The Swine Flu, JSS Beladiyat Style

This past week our platoon had to cover down for another platoon attached to our company while they went and zeroed there sniper rifles. Not a big deal, four days just down the road at JSS Beladiyat. A JSS is now what I'm considered to live on as well. Purely for the reason we are not allowed to have bases in Iraqi cities unless they are joint. JSS literally means, Joint Security Station. It's basically where we live with the Iraqi Security Forces. FOB Loyalty, my home for the last few months, had to change it's name to JSS Loyalty, and the FOB was cut in half to give room to the Iraqi National Police to move in.
JSS Beladiyat is a little smaller than Loyalty, seeing how it can barely accommodate one platoon, to Loyalty's battalion. It's not a bad place though. It's basically a building, with a make shift gym, and a large bay that is the extent of the sleeping quarters. You park just outside and the force protection is basically all Iraqi run.
We stayed four days, four very grueling days out there. Other than constantly having to watch your back for crooked jihadist police, you also get chow only twice a day, if you're lucky. The MWR in the JSS is lined with 5 computers, and a nice big screen TV where our platoon literally hung out together the entire time when not hanging out on mission. The days seemed to go quick there, and we didn't have to deal with the same amount of bullshit that Loyalty tends to give. It was almost a vacation despite the fact that our patrol schedule was intensified.
Upon our return to Loyalty, the platoon fell sick. It could've been the lack of sleep, change of schedule, new germs, or the water we showered in that could've been the cause. The swine flu is running rampid in America, and here maybe it's the same.
Today was a surprising day off for us, after we got back from the other JSS yesterday. It was a pretty nice day off. I almost didn't know what to do with myself. I fought through the nausea and sick feeling to get to the gym, because the time we had allotted was simply to much to be normal. Kind of weird how much of a work-a-holic I have become. It seems not to long ago, I was climbing telephone poles for three hours a day, and calling it a day.
Morale has been high lately. Despite the patrol schedule being completely grueling, and everything else that seems to have been going on, everyone is in the 'zone' right now. The platoon has finally gelled together, and it's been quite an amazing transition to be apart of. A year ago we would be down each others throats all the time, and usually on the edge of fighting after insults were exchanged. We were all small and inexperienced. Now our platoon is either on the cross fit bandwagon, or in the White Supremest Lifting Club, or a little of both. Only joking there are no White Supremacist's in the Army. The Boyz of AT 4 calendar is just a tanning bed and photo shoot away from being complete.
The other night as we were leaving the wire, checking in with the gate guard, Kolt Killman, our truck commander in Four One, said the funniest thing he has ever said. The gate guards are the Ugandan guys that are contractors through some kind of contracting company. They speak hardly any english, and Killman is the man who gives them the number of people and trucks leaving the wire. This guard in particular was having a hard time understanding what Killman was saying, and finally Sgt. Killman told him that on top of the number of people and vehicles, we also had 6 lions and 3 spider monkeys. We ended up back at the gate later on that night, and as he told them again our numbers, everyone in the truck was doing there best attempts at making 'jungle noises.' The individual looked very dispirited at our expense.

"Two more weeks and I'll be through..."