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Originally Posted by smoore
Not to pick nits but he appears to be a Marine. Some of them get a little antsy if you call them soldiers.
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True enough on both counts, but I really don't get riled about that, even in person.
Thanks for all the good feedback. I'll try to dig up some more from all the places I have pictures stored. I went through 4 digital cameras, one laptop, and a 500GB hard drive (which I restored to .CHK files), and there's pictures scattered all over them.
Found some more:
Way, WAY out in the middle of somewhere near Syria. This is also one of my favorite pictures from the deployment - it looks SO rough, like we've been slogging through firefights for a week or something... but it's really just that we rode about 80 miles in the back of an uncovered truck on dirt roads.
Having a spot o' chai at the grand opening of one of Haditha's city government projects. (Yeah, the photo was taken off base, if that tells you something...)
Another one of our dinners we were invited inside for - lamb, rice, raisins, peanuts, flatbread, etc. Can not
tell you how friggin' yummy it was. No, seriously!
From one of our many, MANY weekly city council meetings. Three cities, plus the district, each with their own councils... each meeting at LEAST three hours... yarrrrgh.
One of our "Expeditionary Patrol Bases" I had to stay at a few times. It's basically just someone's house that we occupy (and pay a lease for) with a squad of guys.
We're moving away from that, though, and building "new" bases:
Yes - out of PLYWOOD. Sucks for us, but it means more Iraqis get their damn houses & schools back when we move out.
But at least the bathrooms are nice!
The sign left behind when the seabees finished our new base:
And indeed, it did actually SNOW there one night. Totally unheard of in our part of the country:
The read board at the entrance to the chow hall; hilarity as always:
And last but not least... while out on patrol one day, waiting to pick up a few more Marines who needed a ride with our convoy, I decided to pose down for a blatantly cheesy "ninja action killer man" pose:
I think it turned out pretty decent for a guy who didn't see SHIT for firefights or IEDs or anything. Goes to show that backgrounds are crucial sometimes for photography... and also that I had too much time on my hands.
I just organized everything I found into
a set on flickr, so if you go there you can see pictures of me goofing off with kids, too. Some great pictures there!