The Hellish Hours of a 4 am Wake Up Call

My eyes crack open just wide enough to allow the already protruding light to weave through my eye lashes, my last line of defense. It feel like I just laid down. My head feels heavy, and my heart beats slower than it ever does. I double take, am I even breathing? My eyelid feels like the pulley assisting it to open needs to be greased. My muscles from head to toe feel like they've been some bad drawing from a cartoonist, crumpled and tossed into the corner.
I first push my blankets back to about hip level. The immediate cold makes every hair and goose bump stand to attention, as if to tell me what I already know. My first attempt to sit up is squandered and lost by my will to continue laying down. The second is not really an attempt at getting up, but more of an attempt to free my legs from the spider web my blankets and sheets have created. I finally break free. Damn. I sit up and give a little stretch to the muscles that beg for another five minutes. My feet instinctively find the floor and I sit there contemplating the five feet across cold floor to the nirvana for cold feet. Socks. Its a quick dash and I have them.
I'm still to tired to stand and put them on, so I creep back to my bed and trying not to get caught by even myself, I lay back on my back while rolling the socks up my leg. Ahhhhh, so much better. Damn, back to on my feet. I quickly switch out my ranger panties for my pants. Which since I'm not a ranger, does that mean they're just panties? Anyways the shirt is quick to follow.
I reach for my electric razor, and perform the morning ballet of trimming. I missed a few spots, same old same old. My boots! Another reason to sit. They went on too fast, and I sluggishly move to put on my jacket. It's when I'm almost done getting dressed that I realize my morning routine is only ten minutes in. Grab my tooth brush and tooth paste. My dentist would've been unsatisfied with that job. Good thing he doesn't get up at this hour.
I grab my gear, and hoist it over my head, letting it fall on my already sore shoulders. Grab Delilah and my helmet and move down the three flights of stairs I'm hoping I fall down. Its dark outside. Why am I up and the sun isn't? Well just another 12 hours and I can come back, and relax.... eeeehhhhhh 4-6 delta 6 break, frago.... I guess I'll be a little longer.

If I was meant to pop out of bed in the morning I would sleep in a toaster.

"It's a dirty job, but someone's got to do it." -Chuck Moseley

For those who are unawares of what really goes on here in the middle east, let me give you as unbiasis frontline report as possible.
Huge economy crisis state-side from what I've heard. California is not giving back state tax refunds, and might be cutting welfare checks. The stock market is on the down and down some more. GM, a hundred year old business is laying off thousands of employees. It's total barney rubble. Trouble.
Working for the federal government the one thing I know is that pay day is twice a month, near regardless of how hard our economy is crashing. With a new boss in charge, that might all change. Osama, I mean Barrack Obama, plans on having us out of Iraq in 16 months of him taking over office. This would help cut spending by as much as $10 billion. It's a nice pipe dream. The second we leave this place it will have a civil war, between the IP's NP's and IA. Not to mention Iran and every other nation surrounding Iraq's borders wanting a peice.
The National Police and Iraqi Police have all of there equipment because of US being able to buy it for them. The Iraqi army wears recycled uniforms that we used to wear in the Gulf War. I see National Police guys with better and newer equipment then I have. Chevy 3500's are about the only vehicle any of the three divisions of Iraqi Security Forces have, and they have plenty of em. And yet, when it comes to getting me new uniforms the government can only afford me the bottoms and not the tops. And when I say me, I mean my battallion.
We give away money to these people to help them build an infrastructure. The only problem is the $50,000 we give them to build a park looks like it only cost 50,000 in peanuts. The unit that was here before we arrived had given away.... this is one platoon.... approximately 1.6 million. 1.6 million dollars in your hard earned tax payers money. The higher up Iraqi's get this money and instead of splitting it equally amongst there men, or workers, they pay them as little as the equipment costs, and keep the gargantuan wad of cash for themselves. These people aren't poor despite what you may think from seeing pictures of there unpaved streets that have standing sewage and trash in them.
If you go into a house here, they often times have bigger and nicer houses then people in the US have. Because America is paying for it. These people can't have America leave. They've gotten to used to us creating jobs for them that we over pay for them to do. Their infrastructure here is horrible. There is no government jobs that are helping to pave streets or clean up trash. Hook up electricity or anything of the sort. Instead we give a guy $100,000 to build two generators for his neighborhood, that with labor cost should've only been $25,000. And yet our supply can't get enough money to order enough sunglasses for everyone.
This war here is no where close to over. We've invested to much money in this place, and continue to invest to much money in this place, to just walk out with nothing in our hands. If we don't get free oil for the next 20 years, or some kind of vacation destination package, I would only expect that my son will have to come over here to fight. Because where we're not ready to leave because of money invested, the Iraqi people don't want us to leave, because of money invested.

