Burn Pits.

[Colorado Cowboy]

I'll start by saying I am not defending the military and how they handled their base operations during this period. My experience in the military is a Vietnam era draftee in the Army who was injured in a non combat situation which resulted in my disability.

The bases in the middle east combat areas did not have local trash pickup for sure. They had to deal with it themselves. They could not truck to the local dump for disposal as it contained medical waste, human waste, chemical waste and normal trash (I am sure there is much more I am leaving out). I remember seeing pictures of the local population scrounging the dumps for anything of value they could use or sell. I am sure this alone prevented us from local disposal sites. The burn pits were the only reasonable answer at that time. Sad deal and lots of "Monday Morning Quarterbacking" results. The bad thing is just admitting the mistake and do what it takes to correct everything ....and move on. Keep the politics out of it and do what's right for the troops that got sick from the exposure.

 

[KHSRanger23]

I input my information for the burn pit register in 2014 and I had my first appointment with VA in July of this year with a follow up appointment later this month.

On the burn pits I just remembered we bagged up all our garbage and drove them out to big pile of garbage. Not sure who was burning the stuff, we just saw and smelled the fires. I think some stuff was buried as well.

My thought with the military being in Iraq and Afghanistan that nothing was really planned or thought out really well in the early phases of the operation.

I was in Iraq from February 2004 through February 2005. We spent a few weeks in Kuwait prior to our convoy in Iraq and most people at this point had assumed major combat operations were over. However, the insurgency was just starting and we started to hear about IED's and other threats. We had our soft top Humvee's and other vehicles that were shipped from the states to Kuwait and that's what we were supposed to use in Iraq. Needless to say we didn't feel super safe about our vehicle situation. We got lucky and found some steel sheets and got access to plasma cutters and welding equipment so we could build some gun boxes and turrets for protection, it was the best we could do with what we had. Other units were using plywood, sandbags for makeshift protection it was not ideal. The up armored Humvees and MRAP vehicles didn't start showing up until later deployment's.

We slept in tents (they did have A/C) just as I was leaving they had started building more permanent trailers for people to sleep. Chow at first was MRE's, after a few weeks they got a trailer DFAC and eventually a permanent building DFAC with decent food. They did get a shower trailer pretty early on for us so that was nice. Stuff started getting nicer and more organized when they realized were going to be there for awhile.

 

[Colorado Cowboy]

Thank you for your service Brother.

 

[KHSRanger23]

Thank you for your service Brother.

Thanks for your service and support. Wouldn't have been able to do it without the generations that came before me.