War in Iraq, a Soldier's View

This was the first time I was able to make an actual journal entry, the night whole evening I spent writing the recap of the first 4 days. It was also our first full day trying to live in primitive conditions, before we had a tent with heating, A/C, and power. Plus we had some RV style toilets that kind of flushed. It was quite a shock but the nervous excitement of the War was still in us so we were able to give up alot as long as we weren't being shot at.

24-Mar-03 8:21 PM

I’ve started this journal, its been something I wanted to do being at war and all, I actually thought of the idea back at camp Arifjan when I thought of tracking my progress through my deployment. Maybe some day I’ll publish it to the internet along with the pictures I’ve been taking. CNN may send journalists along with the troops but they’ll never actually see what its like through a soldier’s eyes or know what it feels like when your one of the people that’s involuntarily doing the shooting.

The last five days are in a separate story that I felt should be separate from the journal, I’m actually almost done writing it now, just putting on the finishing touches.

Not much of anything new going on today. All of the units that were here when we got here have left and a whole new set of different units are here but we don’t know for how long. It looks like it’s as for our group it’s just us and the 177th CP tent nest to us.

The guys at the 177th loaned us a GP small that we turned into our own theater tent, since we’re not doing much we might as well try to pass the time watching movies, bringing our TV/DVD was a good idea, it keeps me and Patterson from having to wear out our Laptops.

Other than that the day was just spent getting our area built the way we want it, one of the priorities was a place to take a crap, leaning up against sand piles was too visible to everybody else, even at night some dumb-ass in a Humvee was bound to spotlight you with his headlights and just sit there for everybody to see.
So now we have a nice little wooden shield so that nobody can see anything except your head and shoulders. And no more bracing against a bench, now we got a folding chair with the seat cut out and an oil can beneath to catch all the shit. I still can’t wait till we’re back in civilization. I’m already sick of taking a crap and feeling the flies crawling around on my butt.