Last Thursday, I got up at 1:30 in the morning to travel to the Port of Umm Qasr to do a story on the US Navy Riverines. Keep in mind this assignment was four days ago, and all I’ve done is cut up b-roll. I do get to make a baseball stat analogy where I could have possibly been the first army soldier in Southern Iraq near the port of Umm Qasr in the month of September before 7:00 in the morning to be on a navy boat. Apparently Monty and Raley were the first to witness an Army band play on a US Navy Destroyer in the Persian Gulf while wearing crocks.

The guys on the boat were great. The driver stopped quick once and I hit my knees. The gunners thought that was funny. I found it’s hard to keep ones balance while looking through a camera viewfinder on a 30-foot assault craft. One cool thing about these river boats is the amount of ammo on board. They have something like 4 M-240B machine guns and a .50-cal. You don’t mess with these guys on the river.

Here are some of the photos I got.

This post is tagged 17th FiB, 17th Fires Brigade, 343rd MPAD, Brown Water Navy, River Boats, Riverine Squadren 2, US Navy