[Tobiasly]

A little more on my adventures of late.. this is an email I sent to my family a little bit ago, describing life in Iraq for me and my platoon the past month and a half.

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Hi again everyone! I'm typing this on my laptop so I can put together a longer email. I figured people would be interested in a little more of what life is like over here. Like I said, we are stationed just outside Talil airfield, which is about 1/3 of the way up the main highway from Kuwait to Iraq.

We are basically helping pull security in the area, but things are actually pretty calm. Now that the war is winding down, we are shifting into more humanitarian missions. There are lots of nomads and displaced citizens living in tents around the area who are pretty short on food and water. It sure is a whole different world over here. It's just quite a culture shock trying to understand these people sometimes, even if it weren't for the language barrier.

These people are so poor that most of them will steal anything that isn't bolted down in hopes of selling it or using it to build a house with. My platoon is stationed at a captured Iraqi military compound, and there were several abandoned vehicles here that were in, let's say, less than optimal condition. We kept having Hajis come up to our gate, which we eventually figured out wanted to take the vehicles. ("Haji" is how we all refer to Arabs in general, sorta like calling an American "Joe". It may be a little less than politically correct, but it lets us easily refer to them in the third person). And boy, were they persistent.

Finally we started just dragging the vehicles outside of the wire and giving them to the next Haji who came by asking for them. At last, we had gotten rid of all vehicles in sight, except for the one we were using as part of our vehicle entrance barrier. That one was a truck that was missing all doors, had broken windows, holes all through the body, no battery, etc. Oh yeah, and we ran it over the "severe tire damage" spikes one day when we were bored to make sure they worked (they did). Sure enough, a few days later, another Haji came by and claimed it was his.

There are quite a few old Iraqi government buildings around that the Hajis then started looting. We tried to keep them out at first, but soon realized we didn't have the time or people to keep them all out. So we just concentrated on keeping them out of the buildings where we knew there was still ammo stockpiled. We had to chase some of them off several times and get more forceful each time. One day, during a particularly nasty duststorm, we saw a bunch of people crawling on top of one of the buildings. When we got there, they were ripping the roof apart with a sledgehammer so they could take the steel I-beams!

Not too long afterward, we saw several Hajis cutting down an electrical power pole to cut it apart and use it to build their house -- power lines attached and all! We tried to explain to them that the power is down now, but that it will be fixed before long and we'll probably need the power lines when it is. I could probably go on for quite a while with more examples.

Today is a pretty exciting day. We just got one of our battalion's generators working that no one was using, and are using it to power the small building where myself and the rest of the platoon leadership are staying. So that means we're able to have power for a few hours in the evening. Earlier today, we drove a little into An Nasariyah, past the hospital where those seven POWs were held at first. Again, most of the citizens were pretty friendly, with the occasional not-so-nice glare from some bystanders.

We are pretty lucky to have these abandoned buildings here because it saves us from having to live in tents. We have been trying to gradually improve our living conditions whenever we can. We found an old rusty drum half-full of kerosene, so we built a little stove out of bricks, sand, and some chicken wire we found so we can heat up water for coffee and shaving. We've built a shower, a swimming pool, and various other amenities along the way. It's amazing what you can do with almost nothing when you have to!

Things are pretty much set into a routine for us now. It was a little hectic for me at first trying to coordinate everything and make sure that my troops were able to observe all the areas in our zone where people might be able to sneak up. The commander had to give me extra soldiers to make sure I had enough people to do the job. I'm currently in charge of five rifle squads, a heavy weapons squad, and two humvee crews (a platoon regularly has just three rifle squads and a heavy weapon squad).

At least I should get some extra "fruit salad" on my uniform when we're all done. My company commander and the battalion commander have recommended me for a Bronze Star, which is for going well above and beyond the call of duty during wartime. It's a pretty prestigious award, especially for someone in the Guard who's only been in for a few years. We should also be getting our Combat Infantry Badge, which is also pretty prestigious.

There are some pretty fun moments too. My platoon has a spare humvee that we use to respond to emergencies and run errands, and I've gotten to drive quite a bit (usually the officer just has someone drive for him, but I like driving so I do it myself most of the time). I had never really driven one before we got here. My first time driving was at night, going about 40 MPH down a bumpy, windy desert trail with night vision goggles (we don't use headlights) during a particularly nasty duststorm. I tell ya, that's something everyone should do once in their life!

There is so much abandoned ammunition and explosives all around this area, that they're having a hard time moving or destroying it all before the wrong people get a chance to pick it up. When they do find a cache somewhere, they usually blow it up right there. There are special teams whose sole purpose is to blow up explosives, because they have to know how much demo to use, how big the explosion will be, how big an area they need to evacuate, etc. Every now and then, there will be a huge fireball that shoots into the air nearby, followed by a thunderous boom and shock wave. We've had windows blown out from some that were especially close.

This entire country seems to be crawling with stray dogs. Being a dog lover, I hate to see all these poor, starving animals. I have no idea where they find enough food for there to be so many of them. They also fight each other and bark all night long. We had to thin out the population a little in our area because it got so bad. I've adopted one half-grown pup named Boots. Many of the guys hate her because she barks more than pretty much all of the others. She got stung by a scorpion the other day, and they were all hoping she'd die (they know that if they shoot her I'll make them regret it!) She pulled through though, after resting for most of the day.

Well, I guess that's about it for my rambling description of life in the desert. We will supposedly be getting word pretty soon on when we'll be coming home. It will probably still be a couple months, but at least we should have a definite date set. Everyone here sure is ready for all this to be over with. I'll be sure to let everyone know as soon as I can. Hope to see everyone again before too long!
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