Well… I made it to my permenant ‘residence’ here in Iraq. Our convoy took the better part of five days to reach our destination – Camp McHenry, which is a FOB (forward observation base) from which we launch various patrols and raids, and also do community service for a few of the local villages near here. We’re not in Kirkuk, but we’re not too far from it. I can’t tell ya where ‘here’ is exactly for security reasons… but it’s safe to say we’re pretty much right in the middle of the Sunni Triangle.

The ride up was somewhat eventful. Had a lot of break-downs along the way, in which I helped pull security for a few of them. We had to ‘disbale’ a few civilian vehicles along the way that tried to harass our convoy… also had a couple IED attacks (not my particular serial, but one that was ahead of us) but they were minor, no deaths/minor injuries. Everyone made it in one piece basically. I did get some pics of what we thought was a mortar attack on our convoy position during our last leg… turned out to be friendly test-fire from artiliary nearby. Like 500 meters near our location. Heh ;-)

Since being here… gah. The weather here SUCKS… right now it’s barely above freezing and it’s rained for two friggin’ days straight… big giant mud hole we’re living in right now. Can’t wait for those 130+ degree days eh? We’ve had a few injuries since being here, a couple of them serious. Luckily that’s been it so far. Our platoon leader has been made acting mayor of a local village nearby, which we’ll travel to once a week to do community service projects. Already been there once, locals fed us while our higher-ups were in a meeting. Most of the people here are nice… or at least appear to be. Jury is still out on that one.

I’ll go into more detail in the message thread that will coorespond with this post… lots and lots of stuff to tell, and I got a lot of pics too, just no way to upload them right now.

Gotta run… take care gang, talk to ya soon.