APO

353rd Transportation Company
ATTN SSG Buckley, John 5605
COB Q West Base Complex Iraq
APO AE 09351

Kuwait, this sucks

Kuwait, is hot and sandy. Not much else. We have been here for a little while now and let me tell you it kinda sucks. I mean its 1000% better than my first time in Kuwait, but it still sucks. Mainly because this time i miss home a lot more. Last time the war was on my mind, this time making it home to my wonderful, beautiful, amazing wife is all i can think about. I post this using a Kuwait'i run computer shop where i paid 5$ for an hour of computer/internet use. wow the ARMY really takes care of us. It costs the soldier $ to do anything. If we want to call home, we have to buy a calling card. If we are lucky to have a Military post in our zip code you can make a DSN call for free but its a limited time, and how many of us get that Luxury? NOT ME. So i pay the money and im posting with my time. I miss my wife most of all. My best friend here Jon Sopczak, is helping me pass the time. the training isnt so bad, we got new body armor that is a million times better than the old one. I continue to miss my kids and friends, most of all my wife. I just miss being able to talk to her and hold her. Its weird but such a simple thing can take my stress away. Now that I am without i find i miss it much more than ever. We hope to be making my jump up north to Iraq in the next 5-7 days. This is a good thing. Instead of a 50 man tent the likes of which we are housed in now, i will be living with my best friend Soap, in a air conditioned 2 man trailer. My own slice of home. I can decorate the trailer how i see fit, i can spread out my stuff and not worry about infringing on others space. I can put up pictures of my children and wife, i can organize my gear so i can find everything. Anyway, Kuwait sucks, i miss my wife, but i am handling it well. Jessica will be posting my address in Q-West on each one of our three blogs so please read. i hope once we get to Q-West i will get regular internet so i can post pictures of where i have lived and some of the things we have done. Please everyone who reads this, i ask that you make a continued effort to help Jessica with the children. I praise my mother, father, and jessica's mom for their help in watching our kids while i was on pass at fort dix. I also want to thank Jeneen and Mel, for all your time and support. To those who havent been to the house to spell Jessica or who havent offered to watch the kids so she can shop for herself, or even spend time by herself, please do so. NO Dont offer just do it. If you have the time and ability just find out when she will be home and show up and be there. I know my wife is strong and pround and wont ask for as much help as those three kids will require, just force her to spend an afternoon shopping or to go see a movie or get a haircut and petticure..... or however you spell it. push her out the door. If she wants to spend time with marissa let her take Marissa shopping but not the boys, I want to see Jessica with more help. Those who have helped THANK YOU, from the bottom of my heart, for those who said they would and havent, I am not mad just waiting. Please take this as a huge gift and sacrifice and i know you will be filled with joy after spending time with our children and doing such a un-selfish thing.
To Jessica: I love you, stay strong, i am proud of you. I miss you, and i will be home before you know it.
To Mom's and Dad, and those who are helping, THANK YOU keep up the amazing work. I know its tough but i means the world to me.
To Dustin, thank you very much, we can sit back and crack a cold one at YOUR place when i come home.
To My kids. Be good for your mother.
To my wife again, i love you. i miss you, i am proud of you and i believe you are amazing and wonderful. I LOVE YOU

What lies ahead.

Pass is nearly over and i have begun to look forward to the future. I run through the accounts of my last tour and then i have to bring myself back to reality and remind myself this tour.....this war will not be like the last. Not that i long for combat or i wish for the chance to shoot, but the last war was much more romantic than this is shaping up to be. I use that term with some artistic license. Romantic in the sense that the soldiers still had a sense that what we were fighting for was just and right. We believed we were fighting a evil dictator who was going to use chemical warfare, and who would use his army to put up the best fight since Vietnam. Now we are set to deploy knowing the fight is limited and very controlled. We are treating this conflict as a business venture. We incur some sacrifice but that is always swayed but the financial windfall most soldiers incur. If i could tape conversations about what people are going to do when they come home or why they are going to Iraq this time, more often than not you would hear about a major purchase set to be made. I fall into this same category already planning out the money i will make during this deployment. We fought the first time because we felt we wanted to defend our freedom, we fought the first time for our family and friends, for those who died on 9/11, this time I fear we fight for the paycheck.

