Ugh. More and more. Someone from my runners' group got posted there last week, too. All this time he thought he was headed for Italy, and then he got the change in orders at the last minute.

And the news today was awful.

Soldiering? Volunteering? Politicking? Profiteering? I am guessing the first. Good luck to him.

May your student travel safely
(round trip) and remain protected.

He stopped by my office today. He is a nice young man, sharp, who joined the Coast Guard after high school and somehow went from there to the Army Reserves when he went back to college. He got called up during the middle of the summer semester and was gone in a week. When he got there I let him finish his work via email.

He was stationed at some air base near the biblical city of Ur, on a crew that goes out to disarm IEDs along the highway. Things have been fairly quiet in southern Iraq so he is mostly bored, though he did show me pictures of the dead dog they found rigged up with explosives.

But when he gets back next week they are putting him right in Bagdad. He isn't worried--he is 25, and can't imagine a world without him in it. But I keep thinking of all the bad things that could well happen. Damn.

Wow. Seems to be a bad time to heading to Baghdad in particular. Is he an infantryman? What is his role (not that anyone is safer than anyone else in Iraq these days)? I hope he is a cipher clerk buried a basement in the middle of the Green Zone.

stop them if you can--seriously. I'm totally available to testify that we're lovers.

aaagh.

I'm wishing him well, LarryC.

Thanks, Amber, you made me laugh. There is no stopping him, he does not believe in the war but he believes in his unit, and thinks the folks he is fighting are bad guys. His unit goes out when they find roadside bombs and dismantles them or blows them up. Which sounds dangerous as fuck, doesn't it?

An odd thing, he is still working on his degree via the internet when he is over there. He'll be taking a class from me this summer. He'll ride around in a Humvee, blow up a few IEDs, enjoy the 120 degree heat, get shot at, then go back to base and study colonial North American history a few hours. It is a strange (and yes, evil) war.

It's a Marine slogan, but the sentiment is the same:

Semper Fi, man.