Chris' Deployment Journal

Composite-stacked ceramic And boron carbide, Produced in flawless stacks, Set in ballistic nylon, Wrapped in bit-mapped camouflage...

A charred filet of man is lodged Under the smoke discharger. There are seared nuggets of him Wedged into the grill. There are ...

My hand aches because My hand is empty.  My hand misses the feel, The weight, The finality.  My hand misses the ominous grip...

Last Saturday night, me, Sally and several friends and family went to a Reds baseball game. Because it was my brother-in-law’s birthday an...

- May the days pass quickly - May the poo water never touch your boots (and certainly not crash over your gunners) - ...

Recently I've been asked by various people for ideas of just what items to send troops overseas. I thought I would pull these lists toge...

The Idaho Statesman asked me to write one more story about my experience in Iraq and it is below. If you missed any, most are still posted (...

Our last days on Barbarian Base were spent packing up. We thought they'd be as quiet as the rest of the year. Unfortunately, just as our...

Here's a Spc Henson shot of what happened to the truck (which a few months earlier, while I was on leave, was also hit by another large ...

Here's a shot of the truck, number B36, while it's still out in sector, awaiting a tow back to the KRAB (note that a gunner is still...

Some of 'Scarface's' cuts were near his tear duct though, so he was flown out of the KRAB on a medivac to a larger base, just in...

He rejoined us a few days later and is fine. (When most guys saw these past few photos, some thought that the photos shouldn't have even...

Here you see some damage to a taxi further from the blast. 

Here's a shot of what's left of the car bomb. 

As another truck returned with the ammo and weapons taken off the damaged Humvee and we started unloading it, I noticed something sticky on ...

Here's a close up of vehicle B31, which was right behind B36. This is where some of the car bomb's shrapnel hit it, peeling back a t...

Here's B31 again. The small gouge in the armor is barely visible near the bottom center of the door. You might be wondering what are the...

After all this, we had to keep on packing up. Scarface's squad members, shown here, had to pack all his stuff up for him as he recovered...

In between thoughts of Scarface, I started to get a little excited, finally starting to believe that we were actually leaving!

Our last day, we started throwing all our remaining duffle bags in the LMTV (cargo truck), 

and then finally, blissfully, happily, drove the heck out of Barbarian Base for once and for all (or so we thought). Note that the two guys ...

And then, at last, finally moved onto the KRAB. 

Our new home. 

Inside our new bachelor pad, the lads got settled. 

We unloaded the truck full of our duffle bags and then reloaded it with duffles from the 101st guys. 

While we thought we were done with Barbarian Base for good, we did later that night drop back in and say hello to some of the new guys in ou...

We also turned in most of our ammo (keeping just a magazine per guy, just in case), 

I said a bittersweet farewell to my SAW,