The View From on the Ground
Other wars produced poetry and novels and memoirs. But the war in Iraq has brought a new kind of literature. In real time, on the Internet, officers and enlisted men and women are chronicling the war on weblogs -- better known as blogs. Two weeks ago, one of the most popular war bloggers, a soldier stationed near the northern Iraqi city of Mosul who identified himself only as CBFTW, was disciplined by the Army for violating "operational security." His gritty postings described both the terror and boredom of war. Last week, he removed them from his "My War" website. But the journals of many other military bloggers remain on the Web. Here are edited excerpts from the blogs of Americans serving with the U.S. military in Iraq.
A 'festering sore'
Lt. Col. David G. Bellon was commissioned as an officer in the Marine Corps in 1990 after graduating from law school. He remained on active duty until 1998, then continued as a reserve officer while building a law practice in Oceanside. In January 2003, he went to Iraq to serve in the infantry during the invasion. He returned home in September of last year and was sent back to Iraq in February 2004. Bellon, who is serving in the volatile Sunni Triangle, has a wife and two children, ages 4 and 6. He hopes to be home by Christmas. His family maintains a website, www.thegreenside.com, on which they post Bellon's letters to his father.
Aug. 17, 2004
My regiment has been involved in a fight outside of Fallouja for the past week.
On August 9th, insurgents in the city kidnapped the two Iraqi National Guard battalion commanders within the city, subsequently killing at least one of them. It is another clear example of the savagery of the enemy here. The city is now without any coalition influence other than us. The local militia that was created as a solution to the April fighting has become a defensive army that is in collusion with the insurgents. The police are complicit with the enemy and the city is literally run by terrorists.
The Iraqi National Guard battalion commander who was killed was Lt. Col. Sulaiman Hamad Ftikan. We knew him as Sulaiman. He was the closest thing to a true patriot and leader we have found who is actually from the local Fallouja area. He was kidnapped and murdered because he had finally gotten his battalion to stand up to the criminals and insurgents who have had their run of the city all these months.
