Tribute

I went to Ramadi this week to say farewell to a fallen comrade and offer some support and condolences to the boys I had to leave when I came to Baghdad.

This memorial ceremony was harder than the others, as it ought to be for someone I'd worked with for 18 months. It was good, but hard. You never expect the true warriors to fall like that. You never really expect it for anyone. He was killed in a direct conflict with the enemy, and somehow that makes it seem more tolerable. More just perhaps. Not like the majority of the bullshit IED deaths we suffer. Those are random strikes on random vehicles with no fighting chance to make it seem fair.

Not this time. This was a man in a ditch with a gun and a death wish, ready to fight and be killed. He was making his last stand after an atypically pitched battle. His burst of machine gun fire killed two good men before he was quickly engaged. The subsequent detonation of his suicide vest wounded two more of ours.

My fallen brother was a warrior who died a warrior's death. It wasn't glorious or dignified, but it was what we prepare ourselves for and hope to God never happens. The man was relentless in his duties. He took care of his soldiers, troublemakers all. He was an instigator and mischief-maker, to be sure. But he refused to back down when we were losing vehicles all too regularly to IEDs and were rethinking our tactics. He fought through pain from injuries that should have been treated years ago to do his job, often going above and beyond. He was one of those men who always seemed to be the first to respond when trouble arose. He was by all accounts a warrior, and by most definitions, a hero, probably multiple times over. When the mission called for supporting the local police, he gave them everything he could find, to include taking the time to escort them to our scrap heaps and dump sites to scrounge for usable material. The ceremony showed picture after picture of him with his IPs, with caches he and his boys found, with IEDs they had dug up. The success of that Company owed much to him. Though he didn't seem the type, he just couldn't hold back his dedication, couldn't stop working for improvements, day by day. He was, like so many we've lost, a family man; a husband and father of two boys.

Rest in peace, Ray.

Heated

I'm getting tired of all the "Heat Wave Scorches (insert region here)" headlines.

How about "Heat Wave Scorches Half of US Friggin' Army"?!

110° today in the impeccable Stars & Stripes weather forcast. Cool front coming through, I guess.

The F Word

In a phone conversation this week I was asked what I do for fun. My brain went into emergency mode trying to come up with a good answer. Fun? The best I could come up with was "Well, for MWR I try to work out...and read. "

And in that answer is maybe the saddest thing I can think of. I've reduced myself here to a life so lame that I can't even use the word "fun."

I can't believe I used "MWR" in place of "fun." MWR is a military program providing "Morale, Welfare, Recreation." Downrange (here) the program is run by KBR, former Halliburton subsidiary, as one of its many, many lucrative government contracts. In addition to DFACs, water purification, fuel operations and other services, they run the gym, the Velvet Camel, and an MWR building which has movies, books, pool tables and other largely underused entertainment resources.

But real fun? I guess I hadn't even thought of it.

A lot of soldiers play video games. A lot of pirated movies get watched. I've deliberately watched two movies since I've been here. (A number of others have been inadvertently viewed while they were playing in the TOC. ) But that wasn't really for the fun of it, more to stop thinking about work all the time.

I have my trusty Louisville Slugger here, the XO stick, and I'll occasionally go outside to take a few cuts to remember what it feels like and dream of softball league glories.

Oh, and I did see a group of soldiers taking turns trying to throw rocks into a bucket. That may have been 'fun.' I wasn't sure.

Update: Up until this week I've been avoiding the occasional games of RISK that go on, for fear I actually might have this 'fun' and lose my edge and miss out on some of the 'not in any way fun' that makes up the rest of the day. Anyway, last week I participated in what is probably the second game of RISK I've been a part of. So, to be fair, I have to report that I did attempt some 'fun.' I should also report that in the following game on the Fourth, while attempting more 'fun,' I did inadvertently achieve total world domination. So maybe I ought to be careful what I get involved in.