The Grand Ol' RV Adventure

The year was 2004. June, a rather nice one if my memory serves me correctly. I was in California, and times were different for me. They were different for all of us. At the age of 17 I was soon to be a senior in high school, and was courting a young lady by the name of Deja Escalante. A fair Mexican woman who was still having problems being accepted into society. The Boston Red Sox were playing grade A baseball and were part of a hot summer baseball craze across the country. My brother and I had been following them and with much delight been trying out best Boston accents to allege such players names as; Millar, and Nomar.
A few months prior I had received a telegram from my first cousin in Des Moines, Iowa. Half way cross country and near the Mighty Mississippi. The telegram enclosed the most delightful news that he was to be married at the end of June. He being a veteran of the great Iraq War, my family and I felt the owe of some gratitude, and with little to no discussion decided a visit for the grand occasion was more than warranted.
We began the preparations. On June 21st we departed from the City of Angels. The caravan included; Elbert and Barbara Wright, my grandparents. Dennis, my father. My twin sister Jeri, and my elder brother Glenn. We went by way of the desert and planned for our first stop to be in the Nevada city of Las Vegas. The only thing standing in our way to there was the Rocky Mountains. Just our luck that we reached them midsummer. The passes were clear and it was smooth sailing.
We reached Las Vegas at night and were awestruck by the flashing lights, gamblers, scantily clad show girls, and the amount of people dressed as if there clothes were out on the line to dry. Most of these people also were sporting the most peculiar haircuts. It appeared the haircuts were business in the front, and party in the back.
We stayed a night in Vegas and then continued on. I had caught a film on the silver screen with the talented actor Christopher Walken. I had already been doing some impressions of a Boston accent, and was even off handily crude with a comment to a young lady, "Hey Big Tits Millar!", and decided that I would try and capture the irregular speech pattern of this Christopher Walken. That is where my legacy began. To this day some of my friends refer to me as one of the best impersonators of Chris Walken.
As we furthered away from Vegas and out of Nevada, we found ourselves in such gorgeous states as Utah and Colorado. We even passed through Nebraska. After no more than 3 days we found ourselves arriving in the little town of Sheldahl, Iowa. Only minutes away from the capital of Iowa, Des Moines. Sheldahl was a lovely town, and despite having only one road through the center of town, and a population of less than 350, it was a city divided into three separate counties. And so the towns sign read, "Sheldahl Biggest Little Town In Three Counties."
The wedding was on June the 26th, and it was held at the United Methodist Church of Slater. It was a lovely ceremony. My cousin Mike wed Brooke, and now they have two sons. Luke and Levi.

-The long trip across the country was one of many that my family had been on together. And it was also the last which involved my grandparents. It created a lot of memories. Like when the sewer line on the RV busted and covered my dad, grandpa, brother and myself in sewage. When my brother was behind the wheel, and everyone was sleeping, and he drifted slightly off the road into where they have cut out asphalt so that your car rumbles. And as everyone started to see what happened, my brother make a quick recovery by saying, "no one sleeps on my watch!" My family also overdid the Boston accent and the Chris Walken. I'm pretty sure everyone was sick of each other because we didn't use our real voices for the majority of the trip. I also remember going through 48 mountain dews in less than two days. It was a very fun trip, and I'm glad I could make it out for my cousin Mike's wedding. On a side note when I flew in for my cousin Michelle's wedding, it wasn't quite as fun as the RV trip, but the wedding was still a blast.
"Chewy here tells me, you're looking for a ship...." and the rest is as they say history.

