This particular dream occurred about a month before I came home.  Now that the holiday is over and the superstitious deja vu that accompanies strange dreams cannot occur, I decided it was safe to relate. The dream hasn’t recurred at all, but it has sort of stuck around my subconscious so I am putting in down “on paper.”

So I have made it home again.  We arrived back a few days ago and I have been spending all my time enjoying my family and catching up on all the stuff that I have missed.  Its kind of surreal right now.  My mind and body is on one set of routines and schedules and my life is on another.  I guess it will take a while to re-adjust, but I wouldn’t give it up for anything.  Its so good to be with my family, eat real food, sleep in a soft bed, and not worry about things exploding at any time.

If you haven’t guessed by now, updates may be few and far between for the next month or so. 
Why?
Because I am getting ready to leave this God Forsaken country, and access to the internet is getting scarce. So please bear with me and I’ll update everyone as often as I can.

Due to a complete lack of anything interesting to write about, I bring you the boredom that is my current situation….

• We are definitely winding down.  My CHU is packed and I am just waiting on word to move to the temporary billets.
• We have to get Connexes inspected by customs which is a nightmare.  Imagine packing a Railroad Boxcar to the hilt, then unpacking everything so customs can check it.  Lastly, you pack it all back up so they can seal it.
• Still patrolling.  Still going “outside the wire” daily.
• Everyone has short-timer syndrome.  Every day seems to drag on and we have entered some weird dimension where time has stopped.

Its here… almost!  My time in this hellish wasteland is almost at an end!  Last night my internet was cut off, and I have my lower priority baggage packed and ready to be loaded for shipment.  Soon we will be moving to temporary housing, then comes RIP/TOA!  I can’t wait to get home and spend some real quality time with my family. 

We are, however, still on our regular hellish patrol schedule.  The new guys aren’t here yet.  We have been driving to all the usual places and a few more on what I will refer to as our Farewell Tour.  Shaking hands, kissing cheeks, and eating food.  In fact, I had a really good mix of pomegranite and tomato the other day.  Its was really tangy and sweet, a good combination.

So, I have been healing up for the past week or so.  I have been working at our BAS, and off the patrol schedule.  Its been a good time, and I have been really productive.  I live for patient care and I have treated more people in the past 8 days then I have in the past two months in the field.  I guess thats a good thing.  The lack of serious trauma patients from enemy contact is yet more proof that the surge is working.  I actually heard on the news yesterday that there were no casualties last month for the first time, but I haven’t seen the report myself.  I wish I could just ride out the last bit of our deployment working in the BAS, but alas my platoon needs me still.  They are still being slammed with patrols and the other night they brought in several IA that had been wounded in a rollover.

So I’ve been in the hospital for the last few days with what is called a Non-Battle Injury. In other words, I was not wounded in battle, I had an urgent healthcare matter that required surgery.  I got a whirlwind tour of the medical evacuation system for Iraq and Kuwait in the process.  I have to say it works pretty well, especially if you are litter bound.  I was medevac’d from my FOB to the Combat Surgical Hospital, CSH, in Mosul.  They did an evaluation and decided I needed surgery. An hour or so later I was in surgery.  Can’t really say too much about how that went as they gave me some really good sedatives and a spinal block.  I woke up shortly after the surgery in the recovery room numb from the belly button down.  Strange experience trying to get up and walk when you can’t feel anything below your umbilicus.  I was placed in the ICW for monitoring and was treated pretty darned well.  They gave me civilian clothes to wear on the ward, brought in food, and made sure I was a comfortable as I could get for the pain I was in.  I took some pain meds at first, but I hate the feeling they give you so I pretty much just dealt after that.

Ok, so I guess its time to stop the freakish ramblings and give up some more “Tales of Hell.”  If you read my little post from the other day, then you’ll realize that not much has been going on that hasn’t been going on here for months.  There just seems to be more of it lately, so I just picked a patrol hoping that something worth reading will pop out.

It all started one dark and gloomy night.  No, really it was a dark, cool, and generally pleasant real early morning.  We were going out on some raids with the local IA unit.  These things more often then not turn out to be wild goose chases, or more aptly, wild dog chases.  We did all our pre-combat checks, mounted our nods, and took off for the IA FOB.  The IA FOB is a part of our FOB so we never left the gate.  They met us outside their gate and we escorted them out of the wire.  Once outside the wire we moved tactically, under white lights with 8 humvees, up the MSR to our destination.  Did I mention that I was sitting in the backseat during this operation?  Well it comes into play a little later on, at this point in our story my biggest task was not passing out into a deep coma-like sleep.

I just don’t seem to be that motivated to write anything lately.  I don’t know if its the fact that not much new is going on, or whether I just don’t have energy anymore.  I read other milblogs for ideas, but new material is hard to come by here.  Its basically the same routines everyday.  People think the war here is a lot of shooting, blowing things up, and IEDs every day.  The media portrays Iraq as this long never-ending battle where US Soldiers are always engaged or about to be engaged, but thats just not it at all.  Its long hours of boredom punctuated by short periods of terror (I think I read that somewhere), and I guess that’s the crux.  The long hours of boredom are just that and I find them worth writing about as much as readers find worth in reading them.  However, since this is a sort of “realtime memoir,” I will do my best to continue to recount my experiences in this wasteland.

Its been a few days since I last posted, but we have been really busy.  Our re-deployment date is visible on the planning calendars now and the command has decided that we need to ramp up operations.  Something about the bad guys knowing when we are due to leave, so they don’t want to let their guard down and give them a chance to get at us.  I really don’t know if its a valid theory, but it sounds good in the Staff Planning Process anyway.  All it means for us poor guys in the trucks is more of the same sleepless nights, multi-day operations, less showers, and more grumpiness all around.