nam vets and we knew what they trained us was going to work in war. But the people you work with in a peace time Army are one thing, the people you work with in a real war are another thing altogether. Wars are where you find out who can really do the job and who can’t.
During my Iraq deployment, I’ve mentioned before some of the bad leaders we had and some of the good ones. Today I’d like to talk about the Soldiers, Sailors and Marines I worked with who I call “Rock Stars.” Some of them were on active duty, some were reserves and many were in the National Guard. As a matter of fact, half way thorough my deployment in 2005, the news paper reported that 60% of the military forces in Iraq were Reserves and National Guard!!! This is where the term “One Weekend a Month…My Ass!” came from.

                                  M-249 SAW Gunner on M1114 Armored Humvee

The Rock Stars I knew may have not played in a band, I’m sure some of them can’t even sing or play any kind of instrument, but they “Rocked” in my opinion. Some civilians asked me how I went out my first time in the streets of Iraq in a vehicle or on foot…well, let me explain something. It’s not that somebody went out one time or the first time, what makes them Rock Stars is that they did it a second time…and third time and in many cases over a hundred times.

Take Chris, the former college student who was an English Major. When we first got to Baghdad, the folks in charge of the “Mess Kit Repair” reports grabbed him and stuck him in an office to help with the reports being sent in. They figured (correctly) that Chris could re-write any bad reports and make them better. He did this very well for about the first 6 months of our deployment.

                                              Female E-4 Driver whohad over 100 missions in Baghdad
Then, one day while one of our teams was rolling through Baghdad, the lead Hummer got blown up….Killing the driver (Roberto) badly wounding the gunner, and the 2 new replacements who’d just arrived.

When the bosses needed a new team, Chris volunteered…knowing that he’d be leading a team into the streets of Baghdad 5 or 6 days a week for the next 6 months. He was a Rock Star.

The second Humvee in that convoy where Roberto’s vehicle got hit was manned by 3 of the new replacements. The E-4 female driver, a Staff Sergeant and the Sergeant on the gun. It was only their second trip into Baghdad, and they all witnessed the death of Roberto and the other 3 crawl out of the burning humvee. Can you imagine the shock and the stress of that? I’ve seen a lot of shit, but to witness something like that would have been hard. But, they continued to roll out for the next year. And to top that off, the Staff Sergeant volunteered to stay on active duty and went back for a second tour of Iraq!



Rock Stars…. If you find anybody better than that, let me know. This is only a few examples…I’ll have more later.

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Coming next: Rock Stars I worked with...

Stand by for our next adventure...yes, I did work with many Rock Stars...I'll tell you about a few soon.

Random Shots…Random Death Part 3..…Wednesday Bloody Wednesday.

(Sung to the tune of: "Sunday Bloody Sunday by U2)

WARNING: This story contains graphic war violence… read at your own risk. ( the rest of us will clap with joy at the ending!)

From the Soldier side: I must apologize for keeping my readers waiting on this story, but I’ve been sort of busy. But, I’ll get on with it so nobody complains to management. (which is me, so you’d be wasting your time.)

To refresh your memory, we were at this FOB (Forward Operating Base) South of Baghdad …it was called FOB Kalsu. (check http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/iraq/iskandariyah.htm or Google it for more info)
And to remind you, everyday, usually after lunch, we were getting hit with 2 random mortar rounds. One day, the American Army grunts who patrolled the nearby city, brought in a bunch of males for questioning. This one dude we were chatting with starts to tell about these guys he knew were hitting the camp with mortars…OK, so now is everybody back up to speed? Good, here we go…

So, we spent a few hours “chatting” with this Iraqi guy who was telling all about the insurgents who were hitting the camp with mortars. He said he knew where they lived, their names etc. The female solider “chatting” with him, brought out a US Army map of the area to see if this guy who was helping us could point out where Achmend The Terrorist (ATT) lived. What the female soldier hadn’t yet learned was…most Iraqis in that area could not only not read a map, they couldn’t read.

She showed our Friend the map and he just stares at it like it was the most unusual thing he’d ever seen in his life….come to think of it, it may have been. I was getting frustrated so I got out the big sheets of paper and had the guy draw his neighborhood on the paper. Keeping it as simple as possible so our Friend’s head wouldn’t explode, he went house by house, the mosque and so on until we could find a point where we knew where it was. This took a long time and lots of talking, but was well worth the effort. We spent hours with this guy and got as much detail as possible.

