Archive for the ‘Guest Story’ Category

As anyone who has been through boot camp will tell you, we did a lot of stupid things daily that made no sense. One such practice was tucking our shirts into everything. If you’re wearing uniform pants, tuck your shirt in. If you’re wearing exercise (PT) shorts, tuck your shirt in. If you’re wearing a sweat suit, tuck your sweatshirt in. The point: We always had to have our damn shirts tucked in. The military also has written directives on how to do almost everything. One such directive is the “Marine Corps Grooming Standard” that dictates our hair cut, our weight, our glasses, and how we wear our clothes. There is a line that specifically states “The face will be clean-shaven, except that a mustache may be worn.” It’s that first part that got me in trouble. We didn’t learn verbatim the shaving part, but we did shave everyday so maybe they figured we’d keep up the practice or maybe I was just sick that day.

I have the curse of having a 5 O’clock shadow by noon, because of this, shaving everyday for me is not only a pain in the ass figuratively it’s a pain on my face literally. I countered this by not shaving all weekend or on days off so I could give myself a break. This was all well and good if I would have had my own place to live outside the gates, but when you live on base there are countless number of people who are waiting to not only point out your problem but also tell you about it loudly. It makes for some drama. One such incident occurred when I went shopping with the wife.

It was a typical Saturday morning, I was sitting on the sofa in my boxers, drinking coffee, watching TV, when the wife then says, “I want to go to the mall.” So I head to the mall without shaving. It didn’t cross my mind until who should come walking the other way but the Sergeant Major who is a career grunt, who is going through culture shock by serving in his first Intelligence Battalion in over 20 years. We didn’t get along. He worked harder and I worked smarter. The two worlds could not be further opposite. Upon seeing him I quickly did what any man would do in that situation, I hid in the nearest store in hopes that he wouldn’t see me or my “Elvis Beard” (I know Elvis never wore a beard, but to many a Sergeant Major he did and, he was also used to illustrate all contradictions to the grooming standard.) After he passed, I went back to my wife who was standing in the center of the mall with a very confused and annoyed look on her face. I thought I was safe, but come Monday it was apparent that I thought wrong.

As I passed his office I hear a bellow from his office summoning me. I tried the dumb approach and entered his office with a smile (Mistake 1) and said, “Good morning Sergeant Major! What can I do to you?” (Mistake 2). He told me that entrance was disrespectful and he’d address that shortly but first, “Didn’t they teach you in boot camp to shave every day? Didn’t your highly motivated, truly dedicated, Drill Instructors tell you that a Marine is to be clean shaven daily?”. To which my prep school smugness kicked in and I responded with a very dry, “Yes Sergeant Major my DI’s did have me shave everyday, but then again, they also had us tuck our t-shirts into our underwear so I just figured it was another cruel joke.”

As I watched his eyes bulge, his face turn red, and his teeth began to grind, I noticed the vein on his forehead begin to swell so I knew I was in for a real treat. He proceeded to verbally assault everything about me except my mother.

I expected this reaction, so the yelling didn’t really bother me. What I took away from the whole thing, however, was this:

The Sergeant Major was not a witty man. If he was he would have told me to pull my pants down to make sure my T-shirt was tucked into my underwear and then yelled at me for that too.

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After finally getting my trebuchet back I still hadn’t learned my lesson completely. I bought my own beer and soda intending to drink the soda, and launch the beer. I brought my supplies to the place where my trebuchet now permanently resides. I also brought along several friends to help me turn the trebuchet so it was instead pointed at a much larger, and unused, helicopter pad.

As my friends and I were loading up the twelve pack I had bought, someone pointed out that it was a waste of perfectly good beer.

After a quick discussion and an informal poll, the beer launch was vetoed. So we loaded the soda instead. All four 2 liter bottles. We didn’t bother with ties or anything because the sling would hold them together nicely until about half a second after release. We all popped a beer and toasted the trebuchet dubbing it “Soda-Slayer”.

And the I pulled the firing cord.

