The Exodus

...Monochrome...part V...

2011-05-01T20:43:00.000+03:00

...well this is most likely the last photos that will be going up. I hope the few of you who read this enjoyed the writings and photos. If anything new comes up I will post up on here, but at this point, this is The Exodus signing off.

- The Exodus

...Monochrome...part IV...

2011-04-07T21:45:00.000+03:00

- The Exodus

...Monochrome...part III...

2011-04-01T19:23:00.000+03:00

...so I'm pretty positive not many people read this anymore or browse the photos, but until I run out of photos, I'm going to keep posting.

- The Exodus

...Monochrome...part II...

2011-03-23T18:40:00.000+03:00

- The Exodus

...Monochrome...part I...

2011-03-17T19:17:00.001+03:00

...it would appear this blog is winding down, but it's not dead yet. I have a bunch of black and whites that I shot on Andrew's Konica Hexar. Brilliant little camera. I still have four rolls to develop, but as of now I have enough to fill up three more entries. Hope you enjoy.

- The Exodus

...Holga...Part II...

2011-03-04T22:16:00.001+03:00

...more photos of us coming home...Been developing black and white as well, should have them up next week. Giunta just informed me he should have new stuff any day, so we should have some new writings soon.

- The Exodus

...Holga...Part I...

2011-02-22T22:11:00.002+03:00

...so it would appear that I lost track of how expensive it is to develop 120mm film. For that reason alone I can see why the hipster apps for the Iphone and Droid have become so popular. People can't afford to use the real thing! Here are some shots from Iraq taken on my Holga.

- The Exodus

...The Road Home...part VI...

2011-02-16T21:24:00.000+03:00

...last few photos from The Road Home portion. They are not very exciting, just what I did Christmas day, cleaned all my gear and put it in a box. It now sits and waits for my next trip. Giunta has been working on a few new posts, not sure when they will be up, so hang in there. I also finally got my Holga stuff developed and will be posting those photos at a later date. I have yet to develop the black & white rolls I shot, but I will be shortly.

- The Exodus

...The Road Home...part V...

2011-02-11T23:52:00.000+03:00

...blood pressure, hearing loss, dental; oh my!!!

- The Exodus

...The Road Home...part IV...

2011-02-07T22:11:00.000+03:00

...families of the 53rd IBCT welcome home the men and women who served over in Kuwait/Iraq.

- The Exodus

...The Road Home...part III...

2011-02-01T22:24:00.002+03:00

...who is one of the first people that greeted us after being gone for a year? Santa of course!

- The Exodus

...The Road Home...part II...

2011-01-26T19:23:00.001+03:00

...I must first explain why it has been so long since I've updated this blog. Currently I am in the Great White North visiting family and dealing with a handful of family health issues. I could spend the next two paragraphs going on with woe is me, but I will spare the few of you who read this...but if you believe in prayer or if you are just a finger crosser, get to work because my family needs it! So that being said, I have not had time to get on my computer in the past week or so and update with photos.

Also, Giunta apparently has writers block...still, so feel free to leave nasty comments telling him to get going so we have some new writings up as well.

- The Exodus

...The Road Home...part I...

2011-01-16T01:30:00.004+03:00

..this will probably be a five to six part series, so hang in there. Here are photos of us coming home. From loading up the trucks to stepping off the plane....and then much more. Giunta is currently working on a new post as well, but it would appear he is having writer's block, so once he is done it will go up.

- The Exodus

...Transfer of Authority...

2011-01-12T23:37:00.001+03:00

...a week or so before we left the Florida National Guard 1-124th Infantry had a Transfer of Authority ceremony with the New Hampshire National Guard 1/201st Field Artillery of the 197th Brigade. The purpose of the ceremony is to hand over responsibility of carrying out the mission which the 1-124th had been given. Below are a few photos from this ceremony.

- The Exodus

...Award Ceremony...

2011-01-10T23:37:00.001+03:00

...for the next week or so I will be posting photos up of the last couple weeks while we were overseas. I've been a bit lazy and finally motivated myself to starting sorting out the photos and edit them. Below is a brief ceremony that was held for the Soldiers in Bravo Co......and one civilian! The light was awful, so the photos aren't the greatest, but it was important to still photograph. The conclusion of our journey is finally here.

- The Exodus

...Merry Christmas!!!

2010-12-25T09:25:00.000+03:00

So for the few of you who actually follow this, we are still here. The 53rd and myself have made it home before Christmas and currently spending time with our family and friends. I have a bunch of photos that I've yet to edit of the 1-124th handing over responsibilities to the new unit (my apologies for forgetting which one, I will make sure to find out), us getting ready to leave Kuwait then finally arriving and out-processing at Ft. Stewart, Ga. It may be a week or two until anything new goes up due to myself and Giunta being lazy. Hang in there and in a week or so there will be some new photos up to look at...maybe even a new entry from Giunta!

Until then, cheers everyone, it's been one hell of a ride.

The Exodus

...Faces Part XII...

2010-11-27T13:57:00.000+03:00

The new studio... SPC. Robert Grieves / SPC. Ronald Farah / PFC. Tovany Fernandez / SSG. Vincent Parker

...and if you haven't read it already, scroll down to the bottom or click the link and read Giunta's latest post Cliff Notes

- The Exodus

...The Count Down...

2010-11-24T20:23:00.001+03:00

...soon I will be at home, sitting on that bench, sipping on a scotch or red wine or something with my dog and folks.....feel free to join....

New portraits will be posted up soon and hopefully something from Giunta as well.

- The Exodus

...Light 'em Up Boys & Girls...

2010-11-22T16:22:00.001+03:00

...We lit up some cigars in honour of our last mission through Iraq. A small part of me will miss this place and the routine I've grown accustomed to, but a larger part of me is happy that I won't have to fight with a Ugandan in order to eat anymore.

- The Exodus

...Farewell Farewell Iraq...

2010-11-20T11:33:00.000+03:00

...A few more photos from my last mission in Iraq. There is also a post below this by Giunta, so go read.

- The Exodus

...Cliff Notes...

2010-11-17T15:01:00.004+03:00

14NOV2010

rest over night

“Hey Diaz, you want to come to the hookah bar?” Diaz—a six-foot, 230lbs, serial-killer looking kind of man-child—didn’t even look up from his computer, “I would Sarge, but I gotta level-up my Night Elf Princess.” The rest of us moved along to smoke and drink near beer, listening to music and talking about women or the self-destructive behavior we’ll find when we re-deploy state side.

adder to kalsu

There has been progress in this country, sure, and progress is a good thing I’m told. But there is a dark force out there, a force we’ve let slip through our fingers, one for which there is no control, a super-secret, Iraqi-ninja society known as: The Rock Sniper. Receive small arms fire, you gain fire-power superiority; IEDs enter the theater, you armor your trucks and personnel; IEDs are up-graded to armor piercing, you go-go gadget electronic warfare; a teenage, Iraqi national throws a rock, you say, “Hey you little bastard, stop throwing rocks!” Which would you say is the least proportionally adequate method to deter a given action? In 2003, we chased down a kid who threw a rock at our patrol. An hour later, his father came to collect him from our EPW holding cells, spanking him several times before they left our compound. My father spanked me a couple of times when I was a young pup, behavior modification, ineffective. It was a few checkpoints north of Adder when the radio made a sound like, “Be advised, children throwing rocks at the 3 o’clock.” “Roger, did you get pictures?” “Um.” Pictures? I think of FBI data base files on eight year olds, or the future scouting rosters to fill major league bull pins ten years down the road. What the hell people, just give up.

staging yards

X hours prior to movement, the CET drove into the staging yard to mount the heavy weapons and link up with the transportation unit. The yard resembles truck stops along the highways back home, with the long lines of semi-trucks parked just off from the fuel point. There are a few office buildings, for management and food distribution and intelligence briefings. Lots of lights. And armed guards here and there, ushering traffic or supervising the movements of nationals hired for this or that. When we pulled into the yard this night, we saw no trans unit to meet. The gunners made themselves busy with the big guns and the drivers started going through the engine checking for leaks or cracks or tears and so on. The leaders had met in the middle, and shrugged off the worries of the missing convoy members, talked about the task at hand instead. The trip to the offices was a disappointment, finding all the doors were shut up by chains and pad-locks. On the walk back to the trucks and crews we had finally noticed all the lights were out—Zombie Apocalypse? We were alone, ready to roll, staged and waiting, but alone. Twenty minutes later, a humvee comes through, stopping short of us and letting out about a half a dozen passengers from the cargo-bed. The dismounts scattered and set to work on something, and our CET leader strolled over to see what-was-what. When he came back to us he was shaking his head, saying, “There’s a bomb threat on the staging yards.”

kalsu to vbc

Ten, maybe twenty minutes out of the gate, just enough time for our miles of convoy to straighten out into the order of march and get some good spacing, the radio squelched, “IED, IED, IED, push through!” OK. And? I knew it was our lead truck by the sound of the voice in my headset, but, did it detonate—I didn’t hear anything—was someone hurt, where was it? When you receive contact, you want all the information, right then, or you feel like the world might end. But the information never comes right then, it’s a trickling process, and some of those trickles of detail will never get to you, ever. They’re lost in the flood of what really happened.

The fun part is that the information doesn’t stop at your level. You have to report to other elements in the area (immediately), then Sheriff, then the Landowner, and then your own company and battalion. I called Sheriff, “You this is me, be advised, an IED struck this truck at that checkpoint, no injuries, no damage, we’re pulling out of the area to establish a security halt.”

“Sheriff copies all.”

Then I typed away at my keypad to report to the Landowner, thinking, report one—finished. But no, more information trickled into my ears, “Be advised, two Iraqi Army were in the area just before the blast, then they came back, this was at the 9 o’clock.” I called Sheriff back with the amendment.

“Sheriff copies all.”

And I went back to typing. The rear gun truck trickled, “Be advised, small arms fire from the 3 o’clock, 150 meters.” My gunner set to scanning his sector, I called Sheriff.

“Sheriff copies all.”

