FOB Marez, Mosul __ We’ve returned to Mosul. I can tell we’re back by all the explosions.
Q-West was quiet. That base is surrounded by desert, so there’s really no place for people to hide and shoot mortars at the Americans.
That’s not the case here in urban Mosul. There are explosions pretty much every day. Often they are car bombs or controlled detonations of explosives found by U.S. forces on patrol.
There have also been multiple mortar attacks on the base lately.
I wrote in the paper about an attack last week that caused some injuries. The Strykers found and killed the people who did it.
Most soldiers don’t worry too much about mortars. The insurgents tend not to have very good aim, and mostly hit nothing.
I’ve kind of become used to the explosions. But sometimes the sound of a big car bomb going off in the city makes me jump.
-- Sean Cockerham