Did I mention the four plastic soda bottles? The two liter ones.

Well they make a sound similar to a twelve ounce can of beer slamming into the side of a building.

Especially when they slam into the side of the self-same building.

In all our re-aiming and adjustments, we forgot to readjust the launching platform. What resulted was something similar to a “hook” in golf. The bottles flew the correct direction for about one nanosecond then proceeded to veer off in a beautiful arc before slamming into the roof of the headquarters building and exploding. I was told it sounded something like a cannon going off on the roof. They shook the whole building. The only thing that saved us was when the base commander came storming over, we saluted, and handed him a beer with the promise to clean up the mess and re-roof the building.

After that day I was permanently banned from my trebuchet. It is still sitting there though. It is slightly rusted and the sling is rotted, but a little loving care and an new sling and it will be ready for more soda/beer slinging action.

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What would you do if you found twelve pieces of twelve foot long steel I-Beam sitting next to a metal recycle bin? Me, I’m interested in the late feudal eras of Northern Europe so I did the only thing I could think of. I built a trebuchet.

For those of you who do not know what a trebuchet is, it is a fourteen foot tall counter-levered catapult capable if flinging large object tremendous distances with great accuracy.

In other words, it’s fun!

So there I was, I-Beams and a plan. But how to do this? Well our local vehicle maintenance shop just happens to have not only a welding machine, but an acetylene torch as well. It took me two weeks of leave and a lot of secrecy, but what I emerged with was a twelve foot tall 16,400 pound steel and lead contraption that I was proud of. I even attached a tow hitch and wheels to make it transportable.

My first day back to work I towed it along. During my lunch break I wanted to test fire it, but had no ammunition to fire. Again providence provided and I found a fridge full of nearly expired beer. So I grabbed a six pack, unhitched and set up the trebuchet and had it loaded and ready when one of my co-workers returned from lunch.

He saw me with a rope in hand, a full unbroken six pack upon the launch platform and a huge grin on my face. Unfortunately he was just a hair slow in telling me not to pull the rope.

WHAM!!!!

The six-pack launched about two-hundred feet into the air and sailed completely over the parade grounds I was aiming at. About mid-flight the plastic rings gave out and I suddenly had a cluster shot instead of a single projectile. As it flew I realized my mistake as the beer also flew over the parking lot on the far side of the parade ground and began to pelt the side of the base headquarters. If you’ve never seen an entire six-pack explode in rapid succession I’d recommend using this particular method.

Just don’t hit the side of the headquarters building.

Especially right out side of the base commander’s window.

And doubly especially with the base commander’s own beer.

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It’s been a while since I last posted anything. I’d like to give you all a good reason, but I just don’t have one. Football season is starting, and keeping up with the NFL and Fantasy Football has kept me busy.

I have various little witty sayings that I have picked up over the years, such as when someone drops something I’ll say, “Just throw that anywhere.” Or when I have a situation handled and someone mentions to me to be prepared to handle said situation I’ll say: “I’m on it, like flies to the things flies fly to.”

One of my sayings when leaving to go somewhere is “Let’s head out like a fetus.”

My 9 year old son came up with one the other day that had me in stitches (on the inside)

We were going into my brother’s house and my son, the great mimic that he is, said “let’s head out like a fetus”, I explained to him that we were heading in, so that saying wasn’t accurate, so without missing a beat he says, “we’ll then, let’s head in like a gay man.”

Here’s a few new one’s that I’ve added to my stand-up routine,

1. I can’t do the two guy one girl three-way. I’m always afraid of crossing swords, and that’s just a little too gay for me. So, much to my chagrin, I’ve realized that means no more Letter “H-ing” midgets, the dicks still touch somewhere in the middle.

2. Did you know that every year there are over a million battered women in the United States? And to think, I’ve been eating mine plain all this time.