Now the lead truck called back for the wrecker, there’s damage to his vehicle, flat tires and so on. I called Sheriff, “you this is me,” “you this is me,” sigh, “you this is me!”

“This is Handcuff, send your traffic and we will relay to Sheriff.” Handcuff is an aerial unit, they circle the country from above, monitoring and relaying transmissions when radios are out of range. So I told him the whole story: IED strike, two IAs, small arms fire, security halt, vehicle damaged, self-recovery in progress.

“Roger, will relay.” Wait. “Be advised, Sheriff copies all.”

OK. Now I needed to finish typing, message to Landowner, done, and, sent. And just then I get another squelch, “This is So-and-so X-ray, you are halted in our AO, please respond.” It’s the Landowner, and I wanted to say, check your damn in-box. Instead, I repeated, “IED, x2 IAs, SAF 3 o’clock, halted for maintenance, copy?” Nothing. “Copy?” Damn it, “Handcuff, please relay.”

“So-and-so X-ray copies all.”

Nothing happened for a minute, I checked on my gunner who looked bored. I collected some grids, one for the IED another for the halt and so on. Then I heard, “This is So-and-so X-ray, be advised, we’re sending EOD to clear your site, they’re on this freq.” “Roger.” I had no intention of changing freqs. Then again, “Be advised, we’re sending in aerial support to provide cover, they’re on this freq.” “Roger.” I still had no intention of changing freqs.

“This is Avenger such-and-such, your aerial support, requesting situation report.” Fuck! “IED, x2 IAs, SAF, halted, self-recovery.” “That’s a good copy, requesting you drop to our freq.” “No.”

storyboards and apples

When we pulled into VBC, the three soldiers from the damaged truck were hauled off to medical for observations; a series of memory tests, like remembering a few random words and being able to recall them some time later. The truck was brought off to maintenance for repairs. And our crew was placed on a mandatory ‘stand-down’ for twenty-four hours. The other NCOs and the Convoy Commander, all went to the offices for up-dates and gossip. The storyboard of our ‘encounter with the enemy’ was on the big-screen. It was the collected efforts of amassing trickles of information into a solid body, and it was completely inaccurate. Which is fine, I imagine.

We herded ourselves back out into the lanes to see our three soldiers had returned, in one piece too, which is nice. Bertelli, the leader of that truck, filled us in on all the quack-stuff doctors like to do. And we told them we heard, while we were in the office, that another convoy had been hit, and that they’d be coming through soon. So we loitered around waiting for them, curious to see how they had faired comparatively. When their impacted truck idled past, we saw a softball-sized hole, through and through the armor. And Bertelli said, “apple, bubble, elbow…”

vbc to vbc

Our first attempt to push from VBC to JBB ended up being a six and a half hour push from VBC to VBC. I never lost sight of the FOB. An axle on one of the whites—contracted local nationals—broke off on one side. I had to break apart an Iraqi Police checkpoint to turn us around. There was a man with a suitcase who ranked about a 7 on a scale of ‘1-Shaddy’. Mortars fell in on the rear of our convoy as we re-entered the FOB. It was a long, dull and painful night; I’m grumpy just thinking about it.

corrective training

On the final leg of the trip, we passed southbound past one of our sister units heading north. As my truck met with theirs, my gunner was assaulted by a barrage of chemlites from the opposite truck. “Throw back, throw back,” I said. He missed about a dozen times before we were too close to Kuwait and they were too close to Iraq. He took the opportunity to be a smart-ass, “Sorry, I never went to a chemlite range.” It was a little funny, but even for fun, you can’t take lip from a Joe, so I set him to the corrective training of sniping targets with chemlites all the way home—rocks, tires, dead camels and so on. Good training.

notes

In the event of significant actions, it has become common practice to utilize your windows as a blackboard. They are the Cliff Notes of the what-went-wrongs along your route; a scribbled listing of the order of march, the ten-digit grid of an IED detonation or security halt or small arms fire; a clumsy account of misfortune, recorded in sharpie marker and suspended in air on the glass in front of you. By the end of what I hope is my last mission, my windshield was scared with the crocked information of a bumpy road—like artwork drawn by my little nephew, if he was colorblind and having an epileptic fit.

- The Exodus

...Light Wars...

2010-11-15T16:40:00.002+03:00

...photos from what may very well have been my last mission before going home. Chem-light wars always make for a good time.

- The Exodus

...For Your Entertainment...(read below post)

2010-11-13T00:00:00.002+03:00

the man...the myth...the legend...the soon to be dictator of Nicaragua...the Luna.

...For Your Entertainment...

2010-11-12T22:57:00.003+03:00

...A brief conversation with an Iraqi...

Luna - "Is this made in Iraq"

Iraqi - "Yes"

Luna - "Let me guess, Baghdad?"

Iraqi - "Yes mista, made in Iraq!"

Luna - "Then why does it say made in India?"

Iraqi - *silence*

All other quotes from this mission would probably involve me putting up one of those "enter only if you are 18 and older" type things.....I'm keeping it clean for the children.

Photos to come soon from what was most likely my last mission and more writings from Giunta.

- The Exodus

...On the Road Again...

2010-11-08T02:50:00.001+03:00

...photos from my most recent mission. I think I only have one or two more missions left in me before the towel is thrown in...the Ugandans have been brutal lately!

- The Exodus

...And Finally...

2010-11-05T01:57:00.002+03:00

...the last set of photos from two missions ago, then I'll post some up from the most recent.

- The Exodus

...A Very Common Delay...

2010-11-03T16:15:00.000+03:00

...the process of changing out a blown tire on a HET (Heavy Equipment Transporter) during convoy operations in Iraq. This happens a lot.

- The Exodus

...This Emptiness...

2010-11-01T16:50:00.001+03:00

...a few months ago I photographed the last combat Brigade Leaving Iraq. I watched as plenty of other news agencies photographed and video-taped the event; later I saw what they photographed in papers, magazines and brief clips for prime-time television. I watched in disgust seeing the staged footage and the media preaching how all combat units have left Iraq, which wasn't exactly a lie, but stretching the truth. The cookie-cutter bullshit journalism made my jaw drop as I saw photos get published of convoys and bases that I have been covering almost half a year prior, and currently still doing, then hear, "The war is over, it's time for Operation New Dawn"...a day or two later after the last combat brigade left Iraq I woke up and was given the news that a couple friends of mine just got hit by an EFP and a soldier I know quite well took shrapnel to the neck and arm. The rest of the day was spent waiting to hear the news on how he was, luckily it wasn't bad enough to send him home.

The media has grown bored of Iraq and has completely shifted it's attention to Afghanistan, which years before was the other way around. So to the few of you who actually read this blog, there is still a lot going on here and lots of work to still be done in Iraq. The war may have a fancy new name and the gunfights and massive IED's of yesterday are few and far between, but don't believe the hype when you hear, "We've pulled out of Iraq". If that was the case I'd be at home sipping on a Scotch and not riding in a vehicle listening to all the bloody reports of IEDs and small arms fire that went off in the last 24 hours while supplies are still being dragged in and out of Iraq.

More photos from my last mission below. I just got back from another one and will post them shortly.

- The Exodus

...The Crappiest Fun We Ever Had...

2010-10-29T09:34:00.001+03:00

...here are some more photos from my most recent mission. They involve us sitting in a sand storm for roughly four hours because visibility was so low and the convoy couldn't move forward....this was a sandstorm we already drove through and were told to go back, which forced us to sit in it...part II.

- The Exodus

...A View Through my Window...

2010-10-25T23:56:00.002+03:00

...here are some photos from my most recent mission....part I.

- The Exodus

...A Day in the Life...

2010-10-24T23:45:00.003+03:00

...so to keep this blog from falling off the face of the earth I'm going to start posting a photo or group of photos everyday until we leave, assuming I'm not on a mission. When Giunta writes something new I'll post it. Until then here are two photos from the 40 man tents we just got put in until we leave. Myself and Russell were given the phrase, "You sank my battleship!"

This will become, in some form, a day in the life series for the next month and a half.

I also have a bunch of work from my previous mission, they should be going up in the next few days.

- The Exodus

...Salt of the Earth...

2010-10-05T19:59:00.001+03:00

There’s a certain level of charm to any unsuspected, hipster-hangout, where the smell of decayed fish meets the latest cool guy cologne; aerating into what could best be described as scented Lysol disinfectant spray, settling over a not so often scooped kitty box. Think of the open sea markets of Seattle and Tacoma, or the dingy dregs of dockside shanties in Duluth and Superior. This stagnant odor of lagoon at low tide lingering in the woodwork of this dive was a heartwarming happenstance to fumble upon here in Brooklyn—a peaceful aside from the apparent social normality of climbing down basement stairs or entering through utility closets to find what this month’s in-crowd calls the cat’s pajamas.

Not that last night’s unexpected entry into my agenda wasn’t without its own, “It’s cool because it’s obnoxious.” The G train—which, in itself being elusive, that it, and seemingly at random, will reverse enroute, not completing its fully advertised run—is the closest connection in the only neighborhood in the borough that hasn’t fasten hold to out-skirted, metropolitan public transportation; making the pub only accessible by car or taxi or a well-soled pair of new kicks. Further still, the mere arrival at this watering hole is but hardly the first hindrance to elbowing the sticky bar counter to call for a pint; finding that, the hours of operation hold significant variation of arbitrary listings; welcoming patrons three to four days of the week, at what may seem, a trickling of sporadic, late night hours.

In regards to my personal attempts to belly-up at this particular pub, my initial voyage out to Red Hook was thwarted by what could only be described as hurricane force winds. The skies turned green and gray and rotten in general, and along came the types of winds that make the rains go sideways, pushing on and on until the thick-trunked trees pull over and bring with them the pavement secured to their base, coming to rest within the interior of the parked cars along the curbside. I would hear the following morning that this storm had even spawned no less than two tornados. Florida weather found in peak season, a piece of home, come to visit while I played and drank and acted a fool. It was ambiance befitting the establishment’s motif, heightening my next day’s desire to seek out the adventure once more and with better luck.

