Replacements

Our replacements are here. They're an active duty unit out of Pendleton, and they seem like pretty decent guys. Their average age is a bit lower than ours and their platoons are significantly lower ranking than ours, meaning that we have a captain platoon commander, a gunny, two staff sergeants, something like fifteen sergeants and five corporals, and they only have a first lieutenant platoon commander, two or three sergeants and a handful of corporals. That's the way active duty is, though. Anyways, they're here, we're training them up and soon we'll be back in Cali.

I got taken off duty and put back on the trucks the other day because one of the guys had a concussion. In superstitious paranoia, I got myself ready and did a lot of praying because I figure that would be prime voodoo time for me to get blown up, after I was already thinking I was off missions. Well, I went over there to prepare for the mission and it turns out I got kicked off my truck so that some of our replacements could ride along and learn the ropes. So, my superstitions were qualmed.

A couple days ago I made a big leap in planning out the story I've been "writing" for the past two years. Basically I had no idea what kind of background I could give the main character that wouldn't be extremely cliche, but two nights ago I was in the zone and just randomly started thinking about it and figured it out. So that's swell. I'm still a long ways from actually putting much down on paper, but I do have a full sixteen pages of ideas in my notebook.

That's all, have fun. See you all soon!

Big news for you

I went on a mission last night that was unnecessarily long (we could have driven to the same place in a quarter of the time if we could take the direct route) and painful. When I returned (around 4:30 a.m.), I found out that I'm on guard this week. Any other time, being on guard would be news but not big news. Finding out last night that I'm on guard this week means that last night's mission was my penultimate mission, leaving only our trip from here to our flight out of Iraq, and we're just along for the ride for that one. So essentially, last night was my last real mission.

For you, this means that the danger for me is basically over and you can stop worrying. That final mission, we'll be riding in the back of well-armored vehicles along a pretty dull road, then jumping on a plane bound for the safety of Kuwait. From now until then I'm on base, and the only danger here is incoming mortar rounds, and that danger is miniscule.

For me, I don't know what to think. It was a bittersweet surprise. Of course, it made me extremely excited because it meant that the end was in sight and I'd soon be back in the States and soon thereafter back home to my loved ones, but it also came unexpectedly and I didn't have time to prepare myself for it. There was no pomp, no celebration on my part, since I didn't even realize it was my last mission until it was already over. I had no opportunity to relish it, and there are certainly things I wish I could have done while over here that I now will certainly not be able to do. Regardless, it's very exciting.

In related news, we cleaned the heck out of our room tonight. We are having field days so often that it's no longer a special occasion. For instance, tomorrow is Monfieldday and the day after will be Tuesfieldday. It has gotten absurd. But this one was still special in the fact that we were preparing the building for its turnover to our replacements. I threw out a HUGE amount of stuff, which for those of you who know me well is a tremendous undertaking for me. I'm a packrat. In fact, I ended up actually picking up something that wasn't mine, but it was a book I wanted and I think getting new books is always a good thing. In this case, it was Band of Brothers by Stephen Ambrose.

I was encouraged by your reactions to my last post. I reckon that when I get back and no longer have as much purpose for this blog, I may use it to lie prosaically for your amusement.

Time to go, zai jian.

Chewbacca and others

I just recently found out that my fish (Chewy) died a few days ago. Many of you may not have known that I had a fish. In fact, he wasn't really mine at all. I inherited him once a friend of mine graduated, and Sherm passed him down for me after I left and he graduated. Even while he was mine, I never took care of him. Sherm fed him and cleaned his tank and the like, because I'm stupid about fish, and lazy. But anyways, now he's dead. He was some kind of beta or something crazy like that. I don't really know what kind he was, technically speaking. All I know is he was mean as hell and everyone who knew him could barely stand being in the same room as him and I loved him with all my heart. He had a notoriously violent disposition, and it was whispered that if you stared too long into his eyes, he could steal your soul. We are all diminished by our loss of him.

This reminds me of another fish I used to have. I was down fishing in a creek under a bridge one day, straw hat, overalls, bamboo fishing rod and all, when I caught him. He was a big devil, and when I picked him up to take him off the hook, he winked at me. That wink won my heart, and I couldn't bare to skin him up and eat him, so I kept him in a tank in my room.

One day, I found him lying outside the tank, gills flapping for air, so I picked him back up and put him in the tank. Not a minute later, the lunatic jumped right back out. At that point, I thought maybe he was trying to tell me something, so I let him out a little while longer. This happened every day for several months, and each day I would leave him out a little longer, until finally I kept him out of the tank and let him sleep at the foot of my bed. By that time, he'd managed a bit of a flapping duck walk, so he and I would take walks.

Well, not a month later, I was walking with him down the road when we came upon the same bridge I had been fishing under when I first met him. It was a wooden bridge, and by this time the planks were starting to rot and the bridge was in poor repair. Wouldn't you know it, as we were walking across that bridge one of the planks gave way and the poor guy fell back into the creek. I rushed down to the bottom of the bridge to help him out, but by that time, it was too late. He had drowned.

