Homecoming

Homecoming
Redeployment Ceremony; April 22nd, 2008

In The News

Articles, pictures, and other news about the 2-32 Field Artillery, and the area (Yarmouk and Hateen neighborhoods) where they've been working. For posts older than 30 days, check the archive links on the left, or use the searchbox at the top of the page.

[last update: April 22, 2008]

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Dagger Brigade Weekly Slides

Dagger Brigade Weekly Slides
Dagger Brigade Combat Team Official Site
Week: Sept 17 - Sept 23
Slides: 26, 27

Bravo Battery Finds Cache With Aid of Local Boy
  • The cache contained dozens of explosives and IED-making materials.
  • SGT Brice Tucker shakes the hand of the boy who led Coalition Forces to the cache
  • PFC Waldo Reich breaks into the location of the cache
1st Platoon, Golf Company Renders Aid to Local Woman
  • SPC Brandon Villavisencio, medic for 1st Platoon, Golf Company, treats a victim of domestic vioence in Hateen. The woman suffered stab wounds to her head and arm, but SPC Villavisencio stabilized her in time to be rushed to the hospital.

Actor Robert Duvall visits with LTC Gadson

America Supports You: Award-Winning Actor Visits Wounded Troops
DefenseLink News
Samantha L. Quigley
Sept. 26, 2007


Actor Robert Duvall talks with Army Lt. Col. Gregory Gadson on Sept. 25, 2007, during a visit to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington. Gadson, who is recovering at the facility after losing both legs above the knee fighting in the global war on terrorism, is a West Point graduate. Photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Molly A. Burgess, USN


Blog: Inside Iraq

A Wish To Make
Blog: Inside Iraq (McClatchy News)
September 25, 2007

Today we toured through Al Yarmouk neighborhood in western Baghdad. The neighborhood famous bread baking shop Ahalina is open again since about two weeks for the first time in years.
Looking to that shop open again and other shops inside the neighborhood and the beautiful street that is called Arbaa Shwariaa (4 streets in Arabic) clean and with no signs of violence was delightful. The improvement in several neighborhoods despite the fact it is not that big gave me some hope.


Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Real hero gets gift from Plaxico

Real hero gets gift from Plaxico
Newsday
BY ARTHUR STAPLE
September 25, 2007

Plaxico Burress usually secrets away the balls he catches for touchdowns. After his fifth touchdown catch of the season, the play that provided the winning margin in Sunday's 24-17 win over the Redskins, Burress found someone on the Giants' sideline at FedEx Field he preferred have the ball rather than himself.

He gave the keepsake to Lt. Col. Greg Gadson, an Army commander who had spoken to the Giants on Saturday night at their hotel. Gadson lost both legs to an improvised explosive device in Iraq in May, but came to meet the team at the urging of wide receivers coach Mike Sullivan, who was a teammate and classmate of Gadson's at West Point.

"You see a guy go through the things that he has been through and he is in such good spirits," said Burress, who, like Gadson, is from southeastern Virginia. The two men talked at length Saturday. "It was just unbelievable to come across a person like that who went through a tremendous change in his life. I have never met somebody like that who had a high spirit like nothing was wrong and I was like, 'Wow.' I thought, 'I have a little ankle injury, I have to go out here and give it my best.' All I thought about when I scored that touchdown was that I wanted to find him to give him that football."

Coach Tom Coughlin asked Gadson to speak to the team Saturday. "Everyone was moved by what he said," Burress said.

"The players gave him a standing ovation and the volume kept rising," Coughlin said. "He is an incredible man. A powerful man. The power of his spirit. That is what he really did for us, just the idea that the spirit rises above all these adverse conditions. He is still the same man that he always was. He just had a terrible thing happen to him, something he is not going to let hold him back."