The face of the building, along with its location, the proximity to the dockyards and the stench of last month’s bait lines cooking away in the Autumn air, had me nicknaming the place and calling it so in no time, “Popeye’s Hangout.” Through the doorway I found a long and slender bar ally, crammed with drunkards as the sign of a truly fine and notable enterprise. It had the usual row of barstools lining the counter but obstructed as always by the max. capacity, standing room only crowd, who loyally remain indifferent to your want for rest. The stools themselves, if ever you’ve the chance to claim one, rock from side-to-side, I imagine for lack of the complimentary four bolt set, required to fasten them steadily—given the atmosphere and plentiful clichés on hand, I couldn’t help but recall my nights on the bay with heavy wake rolling and rocking me so.

The first of many pleasantries I noted came with my stout, poured into what you would expect to find a malt or milkshake or float; not the average, “Well, you’re having an ale from a pint, a lager from a pilsner, a stout from a stein, because it’s easier to hold your nose tilted so, when drinking each beer from a glass according to its right.” And so on. This made me happy, and the beer from my shake-cup made me drunk, which made me happier still, which, by and by caused me to explore deeper.

In doing so I found this narrow line of herded customers, stacked on the counter as if stuck on the trough at feeding time, was only so at first glance. Beyond the cattle were two or three rooms, including a back patio, and each room not packed shoulder-to-shoulder but properly seated with tables and chairs and each affixed with its own lighting and mood. A multitude of individuality making Popeye’s Hangout much more complex a thing than I could have deduced the night before, from outside looking in with all that gloomy weather causing such a fuss.

It wasn’t until the band struck up a new set, that I took the appropriate measures to note the breed of customer, having previously not paid any attention to their sect of trend or fashion. My initial impression, rather assumption, was some gritty ode to “The Salt of the Earth,” which, I imagine I gathered from the structure of things; the haggard old barmaid, the working-class neighborhood, and moreso, perhaps, from the white polka-dot pattern of sidewalk outside—courtesy of the flocked pigeons and seagulls and the like. Now I am hardly the musical aficionado—which is to say I still hold on to classic rock like it’s all I’ve ever known—but I imagine still, it will do their play justice to simply say it wasn’t quite rock or jazz or blues or swing, but some illegitimate child of the lot. To which it wouldn’t shock me to see fans of The Charleston or Zoot Suits or long and loose gowns of the Big-Band era—to which, by the by, I saw each and more. It was a horrid display of chaos, somehow made to come to order. I couldn’t help but wish that prohibition were somehow reinstated, feeling, and by gut only, that the evening was of the sort my drunken brethren experienced many decades ago; coolness factor increased not hindered by the oppressive Big Brother of the day.

The evening, in spite of how original and happy of a start it began, soon fell in line with what is expected from all evenings. Which is to say the slow and inevitable haze of intoxication began its removing of single details of my surroundings, one-by-one at first, and shortly, fistfuls at a time. All vanished until one lonely picture remained of a peaceful and serene clarinetist. She was patient and unbothered while tapping her foot and nodding her head so, waiting measure upon measure for a small note or two, which was presently all the music required of her skill. I do not mean to belittle her, for in those few notes the song was made complete, and having been removed would have been a notable loss. I find, I believe, it is in those little details that make a night worthy of remembrance—which is to say, a drunk cynic gives the same romantic value to a beautiful musician, as he does a forgotten bass, pan-seared on the asphalt adjacent to the East River.

- The Exodus

...A little R & R...Part II...

2010-09-29T20:28:00.001+03:00

- The Exodus

...A little R & R...Part I...

2010-09-27T17:06:00.003+03:00

...Giunta is currently driving around Iraq and I am stuck back in Kuwait waiting to get on a few more missions before we go home for good. There are a few new written entries that are ready to go up, but until that can happen Giunta needs to type them up. So until then, here are some photos.

...oh and for you camera geeks out there, all of this was shot with a Canon s90. I was too lazy to carry around anything that wouldn't fit in my pocket, so forgive the lack of pin-point sharpness.

- The Exodus

...And We Are Back...

2010-09-22T18:06:00.001+03:00

...stay tuned for more...

- The Exodus

...Hiatus...

2010-09-04T04:51:00.001+03:00

...this blog will be on a temporary hiatus for the next two weeks as we roam around Brooklyn and Manhattan. We will return to the sandbox and have this thing up and running again.

In other news, if you see a sept. 6th issue of Newsweek pick it up. If you look hard enough, you will find a photo of mine in there.

Cheers,
The Exodus

...Newsweek!...

2010-08-25T21:02:00.002+03:00

4/2 Stryker pull-out of Iraq. Newsweek.

- The Exodus

...Faces Part XI...

2010-08-18T17:50:00.001+03:00

SSG. John Goldwire, SSG. Ronald Lubin, PFC. Esteban Figueroa, PFC. Daryll Carrodeguas, SPC. Hernan Avendano

- The Exodus

...Faces Part X...

2010-08-14T19:41:00.001+03:00

CPL. David Rodriguez, SPC. Kerry Roman, PFC. Orlando Texidor, PFC. Jesse Hubbard

- The Exodus

...It's All Just a Dream...part II...

2010-08-10T01:53:00.002+03:00

...last set of photos from last mission.

- The Exodus

...It's All Just a Dream...

2010-08-05T04:20:00.001+03:00

...I figured it would be better to put some real'ish photos up instead of just the fishing ones. So if you scroll down past this post you will see some random fishing photos and a post by Giunta.

- The Exodus

...Fishing...(read below)

2010-08-04T20:50:00.002+03:00

...Giunta will mainly be writing the introduction for the book we've been working on, so I'll try and keep this month going with photos from the last mission and more portraits.

- The Exodus

...Disconnected Daydreams...read below!!!

2010-08-03T00:51:00.002+03:00

...Disconnected Daydreams..

2010-08-01T00:13:00.001+03:00

29 JULY 2010

Kalsu has a fishing pond. You can rent out some fishing poles and bait your lines with chunks of hot dogs and such. The PX has cases of near beer and you can steal ice from the water coolers and have a nice little time of it. So we did.

There were four of us out there, all sitting cross-legged by the pond and holding a couple of cheap toy poles that wouldn’t cast on their own. We were pulling out the lines by hand and throwing them off into the water. And we were sipping on beers that, no matter how fast or how many we drank, wouldn’t do us any good or get any of us drunk. The view on the other side of the pond was the FOB’s fence-line, with guard towers popping up here and there. The experience wasn’t quite like docking the boat off some tiny island in the inner coastal, but still, I felt at home by the attempt to create a peaceful evening out on the water.

It was a good setting for random and disconnected daydreams. On our push the night before we trucked through a part of town called New Baghdad. First I was fixed on scanning the rubble for IEDs, and I was thinking, they could be anywhere; I’ve seen them paved under the road and shoved up a camel’s ass. Now I’m on Easter Egg hunts at St. George’s Catholic Church, in Newnan, GA. And I think we had a Priest who looked like Beetlejuice. But the streets cleaned up and there were tall, evenly spaced palms and fresh paint on buildings and electricity shining through every corner’s street-lamp. Once you cross the city limits into Boca Raton, the grass literally becomes greener and the air fresher, I always thought that was funny. And suddenly I craved a mojito and the company of a Florida girl dressed for the tropical air, which is hardly dressed at all. The push had been to FOB Hammer from VBC, twenty miles roundabout. It took us six hours and I had imagined an army on bicycles zipping past and beating us to the gate.

At VBC I had seen a Battalion-size element of Ugandan soldiers, formed in columns of two and marching into chow. I decided VBC was something to the sort of their Basic Training area, remembering how, when I was a baby on Sand Hill, the Drill Sergeants used to file us into the DFAC just the same. And many of them had a little red ribbon tied to their blouse and I thought maybe their instructors used it to monitor their water consumption. We used a string of parachute cord, tying knots every time we finished a canteen. And, I thought, what if we just kept training these Ugandan folks, who we already use for tower guard and such. We could assemble a countless mass of them, our own clone army, and have them go off and do all our army stuff, while we sip boat drinks with our old lady in her favorite bikini and so on.

I was interrupted just then by an orange-strawberry Gatorade, and painfully remembered the time I said, “shit” or “fuck” or “cock sucking, douche bag,” and my mother locked me in the bathroom with scented soap in my mouth. I’m sure I felt sorry to have sworn then, but now, all I remember is the nasty fucking flavor of orange-strawberry soap in my damn mouth. I don’t swear much aloud anymore. Maybe I should be made to hold bars of soap in my hands until they write clean words?

I daydreamt of measurable change too. We had to take a partial load at VBC and another at Hammer and still some more at Kalsu. Another CET we ran into drove up north to JBB to pick up a load of nothing, and had to be re-routed here and there to find lost items for downgrade. I imagine it was all disorganized efforts on someone’s part to earn a merit badge for quantity of work rather than quality, or their inability to communicate simple numbers through the complicated new technology that is a telephone. Yes, that sounds right to me, and it is much more believable than measurable change.

These are the sort of things I thought about while the four of us fished a desert pond, sitting next to bold-print signs that read: DO NOT EAT FISH. The sign, well intended, didn’t matter anyway. We didn’t catch anything, which is fine.

- The Exodus

...And We Are Back...

2010-07-30T12:16:00.000+03:00

....give us a few days for new photos and writings.

- The Exodus

...Still on the Road...

2010-07-26T16:50:00.000+03:00

...updates in the next few days.

- The Exodus

...The Man in White...(taken down)

2010-07-22T00:56:00.004+03:00

16 JULY 2010

A guy we call ‘Body Bags’ is filling in for one of our drivers on this next mission. He’s a talker, full of shit mainly. He really did deploy with us in 2003, and spent as much time in Ramadi as the rest of the old boys, but that’s about the end of it, all else fades to fiction. He goes on about the time we took Blackhawks into Syria, to work with Special Forces. Really it was Al-Qaim, and though SF was there, their involvement with our unit was limited; say, if we raided a house and found a high-valued target, we ‘hooded’ them and passed them off. So it isn’t complete fiction, but it is stretching the yarn a little thin. There’s something contagious about a good story, and once you get your mind set on it, it’s hard not to play out what it was like from the days you can still remember.

