Story and Photos by Sgt. Daniel W. Bailey
22nd Mobile Public Affairs Detachment
FORWARD OPERATING BASE O'RYAN, BALAD, Iraq --Task Force Liberty Soldiers worked to clear a cache of more than 2,500 57mm and larger rounds of unexploded ordnance near Balad, Iraq, May 10-14.
Eight combat engineers from 3rd Battalion, 69th Armored Regiment, stationed at Forward Operating Base Brassfield-Mora were assigned to assist Task Force 1-128 at Forward Operating Base O'Ryan in finding and destroying the UXOs from fields at the Tarmiyah Poultry Farm, one of countless caches that litter the Iraqi countryside.
"Our overall mission was to come out collect up and destroy as many UXOs as we could find," said Staff Sgt. Dennis Kradel, Company C, 3-69. "I"d say we've been fairly successful."
The UXOs in the fields which surround the farm were supposedly left behind by the former Iraqi army.
"Rumor has it, (the fields) used to be an air defense and artillery site back in Saddam's days and they just buried all their stuff when they left," said Capt. Paul Shannon, Commander, Troop K, 3rd Battalion, 278th Armored Cavalry Regiment, whose Soldiers patrol the area the farm is on.
The engineers collected the UXOs off of the ground surface and from underground, using mine detectors, shovels and an M-9 Armored Combat Earth Mover, and then moved them to a centralized location for the Explosive Ordnance Disposal Detachment to destroy with a controlled detonation daily, explained Sgt. Kevin Hanson, Company C, 3-69.
"We've got to get rid of them because the anti-Iraqi forces can come in here anytime they want," said Hanson, a native of Maryville, Tenn.. "If they can find this stuff they'll use it as (improvised explosive devices) on the roadsides.
They can use the 57mm rounds as improvised grenades, and they can use them to harm troops, so we're basically stopping that from happening or at least trying to slow them down."
This isn't the first time that UXOs have been removed from the fields at the poultry farm as a previous unit had performed some excavation of UXOs.
"They thought it was all cleaned out and there wasn't anymore there, said Shannon, a Clarksville, Tenn. native. "We've been going through patrolling it every so often and in so doing guys have been finding stuff, so we had some engineers come down, do an assessment, and they said "yeah there's a lot of stuff here.""
Now that the engineers worked on the field Shannon's men will continue to patrol the area and make sure that no one messes with the fields in case there are more UXOs.
"Primarily it's more for taking it out of the insurgent's hands than it is anything else," said Shannon, "but it is also a safety concern for the populace to clean up all these UXOs around Iraq.
| Date Taken: | 06.01.2005 |
| Date Posted: | 06.01.2005 11:04 |
| Story ID: | 1970 |
| Location: | BALAD, IQ |
| Web Views: | 36 |
| Downloads: | 5 |
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