The American Army grunts apparently felt that the info was had was good enough to go do a raid that night. The next day I came into the office and was told I had some pictures to look at. The Grunts had done the raid and wanted to know if the guy in the photo was the guy we were looking for. I had no idea because I had never actually seen this guy, and the way he appeared in the photo made it impossible to tell who he was. This is why:

The Grunts went to the house our A.T.T. was thought to have lived. The Grunts didn’t use a lot of surprise as they rolled up in very loud diesel powered armored vehicles. The A.T.T. ran out the back door of the house across paths around water canals…the grunts had a hard time following him. However, being that the Grunts were well prepared, they had an Apache helicopter flying support overhead. An Apache can track a mouse across a field in the pitch black, although it’s built for the destruction of tanks and all things bad like that…stopping humans is easy. The Apache only has large caliber weapons and missiles for killing tanks…when used on humans, they are devastating.

The Apache pilot told the ground Grunt commander he had a guy running. The ground commander told the pilot to fire a “warning shot.” The only thing onboard for a warning shot was a 30 mm anti tank cannon. It was fired and the A.T.T. ran faster. The pilot told the ground commander that the A.T.T. was running faster (yeah, I would to) so the ground commander told the pilot to “stop him.”

The picture I was looking at looked like a mix of slaughtered chickens, goats and human. I’d never seen anybody look such a mess.  It was a good day for the good guys. 



We never got mortared after that night.

Random Shots…Random Death Part 2

From the Soldier side: you know I realized that when I’m talking about some things that happened in Iraq, it may be difficult or impossible for some good citizens to understand what I am talking about.

For example…take “getting mortared”. How many average citizens who’ve never been in the military understand what that means. Silly me…I just assumed everybody would get it. So, in the interest of full disclosure, I’ll take this episode to help explain.

When I say “mortared” that could also mean “rocketed” because most of the time we couldn’t tell the difference and in most cases it made little difference.

A “mortar” is a weapon with a long round tube. Sort of like an artillery cannon. Mortars usually are measured in Millimeters and go from about 60MM to 120MM. A cannon is loaded from the back or breach and a mortar has the round dropped down the top of the barrel. The mortar bomb or round has a firing primer on the tail so that when slid down the barrel it hits the firing pin. This causes the round to launch out the barrel and go off in the direction the weapon is aimed at. I was a mortar man in the regular Army many years ago. It is actually a complicated weapon to hit a target with any degree of accuracy. Most of the mortars fired at us in Iraq were just pointed in our general direction.

Now when a mortar is fired, it makes a heck of a loud noised at the weapon itself. I lost a little hearing in my right ear from this. (The gunner has his right ear next to the weapon when it goes off.) When the bomb or round hits the ground it also makes a very loud noise. In many cases, it’s difficult to tell if a mortar was launched or landed near you if you can’t see the area in question. Sometimes the only way to tell the difference is when debris comes raining down on you. Then you know for sure.

The first time I was at a camp in Iraq that got hit with a Mortar was on a mission before this story I’m talking about (a camp near Tel Afar, Iraq). So by the time we got to the camp this story is about, south of Baghdad, we were old hands and this sort of thing. The folks at this camp had just arrived in Iraq a few weeks before…so when the bombs started landing…many of them got a bit excited and ran to the bunkers. My team and I knew that after the 2 rounds hit, if we were still not hurt, it was over and we were going to be OK. Some of the folks didn’t understand that and it was hard to get them out of the bunkers for hours after the rounds landed.

The closer the rounds were, the louder they sounded…(duh!) and sometimes they landed within less than a 100 meters and the only thing that saved our butts was the tall concrete barricades the engineers had put up. But the rock and shrapnel would go up in the air and come down like rain. As long as you had your helmet and body armor on, you were OK.

OK, now is that a little clearer? Gosh Darn Bad bombs being randomly fired at us. Loud, scary but usually caused little harm.



Now I’ll get on with this story….later.

Random Shots...Random Death...

From the Soldier side: This is how you are supposed to start a war story: "This One Time when I was in Iraq"… I had a team and we were sent to a little crappy F.O.B. (Forward Operating Base) south of Baghdad. For a lot of my time in Iraq, my team was called the gypsies. They often sent my team to lots of places that were FUBAR and hoped we’d fix things.


The things I remember most about this FOB south of Baghdad was, it got mortared everyday...always  sometime after lunch—so we had to wear our fu--ing body armor all the time when outside. (my team stayed in a fu--ing tent with fragment holes in the roof.) Out of all the fu—ing places I was sent in Iraq, that was about the fu—ing worst place. Most of the fu—ing time we were at this FOB, it rained.

