Goodbye, Mortaritaville: 3rd HBCT unit is making the U.S. base’s nickname inapt
A Fort Carson unit has brought safety to America’s largest base in Iraq in a move that could cost the 15-square-mile Logistics Support Area Anaconda its derisive nickname “Mortaritaville.”
The nickname came from the daily attacks on the base near Balad since it was first occupied in 2003. Its average population of more than 25,000 soldiers and servicemen found themselves running for cover from barrages of more than a dozen shells at a time lobbed into the compound by insurgents with Soviet mortars.
Not since Lt. Col. Jeff Vuono and his 480 soldiers in the 3rd Battalion 29th Field Artillery arrived on the scene in late 2005, though.
Read the rest at the Gazette
The nickname came from the daily attacks on the base near Balad since it was first occupied in 2003. Its average population of more than 25,000 soldiers and servicemen found themselves running for cover from barrages of more than a dozen shells at a time lobbed into the compound by insurgents with Soviet mortars.
Not since Lt. Col. Jeff Vuono and his 480 soldiers in the 3rd Battalion 29th Field Artillery arrived on the scene in late 2005, though.
Read the rest at the Gazette
posted by iraqnam at 2:11 PM
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