War in Iraq, a Soldier's View

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13-Apr-03 11:15 PM
(Edited to remove names and a few personnal paragraphs)

Talk about a lazy day, I slept till 9:00am and then took a 3 hour nap at 2:00pm. But the weather was so nice today it was hard not to enjoy an afternoon nap, there’s been a storm moving in all night and it just barely hit about an hour ago, enough rain came down to make everything wet but not enough to soak everything like the rain storm after the big sandstorm. The night has been nice, cool and humid from the storm and we got a good light show before the storm.

I’ve been thinking of a girl back home all day because of a dream I had last night. It was one of the dreams where it was just good to be with somebody. We were running through a park just playing around and acting like a couple of kids. It was a great dream, just because it was nice to have somebody who loved me and was having fun just being around me. The last part of the dream was us holding each other looking each others eyes.

So the whole day I’ve been thinking of what it will be like when I get home to see her again. We’ve always been good friends and there was a time I wanted to go out with her but she was with someone else at the time. By time she was single again I had noticed that we were two very different people. Me and her have some similar interests we also have many differences.

She’s the type who likes to go to art shows and plays every now and then but not necessarily because se likes them but because it’s the sophisticated thing to do. Patterson’s the same personality, he talks about going to fancy restaurants, art shows and wine tastings but he brags about it like it makes him an adult. He considers himself a connaisseur to be more grown up, and because of the he likes to rub in how much he knows about “sophisticated” things. She’s very similar, she doesn’t brag about it as much but she thinks it puts her on a level above others, one time she was going to an art opening and I was interested so I asked her a few questions about it, but she blew it off like I wouldn’t know what she was talking about. It’d probably surprise her to know that I’ve been going to art openings that my mother was in since I was 3.

Plus she’s not the outdoors type; she needs to be close to a big city because she’s more into the night life and comforts of home. I know she likes to go camping, but she likes to go camping the same way as most of my other friends do, going up in the mountains for a couple days to drink alcohol around a fire, bring as many amenities from home as you can, and never leave the camp site. I can never see me and her going on 5 mile hikes through the mountains, or my favorite thing in the world Backpacking.

So with so many differences between things that she likes and things that I like how come I’m attracted to her? And some people get a taste from things like the outdoors and really pick up on it. Maybe it could work out.

Then it all goes back to what I’ll do when I get home. I’m sure I’ll see her again within a few weeks of getting home, she’s a good friend and I should visit her soon after getting home. There will probably be a welcome home party or something like that, but should I ask her out? (Assuming she’s single) I already know that we have our differences, or should I wait till I get some signal from her? No, I know that’s a bad idea because guys never pick up on signals, if I wait for that I’ll be waiting forever. But if I do ask her out and it doesn’t work out it could ruin a really good friendship. On the other hand could I stand to just be friends with her when all I can think about when I’m talking to her is how much I’d like to go out with her, when I keep having dreams where we hold each other an look into each others eyes?

Too much to be thinking about when I might be going to Baghdad in the next day or two. The trip up there has been put off because people in the convoys going up have been getting shot, and they want to secure the route before we move. Plus it turns out that Maj. Yarber, MSG Grimshaw, and Col Lockwood are going home; they’re supposed to be the guys taking care of us and then when we go to the lions nest they get a “get out of Iraq free” card? That just sucks, there’s no reason for us to be here, we don’t have the parts supply lines to do DS work up there. Hansen’s theory is that we’re just going to be the first maintenance group up there to get everything ready for the next to come up. That’s certainly the way it seem to go for us. Ever since Arifjan we go in and are the only maintenance around till another full size DS unit can come in. The trouble is that this means we go into a place right after it has been take from the enemy, set up our stuff and try to jury-rig what we can for a few weeks, then when the nice things like warm meals, air-conditioned tents and a PX show up, we pack up to the next miserable site.

Tomorrow at 10:00am we should get more info on what’s going on, from what we’ve heard it’s going to be as miserable as Camp Cedar so we sure as hell better get some tents before we move this time.

Well I’m going to bed, hopefully I’ll have as nice as dreams as last night.