So it's been a little while since I've updated anyone.

In July I was given an office in an old Iraqi Army building. Someone who never knew me painted on my wall. As you can see (sweaty office) it fits me quite well.

At the end of July my platoon and I moved south of Baghdad to a little base called FOB Delta (near Al-Kut, Iraq for those of you looking for a travel destination).  We had to get our vehicles ready to roll (18JUL).  For reference, those vehicles weigh around 68,000 lbs and can survive most anything you can throw at them. They're also bigger than the regular semi-tractor you see driving on 465. Gas Station is one of my guys while we were stopped at a heavily-fortified US-only gas station on the way from Baghdad to FOB Delta. Nasariyah is the view from one of these beasts of the little town of Nasariyah, a happy place where people throw rocks at you and hike up their man-dresses to moon you.  Lineup is a picture of my guys after our convoy with our heavy equipment in the background. Convoy Commander is a picture taken of me from my position in the convoy as....the convoy commander. We took nearly 30 heavy vehicles down 200 miles of road, blew tires on the road (and changed them in record time), had vehicles break down on us and got to see a good amount of Iraq from our seats 5 feet off the ground.

 

So we're here at Delta now, building a dirt road. You can see a typical day in "dirt work".  Not terribly exciting.  We occasionally find unexploded ordinance - bombs that got dropped/shot that never exploded.  "Tank shell" is me standing next to a live tank round that we dug up, complete with corroded fuse.  We had EOD (Explosive Ordinance Disposal) come and blow it up.  "Supervising" is two of my sergeants running a job site.  My job is to oversee 3 different job sites while my sergeants oversee their own, individual job sites.  I also work with the parties here on the base to figure out exactly how the road will be built and the specifications it needs to meet.  I am also the quality control person, meaning that throughout the day and after the work day I go to the job sites to make sure my guys implement the design that I came up with.