the build...

The bridge is complete and the effort we put into it today has payed off. The shitter truck will once again bless us with their Afghani power washers and urinal cakes. Capt. Hachey showed up at 0800 this morning with his driver Rider. It didn't take us long to get goin, although I had to inform Hryniw that I was not his babysitter and to get his ass outta bed. Admittedly, pretty rude wake up call, and I'm sure he cursed my name under his breath. So we got kicked off around 0830, and the MPEV (multi purpose engineer veh) with Falkowski operating, started to excavate the old bridge out of the ground. It didn't take long for that to happen so then it was on to prying out the 12 in. spikes that the french had driven into the deck and treadway. That proved a little more difficult, and it took a little prying and hammering to get the ones we needed to out. See, some of the wood we were required to salvage in order to make the improvements. KAF had sent out what we needed for the deck and treadway, but nothing else. The 6"x 6"'s were a necessity in order to keep the sections of sheet pile ( large steel girders if you will) from shifting when vehicles enetered the bridge. We got em out eventually, and the MPEV went back to work. The existing bridge had only 4 sections of sheet pile, and it required 6. Prior to us fixing this problem, the middle of the span was open down to the water. This led to a vehicle, operating without a ground guide to run its rear wheels right into the hole upon turning into our parking area. We chained up the old bridge to the bucket of the MPEV and it began hauling back. It looked like a draw bridge raising into the air. Hauled the thing right outta there and the bridge was officially stripped down to the sheet pile.
I gotta tell you, that mpev was invaluable in this task. It then picked up the new 2 sections of sheet pile and hauled em over to the task site. We man handled the sections into place, and all that was left was the decking and treadway. Hammered that together pretty quickly. All 6 of us, Capt. Hachey, Falkowski, Rider, Veilleux, Roberts, Hryniw, and yours truly were pounding nails ( concrete nails albeit) into the decking. It was a chorus of hammers pounding nails, and there were times I wish I would have had ear plugs. The thing went together well before we thought it would. We took lunch, and finished off the treadway right after lunch. And again, 6 chimos pounding the crap out of nails. We probably could have been getting shot at and we would not have even known. We finished off at around 1500 and well ahead of the estimated time of completion. I gotta say I am truly impressed by the work we did today and the effort everyone put forth to get the job done.
The building was complete and it was time to clena the site up. Lt. Hughes approaches and says they need a couple of us to check out a possible IED. So me and Hryniw kit up and take a walk down to the site where we had found the 2 yesterday. They had us walking in circles saying it was east of us and we should approach from the west. And then it was south of us and we should approach from the east. Gong show.....Finally someone up top got their shit together and gave an exact grid to where this thing was. We get in the vicinty and Hryniw begins sweeping the area. We had an area of suspicion and he began his drills. Just then, low and behold, out of the distance, EOD rolls up and says "we'll take it from here." Hryniw was so pumped to get his hands on an IED and then EOD shows up and totally KBs his work. Needless to say he was pissed and so was I. Nothing like letting the engineers to their job. So it turns out the area of interest had a cardboard box in it, that may have looked like a couple of cylindrical objects from the air. The grid they had given was right where the box was and I wondered. Sure enough, the cardboard box was what they had thought was an IED. thanks EOD.... I think they took the box with them...hahaha...
We patrolled back to the PH and the frickin guys are constructing a frame now with the leftover wood. During the buiild the infantry Warrant was lurking around trying to snap up some of our excess salvage from the build. We, were in need of a heated little entrance way to our room. Its dog eat dog out here for wood, so the boys snapped up the extras and immediately began constructing the framework for our little hacienda. Roberts ran that project up as his background is construction. They did an excellent job with the little wood we had and I reckon they'll be putting a roof on that baby in the next few days. Finished off the day cutting the underwear right off my backside (story for another time) and throwing them into the fire pit. Got a shower and looks like it may be my last for awhile as I'm heading back to the crew in a few hours from now. I'm very happy to be spending Christmas with the section and look forward to hearing their endeavors over the past 2 weeks.
Thats it for now... Happy Holidays back to Canada.. I can't believe its only a week away... Love you guys... night