The Army/Navy game will feature West Point players in uniforms honoring the 3rd Infantry Division in the Iraq War. They’ll have Rocky the bulldog, created by Walt Disney and given to the Division by him, on the helmet.
I spent a lot of time with 3ID in Iraq in 2007 and 2008. They sang the song with the lyrics “I eat raw meat for breakfast every day,” and “so feed me ammunition, keep me in the Third Division.”
The first regulars, yeah. 1/3ID 1-64 Armor conducted the famous "Thunder Run" through the city to the airport. They were the ones who captured the city and initially held it, along with some Marine elements.
Now some Rangers had gotten to the airport first. When I was there, one of the camps around the airport was Camp Slayer (that's where the King Arthur banner was that's featured in one of the links in my post). Slayer had been a pleasure compound, with artificial lakes and streams going to various mansions and such. All these sunken yachts were there, which Saddam had used for his guests and which I figured were sunk in the war.
No, funny story: the boats were captured intact by the Rangers, who set themselves up on them as residences until relieved by the regulars. The higher-ranking regular army officers ordered the Rangers to vacate the boats, intending to use as their own residences. The Rangers did vacate the boats as ordered, but set off satchel charges in each of them to sink them to the bottom so the regular brass couldn't use them.
The regulars also brought in heavy equipment like tanks that crushed the underground water pipes. The whole place had returned to the desert by the time I got there, but apparently it had been a garden during Saddam's era. All the grass except some desert natives had died after the watering stopped.
A friend of ours have a son who was in the 3ID when they took Baghdad. He suffered permanent hearing loss in that maneuver. Able to work and communicate, but you can still sense the 'shock' he took in his speech pattern.
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Wasn't the 3ID the first to enter Baghdad?
The first regulars, yeah. 1/3ID 1-64 Armor conducted the famous "Thunder Run" through the city to the airport. They were the ones who captured the city and initially held it, along with some Marine elements.
Now some Rangers had gotten to the airport first. When I was there, one of the camps around the airport was Camp Slayer (that's where the King Arthur banner was that's featured in one of the links in my post). Slayer had been a pleasure compound, with artificial lakes and streams going to various mansions and such. All these sunken yachts were there, which Saddam had used for his guests and which I figured were sunk in the war.
No, funny story: the boats were captured intact by the Rangers, who set themselves up on them as residences until relieved by the regulars. The higher-ranking regular army officers ordered the Rangers to vacate the boats, intending to use as their own residences. The Rangers did vacate the boats as ordered, but set off satchel charges in each of them to sink them to the bottom so the regular brass couldn't use them.
The regulars also brought in heavy equipment like tanks that crushed the underground water pipes. The whole place had returned to the desert by the time I got there, but apparently it had been a garden during Saddam's era. All the grass except some desert natives had died after the watering stopped.
I rather like the Rangers now.
A friend of ours have a son who was in the 3ID when they took Baghdad. He suffered permanent hearing loss in that maneuver. Able to work and communicate, but you can still sense the 'shock' he took in his speech pattern.
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