Giants rally after motivational speech from wounded Army officer

Giants rally after motivational speech from wounded Army officer
Real Time Fantasy Sports

TOM CANAVAN - AP Sports Writer
2007-09-25

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. (AP) -As a former Army football player and the commander of a 400-man battalion, Greg Gadson was used to speaking to large groups of people.

But talking to the struggling New York Giants on Saturday on the eve of their game against the Redskins in Washington, Gadson was a little nervous.

So the lieutenant colonel who lost both legs when an explosive device detonated near his vehicle on patrol in Baghdad spoke from his heart. He spoke of concentrating on the mission, never giving up and believing in each other.

``One of the things I told the team is I love football,'' Gadson said Monday in a telephone interview with The Associated Press from Fort Belvoir in Virginia. ``It has been a big part of my life and it still is from the standpoint of how I am fighting through what I am going through now and how I lived in the Army.

``I don't want anyone to misconstrue that football is like combat,'' Gadson said, ``but I told the team is that it's the same type of emotional investment. If you put yourself in anything, these kinds of things demand your all.''

Down 17-3 at the half, the Giants needed their all to rally for a 24-17 win over the Redskins, getting the winning touchdown on a 33-yard catch and run by Plaxico Burress with 5:32 to play.

After the play, Burress ran along the Giants sideline with the ball and found Gadson sitting in his wheelchair near the bench. Burress handed him the ball.

Burress and Gadson had spoken the previous evening after Gadson finished his 10- to 15-minute motivational talk. The two grew up in the same area of Virginia and hit it off.

``All this happened to him just four or five months ago and just sitting there listening to his story and his determination and his will (was amazing),'' said Burress, who had all five of his catches in the big second half. ``Let's face it, things like that kind of brought a different light on me. He moved everybody in that room with his story. I just wanted to go out and give what I had.''

When the Giants handed out game balls after their first win, Gadson was awarded one.

``Those are the guys who played,'' Gadson said. ``I didn't play a down. My hope is that they take this and build on this and continue to do the hard work.''

Gadson, 41, has his own hard work ahead.

A 1989 graduate of West Point, Gadson recalls vividly the night that his convoy was attacked. It happened on May 7 around 9:30 p.m. The convoy was moving between bases when the explosive device detonated.

The force ejected Gadson from his vehicle. As he lay in the road, he remembers not having his rifle and expecting the enemy to attack.

``As I was laying there I thought to myself: 'God, I don't want to die here in this country,''' Gadson said.

Bleeding badly, his legs seriously injured, Gadson lost consciousness and was revived by a sergeant.

``The last thing I do remember in Iraq was the helicopter coming to get me, hearing the helicopter coming,'' Gadson said. ``I don't remember anything after that.''

Four days later, Gadson was being treated at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington. His left leg had to be amputated above the knee about a week later. Gadson and the doctors decided to amputate the right one shortly after that.

``It was going to be a cosmetic leg,'' Gadson said. ``It was not going to be of any use to me. I felt the quality of my life would be better with prosthetics.''

Over the next month, Gadson had plenty of visitors, including Giants receivers coach Mike Sullivan, a West Point classmate.

Sullivan told Coughlin about Gadson last week, mentioning that the team might benefit from hearing him speak.

``I wanted the team to hear from a real hero,'' Coughlin said. ``We can learn so many things about a person who has been through an extremely difficult part of his life.''

It was a message the players appreciated.

``He exemplified what we are trying to strive for as far as being a leader,'' halfback Derrick Ward said.

Gadson currently spends three to four hours a day working out. The rest of the time is spent with wife Kimberly, son Jaelen and daughter Gabriella.

His long-range goal is to walk with his prosthetics in about a year, although he admits that might be pushing it. For now, he wants to be at Fort Riley, Kan., when his battalion returns from its deployment.

``I am not bitter,'' said Gadson, who fought in the first Gulf War, and served in Bosnia and Afghanistan before his recent tour in Iraq. ``I don't have any regrets. My life had been a good life. Like any life, there are ups and downs and challenges. My faith, honestly, and my family and friends have carried me through this.''

