Mosul: five years ago today.

“The Battle of Two Mosques” – This entry in my Iraq War Diary recalls a battle between American troops and insurgent fighters in Mosul, Iraq, on February 12, 2005; five years ago today. I have made just a few, minor grammatical corrections to the original post, which was then password-protected and available only to friends and family. I was working as an embedded photojournalist at the time.

Posted by jim on February 17, 2005 at 12:27:37:

A lot of people have been asking me about the other day, when my captions said I was in a four-hour running gun battle, but I was too tired to write, and it takes a few days to catch up on my rest before I find spare time again. (Today, as it turns out, I have a lot of time because I skipped my mission while recovering from a little knee strain, but it’s no big problem.)

I was sleeping-in because I had a late mission, planning to go out at 11a.m. with the battalion commander on his daily “battlefield circulation,” but at about 0930, he sent a runner to grab me in the hooch. He said they were rolling out in five minutes because another convoy was having “contact,” which means fighting.

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01.30.05 - U.S. troops take cover from sniper fire near a polling station in Mosul.

Happy Birthday to me! I survived the first Iraqi elections.

I’ve been up for 18 hours and I’m too jittery to sleep. Plus, I am still waiting for my roommate, a photographer from another wire service, to return. I’ve been using his power supply for my satellite modem for several days now – since mine was destroyed by a power surge, the second time that happened this year – and now I think he might need to use some of my gear.

When I saw him last, at one of the polling stations today, I learned that he and another colleague had survived, unharmed, after a roadside bomb struck their Stryker. Yet, when bailing out under the threat of a coordinated ambush, there just isn’t time to grab your gear. Read More→