The Greener Grass

This may come as a shock to some of you. But then again some of you, if not most of you, expected it. I look back and think maybe it was just a bad month, maybe I was just burned out. But after looking at my future and my future with Holly and where we both are in our lives and where we both want to be and what exactly we both want to do; I, with some help from Holly, have decided that it would no longer be in my best interest to leave the Army.

A few months ago when I decided no longer wanted to be a part of this game anymore, I was burned out. I suppose the sun had fried my brain. I, just like everyone else at some point in their career, decided I wanted a change. I wanted to go back to the civilian life and enjoy all the beautiful things that there are out there. I wanted to go back to school and I really just wanted a change of pace.

All of that would be simple if say, I were single and planned on keeping that way. I would have no strings attached and no one else to consider. I would just have to look after me, myself and I. But that is no longer my life. I have Holly, a mortgage, two car payments and a dog to look after. If I were to actually get out of the service, if Holly were to quit her job and the two of us and Lola were to move back to Oklahoma then we would be in pretty rough shape. To go from two full time incomes and full dental and medical benefits to whatever McDonalds starting hourly wage is, would be rather harsh.

Then there is the deep down fact that, I do in fact love the Army. I love the thrill of the fight and the team that I fight with. I love being a part of something bigger and being a part of history all at the same time. I love the challenge and the stress. I love the people and the places both good and bad. I love what I do, (most of the time) and if you are doing what you love to do for a job then where are you ever going to find something better.

Of course there are days when I hate this job. There are days when I would love nothing more than to be a fry cook at Burger King. I imagine that most of you are sitting at a desk right now at a job where you will one day mutter, "I swear, one day, I will burn this place to the ground…"

I have goals that I have set for myself in life and in the Army as well. By the end of November, after I have spent close to 430 days over here I will have accomplished those goals and checked all the boxes on that list of my life. But if I were to leave there would always be that one question that would haunt me to no end.

"Would I have made it as an Army Warrant Officer and as an Army Helicopter Pilot?"

As some of you know, I was working on my packet prior to my deployment but was held up when my left eye failed the flight vision test. I was nearly 90% complete with the whole process of test and paperwork when I hit that roadblock. I am now waiting to get back home and get Lasik surgery on my eye. After that I will once again be able to press on with my flight application. I took all of the test and did extremely well, I have my letters of recommendation and I have my security clearance. I have everything in order, except my left eye. So if I were to part ways this coming summer with the Army then I know for a fact that I would be sitting there one day at my mediocre job thinking, "I wonder if I could have made it…?"

So for that and other extenuating reasons I have decided to retract my previous statement. I have changed my mind. I have seen the error of my ways and on today the 29 th day of October in the year 2007 I re-enlisted in the United States Army for another five years.

This decision doesn't come without perks though. In fact it came with 20,000 tax free perks if you know what I mean. I also was given the option to go to Airborne Training once I get back stateside, where the good people of the Army will teach me how to jump out of perfectly good airplanes. Included with all this I also received a "college option" which means the Army will allow me to pretty much take time off from being a soldier so I can attend the school of my choice within 100 miles of Ft. Hood for 12 semester hours all paid for by the Army and all while still receiving my active duty salary.

So in conclusion I am staying in the Army for five more years starting, today. I will receive a nice sized bonus of $20,000 US dollars all of which is tax free. I will get paid my usual salary to take a semester off work and attend college and I will get to jump out of airplanes for the Army. But most importantly I will get the chance to get my eye fixed up and I will get to submit my packet to become a pilot in the Army and hopefully check the next block on my list.

Breakfast Car Bomb

So after eating so many Army meals for so many days my taste buds have begun to die off and everything from chicken nuggets to spaghetti has begun to taste the same. I rarely even eat at the chow hall any more. The smell in there makes me want to vomit. The walk is ridiculous and the lines are even worse for such poor food. Seriously, death row inmates eat better. The one meal I do make an effort to eat there is breakfast. But with the schedule we are running breakfast seems to be my dinner most of the time. Through out my time here in Iraq however, I have developed my own breakfast meal that I have grown to love. I call it the “Breakfast Car Bomb”

“Breakfast Car Bomb”

Ingredients-
- One serving of scrambled eggs (Must be fake eggs made from powder and fake milk)
- One and a half biscuits ( The softer the better, but "Rock Biscuits" work also)
- One Hash brown (The crispier the better)
- Two Pieces of Bacon (Must be fake bacon and over cooked by like 30 minutes)
- One Big scoop of gravy with sausage tid-bits

Mixing-
- Place the scrambled eggs on the plate first
- Next place the three biscuit halves over the eggs
- On top on that place a layer of cut up hash browns and bacon
- Over everything poor on the gravy evenly coating the entire pile.

Serving-
Prior to eating cut up all the biscuits and stir it all around in to one big mess. Careful not to flip it out all over the table or let the gravy run over the edge. This is a common problem and is very wasteful and not approved of by others.

This meal has become a staple to my rigid diet. It has helped keep this soldier in the fight throughout the year. It has all the food groups except fruit. But fruit is not really a food group, its just there because it’s colorful. So next time you have the family together for Sunday brunch. Fix them up and Breakfast Car Bomb.

“Cause nothing gets your day going like a car bomb!”

Long Time, No Blog

So the real reason for the lack of blogs lately is the fact that I am really freaking busy. But I have a few hours of down time so I thought I would update all my friends and family back home. So here is the latest from Iraq:

- The weather is FINALLY cooling off and at night it almost gets down to “chilly”.