So that's about that. Have a fine day, folks.

Bur-ba-dur

Not much new here, as usual. Regardless, I will put you through a rather dull update.

I keep seeing this one doc, who I never really knew back at Bravo, around Camp Fallujah, and a few weeks ago I started up a conversation with him. He was very friendly and all that. Well anyways, it was just a chance encounter and I never had spoken to him before or since, until this afternoon. I was at chow this afternoon, and saw him as I walked past his table at the chow hall, and wasn't sure if he'd even recognize me, but he did and I said hello, but then he called me by name and told me that he'd checked for me to see about the Bravo Marine Corps Ball and all this. Point is, it turns out it's the night before Hotel's, so I probably won't be going.

On a related note, I happened to be in Al Asad the other day and talked to a few Straggler Platoon buddies, including one of my fellow Charlie Marines, Butteris. Well, he told me that Charlie is in fact planning on having a ball on the 11th of November, the week before Hotel's. So I might be going to two balls, one of which I could take a real date to, even if it would be pretty boring with only about twelve of us there, plus I guess the I&I staff and probably a handful of older VFW types. We'll see...I'll try and get more details on it once I get to 29 Stumps.

And still speaking of balls, I have yet to reserve a room or secure tickets for Hotel's ball. Considering the amount of trouble I'll be taking to get there (that is, driving for something like 16 hours), I should probably cement those plans soon.

After watching a couple movies recently related to rock and roll, I splurged on both those movies' soundtracks and then three Led Zeppelin albums on Amazon.com. Now I can't wait to get home so I can enjoy them all.

I need to start sending everything home. I'm planning on having just a couple changes of clothes and a few books to keep me busy when I leave for the States. So that's gonna take some doing.

Well, I'm out of time and things to write about, so I'll take my leave for now. Hope to see you all as soon as I get back.

Nothing new

It's been a slow couple of weeks. Mostly, I've busied myself by playing dozens of games of Solitaire every day. Pretty much all my free time is spent on that awful wretch of a game. That's how dull my life has been lately. Then again, I did finish watching Lost, and have pretty much exhausted my movies. I haven't been reading much at all recently, though I don't really know why. Soon enough, I need to pack everything and ship it all home. I'm trying to minimize the amount of crap I have to fly with.

Man, the time is really ticking down here. Unfortunately, the closer we get, the slower time goes by. Soon, folks!

Stressful evening

Things have been going pretty slow recently, without much worthy of note (well, last Tuesday was interesting). Today most of the NCOs had to come up with half-hour classes for us, to keep us from having to do extremely stupid, tedious manual labor for the first sergeant. A lot of them turned out to be pretty interesting, since many of them gave classes on things pertaining to their jobs back home, like law enforcement in Cpl. McTernan's case and federal employment in Cpl. Hinson's. It was educational. Blah.

So then, after the classes were all done, about ten Marines were required to do a PFT. I didn't like my last score, so I asked if I could do it, though it wasn't required for me. I didn't do outstanding by any means, but my scores improved enough to get me a first-class PFT, making me eligible for meritorious promotion. I did thirteen pull-ups, a hundred situps and ran the 3-mile in 23:27, which is better than I've done in awhile (which is sad). I could do better.

Ironically, when I walked back to the house from the PFT which finally qualified me for meritorious promotion, I was told that I would be doing a meritorious promotion board in two hours. It wasn't a real board, but rather a sort of preliminary board because the NCOs couldn't decide from the four of us who did it tonight who to send up for the board (normally, I'd have weeks to prepare). So, I found and borrowed some clean cammies, showered and shaved up really nice, and the four of us found a room and studied Marine Corps knowledge briefly, then at 2200 we went in one at a time. There were two sergeants and two corporals, plus my vehicle commander (errr, sorta former vehicle commander), Sgt. Nicola.

Well, they didn't tell us yet which two of us will go to the real board, but they did say we all surprised them with how well we did. Now, me personally, I think that's a load of crap, because I felt like I did awfully. For some reason, I was more nervous tonight than I have been getting shot at. I was a nervous wreck, and I think I was literally shaking while standing at attention (partially due to my legs being badly fatigued from the PFT I had just run). I didn't speak loudly or confidently enough. I could have done much better, and would have expected myself to do much better. These are the Marines I spend every day with, who I talk to with great comfort dozens of times a day. Yet when they're sitting at this table in front of me, judging my every mood to decide my fate, I quaked. So anyways, that was rough. I asked Doc Schmutz for some morphine afterwards. He said no.

Now, I should mention that I'm terrifically priveleged to have been selected for even this pre-board. That they couldn't decide among me and these three motivators is amazing. They've all been in considerably longer than I have and are all terribly competent. Furthermore, I can think of at least five other Marines I would have picked for it before myself. Pretty much the whole of the lance corporals would be pissed if I picked up meritorious corporal, since so many of them have put in so much more time and do terrific jobs themselves. So, anyways, it's a huge compliment.

This is already pretty long and I doubt there's much more I want to tell you about right now, so I'll finish here. Keep holding down the fort for me, and you're welcome for the lower gas prices.