It was the first time I had ever seen a real AK-47 up close. And it was the first time we had ever conducted a Traffic Control Point too, about a week after we’d taken over the city. The rifle was at the floorboards on the passenger side of a car I had halted. I yelled, “Gun” or “I need some help” or whatever it was, in the next moment an entire platoon had swallowed the area. They were pulling weapons up to the high ready or searching the car on hands and knees and then there were the few who decided to rough up the two nationals we’d snatched from their seats. The search produced nothing but a handful of loaded magazines. And the two men proclaimed to love Bush and our army and our country. Our platoon leader—the rest of us probably too—was still new to war, still naive, still lacking that cynical touch that often proves well in battle. After manhandling them a bit, we gave them back their rifle and sent them on their way. Maybe it was coincidence that we were ambushed moments later. I don’t know.

The ambush started after we had all piled onto the back of a deuce and a half, an out-dated military truck, a troop carrier. We were at our most vulnerable, all huddled together and filling in a tight little bull’s eye of a target. Two or three RPG rounds came at us from right to left. They were poorly aimed, one passing a foot or so from the engine block and the other just above our heads. Then came small arms fire from the same direction. We fired back some but our truck came to a quick stop and most of us flew forward tripping over one another. The platoon was divided when we hit the ground—a squad to assault, another to lay perimeter to the north and the last to complete the perimeter south.

The moment I took to my fighting position along the hasty perimeter, headlights from another motorist grew into the outline of a car, and the outline became bigger and clearer, and the car was just about on top of us. Someone yelled, “Warning shot!” But one bullet became many until the squealing brakes silenced everything. The man stepped out of his car with his hands held high. He was wearing a white dishdasha. He was my father’s age, I imagine. And he had a good scruff of beard growing, it suited him. A Joe named Parker was next to me on the line; he and I rose up and moved in on the surrendering driver. His clothes were white. I thought, when he collapsed, maybe he was in shock, or maybe, he was having a heart attack. There was a single bullet hole in the windshield. I don’t remember which of us called for the medic. His clothes were still white and clean because the bullet had torn into his lung, and what would have become bloodstains was slowly drowning him instead. There was nothing in his car and he had been on his way home from work, I imagine.

I think of that man every time one of the Joes from this deployment complains about the new and strict Rules of Engagement. The guys want to ‘light up’ anything that comes within a hundred meters of us, but they can’t. The most harmless pyrotechnic we have is a pen flare. It’s a small cylinder with a thumb depressor controlling a spring-based trigger. The flare is a tiny blasting cap that, once charged by the spring, will fly at a slow rate of speed for a few hundred meters or so, until it burns out and falls from the sky. The newest addition to our ROE advises that we may no longer use pen flares to warn off local traffic. Any time we fire one of these flares, an incident report must be filed, and an investigation to ensure its proper use will be conducted by an external unit’s officer.

It’s hard to justify the implementation of these new rules to young soldiers, soldiers who still have the means to sleep well at night. Even I have trouble keeping my index finger relaxed in times of high stress or questionable situations. I must try and remember the man in the white dishdasha, who laid at my feet swallowing back his own blood, and the countless other noncombatants, as there were many to follow him, who suffered the fate of being too close to war. And when I think of them, the elderly the women and children, the innocence lost, I must take a small measure of comfort in fighting with one hand administratively tied behind my back.

- The Exodus

...Be Still...

2010-07-17T22:59:00.001+03:00

...photos from last mission and July 4th shenanigans.

- The Exodus

...Movement...

2010-07-14T21:28:00.003+03:00

...when I first heard, almost a year ago, that the 1-124th INF. were going to be doing convoy security in Iraq, I was assuming the missions would be run during the day. To my disappointment almost every mission has been run during the night which makes taking photos without a flash rather difficult. Since I'm plagued by long exposures, I've been trying to make colourful night photos with a heavy emphasis on movement. So here is a handful of frames from the last mission I was on.

- The Exodus

...The Third...

2010-07-11T23:39:00.002+03:00

03 JULY 2010

My father and I had the boat out last summer, drifting down Boca Ciega Bay, and he was trying to teach me about a jib or a boom or some other nautical jargon for ropes and pulleys. My stepmother, bless her heart, was lounging on the deck and reading off some fun facts about reincarnation and other little ‘could-happens’ of the afterlife. I had been drinking, as usual, and had decided to ask her, “Do you know what I think happens when you die?” And, as she typically shows genuine interest in my opinion, she asked, “What’s that?” I said, “It’s a lot like laying in a hammock on a secluded beach…except, you’re not laying down, there’s no hammock and no beach.”

It’s not that I don’t necessarily believe in God, but if He is out there, I find it extremely unlikely that any of my prayers or sins would determine which corner of the ant farm He’d focus His magnifying glass. I believe the world is arbitrarily unfair, and that, if something, anything happens when you die, it will be a surprise. However, much like all ex-catholics—practicing ones too, I imagine—my suspicion of an omnipotent being grows exponentially when I feel scared or guilty or think that I may have mocked Him with just a little too much blasphemy.

This week’s guilt was over something silly I had said during a phone call home. In an attempt to calm my father’s worries regarding my proximity to danger, I told him, “It would take an act of God for them to get me.” It was bold, arrogant, naive and a very ‘me’ thing to say. It did nothing to ease my father’s mind; it was able to raise a distracting level of paranoia for fear of being smited by a super-being, who may or may not exist, let alone give a damn about my own existence.

This was hardly bothersome for me—it was just a tiny notation somewhere in my subconscious, waiting for the right chance to re-emerge back into a level of awareness—until the convoy brief the following day. The brief is a last minute check to ensure the trans unit and gun trucks are all on the same sheet of music: how many personnel and vehicles, the order of movement, route, significant activity on that route, what to do in the event of and so on. The brief is always immediately followed by a prayer—as if begging our imaginary friend for protection will somehow harden our armor more so than as designed by the manufacturer. I imagine our enemies do the same and that they pray for the same sort of success in battle. I do not find it ironic. It would be ironic if we knew God was real. I find it idiotic. I always walk away from these prayer circles and I hope there’s some Iraqi insurgent out there who walks away as well. I hope he’s out there doing this for love of country, rather than blind conformity to some false hope gathered from doctrine that holds no more validity than the Iliad or Beowulf or The Sirens of Titan or last week’s print of MAD magazine.

But, on this last mission, as I walked away from bowed heads and muttering pleas, I thought of my loose lips letting out God’s name the way I had the night before. Not that I feared a well-aimed lightening rod thrown my way. I feared that I had set-up the comic relief of reality for the perfect punch line—you prepare yourself for zig but then the world zags, and seemingly, it does so just because you didn’t expect it.

The mission had a number of curve balls, maintenance halts and poor radio connections and longer than normal pushes from one FOB to another. Each hiccup sparked a ‘tisk-tisk’ moment where I thought, “Maybe I shouldn’t have said that?” But the second-guessing vanished soon enough, as each problem turned to an easy, or at least manageable, fix.

Actually, the one serious incident that laid in our laps the longest, didn’t have its turn at being considered irony’s revenge, it had to settle for a more self-involved concern for lost opportunity. The southern entrance to Taji, apparently, is not the correct entrance for convoys. This was the discovery made after two-thirds of our trucks had turned in, only to be re-routed out. This left my small group, along with the rear gun truck, alone on a major highway during the rush of mid-day traffic. After a half an hour of attempting to block traffic, the Iraqi motorists took to the streets. The people were walking all through our trucks and assembling in masses. It was a failed attempt on our part to herd a hundred stray cats, stray cats that posed more than the threat of rabies and painful abdominal injections. I didn’t think of my blasphemy or my tempting Murphy’s Law or the potential catalyst of one act of aggression turning a mob into a riot; I thought, “Too bad Nigel’s not here, that’d make some great day photos.”

It wasn’t long after the mob had risen that we began to push forward to the next gate. And that no seas boiled or locust thickened the air, I again felt comfortable in doing and saying as I please in matters related to the unseen puppet master, the man behind the curtain. On that final leg, when sleep was getting the better of us, and the cargo drivers began to tire off and sway their trucks, I managed to blow one final raspberry at the man upstairs. Pulling along side one of the haulers, I flipped on my loud-speaker and forewarned the nodding head at the wheel, “I am the voice of God, awake my son, and drive.”

- The Exodus

Soldiers Take Care of Soldiers

2010-07-09T23:23:00.002+03:00

By: Neil Buckman

I was honored when Nigel asked me to write a little something about a group of people that are increasingly being despised by us in the convoy escort business. This group, being the contracted Ugandans, who are the cheap labor force protection throughout the Iraqi bases. Friends, family, or anyone that knows me, knows I love to gripe with fervor and passion about anything that upsets me. The Ugandans do upset me. They upset a lot of people in this company. They seem to think Nigel should starve to death. But as I sat and tried to collect my thoughts about how the Ugandans do random, stupid shit, seemingly just to piss me off, more recent events crossed my mind. A bigger and more evil group was responsible for my shift in attention. This was the no-bid contract award winning company called Kellogg Brown & Root, or KBR. So with apologies, Nigel, KBR and contractors in general is where my passionate griping is aimed.

I am in charge of the lead escort vehicle in my squad. Part of my duties, as I am first in the gate to any FOB, are to draw billeting for the military members of the convoy. So after arriving at the gate, telling the Ugandan gate guard five times how many trucks I have in the convoy, as he does not understand much English, then repeating this again three times to the next Ugandan guard two hundred yards down the trail, who also does not speak English, I make my way to the billeting office. Billeting is run by KBR, who is contracted to provide logistical support throughout Iraq. Two recent events involving KBR billeting have shaped my ugly views of these contract employees, and their greedy, bloated rich employers.

