The most beautiful country in the world

Ladies and gentlemen,
I type this from the internet center at MCAGCC Twentynine Palms, California. This means I am in the United States of America and deliriously happy about it. If only everyone could appreciate life in the United States every day as much as I do right now.

We spent roughly two days in Taqaddum and roughly two days in Kuwait and left the theater on the 9th. We refueled in Frankfurt, and my opinion of Germany improved tenfold. We were told we could drink if we were of age but only two beers, so of course I had four and was feeling terrific (at 5:30 a.m.). There was a delightful blonde girl serving the beers (some kind of hefeweizen...don't remember which brand), and I asked Karnolt and a few other guys if I should propose to her. I was instantly in love with her, I think. Anyways, we were there for two hours and it was probably the best time I ever had between the hours of five and seven in the morning.

We flew into March AFB around 11 in the morning or something like that. As we exited the plane, the local fire and police had several vehicles parked nearby flashing their lights and roaring their sirens and creating quite the raucus for us. The battalion inspector-instructor CO and sergeant major were there, shaking our hands and welcoming us home, along with a contingent of local VFW types. We hung out for awhile as they offloaded the plane then boarded a ton of buses.

The bus trip was a lot of fun. It's about 2.5 hours between March AFB and Twentynine Palms, and leading our convoy of buses were three VFW vets on motorcycles flying the American flag and blocking off intersections for us. Once we got past Palm Springs, we got the idea to open the windows and wave at people, and the bus driver took it upon herself to wail on the horn almost incessantly so everybody knew we were coming. It was like an hour and a half parade through five different towns. As we saw some American-ism that we'd missed, we'd shout it out and everybody aboard the bus would cheer, and then we got to just cheering whenever somebody waved at us or honked their horn for us, which was often. We felt like rock stars.

That day we turned in our weapons and found billeting then were set free to create as much damage as possible. The drinking started early and ended late and took on the tone of making up for lost time. I found a lot of my Charlie Battery brethren who had been attached to other units, and basically the whole battalion was partying together wherever we went, because of the interconnectivity of the batteries (Marines were mixed around a lot between the six batteries of Task Force MP, so you'd know people you were attached to in Iraq and people from your parent unit). It was a grand time and resulted in an awful Wednesday morning.

I finally ran into Schauer and Glynn Wednesday morning, which was nice. That night we were supposed to meet up and do some more drinking and catching up, but I just ate some Chinese and fell asleep in my clothes on my rack at an early hour, and haven't seen them since. We'll have to do some more catching up after we all get home.

Speaking of getting home, I'll be flying into Waterloo late Sunday night. I should have a 96-hour liberty through Thursday night or something, and I may or may not have to be in Waterloo for Friday. But we will have the weekend off and the welcome home party, which on Facebook I have dubbed "The Night America Becomes America Again" in a somewhat blasphemous display of egotism, will still roll starting around 3 p.m. on Saturday the 21st. My mom asks that people not drive home drunk. She ought to join that group.

Anyways, Karnolt's not feeling too hot and wants to leave, so I'll end it there. I'm terrifically happy to be sharing a country with everybody again, especially given how beautiful this country happens to be. I hope to see you all very soon.