- My replacement is here. That is the reason why we have been so busy, it is that we are training these guys on everything we have learned over the past 13 months.

- I was at a ceremony where I was awarded a coin by Major General Mixon, (Two Star) commander of the 25th Infantry Division and commander of Multi- National Forces Iraq – North. I was given this for my coordination of Close Air Support (Two F-16 fighters) a Scout Weapons Team (Two Kiowa Attack Helicopters) and two Abrams tanks. Using these forces I was able to guide them on to a team emplacing IED’s and wipe them off the face of the planet. That was my second team to destroy that week.

- I have been packing my bags!

- I have been working very hard on my Fantasy Football teams despite having one of the worst teams in the league.

- I have been missing Holly's birthday for the third year in a row. There is always next year!

- I have also been rubbing in our victory to all the Tex-Ass fans I see around here. Boomer Sooner!

Those are just a few of the many things that are going on around this place. Things are rather crazy. We are all busting our humps for the last few weeks to finish a few fights that we started and to ensure that these guys from the 101st Airborne are well trained and educated on everything going on in our AO. I really will try to post more, I swear. I do have some more pictures to post also. Maybe I will get motivated and do that. All I really know is that I am getting closer and closer to getting out of here. I have less than one month of actual combat left. Then someday soon after that… I will be home.

Well That's Just Great

So here I am in Iraq. Obviously I am not in the best of places of situations. But I am making due with what I have and I am getting through the days one by one. But then today someone somewhere decided to add just a little more icing to my cake.

As usual on a payday I go check my bank account online, managed by the good people at Republic Bank and Trust. Well much to my surprise there was not as much money as I had hoped. Upon further investigation I see that there are about 9 charges to my account totaling up to just under a thousand dollars. My first thought was, “What the hell has Holly bought now…” But after a deep breath I knew there was no way it could have been her. I really doubt that she had been shopping on to many baby furniture sites. At least I hoped not.

I call her to let her know what’s going on and as I had hoped it wasn’t her; she would never do such a thing, she is too sweet. But now my fears were starting to come true. Someone has stolen my bank account information.

I get on the phone and call up Republic and I was able to get a freeze put on my account and come Monday when all the charges are processed then we will begin the dispute paperwork and hopefully be able to get our money back. Good thing I am over here and have no need for cash 99% of the time.

Hopefully it will be a quick fix; hopefully I don’t have to go around and around trying to get it all taken care of. Hopefully the good people at Republic can handle this situation. It’s not easy handling normal finance matters while over here and I doubt this will be any easier.

I really want to meet the person or people behind this. They must have been really in need of some high quality baby furniture. I wonder if they will tell there kid one day that all his/her baby furniture was purchased from a stolen credit card? I wonder if they realize what I could do to them.

Overtime

For those that have been counting I will have been deployed for a full twelve months this Monday. Yes that’s right, I have been gone for an entire year. If it wasn’t for that little extension that they hit us with I would be home right now if not on a flight headed that way. Bummer.

Even with about two full months to go signs of change are starting to show around here. Large tents are being put up to house the incoming new soldiers and their equipment is starting to arrive bit by bit everyday. There are even a few 101st Airborne patches walking around the FOB lately. It is just good to see that someone has finally shown up to replace us and we can begin to start packing up and preparing the get the hell on out of here.

What this means to you is that due to my short amount of time left over here you can no longer send any more care packages. I know you all are so saddened by these news. But don’t worry, thanks to your generosity I have plenty of food to make it through the last little bit of time. You all have been so good to me this entire year. I could never thank you all enough.

As for our missions and our continued fight over here, things are still the same for the most part. We are continuing to take the fight to the bad guys and we aren’t letting up just because we are short on time. We don’t want to hand a new unit an area that is all messed up and hasn’t been patrolled or raided in the last thirty days. We would simply be setting them up for failure. They will be fresh and this all takes some time to get use too.

In other news of randomness, I was at the patrol base in the city last night for a good sized mission we were running. While standing around waiting for everything to kick off I was talking to a member of the Navy EOD Team (Explosives Ordinance Disposal, think bomb squad). While talking to him he all the sudden blurts out;

EOD: “Is that really your last name?”
Me: “Uhhh… Yeah, been my last name my whole life.”
EOD: “Holy S***, my ex-wife had the same last name, she took everything from me, even my dog. I hate that b****.
Me: Even the dog? That sucks.

What is so weird about this whole thing is that through out my entire life I have never seen, met or heard of anyone that has my same last name. Well of course there is my immediate family but no one outside of them. Everything I was ever able to trace back showed that my name game from German settlers that came over and settled somewhere in the Ohio and Pennsylvania area. Sure enough this guy and his rather hated ex-wife were from Ohio.

So yeah, that was a rather random story. Just one many I have collected over here. But when you scrape up so many of America’s finest and stuff them all in a sandbox, some rather odd stories will emerge. After living, fighting and sitting on the highway waiting for EOD for 5 hours you even begin to learn too much about the people in your truck.

Over this past year my platoon has grown rather close. Granted that deep inside I think we all really hate one another but on the outside we get along rather well. We all love to make fun of how incompetent out leadership is and how our platoon leader couldn’t lead him self out of a paper bag. We are just like any other group of boys; we like to make fun of each other and just try to have a good time despite what it is we may be doing.

So here we are at the end of the fourth quarter, so let’s all get ready for a little bit of overtime.