3. I have this cousin who is always in trouble with the law. He had to get a waiver to even enlist in the military, then was thrown out in AIT for pissing hot. I see him every Christmas and at family reunions (when he’s not incarcerated or I’m not deployed). Every time I see him he has a new scheme or less than savory money-making endeavor that he is trying out. This last family reunion he shows up with a bunch of new tattoos, and tells me that he’s tattooing for a living now, and working part time for a loan shark. As he’s leaving the reunion I say, “bye, and stay out of trouble, and if you can’t stay out of trouble I have a great idea for your next tattoo: “HIV Positive” right above your asshole, might help you out next time you’re in the joint”.

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No shit, there we were on board the United States Ship A. Nonymous, deployed in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. As many of you know, the Navy sends our ships out for six or more months at a time to support operations world wide. During those six months you’re likely to pull into port 3-48 times depending on you ship type, mission, deployment area, prevailing wind, and whatever the aliens are broadcasting on their space beams that day. As it was, we had been underway for over 50 days, and sailors being sailors (and humans) shipmates started to look more attractive. Long cruises have a similar effect to large amounts of alcohol in this regard.

There was a sailor in my branch who we’ll call Seaman Butterface. While I doubt she saw much action when other opportunities were available, she was apparently quite popular once we had been out to sea for a while. Seaman Butterface’s Chief (E-7 for you Army dogs) and Leading Petty Officer (E-6) heard some rustling in the film locker while inspecting an adjoining space five days before our next port call. They attempted to open the hatch, but found it locked. Fortunately as they owned the space, the chief had a key.

He opened the space and they saw Seaman Butterface laying on a couple of life preservers wearing only her uniform blouse and scrambling to get her pants back on. The Chief and LPO also saw the escape scuttle (a small hatch about the size of a manhole used for evacuation in the event the main hatch was blocked by fire flooding etc.) closing. They hurried over to the scuttle but were unable to determine who else had been in the space.

As having sex with your shipmates is contrary to good order and discipline and against the CO’s standing orders, Butterface was scheduled for Captain’s Mast.

Captains Mast is like an Article 15 for you Army types. For civilians, it’s like getting sent to the principal’s office, except with the threat of financial loss, hard labor, or jail. – skippy

Before a case can go to mast it has to pass through the Discipline Review Board (DRB), where senior enlisted verbally berate the offending sailor, and Executive Officer Investigation (XOI) in which the XO chews the sailor out. During both of these grueling procedures Butterface maintained that she was alone and refused to answer any other questions.

I was the branch legal officer and I attended mast along with the Captain, command Judge Advocate General, a couple of master at arms, the legal secretary, Butterface, her LPO, Chief, and Division Officer.

The CO, who we’ll call Captain Prude, paused uncomfortably any time he heard anything that offended his overdeveloped Puritan sensibilities. He looked over the facts of the case, looked over her statements at DRB and XOI and then gave her the senior officer glare. He leaned over the podium and said “Seaman Butterface, you have maintained throughout this investigation that you were alone in that film locker but have not accounted for why you were…half naked. I demand to know what you were doing in there if you weren’t having… relations with one of your shipmates.”

Butterface cleared her throat, looked the old man straight in the eyes and said “Well sir, when I masturbate I moan really loud, and I didn’t want to disturb the other girls in my berthing, so I went to the film locker.”

Captain prude turned beet red with embarrassment and summarily dismissed the case. Butterface remained on board for the rest of her 4 year tour and was promoted twice before leaving.

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For those of you Skippy readers safely ensconced within the loving embrace of a military base, you may be unaware of a dangerous subculture that threatens our civilian way of life. That subculture, dear Skippy readers, is the Muffia.

The Muffia is a foul underworld organization, staffed by soulless Caucasian housewives so uniform in their upper-middle class mediocrity that a Stepford Husband would flinch in horror. Members of the Muffia (also known as ‘Muffiaso’) are convinced that they alone are the true paragons of femininity, espousing 1950’s rhetoric about a woman’s place being in the home while remaining totally incompetent in any of the “home arts”. They rule their families with iron fists, forcing their poor husbands to slave at the office for 60+ hours each week to support their designer label habit while reinforcing the stereotype that fathers who enjoy spending quality time with their children are secret pedophiles, and claiming that everything they do is “for the children”.

