Fine, You Asked For It
"Theirs be the music, the colour, the glory, the gold;
Mine be the handful of ashes, a mouthful of mould.
Of the maimed, of the halt and the blind in the rain and the cold -
Of these shall my songs be fashioned, my tale be told."
-John Masefield
Alright, everybody, stop asking about it. I'm updating this beast.
The flight over was long and boring and we stopped in Germany. Got a 23-hour layover in Ramstein, which gave me just long enough to sleep and take a shower and get a couple meals in. Then we flew down for the final leg. I met the company we're replacing and the last couple of weeks have been a flurry of activity switching out their property, assuming their battlespace, and sliding into their place in the batting order, so to speak. Our AO is quiet now but I'm not sure that will last--either the quiet or that we'll stay here.
Our new kids, the ones who haven't deployed before, have been amusing to watch, as I assume I was on my first tour for the old hands. They are continually amazed by things like the heat and the scorpions and the dust. It makes me feel old that I'm jaded to such things.
The living facilities are actually very nice compared to my last tour. I told Nick during a phone call, if you have to deploy, deploy as a bomb tech. We take care of each other. I'm living in an old prison left over from the Iran-Iraq war. Sure, I know probably every one of our rooms had someone tortured and murdered in it, but they are solid, stone rooms which keep the heat out pretty well and don't let a lot of dust in if you're careful to turn the AC off whenever it gets bad outside. The compound is completely enclosed and we even seal the gates at night, so literally nobody gets it who we don't want. During my all-too-infrequent downtime I like to go up on the walls and think what a great place it would be to defend against zombie hordes.
We have our own latrine trailer (unisex, much to the dismay of our females) and a VERY nice shower trailer (NOT unisex--each gender gets its own time period for showers). We have our own MWR room with four computers and even a wireless router with a subscription service available. I paid ninety damn bucks for a month of the wireless and my connection is pretty bad. Skype keeps dropping when I try to talk with Jen and Clyde. I do have to say, though...ninety dollars is worth it to see my son, even if it is a bad connection with low framerate.
I am doing much better with missing Jen this time--it's not a lesser pain, but it is a familiar one. I was completely unprepared for how crippling my yearning for my baby boy is, though. I sometimes have to consciously put him out of my mind or I won't be able to concentrate. When he saw me on Skype, he smiled at me, and it just about tore my heart out. It's funny, I've been fighting to go back to war for years, and they finally give me a tour right after my son is born. That is the only thing I regret about this deployment. The rest is awesome. I get to blow stuff up, lead soldiers in combat, go outside the wire pretty much whenever I want, I have very little accountability, I can choose my missions, I get to work with brave and crazy Iraqis...and I can't play with my Clydefrog. There's the rub, right?
More about the Iraqis later.
Mine be the handful of ashes, a mouthful of mould.
Of the maimed, of the halt and the blind in the rain and the cold -
Of these shall my songs be fashioned, my tale be told."
-John Masefield
Alright, everybody, stop asking about it. I'm updating this beast.
The flight over was long and boring and we stopped in Germany. Got a 23-hour layover in Ramstein, which gave me just long enough to sleep and take a shower and get a couple meals in. Then we flew down for the final leg. I met the company we're replacing and the last couple of weeks have been a flurry of activity switching out their property, assuming their battlespace, and sliding into their place in the batting order, so to speak. Our AO is quiet now but I'm not sure that will last--either the quiet or that we'll stay here.
Our new kids, the ones who haven't deployed before, have been amusing to watch, as I assume I was on my first tour for the old hands. They are continually amazed by things like the heat and the scorpions and the dust. It makes me feel old that I'm jaded to such things.
The living facilities are actually very nice compared to my last tour. I told Nick during a phone call, if you have to deploy, deploy as a bomb tech. We take care of each other. I'm living in an old prison left over from the Iran-Iraq war. Sure, I know probably every one of our rooms had someone tortured and murdered in it, but they are solid, stone rooms which keep the heat out pretty well and don't let a lot of dust in if you're careful to turn the AC off whenever it gets bad outside. The compound is completely enclosed and we even seal the gates at night, so literally nobody gets it who we don't want. During my all-too-infrequent downtime I like to go up on the walls and think what a great place it would be to defend against zombie hordes.
We have our own latrine trailer (unisex, much to the dismay of our females) and a VERY nice shower trailer (NOT unisex--each gender gets its own time period for showers). We have our own MWR room with four computers and even a wireless router with a subscription service available. I paid ninety damn bucks for a month of the wireless and my connection is pretty bad. Skype keeps dropping when I try to talk with Jen and Clyde. I do have to say, though...ninety dollars is worth it to see my son, even if it is a bad connection with low framerate.
I am doing much better with missing Jen this time--it's not a lesser pain, but it is a familiar one. I was completely unprepared for how crippling my yearning for my baby boy is, though. I sometimes have to consciously put him out of my mind or I won't be able to concentrate. When he saw me on Skype, he smiled at me, and it just about tore my heart out. It's funny, I've been fighting to go back to war for years, and they finally give me a tour right after my son is born. That is the only thing I regret about this deployment. The rest is awesome. I get to blow stuff up, lead soldiers in combat, go outside the wire pretty much whenever I want, I have very little accountability, I can choose my missions, I get to work with brave and crazy Iraqis...and I can't play with my Clydefrog. There's the rub, right?
More about the Iraqis later.
posted by Battler03 at 12:16 PM
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