From: Michael Mabee
Sent: Monday, May 24, 2004 7:57 AM
Subject: 24 May 2004 FRG Update

24 May 2004
FOB Speicher
Tikrit, Iraq
 
Families,
 
It‘s been a long time since I have written.  A lot has been going on over here as you’ve been seeing in the news or hearing from your soldiers and I’ve had a hard time getting started on this letter. We lost two soldiers on May 1, 2004 in two separate ambushes. SPC Trevor A. Win’E, 22 years old, of the 24th Quartermaster Company and SGT Joshua S. Ladd, 20 years old, of the 367th Maintenance Company will both be missed terribly and we are all heartbroken over their deaths. We spent time with both companies after the incident and many of us attended a memorial service in Mosul, but what can you really say to their friends and comrades after something like this? The only thing I can compare it to is when you go to a wake and don’t quite know what to say to the family. There’s really nothing comforting you can say and no way you can make it better. Now imagine that the immediate family consists of hundreds of people. That’s what it was like for the Colonel and me when we went to visit the companies. The hardest thing I have ever done is when the Chaplain and I pulled the soldiers from one of these convoys into a room and told them that their wounded comrade was not going to make it. I think that’s all I’m going to say on the subject for now.
 
Let me go on to an easier subject: sheep. Everywhere we go, there are flocks of sheep. Sheep in the median of the road, sheep by the sides of the road, sheep on the hills, sheep in the desert and sheep wandering through the villages. I am becoming a very big fan of sheep. They are very peaceful animals and there is something very soothing about watching them grazing. It’s also cool how they all move in the same direction and follow the shepherds. There are always a few sheep dogs tending the flocks. Occasionally, there is a cow or two and maybe a donkey and a goat intermixed with the flock. If only people got along this well. I think when I get home, I’m going to quit my job, get a flock of sheep, a few dogs and a donkey and lead a simple life watching them graze. Everybody on Long Island will think I’m a weirdo through, leading my sheep down Sunrise Highway.
 
I’ve noticed that many of the flocks have markings. There is one particular flock of sheep I look forward to seeing near Samarra whenever we convoy south. These sheep are marked with a dinner-plate sized pink circle on their butts. They don’t seem to mind. Another thing I’ve noticed is that we are seeing more and more “circus trucks” (brightly colored tucks with wooden sides) carrying hundreds and hundreds of sheep north. My guess is that as the weather gets warmer and the grass in the desert dries out, the shepherds move their flocks north where there is more grass. We are seeing tents springing up on the side of the road and scores of sheep flocks grazing near the tents. I have traveled over 5000 miles by vehicle and another 800 miles or so by helicopter all over Northern and Southern Iraq, and hardly a mile goes by where a flock of sheep isn’t peacefully grazing by the side of the road.

Besides the sheep, the other innocent party over here are the children. On May 15, 2004, we went with some of our units of the 44th CSB (Corps Support Battalion) to several villages in the Shekhan District of Northern Iraq. Attached is a picture of children from a Yazidi village getting a chance to look through binoculars for the first time. Notice the flag of Kurdistan flying in the background. One interesting thing I noticed about these northern villages was that the adults came up to us also when we arrived. The children always swamp us wherever we go, but in the villages around Tikrit, the adults tend to be more standoffish and don’t socialize as much with us (probably out of fear of being seen by the bad guys and harassed later after we leave).

The Yazidi are a very small religious sect (maybe 100,000 or so in the world according to one source). Their religion has been largely misunderstood over the years, and they have had a rough time for centuries from every regime that has owned the land. They have been subjected to genocide many times over the past 2000 years. An interesting aspect of the Yazidi religion is that it pre-dates Christianity but the Yazidi believe in Adam and Eve and also incorporate some books of the canonized bible (Revelation, specifically) and also have aspects of other ancient religions. The Yazidi, primarily ethnic Kurds, were persecuted for years under Saddam Hussein. The children are beautiful and they are in desperate need of school supplies.
 