As each day passes, more harmless toys are kicked from the market, innocent television shows are ripped from the airwaves , and fathers become more confused about child-rearing. But we will not go down without a fight! Even as we speak, civilians risk their lives to take back those privileges the Muffia has claimed for itself.

My father is one such brave soul. A quiet man, he was raised to accept the status quo by humble, God-fearing Lithuanian Midwesterners. Yet even he could not stand idly by and watch the Muffia destroy all that is Wholesome and Good about America. This is his story, and I, as his beloved child, am proud to relate it here:

A few years back, I was visiting my family for Christmas. At some point, my stepmother asked my father to run to the grocery store for her. As there wasn’t a golf tournament to nap through that afternoon, he readily agreed and invited me along. Twenty minutes later, we were crawling up and down the parking lot rows, looking for a spot to park. At last, he spotted one, an ideal spot, not ten yards away from the doors to the grocery store. However, as we approached the spot, we realized that it was reserved. But, as we drew closer, we could see that it was not for the handicap, but for parents with children.

Yes, it was reserved parking for the Muffia, and, by coincidence, was on the verge of being claimed by one of its members.

With a strange glint of determination in his eye, my father gunned the engine and cut off the Muffiaso, stealing the spot from right under the nose of her minivan.

“But we can’t park here!” I protested, trembling at the thought of the Muffiaso’s wrath.

“In my day, we didn’t have special parking spaces awarded to us just because we reproduced,” he stated in a tone of voice I hadn’t heard since the Cookie Jar Incident.

I got out of the car, swallowing back a counter-argument about the substantial decrease in parking space size over the past two decades, and braced myself.

The tinted driver’s side window of the minivan rolled down, revealing the Botoxed visage of the Muffiaso.

“Excuse me, sir, but that spot has a Parent & Child Parking sign,” she whined nasally, while in the back seat we could see one tiny, innocent future victim of bad parenting gummed the lid of its Vera Wang sippy cup.

“Yes, I know. I’m a parent, and this is my child,” he explained, pointing to then-twenty-something me. The Muffiaso’s Priscilla, Queen of the Desert-inspired makeup was not thick enough to conceal her rage, and her French manicured-talons were poised to rend the flesh from his body.

“Excuse me, sir,” she hissed, “but Parent & Child Parking spots are bigger to make it easier to get children out of cars.”

“Yes, I know,” replied my father, his tone still calm, “but my child is bigger than yours, and my car doesn’t have a sliding door like yours.”

“I can’t get into a regular spot!” she shrieked. “What am I supposed to do?”

My father pointedly looked at all the minivans in the lot not parked in Parent & Child Parking spots, then just as pointedly looked at the dents and scrapes on the Muffiaso’s vehicle.

“Well, you could always learn how to drive,” he suggested.

At which point we ran for it.

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Everything sucks.

Don’t believe me? Read this.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080621/ap_on_re_us/out_of_control

A third of the country is underwater and tomatoes will make you vomit your own poop. Man, it’s high-time to get the hell out of here.

(Voice of Satan): “You can’t afford to fill your gas tank, and you will sit for days at the airport with not so much as a bottle of water, because security will take it away from you. But go ahead and try to leave. Kill time by shopping at that shitty overpriced bookstore that only sells People magazines and Tony Robbins motivational cassettes. Hungry? Have a six-dollar muffin! There is no escape! Bwahahahahahaha!”

I put a gallon of gas in the car last week. Payday was still 10 days away so I only had five bucks. As I went to put the gas cap back on, I accidentally made eye contact with another guy who was fueling up.

“This used to be a good place to buy gas,” he sighed. We exchanged a look that’s usually reserved for the funeral of a distant relative — dejected resignation. “It’s really sad, but what are you going to do?”

