FOB Marez, Mosul __ The wind was cool coming off the plane from Baghdad, or at least it seemed so to us.
The heat in Baghdad was merciless. The sun radiated off the ground and baked us in a temperature that felt hotter than the posted 106 degrees. Here in Mosul, in northern Iraq, a welcome breeze was coming from the direction of the mountains that divide Iraq and Turkey. Of course, it’s still like 95 degrees out.
We finally made it to Mosul on Wednesday after staying up all night waiting for our plane ride. Arrowhead brigade troops from Fort Lewis are everywhere at the base here. The clocks in the Tactical Operations Center give Mosul time and the time back home in Tacoma.
We’ll spend the next few weeks here reporting and hope to make it out into the city tomorrow. The makeup of this ancient city is far different than Baghdad. It’s mostly Sunni Arab and about 25 percent Kurdish.
There are very few Shia here. So you don’t have the kind of Shiite-Sunni warfare as in Baghdad. But the insurgency is active here, and there are some tensions between Kurds and Arabs.
-- Sean Cockerham