The Worst Thing I Have Ever Eaten

This wasn't a Brian Reed trash burger. That would've been a gourmet meal in comparison. This wasn't a $5 spoonful of Tabasco. Or even a Nelson swallowed worm to get out of PT for the day. This was Haji food, and the worst of it all.
Tonight select individuals from my platoon were invited by an Iraqi colonel to have some dinner with him. So far I have eaten very little Iraqi food, but the food I have consumed has been good. I had a kiwi-banana smoothie from a hookah shop. I've had samoon, a bomb ass bread. And the general chi that you can get from any household or business.
As I sit with my LT and a few others from the platoon, a couple of plates are brought out with all kinds of fixings. Cucumber tomato mixed as some kind of salad. A cucumber sauce, potatoes covered in some kind of curri, baba ghanouj, and some kabob cooked mutton, and sheep liver. All looks and smells good. I make myself a sandwich with some of the meat and just about every topping I could find. I ate it down, and though the mutton was a little chewy all was very tasty.
I wasn't really hungry for a second sandwich, but I had another piece of samoon, and so I decided that I would make myself another. That was probably mistake number one. Mistake number two, was that I had already finished my 7up and didn't have anything with flavor in it, for that just in case scenario.
The first bite I took into sandwhich number two I immediately regretted. I didn't not want to be rude, and so I continued to chew on a cold, rubbery, and most of all nasty piece of meat. Let me digress for a moment, and talk about what I have seen here for the last month, just to give you a little insight on what started to run through my head.
We are in a fairly urban area. There is trash and raw sewage in the streets. In our area I have seen these "sheep lots" we'll call them. It's basically a sheep herder/salesman that brings his sheep from the outskirts of the city, or from his front yard, to a corner and sells his sheep to anyone who wants a meal for the night. You can smell these sheep a mile away, and they are dirty and grungy, untrimmed, and definitely not happy as they would be if they were in California. Food is scarce for these animals, and I often times see them picking at piles of trash that I'm unsure even has anything edible in them. The water they drink is polluted with car oil, gasoline, and shit or piss. The water here could kill superman it's so green.
So as I'm three to four chews into this bite, I start to picture all of the times I've seen a dirty sheep drinking some of this water. All of a sudden the taste is too much for me to handle. I begin to gag, and the smell that comes into my nose through the back of my throat begins to suffocate me. I dismiss myself from the room with the bread and sheep meat deep in the back of my mouth. I cleared the door way as my fingers scrambled to get the meat out of my mouth. I launched it as far as I could and managed not to let my stomach turn inside out.
I would rather a sharp stick in the eye then have taken another chew of that mutton. Drinking a dip spitter would've probably been a better alternative. The lessons this story have taught me have been many. Always carry gum. No Iraqi meat. And most importantly RSVP NO on dinner with foreigners.

Trancelike Variations of Melodic Thought

The most powerful thing in the world. Is it the nuclear bomb? Is it money? Is it sitting on the throne of a mighty kingdom? A zamboni? No, although all of those things are very powerful, the answer is Music.
The one thing music possesses over all the rest of those things is, it has the power to move you. To run alongside your emotions. Make you feel happy. Make you feel sad. Make you laugh, cry, jump, dance, sing, or feel special. It has the power to relieve you from life's realities, or pull you into them.
To me, there is nothing like putting on a pair of headphones, closing my eyes and listening to some Floyd, Zeppelin, Beethoven, or Mozart. It makes everything that is running ramped and unchecked in my head, and puts them into a shelf in the back pantry of my mind. I can forget about life for a second and let the sounds soothe and massage my soul into some kind of nirvana that no food, no words, no drug, no nothing could ever do for me.
Music can set the mood in any manner or tone. At a party is can make a crowd shake and groove. In a pillow pit it can lead you to discussing the intricacies the life. In the gym it can help you to get the bar up one more time. Before a game is can hone your concentration to it's peak. It can allow that candlelight dinner to envelope you into a world of only two. It can, in an instant, bring you to a different time and place. Some kind of time travel phenomenon that can take you back to a first kiss.
A song can add weight to your heart, or lift a weight from it. A lyric or guitar chord might be all you need to be grasped to the point of not being able to breathe, or to be able to breathe easier.
Here in Iraq I've found the need to use music as an escape from this reality. I put my head phones on whenever I lay down and listen to anything to relax and soothe me. I haven't written a poem probably since 7th grade, but I feel like trying to be artistic, so here I go...