The first event occurred on a base called Cedar II, in the southern portion of Iraq. We had quite a long push that particular night into morning. About seven hours was our drive time from a FOB in Taji, Iraq to here. It was 7am, and our convoy was ready for some sleep. I made my way to the KBR billeting office, and walked through the door. The room appeared empty. I waited a few minutes, until I heard a faint noise. I walk closer to the counter, and see two men with ear buds on, eyes affixed on a portable DVD player beneath the tall counter. After staring at them for a good fifteen seconds, one of them had the good manners to ask what I wanted. Gosh, what could I want in a billeting office? I asked if I could draw tents for our road weary soldiers. He simply replied, “Can’t, we’re full.” Before he could finish this short utterance, his eyes were reaffixed to the small DVD player’s screen. A tad upset, I asked jokingly if we were supposed to sleep on the ground outside. What would shock and surprise me the most is that he actually suggested we do just that, pointing to the tent assignment board. I could not believe my eyes when I saw a convoy was penciled on the board, NEXT to an existing tent. KBR made them sleep outside. After explaining this to me, he once again rejoined his coworker in what must have been a captivating movie. I wonder where he slept that night.

The second event happened at a base called Kalsu. After driving five hours to the base from Al Asad, and spending two more hours waiting to get into the gate, as the Ugandans had made a complete mess of entry control, I arrived at Kalsu’s KBR billeting office. I speak to the attendant, draw two tents for our convoy members, and return to the tents to inspect them as I typically do. This particular morning, I would for the first time be stunned by what I saw during my inspection. The first tent had only 5 cots, when they are supposed to have 12. It had trash on the floor, and a rotting meal in a Styrofoam box with a delicious looking five day old milkshake on top of a cot. The second tent was a disgrace. It only had 3 cots. The air conditioner was broken. The floor looked like someone had emptied and entire trashcan onto it. Among the various items I had to throw away were flip flops, 10 drink bottles, two of them filled with urine, and empty food wrappers. Before emptying the trash, fixing the AC, and acquiring cots from other tents to make due (all duties that KBR is responsible for accomplishing), I returned to the billeting office with fury. All the above atrocities were explained to the billeting representative in a less than calm manner. He seemed contrite. He told me how he couldn’t believe it and that “This was getting ridiculous.” Gee, I guess that wasn’t the first time this happened. How shocking. After shaking his head, he said, “Let me see what’s going on.” He strapped on his combat helmet, mounted his ATV, and rode valiantly into the heart of the tents, to what I assumed at the time was to find a solution to the problem. I was wrong. After waiting twenty minutes for his return, he simply had confirmed everything I had just told him. He literally just went over there to “see what was going on”. He removed no trash, acquired no cots, and simply told me, “I don’t even know what to say man, I’m sorry.” I stared at him blankly for an unknown amount of time. In shock, I simply turned and walked out of the office. I had no words to offer.

I returned to the tents to find my squad mates moving cots from a neighboring tent into the cot deficient tents we were assigned to. The soldiers occupying the neighboring tent were leaving Kalsu for another base, and were kind enough to allow us to use their cots to fill the two tents that we occupied. So our soldiers took the cots to our tents, cleaned up all the trash in the tents, and fixed the air conditioner, so we could actually rest for our next push to another base that evening. That got me thinking about my last deployment to Iraq in 2003. There were no contractors. We made or bought our own beds, supplied our own food, built our own showers, and made the best of our situation. But we did it our way, and put care and pride into it. Soldiers taking care of soldiers. That’s what that Kalsu morning was. In 2003, that was how every day went. KBR represents everything that is evil and wrong with contractors being involved with our military and this war. The fact that a company, that in 2008 had revenue of 11.58 billion dollars, can’t provide my soldiers with a cot to sleep on, despite that very duty being their contract responsibility, is a disgrace. An utter disgrace. It pains me now to know in my heart that, at this moment, a soldier making $40,000 a year is sleeping on the ground in the desert heat, put there by a KBR scumbag, who sleeps on a mattress in his one man, air conditioned dorm, “earning” cash somewhere in the six figures.

Oh, yeah, and the Ugandans are irritating.

- The Exodus

...Papier-Mâché...

2010-07-07T23:46:00.001+03:00

24 JUNE 2010

Two men from our company were awarded the Combat Infantry Badge this afternoon. An IED had detonated at what could be considered a relative close distance to their gun truck. No one was injured. The damage to the truck, they say, was limited to what we call ‘peppered’ by shrapnel. They had not been directly exposed to the blast. They saw no enemy, and returned no fire.

By deduction of ‘Combat’ and ‘Infantry’, one would suspect the awarded would have performed their duties as an Infantryman under terms of combat. This may have been the case, once upon a time, during a war with a known and visible enemy—as I, and many others, believe to have been so during the course and aftermath of the invasion. But no more. This war has become silly, and the army with it.

Until this morning, when I heard of the award ceremony, I had only noticed the small changes, ones that would irritate on the scale of a fly in my soup. Nine years ago, when I enlisted, a helmet was a ‘K-pot’—a pot made of kevlar for wearing on your head—but now it’s an ‘ACH’—an Advanced Combat Helmet—and other silliness of the sort. I had gone on pretending to be grandfathered in, and I was one of the Good-ole-boys set in his ways—an old dog refusing to learn new tricks. And this was the same shrug of shoulder I gave the first time I read the 3-21.8, cover-to-cover. It is the army’s new field manual for Infantry tactics and applications.

Back when chinstraps still dangled from K-pots, the Infantry took its guidance out of the 7-8; or, the Infantryman’s bible. It was a short read. It began by explaining a battle drill: A collective action rapidly executed without a deliberate decision making process—that’s a paraphrase but I’m close to the money on it. The next eight chapters are each a direct focus on one of the eight answer-alls to combat—react to contact, enter and clear building and so on. The 7-8 was a coach’s playbook on how to take the fight to the enemy. This new text is some kind of lame excuse for the philosophy of gunfights, but without the philosophy. Fire suppression weighed against fire control. The table of contents reads off what has remained or been removed in the translation of tactics. The battle drills fall under the removed.

The concept of our ‘new army’ was on everyone’s mind during the ceremony; even the Commander hesitated for a moment, trying to decide whether or not to make a crack at the depreciated value of this once respected honor. He did not, it would have lacked a certain amount of class he thought, at least I imagined he thought. Luckily however, I have limited and sometimes even no class.

When the dog-and-pony show ended, Nigel asked me what he missed—he never goes to that kind of nonsense. So I told him, “Well, they blindfolded two Joes and spun them around in tiny circles until they were good and dizzy. Then they gave each of them a stick and had them swing away at a jackass shaped piñata. When the papier-mâché broke open, badges fell from the sky, and there were free CIBs for everyone.” So it goes.

- The Exodus

...Mmmmm Guinness...

2010-07-06T18:34:00.001+03:00

...I turned twenty-four a few months ago and I spent my birthday in Al Asad, Iraq. Four days passed as the CET I was with searched frantically for a lost "sensitive item". When I got back to Buehring I had a package waiting for me from my folks. Along with a card and book, I received a neat little patch that I've been carrying around with me in my helmet as I travel through Iraq. It reminds me of what awaits when I finally take leave with Giunta and Barnhardt. Almost six months of sobriety, broken up by a four day pass before flying over here, makes you miss the little things: like Guinness.

I just got back from a mission and Giunta should be shortly: more writings and photos to come so stay tuned.

- The Exodus

...An Illuminating Flash...part II (photos)

2010-06-30T23:57:00.001+03:00

...Giunta's written account on the mission is below this post.

- The Exodus

...An Illuminating Flash...

2010-06-27T20:19:00.002+03:00

17 JUNE 2010

The previous eight sheets of paper in my note pad are each an attempt to write about the same event. An IED—and a very specific type, meant to pierce our armor and aimed at head height—detonated on our convoy just a few trucks back from me. I’m not shaken up or anything silly like that. A close call is not a hit. And in reference to my combat history, I’ve seen them much closer—too close to consider the other night’s attack as a ‘holy shit’ experience. The trouble, and my difficulty in writing, comes in response to the tone I am accustomed to articulating my point—sarcasm, cynicism and light-hearted hoopla and so on. And whether my desensitized, nonchalant, overall attempt to remain aloof, gives a rat’s ass or not, someone’s intent—and an intent acted on—to murder or maim you is a relative serious incident. Unless you’re watching The Blues Brothers—with Belushi not Goodman, of course—or Looney Tunes, deadly explosions lack a certain amount of comic affect.

Because of the type of IED, I didn’t hear much of a bang or feel much of a shock; what did grab my attention was the illuminating flash, one I could only describe to a non-combatant as a lightening bolt crashing just a little too close. This was twenty minutes out of the gates of VBC, somewhere within the city limits of Baghdad, out in some desert country, during a war that’s managed to dwindle on well past what could be considered good sport and fun.

As the closest gun truck it fell into our hands to make the initial report and secure the impacted area of the convoy. I have always been confident in my abilities of tactical control, and the performance of my crew proved that reacting to contact is much the same as riding a bike—that I have gone the better part of a decade without blood, guts and glory but managed to find my ‘war face’ quick, fast and in a hurry.

My driver is a young private who talks about combat the way most, young privates do. My gunner is a recycled soldier from a deployment just a few years ago—a Tanker, my Uncle Joe would be pleased to hear—which is to say, this ain’t his first rodeo. And in those first few moments, these different shades of Joe had me living out some mockery of Joker’s helmet and the ‘duality of man’. Across from me I was saying, “you’re doing fine,” but up to the turret it was more like, “find that mother fucker.” I felt like two versions of a man trying to meet the same end by different means.

There were no injuries. One of the white trucks—driven by a contracted third-world national—had taken the hit. Along with the spider-webbed windshield and deflated tire, a good chunk—call it the size of a softball or so—had been blown through from one side of the flat bed to the other. That single hit would have been fatal to one of the gun trucks, but fatal in an instant, which is the way to go, I imagine—“How many licks does it take to get to the center of a…”

Earlier that day I had been talking with my new CET leader. We were discussing the latest intelligence brief and the various reports of the bad happenings all along the coming night’s route. We had questioned that the only proof of the continuing war was found in a brief or in reports handed along like in George Orwell’s propaganda war of 1984. That there was no way of telling if any of it was still real, just the trust that reports wouldn’t lie.

