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  Welcome Home

29-Oct-07



Me and my wife


Holden,My mom, Me, Squires

It's been a long year for me. May 2006 I went to basic training, I graduated October 2006. Then I came to Fort Campbell, KY home of the 101st Airborne Division. Shortly after arriving, myself and four others volunteered to go to Baghdad, Iraq. Now that time is over and we are finally home. My experience over there was one that was as unexpected as it was pleasant. While there I came to know many Iraqi's the majority of whom loved us, those who didn't simply ignored us. That 1% tried to ruin it for everyone but the will of our troops and that of the Iraqi people would not let that happen. I remember my first few months there were a daily wakeup to being mortared shot at with rockets. Soon though the "surge" came into effect and I put it to any naysayer to prove to me that it wasn't a complete success. For the last couple of months there I didn't get mortared even 1/10th as much, IED's were at an all-time low since the war began, VBIED's (Car Bombs) were also at an all-time low, even sectarian violence dropped off significantly. In months before the surge the death toll of Iraqi's by death squads averages around 120 a month, but soon after the surge that number dropped to around 60, which is amazing in a city of 7 million people. I can't express my gratitude to the Iraqi people for showing me what true compassion and what true struggle is really like. I only had a few close calls and nothing worth really worrying about, but for just the curious in the next couple of days I will chronicle a little bit of my time there so stay tuned for that and as I get back into the swing of things I'll also begin working on finishing my custom computer building operation and we'll get the battle of the bands going.

Also on another note, I have Gallstones so I may have to have my gall bladder surgically removed in the next coupld of days so that might set me back a week as well on updating this thing. Iraq didn't kill me but fatty foods I guess will.

  One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

05-Feb-07


PT is nothing new to me in the Army so you'd think that eventually I'd get better at it....wrong. I always seem to take one step forward and two backwards. I got to Ft. Campbell weighing in at about 138 lbs after having lost almost 40 lbs at basic training, but now and only since November I am tipping the scale back up at a little over 150 lbs. So I've put on about 12 lbs since I've been here and trust me, its not muscle. I dropped about 5 lbs in the last week and a half but then of course with the Super Bowl I ruined it and a mix of constant eating the entire weekend and Bud Light, I'm now having trouble fitting into some of my pants. I know that I need to really shape up and quickly, but it gets tough when all day you have to do things a certain way everyday of your life so when you finally get home you just want to relax and enjoy the things you normally can't have, especially on the weekends. So let this just be a lesson for all of you out there, maintain your work ethic, because I had a run this morning that wasn't even fast and I felt like I was going to have a heart attack.

So today I'm going to put on a pack and run a mile and get myself and Amy a membership to a local gym since all of the ones on base are always full. Anyway, back to work for me.

  Welcome to the 101st

11-Jan-07


Since my last post was more of a down note I thought I'd show some of the better things we get to do as soldiers and at the end of the day what makes it all worth it.

To be honest soldiers are never happy, well rarely. We gripe and we complain and we hate everything were doing, but no matter how meager the job is, we never stop until were finished and we won't just do a job to a standard, no we always go above and beyond that standard. When the day is done we look back on what we've done with pride and just wait, one minute a soldier will be bitching about how he hates something but then at the end of the day somebody will comment on his work and he will suddenly become angry and you'll hear something such as, "It was done better than you could do it", or some other taken aback comment because the soldiers work was questioned.

We also build a bond that you can't find anywhere else. I know that many of the people I met and became friends with at basic training will remain friends for life. You just can't go through something that difficult and not come together, its the only way you can make it in the Army. When everything seems to be falling down on you, somebody will always say something or do something to lighten the mood and everyone will take a few seconds break, sigh, then get right back to work. Its those times and that type of brotherhood that the Army has but the civilian population doesn't. I went to college unsuccessfully for 5 years and I made a lot of good friends, now though I can't even remember most of their names. They are friends out of boredom or friends out of desperation, but in the Army you make friends because of respect. You each are down there loading and moving thousands of pounds worth of stuff a day, or your helping someone on the road, or your watching a friend's back on a deployment, those friends are people you can't just trust... those are friends who you'd bet your life on. I wake up everyday dreading going in to work, but I also wake up laughing about something that happened the day before and wondering what stupid thing will be said or done that day.

  Day in the Life

03-Jan-07
People come up to me all the time when I'm away from the base just to say "thank you for what you do", and I'm appreciative I really am, but sometimes I think..."Do they really know what we do?". Of course there is always deployment where we go over and do the things we were meant to do, the things the Army was created to do, but what about all the other times, when were back here at home.

Well its not quite as glamorous to say the least. Mainly we spend our day doing jobs that aren't exactly glorious or patriotic. In a month long period I've raked leaves around two huge buildings, I've painted a dungy smelling basement, I've ripped apart what looked like early 30's wooden dog cages with chicken wire attached and then ripped off all the chicken wire and pulled out all the nails so we could keep the wood that could be re-used (low budget here folks). After that I've moved office furniture from 3 different places to one building and then some of it back to its original buildings because we either got to much or it was the wrong stuff. I've broken metal lockers that were damaged just so we could fit them in those huge containers you see on ships in movies going across the ocean. Then today we found out we have to pull all of that stuff, thousands of pounds of stuff out and take it across the street to a building and sit it on the floor in pieces so somebody who has some rank to them can come tell us its broken as if we can't make that judgement, then we have to load it all back up and put it god knows where. We had to also move an entire gym today, and huge mats, which took from 9:30 to around 3:30 to do, and once we got it to the building, we had to take all the equiptment including god knows how many 100 lbs dumbells and take them up rickety stairs in between two narrow walls to the top floor to place them. Afterwards we made trip after trip back and forth to get more stuff from these shipping containers and will continue to unload and move TWO containers a day until they are all gone, because somebody else apparently wants our containers. I've also had the privledge of putting the office furniture and desks we moved to our building and up and down stairs and to basements together piece by piece, then we had to take junk in hundreds of boxes and move metal shelfs to our basement, just so we could take the crap out of crates and plastic boxes and put it on the shelves neatly

My personal favorite though is being on my hands and knees scrubbing a floor with brillo pads that have 2 inch deep ruts from dragging office furniture up and down the halls, then sweeping and mopping every inch of the place so we can come back tomorrow in the freezing cold and the pouring rain and do it all over again. We had a battallion run awhile back (thats were your entire chain of command on that base gets everyone together and you do a little run for miles), anyway during the run it was freezing cold and everybody had to lean to one side because the wind was blowing so hard and I had to shut my eyes and run into people because the sleet/snow kept hitting me in the eyeballs and I couldn't see.

So I guess what I'm saying is, I'm extremely proud of what we stand for and what we eventually do, as far as defending this country, but sometimes when people come up and pat me on the back and just say thanks... I feel like what are you thinking me for, anybody can lug heavy stuff up and down stairs all day. Go thank a doctor or somebody who's making a difference everyday, don't think me because for a year of my life I get to do something important and then the next year and a half I'm just a janitor and mover and painter.