His speech helped carry the Giants for a week in the 2007 season.


ONE HOT SUMMER

ONE HOT SUMMER
The Dagger's Edge: Vol 1, Issue 22
1st Lt. Quinn Robertson

First, congratulations are in order for the Soldiers of Task Force Patriot and the rest of the Dagger Brigade for withstanding a brutally hot summer. The past three months have been filled with gusting winds and sand that seemed to blow into every crevice of our equipment, our gear and our uniforms. With temperatures soaring well into the 120s, common sense would dictate that we slow down and stay inside our air-conditioned tents and housing units. Our Soldiers, however, braved the heat on a daily basis to maintain security in Yarmouk, our area of operations in western Baghdad. Despite having to wear fifty pounds of body armor under the blazing Iraqi sun, our Soldiers found success by employing that age-old Army maxim: “Drink water and drive on.” I cannot imagine what our enemy must think when he sees us conducting dismounted operations under such harsh conditions. This is part of our arsenal, this apparent imperviousness to the heat, and I have nothing but respect for the men and women who display it with such ease day in and day out. It is still hot out, to be sure, but September marks the beginning of fall in our Western minds and though it might still reach 113 degrees this week, we all know that cooler temperatures are just around the corner, and for that we are thankful.

Over the course of this summer, the Soldiers of Bravo Battery, 2nd Battalion, 32nd Field Artillery, performed exceptionally well across the full spectrum of combat and civil-military operations, proving that the Field Artillery has never been more diverse in its skill set. Today’s Cannon Cocker – an affectionate term – not only knows how to shoot a projectile miles across the battlefield, only to have it impact with pinpoint accuracy, he has also mastered the Infantry skills needed to evict Al-Qaeda and Jaysh al-Mahdi from western Baghdad. Our Artillerymen have also become proficient in the kinder, gentler side of warfare, learning to plan and execute civil-military projects which have beautified our area of operations and fostered increased levels of governance and social cohesiveness. These projects have given an overwhelming sense of pride to the local residents. For those who have helped clean streets and repair schools, these projects afforded them the opportunity to participate in the reconstruction of Iraq, a process which cannot succeed without a spirit of ownership at the local level. The Iraqi people want to strengthen their communities; we have simply given them the means with which to do so.

As Soldiers, we all live by the Army Values. As Soldiers at war, we have come to see that we share our values with those Iraqis who are committed to rebuilding their nation. We identify with the Iraqis who call us to report suspicious activity in their neighborhoods; cooperating with US forces means risking discovery by insurgent elements and takes a great deal of personal courage. Iraqis are also becoming more self-reliant, in terms of governance, economy, and security, and the men and women of Yarmouk have made it clear that they will not tolerate those individuals who stand in the way of progress. The average Iraqi understands the fact that those of us in ACUs want to empower his community, while the insurgents are destructive and self-serving; an anathema to his vision of a new Iraq.

In any counter-insurgent fight, it is tempting, but ultimately unproductive to look to numbers and percentages as measures of success. We learned in the Vietnam War that the body count did not correspond to victory, and in this war no set of metrics will predict the outcome. Instead, we must turn to the subjective, to the intangibles, to get a sense of our progress, and for that we rely heavily on our interpreters. Baghdad is a metropolis teeming with millions of residents, yet, according to our interpreters the streets stood empty in the years following the growth of the insurgency. Now, however, men and women crowd markets and bustle through the streets. Our interpreters attribute this behavior to the level of security that we and the Iraqi security forces provide. As the people of Baghdad come outside to enjoy their communities, they provide us with a great sign of progress. We do not need to count the number of people on the streets to measure the effectiveness of our efforts; simply seeing them go about their lives without fear of a terrorist attack is proof enough.

