...Blah blah blah...

...I just returned from my second mission and as I suck on some sour patch kids while waiting for a sugar rush, I’m trying to think of a way to write about my second venture into Iraq. Anything that could go wrong on a mission happened to us; minus getting blown up or lost. Which I guess are two pretty big ones, but those aside, this one was a doozy.

Giunta just wrote a new entry that will be going up shortly about how individuals who have never seen combat try to blow out of proportion everything that happens to them just to sound like a hardened combat vet. I found myself a couple weeks ago watching “The Men Who Stare at Goats” and seeing myself exactly as the journalist in there. You know the part where he is sitting in Kuwait for a month trying to get into Iraq during the invasion as he hears the other war correspondents sharing their stories from the fronts? Well I catch myself every once in awhile being like that soldier who wants to sound like he’s seen 'things'.

This time around I saw a young private almost blow his head off with a flare and just like in the movies his hands shook as his Sergeant gave him the last remaining puffs of his smoke to help settle his nerves. I sat in a vehicle for countless hours as tires blew out, break lines broke, and loads shifted. Spent more time waiting for the Iraqi Army to secure a trigger man who just set off an IED ten minutes before us on another group only to find out that another IED a few klicks behind us was just cleared. So we sat and waited in the middle of an IED that just went off and an IED that was recently found. Later on Moore, a veteran from the invasion, almost got decapitated from a canopy that collapsed on top of him causing the turret to spin out of control. Blah blah blah, loss of a sensitive item; blah blah blah, rocket attack at VBC; blah blah blah, sandstorms; blah blah blah, a six day mission finally ending on the eleventh day. Oh and I how could I forget listening to Enya cranked up in the back on an MRAP; that’s right, don’t ask don’t tell!

This year will most likely become a series of “almost” events, and I’m finally coming to terms with that. It’s hard to explain the amount of stress one goes through when you spend countless hours bored out of your mind, then have a few extreme moments of clenched buttocks. You wait for something to blow up, listen to other convoys that got hit…then you arrive safely at your next destination.

“If you’re going to die Wright, you’re going to die! You need to chill the fuck out, fucking relax dude.” Followed by the gunner screaming, “BOOM!!!!”, “hahahaha!” A quote taken from SGT. Bertelli trying to calm his driver down. That statement basically sums up every time we roll out, boredom with a few moments of, "oh man, I think we're screwed."

- The Exodus