Does that make us Mercenaries? My first time at war we all did the math to find out how much cash we would make, but the talk of what would be purchased or how much the money meant was very secondary to the reason for the war. Yes the first war was romantic, we went with flags in our eyes and the stories of WWII in our heart. We all watched the amazing movies depicting great American battles in all previous major wars. We believed or maybe hoped that our chance at war would give us those same stories. Maybe we had a false belief that they would make epic movies about our battles and our stories. Who knows maybe in time their will be that great war epic about Iraq.

Maybe I should enjoy the diminished combat, maybe i should be happy to have such a limited amount of time in the war zone. I hope this time we can replace that quest for our great story with conquest of ourselves. I know i return to Iraq looking for a closing chapter on this part of my life. I return to this war torn land with the hopes to return home like the rest of my buddies did the first time. I want to enjoy the return to the states. I want to experience the joy of leaving Iraq under my own power and on my own terms. My stories were formed in my last deployment, now i search for my summary, for my closing chapters so the novel that has become these past 5 years or so will finally be finished and can put on display for all to see.

True Romance

Okay, so we have pulled out of the FOB, which means we are back at the barracks and that means hot showers, porcelain toilets, and PASS! If you don't know what pass is then you haven't read my wife's or my family blog, which i do encourage you to do. I think it will give you (my readers) a 360 view of this deployment. Anyway being back in the barracks means i have one day to wait to see my wife. Jessica is driving out here to Fort Dix to spend 4 days with me. I haven't been this excited in a long time. This wait and how i feel has just reconfirmed how much i love my wife and why she is the perfect one for me. I guess its just the gut feeling of needing her around. I feel like she is my drug and without her i am in constant withdraw. So these four days will need to be my "fix" if you will for the next 10 or 11 months. As for what we plan to do on pass, we want to have a nice dinner, we want to spend time together and we just basically want to forget what happens at the end of the four days.

That being said, what happens at the end of those four days is the hardest part. The good bye. Not the good bye like last time because we knew there would be one more chance to see each other. This will be the last goodbye, a physical goodbye, for a long time. This will be the last time i kiss my wife for approx. a year. That i think will be the hardest part for me. I love my kids don't get me wrong, but the kind of love i have for my children is completely different than the love i have for Jessica. I am IN LOVE with Jessica. I feel that my soul mate has been found. No matter how much we fight or what its about we both seem to always find a way through. We may have hard times and we may have easy times but the toughest times are the ones spent apart. I have spent over a year preparing to leave my wife and kids on this deployment and i feel they are ready. As ready as the can be. I feel that i have not prepared myself. I am not ready to not touch my wife's beautiful face for a year. I have done time away from Jessica before, a two week stint here and there, but never this long. Time away from Jessica, is like time without breathing. I feel very alone without her. I have never felt in all my life that i needed someone to help me through. I feel that now. I need my wife, my Jessi, to help me through the rest of my days. I hope it is not taken as a weakness or as trivial. I do not say this to anyone but the computer screen, i do not toot my own horn in how i have found my "one" i write this to put what is in my heart and what is in my soul on paper for all eternity. Never have I, and the never is for sure, felt so amazed by one person. Jessica has weathered the storm of kids, moving, custody battles, marriage, poverty, a husband that has PTSD, her own demons, and then a deployment. She has done all this with smiles on her face and a drive for the next day. I have, and i admit this with humility, underestimated her. Never again with that happen. I have always known Jessica could handle everything put in front of her, but never did i completely allow what would come at her to be unchecked. I have always put secondary plans in place to protect her. I have not done so now and i am glad i didn't. She has done wonders.

