Almost everything I remember involves shit, trash and smoke. There was the constant waft of shit air coming from the porta johns. There was burning trash, road side trash piles, shit water in the alleys, and sometimes a combination of everything.

My driver drove us through a particularly big shit puddle once which sent a tsunami over the truck and soaked me. The worst part was that as the truck hit the puddle, it made me lurch forward, and for some reason I opened my mouth. Maybe to say “fuucckkk”. Regardless, I got hit by a wave of shit water mouth first and swallowed a ton of it. It was nasty. I was sure I was going to get some sort of parasite and die sweaty and feverish. Ok…that’s an exaggeration. Not about the parasite though.

I still gag thinking about it although I admit it wasn’t as bad as when I was at a party and drunkenly took a swig from a bottle with three people’s dip spit and two people’s loogies.

I made sure to get a max strength, kill-everything pill from the docs when I got back to Hurricane Point. I had to clean my gear too. Fucking annoying. They don’t tell you about stuff like that before you enlist.

Every time you shoot you have to clean up the brass.

The first picture is of something on fire. It might just be trash. These kind of things you see don’t help your mental state. At times it does really seem like you’re in hell. When there’s trash everywhere there are flies everywhere. There were horrific stray dogs and angry people. Sometimes screaming people.

You’re fighting in the oppressive heat, breathing in shit, trash smoke, diesel fumes, and gun powder. To be honest I kind of miss it.

The second picture is from one of many fire fights, IED responses, ambushes, QRF missions, etc. I don’t really remember but we spent a lot of time “going firm” like that. I generally thought the way that I would die in Ramadi was getting sniped out of my turret while posted up.

It didn’t happen obviously but those past, intense pressures of reality still creep back to haunt me from time to time.