MY WAR In PICTURES
Operation TRUTH PicturesCasey Culler, from Mt. Airy, NC, served in the Army in Afghanistan from August 2002 to January 2003, and in Iraq from September 2003 to March 2004. Here are some of his photos from his deployments.
"My first deployment was to Afghanistan in August of 2002. While there we did various duties to include; QRF from Baghram, safe-house security near Khost, combat patrols and missions from Khost and we worked out of Jacobabad Pakistan for a while with the Air Force.
I was in country for about 7 months and saw the better part of the country, from the mountains of Baghram to the desert of Kandahar to the border of Pakistan near Khost and Skhin.
This photo is of a mission we on near Khost Afghanistan. Khost is a border town near the Pakistan. We did a lot of searching in that area for caches and bad guys.
The "safehouses are used by the Special Forces. We were the primary security for the base and in the background you see a bunker. I am holding a round from a confiscated 75mm recoilless rifle, we added it to our defenses.
For Thanksgiving the Special Forces guys had bought 9 turkeys on the local economy and had a oven built to cook them with, we fed them and turkey-day morning we killed and cleaned them. Man they were good!!! I never will forget that Thanksgiving!
This is when we were headed out of the Khost region to go back to Kandahar and the trip home. We were so happy, finally it was almost over...That morning a suicide bicyclist ran into the gate and blew himself up.
My second deployment was to Iraq in September of 2002. While in Iraq we moved into a place that used to be used to train Iranian terrorist (Mujahedin-e Kalq.) This was in what is now called Camp Fallujah by the Marines I think. It is at the bottom of the "Sunni triangle" just outside Al Fallujah. From there we ran combat patrols and missions all over the sector. We didn't move around as much as we had in Afghanistan, but did we ever stay busy! As a mortar base gunner/team leader I was used in many roles from the Commander and 1st Sgt.'s drivers and escorts to a regular fire team. I convoyed up to Fallujah from Kuwait and saw the better part of southern part of the country and central Iraq through the missions.
We worked a lot in this town on the outskirts of Fallujah, it was called Nasir-Wel-Al-Salam (excuse the spelling) We would go there 4-6 times a week and sometimes spend all day in the streets with the locals. There were many kids that loved to hang out with us. Some were good, some were bad, one kids actually pointed out a IED one day, we thanked him and gave him tons of candy. He probably saved someones life that day. We loved to give the kids candy and pens.
This is a picture of me and the family of a girl I "adopted." She is in the yellow shirt, the rest are her siblings. I gave her almost all my candy and pens. I thought she was so adorable. I gave her Scooby-Doo doll my wife had sent to me for my birthday even. If I could have adopted her and brought her home I would have. To give her something better than Iraq, I miss seeing her cute smile.
Most of our missions were in either darkness or very early morning hours. This day was no different, we left and got into position during the night and hit the houses at dawn. It was very cold during this time of my tour in Iraq.
Notice the mud, this is during the rain season. We used to fire rounds near some of the areas we were assaulting just to let them know we meant business. They responded well to that, they didn't want nothing to do with the business end of my mortar.
Local people who worked with us ended up dead. This was a fairly normal occurrence, we were on the way to Nasir.... And we found this guy in the middle of our trails. He was shot execution style in the back of his head. He worked with the Army to help us find the bad guys. This is why a lot of the locals are scared to talk or help us.
One of the problems we had with the locals was looting. They would steal anything not nailed down, and then some. We gave them fair warnings but after a few of them we let their horses go and burned their cars and trucks. They would steal the concrete mix, steel rebar, and anything else. They were known to even kill the Iraqi guards in doing so.
posted by Mike Mx @ 2:25 AM
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