Goodbye 2007!!!

Today is Dec 31st, the last day of the year 2007. This year has brought many memories, experiences and friendships and one big event in my life, that will forever be with me. On Jan 3rd of this year, we deployed to Kuwait and then finally up in to Baghdad, Iraq. Most of this year has been spent deployed, running missions, fighting a war within a concrete jungle, and just plain being bored out of my mind. But if theres one thing that this year has brought me, it would be the friends and brothers that I have been with and have come to think of as family. We have been through it all together and Im sure we will remain together for the rest of our lives.

Of all the years in my life, this will be one that I will remeber more than any. The memories I have from this place over the past year will be with me forever, and I will look back with both joy and sorrow. In the past year we have lost 2 great men from our company, men whos families did not get to spend this holiday season with the ones they love. These men made a sacrifice that no one could have asked them to make, and we will always remeber and tell the stories of these great men.

With a little time left, we will continue to make memories in this place through part of 2008, but the experiences of this year have been wide and numerous. In a land, far away from home, in a place much different than anything we have ever experienced before, we had made a life. Not the best of lives that could be lived, but we have made the best of what we have had. We will continue to do so until the day arrives that we are able to leave here, to finish our work in this land, and to head home to be with those that we love that we left behind.

For this New Years I have ended up with a nice suprise. Due to the rotations of our days off, I am ending up getting quite a few days off this time and will enjoy all of it. I plan on using this time to start packing things up and to start sending some boxes home. My goal is to minimize what I have to actually carry back with me, because the experience of carry all the gear at one time on our way here absolutely sucked ass and I will not go through that again if I don't have to. I have quite a bit of stuff that I bought here and I need to really assess what I want to keep and whats just not worth taking back. Probably over the next week I am going to get a bunch of stuff to send back and will buy a tuffbox to mail it back in.

Lastly things around here have been getting gayer and gayer by the day. There are so many stupid rules being put in place and they are enforcing them with vengence. Both of the other platoons in our company in the time that we were at the outpost ended up getting caught for "infractions" and having to post NCOs and infractors in front of the chow hall to check for other infractions. How stupid and what a way to boost the morale of the troops which has already dropped significantly after spending 12 months in this hell hole. There are so many new stupid rules and dumb shit that its not even worth listing, but it makes me wonder what they are thinking. Who in their right mind at this point in the game would want to make things even worse on us. Again I say "And they wonder why no one wants to re-enlist."