Operation Uphold Democracy - 95
Sooner or later, geocities is going to figure out I'm only storing pics on their site so I can direct link to them here... and then, I'll have to find a new place to store images... maybe by then, JU will be open for the subscription service and I'll be able to upload them here...
Well, here is a picture of me from Haiti. I spent a little over 3 months there (Jan-Apr 95). It wasn't a very productive place to send a team of Korean linguists, but neither is Iraq/Afghanistan. The Army sends you where it needs you because you're still a Soldier first, and can perform other jobs. Overall, it was a great deployment, though. I learned a lot and the team I went with was pretty cool (well, most of the guys).
These pictures are all from Feb 95. We spent the entire month at a remote site about 10 km from the nearest US camp. Was kind of tense at times. The first night we were there, we heard gunfire about 5 minutes after we turned in. Spent about 2 hours pulling 100% security. We quickly figured out it wasn't at/for us, but we remained alert just in case. That became a regular thing while we were there. But, that is all the stuff of other blog articles that will someday be posted...
This first pic was just me with my rifle. Soldiers do this sort of pic thing on deployments. It's KEWL. No really, it is...
Next are two pics of our team. We were often bored between missions, so we'd do the normal, everyday deployment things. Watch videos (we had a small TV, VCR, and generator that the unit let us use), drink near-beer, write letters, talk, look at girly mags, burn shit (no really, we didn't have a toilet, we went in plastic bags and tossed them over the side of the building to a pit we built and did a daily burn), and take Hooah! pictures.
This first one was the day before we left. We thought we'd take a tough guy Hooah! pic. Most of us were wearing the free sunglasses that came out of the old leftover Desert Shield/Storm care packs that also came with candy that tasted like the laundry soap it was packed with.
This one was another we took shortly before we left. We had a number of antennae on our rooftop. One of us got it into our mind to do a version of the Marines raising the flag on Iwo Jima. Like I said, we had a lot of time on our hands and that can be pretty dangerous for a group of MI professionals!
Next time on chiprj's Hooah! pics -- Korea!