.Photo Story Monday - Recollections
"On a radio interview I did for Memorial Day, I had a hard time describing how I would spend it this year. Before I enlisted, Memorial Day seemed a convenient way to have a long weekend away from school. In my first year in the Army, it was spent sleeping in without having to do any PT. No push ups in the mushy Ft. Lewis grass for us that day.
A year ago, Memorial Day was spent in the confines of our small outpost on the east side of Baqubah. We had converted a two story house into a fortress deep within the city to keep close to the roads and buildings that concealed homemade bombs, waiting for us to wander helplessly into them. It was part of the surge strategy: total immersion in the communities we patrolled.
The outpost was a home away from home, one where we spent four days out of seven without plumbing, running water or relative safety. All that was found miles away at a huge forward base. We were on our own, two platoon's worth of scrawny, hungry, tired and irritable men heading into month twelve of the deployment. On the day we were supposed to be home, everyone gathered on cots on the second floor, shouting phrases like "fifth quarter, fuck yeah!" and "Overtime baby!". We were, as you can imagine, a little disappointed in June of 2007. We were supposed to be on American soil by then, sipping beers and laughing about the deployment and how cold Washington was. Instead we were chugging boiling water in between guard shifts and slapping mosquitoes off our necks in the Diyala River Valley."
Army of Dude
A year ago, Memorial Day was spent in the confines of our small outpost on the east side of Baqubah. We had converted a two story house into a fortress deep within the city to keep close to the roads and buildings that concealed homemade bombs, waiting for us to wander helplessly into them. It was part of the surge strategy: total immersion in the communities we patrolled.
The outpost was a home away from home, one where we spent four days out of seven without plumbing, running water or relative safety. All that was found miles away at a huge forward base. We were on our own, two platoon's worth of scrawny, hungry, tired and irritable men heading into month twelve of the deployment. On the day we were supposed to be home, everyone gathered on cots on the second floor, shouting phrases like "fifth quarter, fuck yeah!" and "Overtime baby!". We were, as you can imagine, a little disappointed in June of 2007. We were supposed to be on American soil by then, sipping beers and laughing about the deployment and how cold Washington was. Instead we were chugging boiling water in between guard shifts and slapping mosquitoes off our necks in the Diyala River Valley."
Army of Dude
posted by madtom at 10:48 PM
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