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Tuesday, September 27, 2005
‘Operation Boiled Peanut’ shells out taste of home
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Camp Striker, Iraq - All that Spc. Clark Rountree wanted was a bag of boiled peanuts from home.
Rountree got his wish, and then some.
More than two tons of the Georgia delicacy arrived in Baghdad this week for the soldiers of the Georgia Army National Guard’s 48th Brigade Combat Team.
Louie Favorite/AJC
MSgt Daniel Fischer, Hinesville, Staff Sgt Terrence Williams, Milledgeville, and Sgt. Charles Morris, Thomaston, go for the gusto.
“It’s a little taste of home,” Rountree said.
The soldier with Bravo Company, 2nd Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment called his mom, Patricia Anderson, in Owensboro back in August and told her he and his homesick buddies had a hankering for some good old-fashioned boiled peanuts. She immediately sent her son a personal stash.
“They were all gone like that,” Rountree said. “Everyone wanted them.”
So Anderson contacted Rex Bulloch, a peanut farmer in Wilcox County for 35 years. Rountree had worked on Bulloch’s farm before reporting for duty at Fort Stewart in January.
The Georgia 4-H Club got involved and launched “Operation Boiled Peanut.” The mission came to a successful - and happy - end this week. Soldiers started distributing the nuts from four blue crates Tuesday.
“I am thrilled,” Anderson said, “and flabbergasted that a small request could turn out like this.”
The heat is off (sort of)
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Camp Striker, Iraq – Want to know what the weather is like in Baghdad?
Louie Favorite/AJC
The temperature was this high at 6 p.m. on an evening a couple weeks ago.
Turn on a hair dryer and point it at your face all day.
Since June, the average temperature has been 110 degrees. Today, it dropped to a cool 96 degrees. It was almost tolerable.
That’s the first time the temperature has dropped below 100 degrees since the 48th Brigade Combat Team got here.
Atlanta’s famous heat has nothing on Iraq.