Every night as I lay here in bed
The wear of a days work apparent on my boots tread.
I turn on the sounds for my soul
And let my emotions run dull
Relaxed in every aspect it makes me become
Allows me to feel like I'm the only one
Without the heavenly embrace of her soft touch
This worlds toll on me would show too much.
It warms me deep down in the bottom of my core
And everyday... I love you more

It's not where we're going, but how the hell I got here!

Whenever there are doubts in your mind about decisions you have made in your life. No matter the hardships and the gut feeling to sometimes want to quit you have to look at how the path you have traveled might not have been up to you.
We would all like to think that choice is a choice, and maybe it is. But maybe only to a certain degree. The path I have been on, started when I was six...or even younger. I'm not to sure, but Clint Eastwood had a lot to do with it. The movie, Kelly's Heroes. A bad ass wanna be of a World War II version of the Good The Bad and The Ugly. It even has a knock of Ennio Morricone score.
Playing with my little green army men, or fighting the krauts in the ditches of my backyard, one thing always seemed clear in my mind... I would join the Army.
The years to follow the illustriousness of childhood dreams and fantasy would put the Army on what would've seemed to be a back burner, but in hindsight, it was more of a preparation to need the Army. My high school baseball team believed in hard work, dedication and accountability. To be a Sylmar Spartan baseball player, was not just that you could catch, throw or even hit a ball. It meant that your mom had to drop you off at 6 in the morning, two hours before school started, so that you could go into a cramped gym and lift weights, do cardio, and practice countless reps of bunt defenses. Then it meant that your mom had to pick you up two hours after school ended because you had to do more exercises to help with agility, and balance. The first semester of the school year, I never once touched a baseball except on weekends when we would play double headers. At the time I thought that this was crazy. I just wanted to play baseball.
Another significant aspect that I believe effected every American was the sense of lost security and personal safety, was September 11th. I was a freshman in high school, and the vulnerability I felt during and after that day reminded me that I needed to do something to protect that. I joined a military explorer post that met once or twice a week.
My discipline in high school faltered. I didn't have a lot of personal accountability, and despite having a smart head on my shoulders, I was much the same as a lot of teenagers. I was confused and scared. I had feelings of anxiety and needed a change. It came by way of unfortunately dropping out of high school a little early, and moving to Iowa to work for my uncle and cousin. My cousin Mikey who I had always looked up to, because for one he was quite a bit older, and older kids were always cooler right? I also looked up to him, because he had been a combat veteran during the initial Iraq invasion. He worked me hard, and didn't allow me to slack. He tried his hardest to change some of my bad habits that I had developed. He even gave me a great deal of responsibility, more than I could handle at the time. I learned a lot about myself. My uncle made me finish high school. I made leaps and bounds in personal development. I learned a lot about myself and of life while there. It was one of the best decisions I have made in my life to date.
I moved back home to California, because why? Money! Lots and lots of money. I worked alongside my brother and basically under my dad for a year. In that time, I didn't continue to develop myself. I wasn't happy. I couldn't instill the discipline to change myself. To make myself better. My twin sister did it so easily, and my competitive spirit started to get the best of me. I tried and tried and tried to get better at being punctual. I couldn't beat the snooze monster though and would sleep in almost every morning, just to go to work for a few hours and call it an early day. I missed a lot of opportunities, and after a year of ill-tempered feelings and regret, I finally decided that if I couldn't do something to change my life, I would let someone else take charge.
About the only thing I figured out in that time between Iowa and the Army, was that I wanted to run businesses. Restaurants in particular. I couldn't imagine myself trying to get into having that kind of responsibility without first having personal accountability, and second, without knowing that I had done everything I wanted to do that only my youth would allow me. It was then I took a giant leap. I signed a five year contract with the intent of being in the US Army Special Forces. Green Berets, the best of the best. I went to basic and airborne school, both prerequisites for going to Special Forces Assessment and Selection. I spent 24 days in a suck fest where I learned a little more about my inner self, and the drive and commitment I possessed when the chips were down. I didn't unfortunately get selected, despite performing rather well. I then was cycled into the regular army, where I was selected to my current platoon out of pure control of on circumstance. A man with the same name was the commander of the platoon. Lt Jeffery Wright. He spelled Jeffrey wrong, but I'll let it slide, after all he is from Texas.
I'm now in Iraq, and he is no longer in charge. In retrospect it seems that everything in my life has tried to push me in the right direction. To better myself, to better understand myself. And the only way that I have been able to do any of it, has not been the pushing and shoving of others to conform, but the will power I possess to improve myself.
I guess the old adage that you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink has been true to my life at least. But I like to think of it slightly differently. There are people in your life that will show you the positives and negatives, open the doors of life for you to see, and if you want to change, you can't just look at what's through the door, you have to step through it. Caution: Sometimes it's a bigger step then you can see. Advice: Grab a blind fold, hold your breath, and jump.

