Convoys? Why?

Wednesday we were sort of off, we had to do some administrative things, clean the barracks, pick up Humvees and things like that. Thursday, we began convoy training. "Well I thought you were going to be doing police work on a base in Kuwait?". Yeah, you're right, and I am, but the Army trains on all this stuff just in case the you know what hits oscillating blades that hang from ceilings. Its fun and I like learning this stuff, so I'm up for it. Thursday was also classroom training. It was a long day. We started at 6am and went until about 9pm. Then at 9pm we received our mission (take a general to meet an Iraqi general). So we went out on a recon mission. We got back around 945pm and moved into our new home:

Not quite roughing it, but its not the best either. Bathrooms are port-o-pottys, which aren't that bad until you have to go number 2 when its pitch black out. Lucky for me it didn't come to that, but you get where I'm going. Also the showers were a trailer. It is an 18 wheeler with showers inside. It's pretty cool how it works, but since we were only staying one night, we decided to skip the showers.

So we woke up early the next morning and started our mission. It was pretty awesome. I was one of the drivers of the Humvees. I was driving our second in command so it was a little nerve wracking but it went well. We were hit by IED's, VBIED's, mortars, small arms fire, we received "casualties", vehicles broke down so we had to tow them out while taking fire. There were protesters throwing sticks, stones and rotten tomatoes at us. The terrain was great too. I got to drive through some big puddles, creeks, mud, rock, dirt, inclines, declines, brush. Overall we were told we did really well. Better than some Army units who have had 10 days of training to our 1 day. So we finished about 12 hours later with our heads high again. Then they told us we still had to wash the vehicles, clean the weapons and turn them in. Had I known this, maybe I would have thought twice about splashdowns in to the creek beds. Actually, had I thought twice, I still would have drove the way I drove. It was worth it. So we ended up finishing our day that started at 6am around 10pm. I took about a 45 minute shower and went right to bed.