Babby's first chopper ride

I had zero conception of what I'd be able to bring to COS Sykes in Tal Afar, so I think I packed everything I came to Iraq with. That morning, I found out I could only bring two or three bags... so much of it was spent frantically redistributing everything to make sure I had enough clothes for however long I would be out there for. Then, I got to da choppa and flew out west across the desert... oh joy. It was super stressful for me, having a day's notice I would be going out to a base away from my team, where I didn't know anyone. In my email newsletter to my buddies, I wrote about the visual textures of flying in a Blackhawk, but I feel like I had to present a sanitized version of events and inject as little emotion into the process as possible, while keep it it humorous and interesting.

"You're leaving for Tal Afar tomorrow. Pack your bags." WHAT?!

It's such a contrast to me: tonight the 29th was spent in Royal Oak and Ferndale hanging out with old friends, while last year I was basically given a day's notice that I, the least experience soldier on my team, would be traveling by myself to a base in the middle of nowhere to do a job that required someone who actually knew what they were doing... makes me appreciate little things like hanging out more! I'll post more substantial content once I've gotten some sleep.

One Year

A year ago today (December 28th) marks my first day in Iraq, and I feel like I have a lot to say about that... but there's so much else to write about, like fear and drinking with other veterans! I guess I'll write about the first thing.

C-130 Porthole

December 28th, 2010 - the day I arrived in Iraq! All the fretting, all the waiting, all the planning finally over! After spending more than a week in a daze somewhere in Kuwait, we finally boarded a C-130 and flew to Mosul.

I've never been much for observing people, and I don't think I really started noticing people's personalities until the deployment. I got picked up at the airport by a young Asian NCO, and over the course of the ride back to the PRT compound I learned everything I cared to learn about him. He was the same age as me, and though it was interesting how our paths diverged (he enlisted right out of high school whereas I enlisted after college) I really didn't care at all for his ridiculous machismo. I tried to make some light conversation about how the deployment had been for him, like asking about how many missions he had been on, and he gave hard ass responses like "yo dude I've been on over 400 missions!" Then I met one of his buddies, and unsurprisingly this guy was the same way, if not worse... haha as insecure as I am/was, they took overcompensation to a whole new level! I'm pretty certain they didn't shoot anyone or have a chance to be involved in any kind of shenanigans outside the wire, and that they had simply taken after a senior NCO in the wrong ways.

I will admit I was like that once, thinking I was an absolute BAMF immediately after basic training and AIT... then working on Red Dawn illuminated how foolish my notions of badassery was. If anything, in the past year I've been thinking about how to be kinder, gentler, more thoughtful, more loyal, and generally trying to better filter the words coming out of my pie-hole. Sure, I've deployed, I like to shoot guns, and I'm really good at video games or whatever, but those things in and of themselves don't define masculinity, they're facets of it at best. It's just something I'm increasingly conscious of, how selfish I might have been during college, and learning to appreciate little things here and there that people have done for me, and being actively engaged to try to pay them forward.

On Fantasy and Memory

Jon: lol

  you should blog more!

 i think i want to do that...

Coincidentally, we were talking right after I wrote about reading military fiction and how I can't relate to the book I'm reading. I remember having a conversation with a NCO (staff sergeant) about literature, and how he read fantasy novels to keep himself busy, particularly due to the ferocious nature of the Iraq War during his previous tours. Though I haven't really been reading fictional books as much, I must admit I've been enjoying video games with a fantastical element like Killing Floor, as opposed to the faux realism of Battlefield or Modern Warfare. More on wargaming later, I could write a whole blogpost about that.

Now I'm not that educated on the whole process, so this is probably going to sound like ignorant drivel, but human memory is something I've always been fascinated with, especially since it's something I can learn so much from but oftentimes do not. One of the things that intrigues me: my memory strongly remembers December 26th as the date my team got to Iraq... but all of my photos have timestamps of the 28th. I wonder why that little detail is off by two days - maybe because I remember with great certainty being stuck in Kuwait on Christmas? In any case, it's nice not to be in the Middle East, and I'll probably write more about it as I reflect on the past year.