After the attack, the convoy was re-routed into another entry point at the far end of VBC. This new route drove us past BIAP, which is secured within the compound’s fence-line. Seeing those airfields had stripped me of some little safety device up in my brain, one that had been filtering out the bad from the good daydreams. And I thought of April 28th, 2003, and the first time I had seen those landing pads. When they still called that place Saddam International Airport. When I was a young little private, and had still thought of war the way most young little privates do. How I stepped off of a bird with my rifle and rucksack, and thought for that first time, “I have found war.”

- The Exodus

...An Illuminating Flash...part I (photos)

2010-06-25T21:37:00.001+03:00

These photos are an introduction to the mission I just returned from. Stay tuned for Giunta's post on what happened and the exciting shit that I didn't get to photograph.

- The Exodus

...A Moderate Nuisance...

2010-06-23T00:37:00.003+03:00

12 JUNE 2010

Today is day two of our ‘validation’ mission to JBB and back. That I have a tag along TC to give a go/no-go on my abilities as an assistant CET leader—especially when you consider that my grader and I have completed the same amount of missions on this deployment, that I out rank her both in position held and time in grade and time in service, that her only previous deployment was to Washington, DC for some POG assignment, and that I’ve more combat experience in my baby toe and so on—is only a moderate nuisance. That it’s day two and we’re still stuck at Buerhing on account of two trans unit trucks breaking down prior to movement is just absurd.

This stay of execution, of sorts, did afford me the chance to welcome back home my old CET, the one I was just yanked from for an exercise in stretching beyond our means. The night before, an IED had detonated on their convoy. No injuries, no damage. But, still. I am unsure of the good luck/bad luck ratio of having not been with them.

These are the Joes I’ve been with for the better part of a year, involved in the training for and running of combat missions. Their well-being and performance of their duties are still a great concern for me—proved by my inability to walk away from the Ops center, monitoring their movements until they reached the border safely. It was a mistake to worry so—a result of the small amount of Irish blood in me, my Father might say—I had my own mission and sleep is a must.

Any Infantryman will tell you, when you can sleep you do sleep. I know a guy from my first deployment, whose intent was to sleep every spare second of the day. His theory was, for every hour of extra sleep he had, was an hour less spent in theatre. When we flew home in 2004, I remember he claimed, strictly according to his theory in practice, that he’d spent two months less in country than the rest of us. I am fairly certain he was paid his full year’s wages. Someone might want to look into this.

- The Exodus

...Stand-by...

2010-06-22T22:56:00.001+03:00

Photos and ramblings coming soon from these two guys below...

- The Exodus

...Infinity CET...

2010-06-15T16:03:00.002+03:00

03 JUNE 2010

As I suspected, my new CET suits me just fine. My boss—and this is not well-marketed ass kissing—turned out to be one of the few NCOs here I feel could teach me a thing or two. He’s quiet. And a combat veteran of multiple tours with similar experiences to my own, just more of them I imagine. If he has any of the issues I carry around for Uncle Sam, he hides those better than I do too.

The soldiers below us are fine enough Joes. I had pictured them to be more disgruntled. These are the additional men, flown in after our work had started, to make the efficiency of our backwards production line to disassemble Iraq’s recalled American parts run a little smoother. They are inactive reservists, deployed to their own little war of paradox, suffering from the irony of a catch-22, fine print under the dotted line of enlistment papers. I had expected them to be black and white, Quick Stop clerks, and thinking, “I’m not even supposed to be here today.” But they are here, and as it turns out, neither bad soldiers nor grumpy company.

One small line of sarcasm is all that I’ve been able to recognize concerning a disinterest in being here—aside, of course, from what could be considered usual bitches, gripes and moans of the average soldier. We have been dubbed a handful of names: the New CET, Fourth CET, the Infinity CET and so on. The title that really sticks though, is the Floater CET. And our design and purpose, as it seems in this first short week, is to fill in and make ready any pre-existing CET required to be ‘combat effective’—which is to say, give a man here and a truck there for lending. We’ve also been tasked with riding as ‘armed escort’ for Joes going to and from the airfields of Kuwait on two weeks leave. We have, it also seems, taken on the responsibility of range cadre for the local training areas. It is in response to these assignments, as we looked around discussing the possibilities of nothingness, one of the new Joes said, “Man, I’m so glad the Florida Guard needed the extra men for this.”

I am not upset with my new agenda, as I’ve said it suits me just fine. Our convoy missions had become boring and familiar and quite monotonous. The change of scenery—I imagine you could call it that—was needed to break the slow grind of redundancy. Other changes to the custom—a complete and most likely irrelevant side-note—I have decided to grow out my hair, to the very limits laid out by army regulations. It has been inching its way out for some time now, so I imagine what I mean to say is, now I have made the conscious decision to let it be so. I hope it will be good for my morale. So far, however, the only change in me I’ve noticed is that there is less hair up there than memory expected. And, I imagine, this suits me just fine too.

- The Exodus

...Faces Part IX...

2010-06-09T18:22:00.001+03:00

SGT. Matt Tullio / PFC. Bill Bailey / SPC. Matt Coello / PFC. Carlos Jimenez

- The Exodus

...There Are No Break Pads In Iraq...Part II...

2010-06-06T23:16:00.008+03:00

To be honest, I’m still not sure what my brother did on his last deployment. I know it involved an office and a desk and paperwork and such, but beyond that, it’s a mystery. And I felt, because my brother was Infantry too, that I had a certain level of bragging rights being that I got to kick in all those doors and do the kind of army stuff you see in commercials; where he had to worry about things like the new cover sheet for those TPS reports. The same cannot be said for this deployment. What I do know about his mission this time around—even though it’s still a less than rugged assignment—is that he’s permanent party in Iraq, he’s out of the wire often, and he’s doing some kind of high speed, low drag training to build up the Iraqi police or army or secret ninja squad. Where now, I am permanent party in Kuwait, making a few hand-full of trips in-and-out of Iraq per month, doing things that amount to America’s big disappearing act finale. The bragging rights have passed.

Speaking of disappearing and re-assignments and the passing of things, this was my last mission in the rear gun truck. I am being moved into a new CET with a new boss and new Joes. The move is not political or punitive; we simply had the means to create a new group in effort to reach the desired effect of decreasing everyone’s workload. I am indifferent to the move. I liked the rear truck but I imagine wherever I end up in the order of march will suit me just fine.

My job in the rear truck had its moments. Most of the real work focused on my little GPS-free text message-mission tracker toy, built right into the truck; sending in reports and herding together the back half of a three-mile line of trucks. The fun back there was the common interaction with the civilian traffic and my attempt to adhere to this new ‘share the road’ policy. Before, for US forces in Iraq, traffic laws did not exist; we did not obey signs, proper lanes, right-of-way, nothing. It was all in effort to maintain a higher level of security and tactical control. Now, we must go with the flow of things, so to speak. The majority of my time in the rear was spent deciding whether or not I’ll allow traffic to pass—in the event of two-lane roads, security halts, maintenance issues, suspected IEDs and so on. The catch being, we can no longer use bullets or pyrotechnics or the weight of our own trucks to stop them. On top of this, the wonder that is Iraq’s media, told all their citizens to drive right on past us.

So whenever I did want to hold up traffic, we’d have to try spotlights in windshields—moderately effective—and swerving back and forth between each lane—slightly more effective but horrible on gas consumption—and a number of other things just short of getting out and banging on hoods. Needless to say, the motorists of Iraq are none-to-pleased with me. I can never figure out why it bothers them so much to wait in line. I think of the hundreds of miles on a two-lane US 1, heading down to Key West, FL. There’s an accident just about every few minutes. My friends and I would just hop out of the car with cooler and chairs and have a little impromptu tailgate. No need for worries or horns or stress.

I couldn’t have asked for a better ending to this mission and farewell to my friends in 1st CET. We had our convoy pulled into the border lanes before 0400, a first for us. After we downgraded the heavy weapons and had our end of mission brief, my driver set up his iPod and speakers for some traveling tunes for the short-leg back to Buerhing. Three songs deep into the play-list and Flogging Molly jigs started tapping everyone’s feet and bobbing everyone’s heads. I instantly thought of Lilly Coogan's, a bar in the city on the corner of 6th and 14th. It’s as dive as a bar can be in that part of the world, but the bartender kept the drinks coming and all the while there was live entertainment. It was a talent night/open mic night of sorts. The final act, the one that made me think of Lilly Coogan's out here in the desert, was some sort of cover-band whose members—I think all of them but you can never be certain—were all transvestites. They had the place going wild—all six or seven patrons—with everyone running around yelling and toasting and when their set turned to Irish punk we thought it fitting to make pretend our best Lord of Dance impressions—our asses planted in stools with dangling feet suspended in air like uncoordinated puppets. I think how pleasant it is that a song in your ear can remind you of so much drunken foolishness you’d be hard-pressed to recollect any other time.

- The Exodus

Lilly Coogan's, NYC...open mic night.

...There Are No Break Pads In Iraq...Part I...

2010-06-05T15:54:00.002+03:00

30 MAY 2010

There are no brake pads in Iraq. I find this difficult to believe, as I assume you do too, it was certainly difficult for SGT. Whos’it, desk jockey for the maintenance shed at FOB Adder. This last mission had already brought me to Scania, Taji, and VBC—which is where I decided brake pads no longer exist—and at each stop I went along with these motor-pool guys to seek out some of these pads but came to no luck every time around. So when I walked into that shed at Adder I gave the guy behind the desk a song and dance that went something like, “Let me ask you, I’ve got an 1151, up-armored Humvee, with a Frag 7 kit. It needs brake pads. Now I’ve heard this rumor that there are no brake pads in theatre, and I’m starting to believe it. Is any of that true?” He didn’t think much of the rumor, called it silly and tried to give off the impression that I was stupid for asking. So I said, “Well, do you have any?” And I gave him the stock number and he made some phone calls to sort it out. But his tone was only slightly apologetic—it was more of an as a matter of fact—when he said, “Well, we don’t have any…” So no, there are no brake pads in Iraq. And I couldn’t help but to think, if I were to break into one of our loads on the back of these trans trucks, it would be nothing but wall-to-wall stock full of fucking brake pads.

