It gets hot down here. Hot enough to make road tar turn into liquid and pool up on top of the ground (hot tar).  I found a picture of Saddam and did the obligatory "stand on Saddam's face and smile" picture (mural).  We had a cookout a couple of weeks ago but realized that we didn't have any utensils to grill with - everything from the chow hall is plastic.  We had to use a putty knife and a sharpened wooden stake to flip our burgers and hot dogs.  We also have what everyone refers to as "near-beer", non-alcoholic beer bought by the Army for us to drink and grit our teeth to; it's only good for seasoning burgers. 

 

So we'll be down here for another couple of months. The extreme heat (think hotter than 135F every day) is killing our equipment.  We live in an open-bay barracks. For those of you not into Army-speak, "open-bay barracks" means that we (all 43 of us) live in one (not very) big room on bunk beds. I have a tiny office/bedroom with this gov't internet connection and a radio (the talky kind) so that I can type up reports and email people like you. 

 

That last picture, "i want you", is my impression of good ol' Uncle Sam.

 

This tour is way different from my last one.  Here, I'm in charge of 43 dudes and we have a months-long mission to work on.  It's also dealing with dirt (and moving it), not people (and talking to them).  In Afghanistan I was out among the people on a regular basis as part of my job; here I am surrounded by Americans working inside of a US base. Iraq is night-and-day different from Afghanistan in nearly every sense of the phrase.  Not that I necessarily want to go back to near-constant danger.....I just can't wear my cowboy holster over here.

 

Anyways, thanks for your thoughts and prayers.  Hopefully everything is going well at home and everyone is enjoying their September a little bit more now that you know we're over here, sweating in 45 lbs of armor in the 130-degree heat.

 

-jeremy