Goodby Mac, We'll miss you.

Well all, as you may have heard on the news, yesterday was a very bad day for us. Although none of our boys were in the area, we lost our BDE FSO, Mac to a suicide bomber. He was a charismatic leader from PA who was an exemplary leader and a friendly associate. He was quick to correct us but in a way you felt ok about it. He loved the sound of his own voice and would go on until he forgot what he was talking about. I loved that about him. He was quite a character whom I had a lot of respect for. I will miss him. It hit me kind of hard when I found out combined with seeing the dead, dying, and wounded troops and civilians at our medical facilities. It was overwhelming to see so many ambulances; dozens, bring them in, triage, blood, death, helicopters taking the most critical patients away.

The incident happened right outside our FOB. A suicide bomber wearing a suicide vest detonated in a crowd of locals who were there to apply for Iraqi Police jobs. I saw the aftermath on a display in the TOC from a UAV feed. I talked to some of the Fire Support boys that were there to console them as best I could.

Hopefully some good can come out of this and the Sunni that revere the “freedom fighters” will see now that they are nothing more than criminals killing their own sons. This is not Shia Bagdad. It is Sunni Ramadi. I hate this place. KT out.

BTW, Mac is the guy in the PT uniform on the left. Patrick is on the right. It’s the only pic I have of Mac. He came out that morning to check on the troops after a rocket attack and we bumped into him while doing crater analysis.