But we weren’t hauling out connexes of brake pads, or any connexes for that matter. The trans unit had hauls of HEAT trainers loaded onto flatbeds. A HEAT trainer—actually I think the ‘T’ in HEAT stands for trainer so it isn’t right to call it a ‘HEAT trainer’, it’s like calling it a ‘blanket-tee-blank-trainer trainer’ and so on—is the body of a Humvee or MRAP on a giant rotator, think of a chicken rotisserie. It’s meant to help soldiers experience a vehicle rollover and train them on how to egress and establish aid and security in the event of accident or explosion. It’s a good system, I imagine, and whenever I see one it helps me to smile. You see, my Uncle, Uncle Joe—not Joe because he’s a soldier but Joe because that’s his name, well, he was a soldier too, but let’s move on with it—works with some fancy-pants DoD office that manages or over-sees or helps develop or something with all these private contractors that the army pays to make toys for training and fighting. The trainers on the flatbeds were one of those toys Uncle Joe had bought or built or managed or something. And it always makes me feel a little less lonely when I see my family is involved in the army version of myself.

The trans unit, the one I spoke of last week with all those super soldiers and so on, did their part to drag out this mission with blatant acts of unorganized foolishness. I don’t mean to complain, it all actually gave a certain role of comic relief, making me half expect a dozen clowns to hop out of their truck cabins each time we halted—peddling unicycles and juggling flower pots and going on make-believe to be stuck behind walls (I think clowns do that, if not, eleven clowns and one mime). I think of the one friend every group has, who walks into every conversation screaming, “That’s what she said,” or some other cliché of supposed comic relevance. The best example of their misdirection could have been our second attempt to push from Taji to VBC. Their lead truck took off from the staging lane with the choice of a hardball road to its left and another to its right. Instead, they tore off between the two, deer-in-the-headlights style, and managed to sink their truck into the only mud puddle we’d seen in days. And then there were massive U-turns and jokes on the net, but I liked the puddle of mud best.

I was actually quite relieved not to make the push that night. There had been a full moon over a cloudless sky. Which isn’t to say I worry for hoards of werewolves attacking the lines, I worry that the ‘enemy’ had clear line of sight and calm conditions for mounting an offensive. I worried for this in memory of the old days—2003—back when we were still doing all that fighting and crazy movie scene combat and so on. The enemy can be very predictable at times; certain weather, day of the week, time of day, terrain and other little things could have been converted into likelihood of attack. And there was some little tingling on the back of my neck that night, seeing that full moon, a paranoia picked up and stored away years ago just coming out to say hello.

My Father does his best to remind me those days are over and sets himself in parrot-mode-repeat, saying again and again, “I’m glad you’re bored over there, it’s better this way.” It must be unnerving to have two sons deployed. Oh, yes, my brother Stevie is out here too, off being a Captain somewhere and doing officer-type things, I’m still not certain what.

- The Exodus

...Ugandans = PTSD...

2010-06-03T02:54:00.003+03:00

...I realize it has been quite some time since I've put anything new up; photos or written, and that's not about to drastically change. There are a few things in this entry I would love to talk about that involve the last two weeks of my life, but I can't. What I will say is this, I'm slowly developing PTSD of Ugandans and 90 day Visas.

During my last mission I spent most of the time pissed off sleeping and reading since I was fighting to get a 90 day visa renewed and arguing with Ugandans to allow me in the chow halls. Eating food was a battle I gave up on due to a 15 minute argument I had the first night. It would appear my memorandum isn't a memorandum and CENTCOM isn't a trustworthy individual. On the plus side, an American soldier working the chow hall finally came out saying I didn't look like a terrorist and allowed me to eat, which resulted in one pissed off Ugandan and one bitter photojournalist.

SSG. Lubin, I shall rejoin you all on another mission and take some more snaps next time around.

I have started back up on the portrait series, so in a couple days I'll have new ones up. As for now, here are a few photos from my last mission.

- The Exodus

...Cupid and Board Games...

2010-06-01T16:38:00.001+03:00

25 MAY 2010

Imagine a desert. Do you have it? I’m guessing you pictured loose sand and rolling dunes, maybe with some random camels in the distance, or one of those snakes that fumbles sideways all of the time like it’s always dizzy. None of that is Iraq, at least not like the Iraq of memory. This has been like visiting a childhood home, and though everything is just as it was, nothing seems the same. I remember dirt and grit and burning trash everywhere; some palms and brush along the river’s edge; shambles of homes and shacks over-shadowed by small lots of marble structures with thick metal gates; and all of this was covered with a fine powdered dusting—like watching the foot prints on the moon—but no sand. This was the pesky annoyance of thought fluttering about as our convoy drove north to grab this week’s haul of downgrade. I lost my thoughts in a gaze to the road as the wind-blown sand crawled over the asphalt to the east as we trucked along north until I felt bent and sideways and dizzy.

The Convoy Commander is from the Trans unit and even though our gun trucks are charged with the convoy’s security and movement, the CC is by and by the boss of things. So far we’ve had asshole CCs and clueless and lazy and all sorts of other CCs. This one, though competent surely, I believe is on drugs. When I met him at Buerhing, an hour late to the appointment he set, he was all stumbles, mumbles and fumbles. Each point he addressed was cut off mid-thought and abandoned for something more shining and tantalizing. A kid in a candy store comes to mind. At our convoy briefing at the border, he passed off his duties to one of his Joes under the premise of ‘not feeling well’. Maybe he’s just lazy and prone to illness and suffers from an equilibrium off its keel and so on.

His men were a bunch of super soldiers too. They rolled into country with a burnt out alternator—and I had flash backs to empty cans of 10 weight. We halted the convoy and the CC had the wrecker pull up to tow the down truck, and its crew got out to hop in an empty seat here and there. One of his homeless Joes asked, “Should we take our sensitive items with us?”—he meant their weapons, ammunition, night vision goggles and such. And this, somehow, was a hard question for him to answer but by and by he was able to mutter off an, “Um, roger.” When they called up to say they were all in this or that truck and ready to go, one of them said, “Yea, we have all the SI, so-and-so took all the NVGs and I have all the ammo.” Silly POGs.

But it wouldn’t be fair to point—as I do so often—fingers at these Trans units and say how they’re all ate up like soup sandwiches—a popular army saying that shouldn’t hold so much merit; when I think of a soup sandwich I think of bread bowls, and I love bread bowls—if I didn’t mention our own mishaps. For instance, just a few days ago my driver merged in behind the wrong convoy, separating us by about fifteen miles from where we should have been. If it hadn’t been for luck alone we may have followed them off into nothingness till morning. So, there. Equality.

You might call this a mishap too: I spoke to my wife—ex that is, I imagine it’s the last bit of catholic in me that would rather not say ex-wife—on this mission. We were held up at one of those FOBs and had all been turned away from the internet/phone center. Anytime a soldier dies in theatre, they try to blackout the area, so the family doesn’t hear about it on Facebook or whatever first. I am unfamiliar with the details of the incident, was even told it was a rumor, then truth, then a rumor again and so on. But it did make me think a little. Nothing important, I guess, just wondering how they notify the families now-a-days—I find it hard to imagine some high ranking brass still knocks on doors. Naturally, I thought about my own death, which, I imagine, is a perfectly healthy thing to do. And this made me realize it would probably be a long time after the fact that my ex-wife would hear the news. I guess it made me sad or one of those other silly little feelings so I wrote her to say hi. Didn’t mention any of the sad, sappy, self-pity whatever feelings to her, which was probably best and all.

I wish I hadn’t mentioned death like that just now. I don’t want to give the wrong impression about our task and purpose on this mission, which is a joke; that I’d probably rate it at a ‘2’ on a ‘1-10’ HOOAH scale. So let me remind you of the absurdity that is our time spent here with a little help from Cupid and board games.

The New Guy, my driver, the one who got us lost a few days back, had struck up a conversation with a female soldier at one of the staging lanes. I saw no harm in a little innocent flirting and thought it might be good for morale so I let him blabber away like a chatty Cathy. They went on about how silly and easy convoy security is and all, and then typical army small talk lead to the question, “So what MOS—army speak for job—are you?” When the New Guy said 11B—more army speak for Infantry—she was blindly confused and asked, “What are you guys doing here?!” We didn’t roll out that night because of a sandstorm or a broken truck or some other unfavorable circumstance, so the boys retreated to a friendly game of Risk to pass the remaining night hours. They fought and squabbled over two-dimensional countries and made a good time of things. But I can remember telling myself in the middle of it all, “This is the most combat any of you will ever see.”

- The Exodus

...Still Alive...

2010-05-30T14:26:00.001+03:00

...just been really busy. More to come.

- The Exodus

...The Commas of History...

2010-05-23T01:15:00.001+03:00

17 MAY 2010

To break it down Barney style—third-grade reading level, No Child Left Behind, Windows 95 version, and so on—the CET is given big guns and told to baby-sit convoys of transportation units and civilian contractors as they drive load ‘A’ into country and then load ‘B’ out of country. We deter bad guys from doing bad things, and in the event of bad things we shoot at the bad guys. This, I’m told, is our piece of the pie in America’s withdraw, er, exit strategy from Iraq. So let it be told and recorded in the commas of history as such.

The question posed by so many loved ones and fence-line voters back home, is something to the sort of measurable change. A society of must see it to believe it—which is fine; I prefer it that way, helps to dilute the ignorance. “Do you see any difference, Mac,” they’ll ask me. Sure I do, and not merely the drastic change from 2003’s gunfights to 2010’s espressos under the desert sky—though that is mostly what I notice. It is measurable, by the naked eye of this Joe, who is so far down the information hierarchy, that we are moving tons (both literally and figuratively, my father would have me clarify) of equipment out of country; our presence in the cities is limited, that FOBs are closing, that Iraqi police and army are on every corner (to the last some might argue of corruption but I’m not privileged to those studies and if I was I doubt it’d compare to Chicago flat-foots of the 1930s) and so on. And that would, by and by, cover loads falling into ‘B’ group—clearly without giving specifics or adding jail-time to the end of my enlistment.