The other thing about this FOB was that it had the worst KBR contract mess hall in Iraq. I know the cooks got the same food that all the other FOBs and camps got, but at this FOB they screwed it up so bad that MREs actually were better.

                                        The CI Roller Dude riding in a Sherpa (think file cabinet with wings)

Well, in regards to the insurgent assholes who were lobbing random mortar rounds into the FOB everyday, they were really annoying. Lucky they had missed that day in Terrorist 101 class on how to actually aim the mortar…the rounds just landed at random. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes the shits actually hit somebody or something important…but it was always 2 rounds, then they took off before the Army could catch the little cowards bastards.

The retards in charge of sending the Apache helicopters after the little terrorist assholes never quite got it right…they didn’t go after them until about 45 minutes after the rounds had hit the FOB. By then, even an insurgent low crawling away would have been miles away laughing their asses off at the Americans.

Then one day we got kind of dumb lucky. One of the infantry patrols, who usually had no idea what they were doing there,…but they got dumb lucky and brought in some locals for “questioning”

I was trying to train one of the “Fobbits” stationed there how to “chat” with these guys. She was not very well trained, being a late comer into our business and in the ----Army National Guard….I think before she was activated, she was flipping hamburgers in some restaurant in the south. She was not well trained, if I didn’t mention that before and she really seemed to lack what it took to do that sort of thing.

At any rate, she was “chatting” with this knucklehead…asking the basic stuff: “What’s your name, date of birth (which most had no idea) and where he lived…how many wives and sheep he had" and stuff like that.

While “the former burger flipper now Army Soldier asking questions” was going down the page and filling in the blanks, the little Iraqi turd blurts out: “I know who’s bombing your camp everyday!”

“The former burger flipper now Army Soldier asking questions” didn’t hear or understand what now Mister helpful had said and went out with her next question. I had to stop her and point out that the dipshit might know who’s lobbing the annoying fucking random mortars on the FOB, and it would be a really good idea to ask him about that shit.

TO BE CONT........Warning:  Part II is rated PG 13 due top graphic violence and war death.... but most of you will be so happy to hear how it ends...

Editor's note: I got some f------ complaints about my language.  Sorry folks, I went to the VA for bad language rehab, but I got kicked out of the f----- meetings. 

When it counts, have a Good Plan & a Plan B

(Editors note:  Wow, I have 30 "followers" now.  Sorry you all have nothing better to do.  And it's Led Zepplin day!)
From the Soldier side: In all my years as a Soldier and a civilian cop, there’s a few key points I’ve learned about survival. You can plan on equipment, vehicles, people, weather and anything else you little Field Manual shows you…but one of the most important things to have in you kit bag—a good plan and a better back up plan.
If you don' make a good plan on what to do with all that shit, it will end up going to waste.  Hope is not a plan.  Waiting to see what happens is not a plan.  A plan is figuring out what you need to do, how to get there and do it, and how to come back all safe. 
My number one rule in Bosnia and Iraq was: "None of you people are allowed to get hurt or killed.  Do you understand me?" 
It worked.  Nobody I was ever in charge of got hurt in either deployment.  But the truth is, it was from planing shit out. 

                                              View from Army Black Hawk, Bosnia 2004


This picture of an old Fort in Bosnia, which was built hundreds of years ago… The dude who built the fort had a great “Plan A” but no “Plan B.”

The fort had a great view of the ground below it and around it. If they had machine guns and modern cannons, they would have devastated any enemy who tried to attack. But what is the purpose of a fort? The purpose is to protect a village or town. Any fort is limited on how much food and water the occupants can stock up. If lucky, they could stock enough for months or years. However, in them days they had no way to can or freeze food.

How would you take this fort with minimum casualties for your troops? Let’s say you had lots of time. (Hint: look at the photo. There’s only one way into and out of this fort.)

Block the only road and starve the defenders out. Kind of makes me think that even though this was built in what is now Bosnia, maybe it was built by the French?

When it’s really important, always have a good plan and an even better back up plan, if you need one of something, bring two. (One is None, Two is One.) Have an alternate means of escape, don’t let your gas take go to Empty, have extra ammo, food and water, don't depend on tech stuff because the batter will die when you need it.... and plan two steps ahead of your foe. There is not an Art of War, there’s only good planning, good training and a determination to win. (Don’t forget “Murphy’s Law, and make Plan B better than Plan A)
--------------------Have a friggen great day, but plan it first----------------------