Kuwait

"Hi,
so we are in Kuwait for a few days here. Oh man is it hot. It feels like an oven. When we landed yesterday it was about 125 on the tarmac. Dry heat lol ok, its still hot. Oh did I mention the A/c in our living area went out this morning. Wooo its hot in there. Not bad though I walked to the USO center here when they opened and waited an hour for a computer. Its very slow! I saw the blog comments and the blog picture. The breakfast chow was very good, but this is mainly an army base. I hope everything is going good back in the states :)

- Will"

Also - I edited the last post after it had been emailed. If you haven't seen the great picture that the Maine Troop Greeters took - stop by and check it out. www.WillinIraq.blogspot.com

... and he has left for war

Well reality finally hit hard today. Today was the day where a new phase begins. Will has boarded the plane and left American soil. Will described it best with "Surreal". It's crazy to think that life can change so much with a flight. The blog will be updated as soon as we know he's safe and settled at his base. It could be a bit of time, so we all will need to sit tight and be patient.

I'm so grateful for the Maine Troop Greeters. Big thanks!!! They are a volunteer based group that makes sure they hug all the troops coming and going. Will was able to drop a quick call from one of their available cell phones. Here's an article about them and the wonderful part they play in the deployments of our troops.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0124/p01s01-usmi.html

Good chance they got a photo which should be posted soon at http://mainetroopgreeters.smugmug.com/Troop%20Pictures%20by%20Month/357893
I'll post the photo if I can find him!

*** Edit - Robin found the best picture ever!!! Here's the URL for it if I doesn't show up. http://mainetroopgreeters.smugmug.com/gallery/3391495#189577122

Iraq Address

****Removed - Address no longer active ******

Field Day

Finally a Field Day like most people across the country think of field day! After playing soccer for 2.5 hours we get the rest of the day off to start packing our gear and mailing stuff home. They tell us we leave sometime in the next week! Everyone here is ready to kick this thing off, and get over to Iraq and fix some electronic gear!

Training before war

Schedule of events leading to a cycle of training:
1630: Training might happen tomorrow, Stand by
1633: Training will happen tomorrow, time to be determined, Stand by
1645: Training will start @ 5:15 tomorrow morning be there
-----------------------------------------------------
0420: Get up shower, find gear needed for training
0450: Meet with rest of platoon for morning accountability
0500: Move off to rally point
0515: Wait at rally point for 7-ton trucks to transport
1030: Trucks finally show up
1045: Arrive at armory, no weapons available, Call important people, they cancel.

Rinse Repeat for tomorrow

6 Flags

While on pre-deployment block leave Carolyn and I went to 6-Flags in IL. A very cool place. One thing that struck me as humorous was as I was walking in the park I had to pass through a metal detector. What seemed rather twisted in that bizarre kind of way was the person monitoring the metal detector was of Middle Eastern descent. He had a very thick accent and it was obvious he recently had immigrated to the states. How funny, in prolly a month the roles will be reversed. Yet, he is guarding our theme parks, which are capitalism at its finest ($3.50 for a 20 oz. coke out of a machine anyone?), while I will be guarding his country (I'm going with he was Iraqi here for sake of argument) making sure no one blows it up.

I finished reading Colby Buzzell's book "My War Killing Time in Iraq". Colby was a 240 gunner back in 03-04 in Iraq. His mission was to "punish the deserving". We Marines would have called it "go get some". Its a very quick read for those interested in an honest outlook on military life. A lot of the observations are cross-branch for the military. OK, I am not going to shamelessly plug his book anymore because well he's making good money off of it now, and he had a way cooler blog than I do ;)

(Jim, if you read this, I know I have violated about a dozen grammer/punctuation rules but I'm tired )

-W