This of course leaves to debate all the loads of ‘A’ or ‘into country’ loads. These are far fewer in number and their manifest is purely left to imagination and daydream. At this speculation, our line-medic has had the most recent break-through. “Chips and Dip,” he calls it. I’ve heard the concept before as “Burgers and Beers”. The last was used by a fine dining manager, who was trying to over-simplify our duties as servers, that when it all boiled down, we were just passing out burgers and beers. Here, Jackson, the medic, uses it as a reference to our role in the support/stability operations for U.S. and Iraqi forces.

As we have Starbucks on Resort Buerhing, each FOB up north has a Burger King or Pizza Hut or Subway and so on. Jackson’s assumption is that what we escort northbound are supplies for these happy international chains. His meal at the time of illumination happened to be Taco Bell—hence, Chips and Dip. I think of the Golden Arches Theory—or the Dell Theory, whichever—and that maybe we’ll get this country too dependent on nachos to have the want to cross swords again. And yes, I know I just used a well-known script out of context but for all those who never read up on it, who judge a book by its cover, perhaps they’ll like that last passage.

And these loads of ‘happy meals’ again offer a note of measurable change. Everyone back home knows all about Red Bulls, even if some—as is in my case—only experience this cranked up beverage with heavy portions of vodka or in the collegian concoction known as a Jager Bomb. And then of course you have the numerous knock off brands, which leads me to the point at hand: Rip-its. A Rip-it is the Army supplied ‘holy goodness I have to stay awake’ solution. They are the answer to what I think is in box ‘A’.

At each transit stop our supplies for the road are re-fit, including this sugary, caffeinated treat. What I’ve noticed, on each mission south to north and back again, we are afforded fewer and fewer of these pick-me-uppers. On just this last drive, there were none. If my fantasy is correct—which it surely isn’t—and these transportation hauls had been stacked with Rip-its, that they’re coming up short in our FOB re-fit is a clear sign of a shortening of supplies into country.

So, to whichever side of the fence this might push you; or to whatever level of comfort this brings my family and friends: yes, there is a measurable change. I notice everyday that they give me less Rip-its.

- The Exodus

...Non-smoking Compatible...photos...

2010-05-18T22:22:00.000+03:00

I am no writer, Giunta is, so instead of me talking about the last mission go to the post below these photos. Giunta sums it up quite nicely. Enjoy.

- The Exodus

...Non-smoking Compatible...

2010-05-18T16:41:00.002+03:00

15 MAY 2010

Our mission is halted due to weather. The CET is held up at some FOB in southern Iraq just waiting for the sand to settle back on itself. It’s been three days here now and if we’re delayed again tomorrow, we will have spent more time stuck than on the actual mission.

Each day that we’ve stayed over I’ve had to run my truck over to maintenance to have a fuel leak checked. It’s coming from a little hose right next to the tank. At each visit the hose is replaced but hours later the line is swollen and a puddle of go-juice is pooled in the dirt below. Apparently, there aren’t any lines on this FOB rated to hold diesel. So it goes. I think of a story from my dad’s youth, when a little plastic piece to his flat-bottomed boat, maybe a 45-cent part, broke apart and had him drifting out to sea.

This was our first mission where Nigel was able to tag along. He was a quiet passenger in the back seat and went hardly noticed until the trucks came to a halt coming down a main supply route, where he hopped out to see what-was-what. The what-was-what had been a transmission issue with one of the transit trucks. It seems they had allowed their fluids to run bone-dry, neglecting to stow extra supplies in case of emergency. This is a unit, whose job it is to drive up and down Babylon; this is their only job, and they appear to attempt this without 10 weight on hand. I say it’s like the Infantry trying to roll without bullets and so on.

The hurry up and wait that somehow found me on mission is driving my thoughts off to silliness. I think of my replacement gunner and though he’s capable of the task at hand he’s still not my gunner, like I have some nonsensical right to ownership of my usual crew. I’ve dreamt of NYC and what adventures I might find when this tour has ended. But mostly the silliness has been found in jibber-jabber with the men. I asked a Joe for a smoke and he produced a clove, which, naturally lead to the rant of silly…

I started, “Do you know why we use the 9mil round and not a 45?” He answered—which wouldn’t be a bad guess, “Because it’s cheaper?” “The 9mil round is a NATO round,” I corrected him, “and all members of NATO have to use compatible ammunition. So that, if you walked up on a dead Canadian Joe, you could fall in on his bullets.” “Oh,” was all he said. So I went on, “Now let me ask you this: If I came up on your dead body and I needed a smoke, but you didn’t have any Marlboro Lights, you’d be non-smoking compatible, wouldn’t you?” And then he chuckled just a bit until the thought of his dead body sank his face sore, which is when I had a chuckle. So we both got a good laugh out of it I guess.

- The Exodus

...Faces Part VIII...

2010-05-16T22:21:00.000+03:00

SPC. Anthony Suitto / PFC. Thomas Aldridge / SPC. Nick Acevedo / SPC. Kevin Lopez / SGT. Neil Buckman

_ The Exodus

...Just got Back...

2010-05-16T07:15:00.002+03:00

...from a mission. More to come in the next few days.

- The Exodus

...Happy Birthday to Me...

2010-05-10T09:26:00.000+03:00

08 MAY 2010

Today is my Birthday. I am 27 years old. The boys in the CET all signed a card. On the front are two kids playing basketball; one of them has a giant gold star on his shirt. It’s funny because whenever they do something good, I award them ‘Gold Stars’. Scuteri filled all of the radios so I pat him on the shoulder and say, “Good job, buddy, Gold Star!” And so on.

This is my second Birthday in Iraq. The first one, back in 2003, was spent stuck up on a wall getting twenty licks from a belt by my squad mates. This year, I was given comforting words from my Lieutenant about 30 being the new 20. And I think, “Oh, how Iraq has changed…” It’s a good thing too, I imagine, the idea of 27 lashings doesn’t sound very agreeable right about now.

The first Birthday I can remember, I was 8 or 9, maybe 7, I don’t know, and my school teacher was there. Mrs—or Miss or Ms or whatever—Covey something or other was her name. She deployed in the middle of the school year as an Army Reservist for the Iraq War: Part One. And I remember we all dressed up like Batman characters and stuff.

My favorite one—to date—was turning 23. Liezel, my South African angel, surprised me at midnight with champagne and sang in such a sweet voice and yada-yada-yada. It is debatable, my closest friends would argue, that this couldn’t possibly be my favorite. “After all,” they say, “What about the great times we’ve had? The trips to the Keys and island parties and block parties and keggers and such!” They go on, “And didn’t you have to bring her to the airport and send her home that same day?” Yes, I remember all the good times, and yes, she left that day too. Maybe my happy-o-meter is askew, or something, but it was my favorite.

I guess it’s expected I’d say, “Dude, when I turned 21 that was awesome! I got so f’ing messed up, man!” But that isn’t true. I turned 21 just a month or so after the first deployment; was happily married; and had yet to begin ‘self-medicating’. It only took six Long Island Iced Teas at dinner to make my night end throwing up in the shower. And if it weren’t for my poor wife, I probably would have drowned in that tub. So no, I imagine, 21 was not awesome or my favorite. Not by a long shot. 21 was stupid.

And what would I be doing right now if this deployment didn’t happen and I was spending the day back home? It would probably be a toss up between what I did last year verses the year before it. It is quite likely that I’d spend it alone at some beach bum bar, bare footed with my toes in the sand, while I sipped on a Margarita—on the rocks, no salt—and reading Vonnegut or something of the sort. But it is just as likely that I’d creep around in some hole-in-the-wall, trying to find some ‘patriotic civilian’ or old Vet who wants to buy the young hero a drink in exchange for a good war story—even though what they’d get from me is probably some watered-down, hippie-leftist, tree-hugging gibberish and such. But I can’t please everyone.

All that aside, Happy Birthday to me.

- The Exodus

...These Little Substitutions...

2010-05-08T14:54:00.001+03:00

Three weeks in Kuwait has made me miss Iraq and the past few weeks I have found myself drinking far too much coffee, smoking more cigarettes than I should, and watching endless hours of TV broken up by video games. Missions have come to a halt due to armour refitting and I find myself trying to kill the time with things I usually don’t do back at home. My sleeping and eating schedule is beyond backwards due to trying to keep a sleeping pattern that mimics the ones on missions. Four AM fall asleep, two PM wake up, five PM eat, twelve AM eat…repeat. I write about this because I find it interesting how the routines I had at home have essentially just been replaced with different times and other ‘vices’.

In the comfort of my room back in Florida I find myself sipping on a Scotch as I edit photos and walk around the house to take a break when I’ve grown tired of staring at a screen. Smoking is non-existent habit for me unless I’m at a bar with some friends who enjoy cancer sticks and I’ll puff on a couple along with them, but here, it has changed. I can’t sip on a Scotch after hours of editing, or chase my dog around the house, or go into the fridge for some food to fill me up. So instead I smoke a cigarette or munch on chocolate or walk to other billets in hopes to find someone to smoke a cigarette with me or attempt to pick up my bible and try to not feel like a hypocrite. I’ve replaced an enjoyment with something to fill the mental hole of relaxation that I’ve created out of routine. Have I become addicted to smoking? No. It’s just a substitute for the time being. This deployment has become filled with many little substitutions.

I’m finally leaving for Baghdad again.

Oh…..and it’s Giunta’s Birthday. We are eating Ramen Noodles, scraps from MRE’s, and drinking a six back of near beer.

- The Exodus

...Faces Part VII...

2010-05-05T01:22:00.000+03:00

PFC. Chris Lopez / SPC. Zach Molnar / CPL. Jon Kellam / SPC. Michael Walker II / PFC. Carlos Arauz

- The Exodus