One Marine's View

I'M HOME

After a long trip I’m home. Beginning on the 8th, we departed our company out post and headed south. Traveling from northern Iraq, to Baghdad, to Kuwait, then to Ireland, then to Maine in the US then to California and finally back across to the east coast.

It was a long trip but it doesn’t really matter when you are headed home though. My frequent flyer miles should be off the charts!! Its awesome to be home and the things that I see the most is green trees, the smell of green fresh cut grass,clouds (since we never saw any) and the several other things I immediately see we have as Americans that we so easily take for granted. That will be another post.

This weekend, look for the guy with no hair enjoying a nice non- boiled steak, cold beer and several cigars, that’s me.

The large effort by all of you supporting us while in Hades is nothing but exemplified now as we are home. I can’t thank you all enough.  I will be “resting” and getting to know the entire family again. Will write soon!
Semper Fidelis and God Bless.

A time with warriors

Although we are continuing to do great work in country our time here is limited. We continue to disrupt the enemy and keep the area safe. At some point we will begin the hurry up and wait procedure out of country and make the transition towards home. We ran into a few Georgian soldiers that were making their way back home due to the situations in their country. With broken english, Marines talked with them about what was happening in their home land. Organized and ready, they departed Iraq, making only small talk heading back home to do their work there.

The “Hoofs” dept.

Ways to keep both fronts happy

As you battle the daily contingencies while being deployed, not much sleep, sharing the heads with 100 of your closest buds, and dinning in the swahut of food, you still have to balance that juggling act back home.

Although you miss birthdays, wedding anniversary’s and moments that will never be brought back except for pictures and stories from you kids you know your mission deployed is important and so does your spouse. However, without divulging all the Op Sec in the world, your spouse doesn’t really “get” what you’re doing, and if they do, you probably peaked over the Op Sec rules. So you try to tell and explain to them all the little corks about being deployed, the funny stories of people getting locked in the port a johns, sun crazy dogs chasing you as you try to PT, having all sorts of bugs crawl up you leg at night and finding dirt in every crease of your body, good times!!  You try to minimize the bad because, well they are bad and you don’t need to stress out the home front when there isn’t anything they can do about it anyway.