Our accommodations in Kuwait - borrowed that blanket, travel pillow is mine

War Fiction

I recently purchased a Kindle Fire to do some reading with, as well as to entertain myself at airports or in the air. I bought the novel "Of Rice and Men" because I thought it was a nonfictional account of civil affairs units in Vietnam, but as it turns out, it's fiction based on the author's experiences. For that reason, I can't really get too absorbed into reading the book - I don't really care, because on some fundamental level, it's not real and I don't know what I can learn from that.

"We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People" was a much more interesting read for me, mostly because I would have written a very similar book myself, and I can relate to the subject matter. Basically it's the story of one State Department diplomat's time as a PRT team leader in Iraq, so it's interesting to see how things unfolded from a top-down perspective.

I wonder if my reading tastes are another one of the things that have changed this year.

On Anger

The nice thing about having a blog is that even though it's a public space, if people don't know where to look then they won't find it - depending on how private you want your thoughts to be, it could be the perfect niche.

I think I can diagnose when I started thinking about my buried anger: at one of the Yellow Ribbon workshops this past weekend, there was an "Anger Self-Assessment Test." The metrics themselves were irritating me because most of them are legitimate in my eyes: of course it's true that I still get angry when I think of the bad things people did to me in the past, because it happened recently!

I feel like it's something I've been trying to hide, especially because no one wants to listen, but I can't set it aside any longer - yes, I did mean it when I said Iraq was an eye-opening experience and good overall, but there was a lot of shit that happened while I was there, and I simply can't talk to people about it because no one wants to hear about it or understands. Maybe it was being back in an Army-related setting, maybe it was a lack of access to my normal outlets for this kind of thing, or maybe it was the shitty plane rides there and back, but something snapped on the way back home.

I don't need someone lecturing me that I'm being melodramatic about being lonely, far from home, in a country where the natives are trying to kill me - this conversation actually happened early on in the tour, right at its loneliest point. I've tried to play it off cool, but the experience was a rude awakening to how human nature really is - shitty terrorists, abandonment by friends, leaders pawning off responsibilities, etc. I could go on and on, but no one wants to hear that shit!

I've constructed a clever, logical narrative, but I think the facade is starting to wear on me. I'm pretty sure I don't have PTSD or any of that shit, but one of the things I find incredibly frustrating is being unable/reluctant to articulate my true feelings about the deployment and how my values have changed to my closest friends... might as well hint at it on a blog!

9/11

At 8:46AM on September 11th, 2001, I was a sophomore in high school - I don't remember what I was doing at the time... I do remember walking into my next class, seeing the World Trade Center billowing smoke, and commented that they must be talking about the terrorist attack in 1993. Another classmate corrected me, "no it's happening right now!" We basically watched speechless as the towers continued to burn, and then collapse in horrific fashion.

At 8:46AM on September 11th, 2011, I was in a large airliner flying from Kuwait to at Atlanta, just a few minutes from touching down on American soil, commenting to a fellow soldier that it was about that time 10 years ago that the first plane hit the World Trade Center.

If anything and in spite of things I'm not necessarily content with, one of the things my time in the Middle East (so far) has taught me is just how fortunate I am. I wasn't deployed for a full year, there was only one mildly hairy incident outside the wire, and I'm coming back with quite a few blessings to say the least. A lot of money, post-9/11 GI benefits that I can use for grad school, and my mind & body intact... I'll take it! Many of my other buddies in my unit, though assigned to other PRTs, have also gotten through our deployment okay, and we'll all be demobilizing together at Fort Dix, the rest will come home soon as well. It's been quite the ride, and I know for a fact that even with all the dysfunctions of PRT operations, I was right where I needed to be from December 2010-September 2011. Did I change the world? Did I necessarily fight the good fight? I dunno about that, but I did my job!

It rained yesterday, no shit!

Granted it was 105 degrees or so, the rain was pretty light, and from the looks of my camera possibly mud rather than water... but it was still refreshing to step outside and experience a little bit of precipitation. There's been a lot going here, maybe it symbolizes a break in the shenanigans... or maybe I'm talking out of my ass, haha.

A poem to live by

If, by Rudyard Kiping

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!


The Hands of Victory, Baghdad, Iraq

Something I found digging around...

I dug this image up while I was looking for some paperwork, unfortunately I wasn't able to find the original patch lying around.



Love it!

Lack of updates

Hey guys, I pretty much just send out newsletters so if you're interested in reading more about my shenanigans, just shoot me an email!