Knee Deep in the Hooah!

I found the following story on DVIDS and wanted to post it here. When Toy Soldier was in BCT he had a very unexpected but very welcome surprise. One Sunday about half-way through BCT and before his AIT started, he went to Chapel. He sat through the sermon and got up to leave and nearly walked right into a young, very tall, very lanky black soldier — who also happened to be Toy Soldier’s best friend! They had lost contact for a little while and neighter knew the other had joined. Toy Soldier was Infantry and his friend was Reserves and going into Communications (although he wound up being a medic). So a childhood chum can surely boost the morale of a soldier.

Face of Defense: Childhood Chums Serve Together in Iraq

Story by Staff Sgt. Dilia Ayala
Date: 04.10.2009
EXCERPT

CAMP TAJI, Iraq – As boys growing up together in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, Air Force Staff Sgt. Jeremy Moersch and Army Spc. Brandon Kosky played cops and robbers, fighting “bad guys” and putting them behind bars in an imaginary world.

Now, more than 15 years later, they’re deployed here and doing something similar. But it’s not a game now, and their actions are helping the Iraqi judiciary system.

Moersch, a member of the 732nd Expeditionary Intelligence Squadron, is a document media exploitation analyst assigned to an Army unit, the Pennsylvania National Guard’s 56th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, in a joint expeditionary tasking assignment. Kosky is an infantry soldier and driver with the 56th Stryker BCT.

“I work primarily on the cell phones. I get all the information off them [and] give them to whoever needs the information,” Moersch said. “In general, it is the whole capturing bad guys, putting them behind bars and keeping them there.” The information from the cell phones can provide soldiers with forewarning of attacks, he explained.

“It may provide information as to where [the enemy] may have weapons caches,” Moersch said. “We’ll let them know, ‘Hey there are weapons over there, go get them.’ That’s fewer weapons that [enemies] have to shoot at [Kosky].”

Air Force Capt. Eric Allen, 56th Stryker BCT’s document and media exploitation officer in charge, also a 732nd EIS member on a joint expeditionary tasking assignment, explained it further.

“We are the document media exploitation team here at Camp Taji,” the captain, deployed from Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala., said. “What we do is support the brigade support team. We support them with intel.
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