Wow, that was a close one...

Well, Im back to my sweet ass schedule now. Our schedule changes through different cycles and we've now switched into the easy cycle. And my turn at a day off is up next and it will end up working out to quite a few days off in a row for me! God its going to be nice. Today was good, although I didn't get to sleep in as long as Id like to. I woke early so that I could go down and get the internet setup in my room so I no longer have to go to the computer lab. This is so nice and I feel free now! :)

Tomorrow Ill be able to sleep in a little more than I did today, although I do have an appointment to meet with a historian for my batallion. A historian? I was like "What the hell?!?" when they told me about that. Apparently theres like 8 or 10 people from the batallion he's going to speak with, and Im one of them. I can only guess that it has something to do with me and this blog, especially considering that almost everyone else he's talking to are of rank much more considerable than this lonely Corporal.

So durring our time that we were out at our outpost, it was pretty chill. Time went by fast which was great. One thing I noticed is that it had been pretty quite for a while in terms of that one bad area. I guess they have been trying the whole "peacful" approach, and for a little bit it seemed it was working; although myself and many others figured it was pointless. But they have to try right?

So anyways, the quiet finally ended the other day when they decided to attack an American convoy from my unit that operates in their area. I guess it was a pretty decent attack because they had called for assistance, and another platoon from my company rolled out there to assist them. They didn't end up getting into anything though, for it was a fairly short lived attack. Somehow that platoon always are the lucky ones who tend to be in the right place at the right time to get in to stuff like that. Bastards! But either way that was an attack on US troops so in my opinion, the whole peace thing just went out the window. Ever since that day, we've been seeing and hearing little firefights going down in that area; like how it used to be all the time. In fact one night there was a qucik little engagement and a stray tracer round ended up flying just over the top of our outpost. I ended up hearing that distinctive SNAP as it flew by, which is something I haven't heard in a while.

Well the other day we were out on patrol and for some reason we ended up having to make a stop by the Green Zone, which is this large base here in Baghdad where a lot of the Iraqi Goverment is housed as well. Its rare that we get to go there, but when we do it is awesome because they have a big PX and some good food we can eat. As we were pulling in, one of the guys on my team was saying how he had read on the news that the day or so before, 5 guys were killed and 20 injured in mortar and rocket attacks. I guess lately they have been mortaring the shit out of them.

We ended up getting a chance to get some food and then stop by the PX. I had already made my stop in the PX and got what I needed and had gone to get some food at Subway. After I got my food I ended up going to this one area where me and a couple others could sit and enjoy our food. We were actually in the middle of sharing stories from either their last Iraq deployment or my stories from my deployment to New Orleanse for Katrina. All of a sudden out of nowhere theres a loud scream for a split second and then an earth shaking BBOOOOOMM!! We all immediately look over where the explosion came from and see that a mortar had hit this building right next to where we were sitting, maybe 25 meters away. It was a BIG one too. We all immediately jump up and begin running for cover, expecting more rounds. After 2 steps, I realized I didnt grab my rifle so I stopped, grabbed it and started running again. About 1/2 way to the bunker I realized that others had probably forgot them so I turned around and went back and sure enough there were a couple. I grabbed them up, while another guy had run back out to grab up all of our bags of stuff we had bought. Wouldn't want someone stealing our stuff in the middle of a mortar attack right?! :) lol

At this point, we could tell that more rounds probably wern't coming so we wern't in the frantic rush and at this point just walking to where the shelter was. Well apparently some Air Force and FOB dwelling 'security' personel were freaking out like WW3 was underway. They were yelling at us "GET THE FUCK IN THERE!! HURRY THE FUCK UP!! LETS GO!! NOOWWW!!!" We just kind of look at them like are you serious? We continued to walk to the bunker. I guess another guy from my platoon was taking his time and one of the Air Force girls had threated to arrest him because he wasnt getting to the bunker fast enough. WOW! That is HILARIOUS! I would love to get arrested for that. Theres no way I would get in any trouble and it would be hilarious for my chain to have to come bail me out for "Failure to run durring a mortar attack"!! HAHAHA!!

Once under cover, we saw this one kid that was in there that had taken some shrapnel to his shoulder. It was nothing big, just a little bit. The funniest thing was that as the medical personell were patchin him up, he was bitching up a storm about how he had just paid for his pizza and was waiting for it to cook, and now he wasnt going to get his pizza! Thats great! Hey, Im sure that Purple Heart will get him a free pizza or beer or two.

The crazy thing was that he was twice as far from the mortar than we were. The thing was it hit a building with a solid roof and thus exploded 15 feet above the ground. It was pretty much dead online with where we were sitting, but because we were below it, all the shrapnel flew past us over our heads and ended up hitting that guy. If it had ended up hitting the ground level, it could have been a very bad day for the 5 of us sitting there. But once again, luck or fate or whatever intervened and we escaped totally unharmed with a crazy story to tell. Thats how it is. If it doesnt kill you or hurt you it makes a great story. The question is how many great stories until it becomes a horrible story. And with war, you just never know.