You know that bumper sticker, “Grass, Gas, or Ass. No One Rides For Free”? You know things have gotten bad when you’re sitting behind that guy in traffic and instead of thinking, “douchebag,” you’re thinking, “Well, that makes sense. What do his friends expect? That he’s going to just drive them all over town willy nilly? Buncha freeloaders.”

Eight years ago, when that guy went to pick up his date, the girl would receive a long lecture from her father on the order of, “I don’t want you seeing that boy. He’s no good. He has no respect for anybody, and he obviously doesn’t respect you.”

Now the girl’s dad’s saying, “That kid has a good head on his shoulders. Excellent business sense. I think he’s a keeper. See if you can talk him down to a handy. He’s going places.”

One of those ginormous monster SUVs cut me off in traffic the other day, setting off one of the most artistic, eloquent, and deeply-rooted-in-high-school-economics barrages of obscenity I’ve ever mustered. The gist was something like, “You selfish fucker! It’s bad enough you can’t use your turn signal, but you’re driving one of those unnecessary, wasteful machines that’s increasing the demand and lowering the supply, thus driving up the price! Cocksucker!”

Then I saw the “Iraq veteran” sticker on his bumper and shrugged. “Well, at least he fought for it.”

I think Iraqi war veterans should get free gas for life and it should be paid for out of the personal bank accounts of key Bush administration members.

I suppose the upcoming election should make me hopeful, but none of the candidates are using the words “George W. Bush” and “guillotine” in the same sentence yet.

(Note to Secret Service: I’M ONLY KIDDING! I have deep philosophical convictions against killing people, whether the killing is legally sanctioned by the fall of a gavel or otherwise. It’s just that “guillotine” was less ambiguous than “the stocks” because stocks can refer to those things sold on Wall Street, which a presidential candidate might actually mention, but what I really would have meant are those two boards where you put the prisoner’s head and hands through and lock him in, so the general public has the opportunity to walk by and shout curses at him, throw rotten eggs and salmonella tomatoes, or give him a good swift kick in the ass. That would be more fun anyway, come to think of it. Right there on the National Mall, in the shadow of the Washington Monument, or maybe over by the reflecting pool near the Vietnam War Memorial. Poetic, indeed, but see how many more words that took? Suffice it to say, if that happened I’d sit on the tarmac for up to a full week to take my vacation to D.C. Besides, they have pandas at the National Zoo, and my daughter would just love that. The point is, I do NOT actually wish the president death or even permanent disablement. I just want to give him a titty twister.)

Even when Bush leaves office it won’t be the last we’ve heard of him. Traditionally, every president gets his memoir published. It’s just too bad the title, “If I Did It, Here’s What Happened,” is already taken.

Sorry if all that sounds bitter. I’m trying to look at the bright side of it all, and here’s what I’ve come up with:

Four dollars a gallon is just a free-market solution to global warming. Recent reports my father-in-law claimed to have heard on the news show that Americans have collectively reduced their travel by some 40 billion miles.

Come back, polar bears! Everything’s going to work out!

Why hasn’t the White House and Fox News started sharing this wonderful new perspective on things? Why isn’t there a sign on every gas pump explaining this, like the signs at IKEA that explain that they only hire a handful of unhelpful assholes so they can keep prices low?

My guess is for the neo-cons and oil companies to take on that perspective, they’d have to acknowledge that global warming exists.

Here’s another ray of optimism for you: I wouldn’t be surprised to find out people are starting to find their proverbial last straw broken. For a lot of people, it’s starting to feel like they’re just going to work to buy gas so they can go back to work. Once that feeling catches on and spreads like a virus, people will quit going, and when their boss calls to see where they are, the reasons are going to sound absurd.

Like, out of the almost 300 million people living in America today, at least one guy really liked tomatoes. Like, that was his way of treating himself for working so hard — every Sunday, he would sit down with a ripe, red, round, succulent, juicy tomato and he would savor it. It wasn’t much, but it was the thing that kept him going.

