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Thomas Wells
Jennifer Farish

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Welcome to the Journal of War Web site, a collection of stories, photographs, blogs and other information about the 155th Brigade Combat Team gathered by Jennifer Farish and Thomas Wells of the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal.

Farish, a reporter, and Wells, a photographer, spent April 2005 with the Tupelo-based 155th in Iraq, which is on its first deployment overseas. Their coverage appeared daily in the Daily Journal and at djournal.com during the month.

Although Farish and Wells are no longer in Iraq, the Daily Journal and djournal.com will continue to provide special coverage of the 155th. Check both the newspaper and this Web site for breaking news, features and photographs.
 

From the field

Posted by Thomas Wells at 4/24/2005 6:46:00 AM CST

---

Well it's 11 days until I return home and our first full day at FOB Iskandariyah. The FOB is located on the grounds of a hydroelectric power plant built by the Soviet Union some 25 years ago, and by the looks of it you can tell. I went to bed late last night and slept right through several 155mm artillery rounds being fired by our artillery at about 2:30 this morning. I heard them but I was so tired I didn't even bother to get up, plus I actually thought I was dreaming when I heard them. I've become accustomed to all the loud noises -- incoming or outgoing. After only 5 hours of sleep, again, I got up and got a bit to eat because something told me it was going to be a long day.



We linked up with Lt. Kenneth Anthony from Tupelo, who teaches at Tupelo Middle School. I had the honor of speaking before his class about photography some two years earlier. So it was kind of neat to run into him here and not a school where he's in his element. So around 7 we loaded up and headed south to get a ride through Al-Musayyib and then a scenic tour and back to the FOB for lunch. Once in al-Musayyib our plans got a little sidetracked when the chief of police showed up and wanted to talk to us. Then we did a walk around the downtown area. I must admit it was one of the cleanest cities I've been to yet. It was still very dirty by our standards but they were picking up garbage and other debris as well sweeping the curbs. After our tour of downtown Lt Anthony wanted to take us out to show us some of the places his soldiers had discovered weapons and other things since getting to Iraq.



He elected not to go down San Juan road because it's the most IED-laden road in Iraq right now and one that almost killed him a just a few weeks earlier when he approached an IED on foot and it exploded. The blast knocked him off his feet and into a nearby ditch. So he elected to take us down a side road named "No Name Road." After traveling down the road for a few minutes over the radio came call that Alpha Company had been hit by an IED on San Juan Road and needed help. So at this point I'm thinking -- what a great call by the lieutenant. Not to put us on San Juan. The entire convoy turned around and my driver, Sgt. George Robertson of Hattiesburg, had just handed me his video camera when the call in. After watching the first two Humvees turn around we did also, in order to stay in formation and also to keep a moderate distance from each other just in case an IED went off.



With Sgt Robertson's i-Pod playing "Eve of Destruction" we turned around and fell into line, the No. 3 out of 4 Humvees. With me filming from the back seat, Sgt. Robertson floored it in an attempt to catch up to the lead two Humvees and also get up to fast rate of speed in order to reduce our chances of being hit by an IED. Within a few hundred yards our Humvee was getting up to speed when the rear end of the Humvee lifted off the ground and landed again as if we hit a very large speed bump or even a huge pothole. The only problem was the truck didn't make that jarring sound it does when the suspension hits something hard like a pothole. And then I heard it just about half a second later I heard it and I knew what it was but deep down but I wasn't going to say anything.



But our turret gunner, Sgt. Brian Herring of Bay St. Louis, answered my fears when he started screaming, "We've been hit, and we've been hit." A damn IED just went off.



The radio immediately started crackling with activity from us and Alpha Company who we were headed to help and were just 10 minutes away, but now we had our problems. The lead truck, which had both Jennifer and the Lt. Anthony, had no idea what was happening behind them. The dust and debris blocked their view. It wasn't until the lead truck got turned around fully and came racing down the road did the lieutenant know we were all OK.



As the Humvee was being lifted into the air I didn't try to brace myself, instead my photojournalism intincts kicked in and I secured my cameras first, then myself. Once back on the ground I picked up my camera and started shooting. The IED went off about 100 feet to our rear and about 15 feet in front of the No. 4 Humvee. The blast which we later found out would have killed all of us in both trucks had it been placed right was 5 to 10 152-mm artillery shells. One on the largest kind of shell made by any military. Lucky for us the insurgents placed it inside a thick concrete culvert, which also had two very heavy steel pipes running through it. This caused most of the blast to be directed away from the road but a good portion of it still went straight up. Had these shells just been buried on the side of the ride I would not be here to type this diary. It would have ripped the road and our Humvee's apart like a tin can. Anyone familiar with artillery shells of that size knows what they can do and almost 10 of them at one place set off at one time. SCARY!!!!!!





After the explosion we started hearing Lt Anthony calling out to his No. 3 and No. 4 trucks to make sure he had all his men. When it was clear that we were all OK, Lt. Anthony and several other of the 155th infantry unit headed up to site which was some 1,000 feet ahead to make sure the road was clear of any more IEDs before we moved anyone anywhere. This is when Lt Anthony found the device they called to set off the IED and it was still ringing, which told him two things. One, they could still be in the area and two, they could be trying to set off another device with them standing right on top of it. Neither of which sounded real good to me. So they set out immediately searching nearby houses for the ones responsible. After several hours of searching and questioning those who lived close by Lt. Anthony found out the IED was placed two days earlier by a group of five men. But the Iraqi was scared to say anything because of what might happen to him. Needless to say the lieutenant wasn't to happy. We found out later on that day that we were one of three convoys to be hit on Saturday, and to think I thought I was special -- my first and hopefully last encounter with an IED.



Our three-hour mission turned into a all day event and on our ride back home to the FOB a song came into my head and I sang it all the way back -- the theme to "Gilligan's Island" ..especially the "three-hour tour: part was quite fitting.

More posts...

Thomas Wells

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