No it's not the twilight zone, it's war.

It's January 21st 2009. This morning I awoke to find myself under the command of a new boss. My old ones retired, probably milking a cow, or playing golf in the warm sun of Texas. I've been working like a mad man despite not seeming to have a job.
The cold reality is that I am a product of a couple hundred thousand dollars worth of taxpayers hard earned money, which trained me to me a steely eyed killer. And though I'm thankful for a paycheck every two weeks, it seems that all is a waste. When you're told that you are going "over there," you expect a few things in your life to change. For me it's been the longing for a girlfriend caress, and the new idea of not fighting these people but loving them.
My first patrol; 0530 Dec 26 (no shit my birthday)
Not exactly what I expected. Number one, I'm in Iraq walking through a Palestinian neighborhood. Two, I feel safer than walking in the downtown of any major metropolis in the United States. The sun rises, the kids are walking to school. They wave and say, "good morning mister," with an uncharismatic amount of enthusiasm. The people respond with warm smiles and greetings, "sabaah al-khayk," "salem alaikum." There seemed to be not a care for what would've been considered a threat. Vehicle traffic and pedestrian flow fluidly and unchallenged between convoy and patrol. A year ago, if a car attempted to pass through the convoy, that gave you the right to engage and stop the enemy at the cost of lethal force.
A man digs on the side of the road with a shovel. IED placer? All of my training, everything I ever learned in the army about Rules of Engagement are telling me to shoot this positively identified threat. But he's ok, says the LT. A shovel in hand a year ago meant that guy just signed his death warrant.
Operations should be smooth because of the peace in the neighborhoods. Dec 31st hits...
New security agreement between Iraq and the US. Where we were allowed to walk in the streets by ourselves, and go into houses we thought could be threats, now we need Iraqi Police and a search warrant. The grey haired big wigs at the top decide that with the Iraqi elections coming up have mandated us to be "vigilantly guarding" in our sector at the same times of day, for the same amount of hours everyday. If you don't have a military background or understanding then allow me to stress the point I'm trying to make.
If you go out of your base the same time day in and day out, you create a pattern. The more of a pattern you create the more dangerous it is for you. Ahkmed the bomb builder and Muhammed the bomb placer notice that you pass by there neighborhood the same time of day. Now instead of having to guess where you're going to be they know where you are going to be.
We aren't allowed to do our job here anymore. We can get kicked in the teeth, and in return we are only allowed to pass out candy, and give hugs. We allowed a guy who put in an ied that killed a friend to ride freely in our vehicle, because he said he knew where two more ied's were. Instead of making an example of an enemy, we protect them, and hide their identities from their peers. We get scrutinized and in trouble for opening fire on and killing a woman running full speed with no intent of stopping at US troops. Something from the first day of training you learn is well within your rights of protection for yourself and the man on either side of you.
So here's to bureaucrats, democrats and republicans alike, stay in Washington DC and out of our fight.

RIP SSG Justin Bauer
January 10th, 2009
Baghdad, Iraq