And a couple weeks ago he went to the store and, “What the fuck do you mean there’s no tomatoes today!? Why do I even bother! Fuck it! I’m staying home! You got any tomato seeds?”

And after three days of no one at the office hearing from him, his boss called.

“Oh, no. I’m fine. I just decided to stay home and work in my garden. Yeah, forever. Should be a pretty good crop. All organic. Hey listen, do you have any butter you can trade me? I’ve fallen way behind in my churning.”

And that’s how we’ll all become Amish again, but we’ll be the most technologically advanced Amish people the world has ever seen. You’ll spend four hours churning butter to take to the guy who shod your mule, but before you ride your bicycle all the way over there, you’ll text him to make sure he’s home.

That actually excites me — like we’ll renew our vows with ole Mother Earth.

(This is why you don’t mix metaphors, kids. See that last sentence, I have us married to our mother. Yuck.)

I’m taking up a couple new hobbies in preparation for this new technoprimitive society. Today, I started my garden. For now, it is but a lonely, potted jalapeño pepper plant, but I have dreams of expanding so it takes up my whole back yard and has a miniature golf course through the middle of it, so I can pick and play.

If only I hadn’t started so late in the season.

Also, I intend to start practicing with a boomerang so I can hunt small game. Why not a rifle? Because in a pinch, I don’t know how to make bullets. But I have a pretty good idea how to make sandpaper. Plus, I’m pretty sure the game warden’s not checking for boomerang hunting licenses. I’ll have to check, but I’m pretty sure the guy at Cabela’s is going to answer me with a weird look when I ask to buy one. So there’s, like, $20 I just saved, which will keep me going back to work for half a week.

Todd Merriman is a standup comedian. He lives just outside Austin, TX, with his daughter Ava and his babymama Erin. Todd will be opening for Brian Posehn (Just Shoot Me, Mr. Show, Comedians of Comedy) at Cap City Comedy Club in Austin, TX, on Aug. 7, 8 and 9. Call (512) 467-2333 for details.

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This is SGT Brick. Not only is he an soldier currently on deployment, but he is also a stand-up comedian who has a pretty good act that I managed to catch a few years ago.

Of all the dangers that exist for those of us Soldiers who are currently deployed to Iraq, defending your freedoms which you cherish, yet take for granted, there will always be dangers that I could never even fathom to think existed.

I had such an encounter recently.

My unit is stationed in this super-secret ninja location in the outskirts of Baghdad, where we have no running water and what little electricity we have, we get from a generator that we keep out back. In order to take showers we basically just lather up with a bar of soap and then pour bottles of water over our head.

There are these tubes sticking out of the ground, and those are what we pee into. And there are these steel buckets that we shit into, and then we burn all the excrement at night when the sun goes down. So yeah, living conditions would be classified as “sub-par”.

Recently, I was walking over to the pee-tubes because I had to “do my thing”. I step up, whip out my junk, hold it up to the tube, and before I begin urinating, a BEE comes out of the tube and stings me right on the tip of my “man-business”.

As I’m sure you can all imagine, this really freaked me out, but it gets worse, believe me. For some reason, the good Lord in his infinite wisdom decided that this would be the time and place to inform me that I am allergic to bees, because it swells up to over twice it’s normal size, for all the wrong reasons.

So here I am, in agonizing pain, but still wishing that wasn’t in this combat, all-male environment which was preventing me from showing off my new 15-inch penis to any lady that may cross my path. Although, it was pretty cool to be the “big man on campus” as it were, even if it was only for a day. The medics had to give me a shot and some pills, but in spite of the pain and suffering that it caused, I think I’m gonna carry some honey with when ever I go out on dates from here on out.

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In the dawn of time, order back when T-Rex ruled the Earth and Custer was a private, medic the young cadet was on field maneuvers. Not being blessed with the keen vision expected of an aspiring Air Force officer, arthritis the young man wore glasses of approximately the thickness and refraction index of Coke bottles. Not the ridiculous new little plastic bottles, light of weight and clear of surface, no, these were of the one liter glass-bottles-as-God-intended-Coke-to-be-shipped, indestructible in and of themselves but…alas, the frames, not so much.