While this deployment is just getting started i pray i do not speak prematurely, but no matter what happens next I will always support Jessica in everything she chooses to do. I want to chastise, those who have underestimated, not believed in, or just down right passed over MY Jessica. She would has proven you all wrong. Those of you out there who ever doubted her, this includes myself, should be ashamed. She is smarter, stronger and has a better constitution than any of us. She will make things work. If she cant she will go down fighting. That is all anyone should ever ask of a person. To continue trying no matter what the cost is a sign of someone worth supporting. I love Jessica with all my heart, i wish i had more ways to show her how much she means to me. I took stock of myself when i decided that Jessica was the one for me. I said to myself and her that i would make every dream of hers come true. I felt that she was never given the best situation to succeed and because of that she never got what her heart desired. I was not about to let such a wonderful person go through life without being happy. She received this news well and unlike most, she didn't ask for the moon, though if she did, I would be at NASA now. She asked for a house that she could call her own. Something she had never lived in. An actual house with four walls not attached to anyone else. She asked for her children to always be at her side. Meaning having majority custody of Marissa and any other children we have. She asked to be able to raise her kids herself without have to rely on daycare for help. This meant she would not be working. She asked for a car that wasn't a bucket. Yes the ones previous to the one she had now all were buckets, any way you slice it they were bad. She asked to have a chance to repair the damage that three kids can do to the body. That is it. Please note that no where did she ever ask for riches or outlandish vacations, or unrealistic materials. I promised her her dreams and I have come through on every one so far. I do not intend on stopping. Jessica is my soul mate, she will always be my soul mate. I don't care if she reads this, that is not why i am writing this, I am back at the barracks counting the hours till i see her. I have trained hard over the past 3 weeks with the hope of earning my chance to see my wife. No touch will be as sweet has hers, no kiss as soft, no voice as calming, no embrace as welcoming. I want my Jessica here but i dread the four day. I do not want that fourth day to come. I know what that means, if i could spend forever on day 1 i would.

I love you Jessica, I will come home I promise.

High speed training

Okay, we have been doing a lot of training, i mean quite a bit. we have been running convoys and using high speed Humvees. we we use the latest equipment we all get excited. I have had a few issues with how they set up our training. I hate when the command has no real vision for how the execution of the missions will go. I almost think they have no real idea of what they are doing. i do understand that i have to respect my commanders and those appointed above me or those who outrank me, BUT when in the civilian world i do all of their jobs combined everyday it makes it hard to sweep all of their mistakes, misjudgements and out right stupid decisions under the rug. these people cant plan out a whole day of missions and when things go wrong or break down they are unwilling to adjust their plan to fit the capabilities of those performing the missions.

Now i had a run in with those people in operations and well lets say it got heated and i got pissed. I think when all was said and down they saw how fucked up all this extra training was becoming. Pushing soldiers to their limit, when even the command says before the training starts that" we know this training is irrelevant" makes it hard to motivate your soldiers. I have found my ways to motivate and my soldiers continue to impress me. I just wish the ARMY would have a better way to evaluate and (replace,retraining, dismiss,or just remove) get rid of bad leaders.

But since the ARMY fails in that aspect i guess i am stuck with leaders looking out for their own agendas, looking out for only their careers, and basically using the soldiers a tool to prove their own worth.

All in all i liked some of the training, but with it being unrealistic, its hard to get too excited. I am excited that its almost over. I get to see my wife in two days. I get to have four days of freedom in which i will rest up, spend time with my beautiful wife, and try and prepare mentally for the jump across the pond. I have some pretty cool pictures of our training. i will have more soon. Oh yeah the Hurricane/ Tropical storm came in a gave us a soaking.

Deployment mustache

Yes we all kinda grow a mustache, it looks horrible on me. i know! Its gone, it might come back as a joke or as something to do besides sit around. Here is a photo