keep on keepin' on like a bird that flew

Well! I guess it's been just over two weeks since my last post... sorry for the delay! There have been a few things going on, but we should be getting to the cool part of my IZ trip: the flight.
Above, you'll see the sign for the Washington LZ, which is the heliport in the IZ. We showed up there, and kindly asked to get on a bird, and they obliged! Cool!
Like everything in the Army, we were forced to wait for several hours awaiting our flight. I took a nap. Soon, though, we were roused from our sleep, and marshalled onto the flight line, ready and eager to take to the skies. Our craft for the day would be a Sikorsky S-70, otherwise known as a UH-60 Black Hawk.
The seats are little, and you buckle in using a four-point harness with a rotary buckle in the center.

I was lucky enough to secure a "window" seat. I emphasize window, since there wasn't one. They had removed all glass with the exception of the cockpit. That's my buddy Billingsley, by the way. He's from my old unit in Cincinnati.
After takeoff, we flew up and over the IZ on our way back to Liberty. There were lots of cool sights, which I'll take you through now!

Some of the streets of Baghdad.

This is the Iraqi Monument to the Unknown Soldier. I have a short clip of us driving by it, but I haven't figured out a way to post movies yet. It's a neat monument. Really cool architecture.

I have no idea what this building in the foreground is, but it's pretty cool. My intent in the photo was to catch the construction in the background. This is the site of the old Baghdad Airport. You can still vaguely see the remains of a runway stretching off into the upper left. Anyway, the construction is for the "Saddam the Great" mosque, which, if it ever gets completed, will be the largest in the world. I don't think it will get completed, at least not without being renamed.

This is the outskitrs of downtown Baghdad. We're staring to come out of the central districts, near the Tigris, and into more of the suburban sprawl.

No idea. It was a neat looking building with a spiral Iraqi flag.

This is one of my favorite pictures. This is the al Rahman mosque, which is only slightly smaller than the Saddam the Great mosque. I hope they finish this one, simply because it's already so grand.

Here's another shot of the al Rahman mosque. I think it gives a bit of perspective to the size of it all. The foreground buildings are all about two stories tall.

More of the streets of Baghdad. It's a fairly ordinary city. It's very comparable to suburban America in the fact that nothing really exceeds two stories, with the exception of government structures and the city center.


This is one of those quintissential "Army at War" pictures. I had to get a couple of shot of the Black Hawks flying, and this was one of them!


This is Camp Victory. Note the al-Faw Palace on the left, and far in the background is the Victory Over Iran palace, on Camp Slayer. We hit that with a cruise missile on the opening night of the war, thinking that Saddam was there. It hasn't been repaired.

This is our helicopter!


And, lastly, me and Billingsley after our ride. I was excited, and he was his usual stoic self. Now all we had to do was find a way home to Striker...