Bravo Battery’s successes in Yarmouk come not from the pens and keyboards of strategists and analysts, but rather from the pounding of boots heard daily throughout the city. Our Soldiers have walked the same streets thousands of times over, shaken the same hands, and sweated through uniform after uniform. It has been a long six months so far, but we have built relationships in Yarmouk that are now paying dividends. Local citizens are taking more and more responsibility for their affairs each day, and the Iraqi Army continues to become more effective and independent. Best of all, we have made it through the hottest part of the year. Cooler days are in store for us, and I hear that Iraq even has a winter. I just hope it does not get too cold…

Monday, September 24, 2007

LTC Gadson Attends NFL Game

Burress breaks out of blues
New Jersey Star-Ledger

Monday, September 24, 2007
BY STEVE POLITI

Plaxico Burress trotted up the Giants sideline with the football tucked under his arm, looking like he was ready to take home a souvenir from the touchdown reception that capped a second-half rally.

But the ball wasn't for him. Instead, Burress found Lt. Col. Greg Gadson on the sidelines, leaned forward so he could see the war hero in the wheelchair eye to eye, and handed the ball to him.

Gadson had spoken to the Giants on Saturday night, telling the players about his experience in the Iraqi war -- and the roadside bomb that destroyed his jeep in May and left him a double amputee. Burress, who like Gadson is a Virginia native, took the motivational speech to heart.

"I never met a guy in his condition who was in such high spirits," Burress said. "When you see people like that, you kind of say to yourself, 'Man, all I have is an ankle (injury).'"

Burress missed most of last week with a right ankle injury and figured he was about 80 percent coming into this game. He looked worse than that in the first half, failing to catch a pass and dropping three throws from quarterback Eli Manning as the Giants fell behind 17-3.

"I don't think I've ever started off a game like that," Burress said. "I came in at halftime, and there was nobody as disappointed as myself. Those are things I don't know. I felt bad because I let my team down. The defense was playing great and I was just stinking it up, basically.

"It was one thing after another. It seemed like we couldn't get a handle on the ball early," he said. "We came in before the second half, I sat on that chair over there, and I was telling myself that my team was counting on me to go out and play well in the second half."

Burress looked like a different player after intermission. He caught five passes for 86 yards, and with 5:32 left in the game, put the Giants ahead with a nifty catch and run on a short pass.

With the Giants facing a second-and-nine at the Redskins' 33-yard-line, Burress caught the throw from Manning at the 20, broke inside to get past cornerback Carlos Rogers and then made a move on safety Sean Taylor that he described as "one of those backyard Virginia Beach moves."

Taylor fell for it, leaving Burress a clear path to the end zone. Strong safety LaRon Landry leveled him after he crossed the goal line, but it didn't matter: The Giants had taken a 24-17 lead, and Burress, after that difficult first half, made the biggest offensive play.

"I just had to keep fighting," Burress said. If we had lost the game I would have felt horrible, but I still feel bad because I let the team down. But in the end, we finished strong and won the game."

Instead of a flashy end-zone celebration, Burress ran to the sidelines to find Gadson, a U.S. Military Academy graduate who has served in Bosnia, in Operation Desert Storm and as a battalion commander with the 32nd Field Artillery in Iraq when he was severely wounded.

The two men spoke briefly when Burress handed Gadson the football. "He had some bad things happen to him in Iraq," Burress said. "Just seeing the good spirits he was in after all he's been through, sometimes you have to say to yourself, 'Hey, you've got to go.'"

Sunday, September 23, 2007

IED Set Off in Hateen Market

IED Set Off in Hateen Market
DVIDS
September 20, 2007

hateen ied explosion -- sept 21

  • 1st Lt. Christopher Lowry
  • Sgt 1st Class Samuel Popple
  • Golf Company

Patrol of Mansour District

Patrol of Mansour District
DVIDS
September 21, 2007

Patrol of Mansour District - gallery 13592

  • Sgt. Jonathan Ellis
  • Sgt. Jason Billings
  • Staff Sgt. Jeremiah Brennan
  • Alpha Battery