In this particular village, we are helping to repair and renovate their school. Most of the schools have no bathrooms (or at least not working bathrooms) and the class rooms consist of some old beat up benches and a blackboard. There are no computers, copiers, libraries or anything else you would see in even the worst schools in America. Basically, just rooms with some benches and desks. Some of the better schools have electricity, but maybe no heat or windows. These particular children in the picture come from subsistence farm families. They mainly raise vegetables and sheep.
 
SPC LaCroix got a whole bunch of the kids together (about 25-30 of them) and had them recite the A-B-C’s. It was amazing. They all knew them and I found that in these schools, they teach some English to the students. They ha d trouble pronouncing “W” but they sounded great other than that.
 
We were invited to lunch by the local schoolmaster and village leaders. Lunch was in an empty rectangular room in a brick building. The only furnishings were mats on the floor to sit on. We took off our boots before entering the room. The Iraqis (or Yazidis in this case – they do not consider themselves Iraqis) put out a lot of food when guests come. Bowls of rice, cucumbers, tomatoes, beans, bread and roasted meat were placed in the middle of the room. What you do is take a piece of the flat bread, put all the aforementioned stuff in it, roll it up and voila – a Middle Eastern burrito. After lunch we had tea with them. The food was quite good and the conversation (through a translator) was very upbeat. The Americans are really well liked up in “Kurdistan.”
 
We have been getting in many boxes of school supplies from a lot of you back home. You have no idea what your generosity is going to mean to these kids. They really have nothing. We were handing out some pens, pencils and crayons and it almost caused a riot with all the kids climbing over themselves to get a pen. You just can’t even imagine how much something as small as a pen or some crayons means to these kids. I think back to when I was their age – if some people came around the school yard passing out pencils, I would have continued to play tether-ball and ignored them. What a difference poverty makes. Notebooks and notebook paper are also highly coveted items over here.
 
As usual, a lot of the news in the media has been exceedingly bad. We are all upset over the pictures of the prisoner abuse that have surfaced, and don’t understand how something like this could possibly happen. I want to believe that American soldiers just don’t do those kinds of things. I was an MP in the first Gulf War and my unit handled thousands of Iraqi prisoners in 1991 and it is just impossible for me to imagine that something like this could happen. But there have been a lot of good things happening over here. The projects our S-5 sections are working on in the local communities to fix schools, restore water and fix up police stations don’t ever seem to make it onto the news.
 
On May 19, 2004 we were on a convoy near Bayji when we passed a horrible head on collision involving two civilian cars. We stopped to help. Apparently, one of the cars had been traveling north in the southbound lane. (I told you about the traffic over here, didn’t I?) The driver of one vehicle had a fractured femur and the other driver had minor injuries. By the looks of the cars, they were very lucky they survived the wreck. We splinted the fractured leg and bandaged up the other driver and the Iraqi’s took them off to the hospital. All of the Iraqis at the scene seemed to genuinely appreciate our help.
 
It must be discouraging sometimes for the families to see only the negative things reported in the news. What I can tell you from here is that all 3000 soldiers and airmen of the 167th CSG are working very hard everyday and accomplishing all of their missions with distinction. We are moving supplies all over Iraq, fixing vehicles and equipment, providing every type of service to the units we support and doing everything we can to help the people in our local villages. The school supplies you are sending are going to make a big difference in the lives of a lot of beautiful children, and I encourage all of you to continue to help us improve the schools in the local villages. No matter what ultimately happens in the grand scheme of things over here, we can all make a huge contribution to the quality of life and education for the kids, so that is a great project for us all to work on together. Please continue to encourage everybody you know to send school supplies to:
 
167th CSG
ATTN: S-5
OIF II, FOB Speicher
APO AE 09393
 
Thank you for helping some really great children.
 
"Granite 7"

Michael Mabee
Command Sergeant Major
167th Corps Support Group
Tikrit, Iraq