The young cadet was marching his little flight back to the barracks when through the haze of myopia a car, a car painted an odd shade normally referred to as “Air Force” blue, approached the formation at a high rate of speed. The cadet asked, sotto voce, of his stalwart element leads if this was, perchance, a staff car but received no answer from the traitorous band. The car screeched to a halt in a shower of gravel, accompanied by the smell of hot asbestos (this was a long time ago).

From behind the wheel lurched a giant of a man, dour of demeanor, frothing of mouth, shiny insignia gleaming from his collar, to corner the young cadet in a shower of spit and ear-splitting decibel of comment. Parentage was discussed, probable relation (however anatomically impossible) to various farm animals postulated, and finally, a demand for accounting for the terrible (perhaps mortal) sin of failing to salute the staff car. A large staff car, painted Air Force blue, no less, that only a blind man could miss!

To which the young cadet, still without a word, pulled the broken halves of his glasses from his pocket and silently presented them to the officer.

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There was a chill in the air as the soldiers of the 876^th EN BN loaded up for their logistical ground assault convoy. The weather here in Iraq had dipped down from the 140 degrees that most soldiers experienced when they had first arrived, medic to a frosty 65. Our mission was a night move, shop our purpose logistics, drugs and the reason was to gain some of the excellent equipment being left for us by our state’s outgoing Guard units: Task Force Dragoon.

The final pre-combat checks and inspections were complete; everyone was talking via the radios, weapons were given their functions checks, and the route was deemed clear according to the latest intelligence. I gave the final safety brief, reminding all of the participants of the places that we would travel past during our trip. Upon leaving the gate it was ”Go Time”. Our crew-served weapons gunners scanned their sectors, the drivers focused on the road laid out ahead of them, the passengers scanned the sides of the road for possible IEDs, and I kept constant communications flowing with our air support who was watching our progress from the sky.

We were making great time as we passed by Fallujah, one of the apexes of the Sunni Triangle. You could see the walls and towers of the Abu Gharaib prison complex as we passed Abu Gharaib. Once we reached Baghdad we got turned around on an onramp, but quickly righted ourselves. We were passing through the second of the Sunni triangle cities.

As we passed by Camp Taji and its high walls my thoughts passed to my brother who is stationed there, and reflected momentarily that even though I am thousands of miles from my home, that a person with whom I had lived under the same roof with for fourteen years of my life was only a mile away. My thoughts quickly returned to the duty at hand as a call came up on my radio. A convoy ahead had been hit with an IED. This served as a grim reminder to maintain my focus. EOD was on the scene, and the area would be cleared by the time we made it to that area.

A quick stop by Camp Anaconda for fuel allowed us to stretch our legs and prepare for the final leg of our journey. We would bypass Balad next, and then Sumeria. Coming up to Tekrit we saw that the road was blocked off entering into the city of Saddam Hussein’s birth. We knew that this was coming and took the detour around the third corner of the Sunni Triangle. Soon we were able to take the bypass of Bayji, where we were warned not to go because “there are bad people there”. Eventually we arrived at our final destination; Camp Sumeral. I looked at my Global Positioning System (GPS), and noticed that we were very close to the city of Mosul, and the countries of Turkey and Azerbaijan.

We had made great time, arriving two hours ahead of schedule. With the exception of the Baghdad turnaround, it was a flawless convoy.

On the way back we were also making great time. Because of this I allowed my soldiers time for Pizza Hut or Burger King at Camp Anaconda. They had performed exceptionally and this was a reward that they could not receive at any post near Ramadi.

This turned out to be a good choice because as we prepared to depart Anaconda I was informed over the radio that an IED had been initiated on a convoy just south of Anaconda on the route that we were to take. Had we not allowed the extra time for pizza it would have been our convoy hit with that IED. The return trip back was thankfully uneventful.

Thank God for lifesaving Pizza.

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