I’ve always been a curious person by nature. I enjoy going to places I’ve never been, and especially places of historical significance. During my time in the army I was fortunate enough to visit a lot of places like this. I spent some time in Munich Germany and enjoyed one or two too many German beers at the Hofbrahaus, the beer hall where Adolf Hitler formed the Nazi party that led to World War 2. In Iraq I spent a few nights in Saddam’s palaces and took pictures by the giant cross swords where the Iraqi Army would hold parades. At the base of the swords is a concrete foundation with the helmets of dead Iranian soldiers from the Iraq-Iran war stuck into the concrete. When I was in Mosul we saw the ruins of the ancient city of Nineveh which is mentioned in the Bible. I was in Iraq when Saddam was hung, and I spent a few nights in the soccer stadiums that the national teams played in, and were tortured by his sons when they lost.

One of the things that I really wanted to do while I was there but never got the chance was to go into one of the impressive Mosque’s. There are impressive buildings and cathedrals in every city but some of the Mosques that we saw were some of the most ornate and beautiful buildings that I’ve ever seen. The problem was that we were forbidden to enter them unless it was absolutely necessary as part of an operation. Had we entered them just for the sake of wanting to go inside it would have been a major insult to local population and would have likely caused a riot that could be easily avoided by just staying out of them all together.

Another problem we faced was that the bad guys knew that it was our policy not to enter a Mosque so they would often times use them to launch an ambush from. The closest I came to entering one of the Mosque’s unfortunately was walking on top of the rubble of one that we destroyed as a result these ambushes. We were on a typical mission to clear out weapons and bad guys from a neighborhood when a large volume of firing started coming out of this Mosque at another platoon that was on the streets. At the time I was on top of a roof about two blocks away and the shooting wasn’t coming at me but I could clearly see the culprits from where I was. I began to place a large amount of fire into the building. It was quickly learned over the radios that the bad guys had shot and killed one of our guys on the street which immediately changes the mission. From where I was I could see a few of the guys who would pop out of a window and fire at the guys on the street who were trying to evacuate their casualties, and as was often the case I could sit on my roof top and eliminate them as they would appear in the windows. The fight drug on for some time and I’d shot enough people from my spot that they quit using those windows but continued to fire from other locations.

As the fighting continued it eventually reached the point where we decided to use artillery and destroy the building and the occupants inside of it that had killed one of our soldiers. Being in close proximity to this was always a nervous few moments because you’re depending on the accuracy of the people firing the artillery to hit the proper target, and when you’re 100 yards away it doesn’t take much to be on the receiving end of that.