A couple days at the MOD, Iraq’s ministry of defense, a giant military compound in north Baghdad right on the river.  Imagine the Pentagon, but with an entire light infantry division of third world troops garrisoned there and spotty electricity.

I went on one humanitarian aid drop and one predawn hate raid, both led by the Iraqi Army, so I think morally I broke about even for the trip.  I wasn’t photographing very well given the gravity of both scenes - it’s time for me to take a break from this place.  68 days left, by the latest count.  It feels like it’s almost over.  I’m going on fewer missions on purpose, I’ve seen enough combat for this year and I’d like to survive long enough to take a small vacation at the end of this chapter of my participation in the Great Crusade.

Wild Bill, the man who was a big part of my military trajectory died today, just south of here.  He was my battalion commander in boot camp, I remember him crawling next to me through the sand and concertina wire and sweat and gnawing fear of brand new soldiers as three big machineguns rattled over our heads, tracers twisting wildly in the cold winter wind.  Wild Bill they called him.  He came to Spartan BCT at the same time I did, did a double take after walking into a smelly tent in a Louisiana swamp and see Wild Bill standing there looking like he just bit a rattlesnake’s head off.  Infantry for 18 years always looking for combat and never found it once until a five pound hunk of molten copper came crashing through Wild Bill’s door at seven thousand feet per second.  This place is weird, sometimes that’s all the combat you see in ten months, but that’s all it takes.

I ran tonight, despite no sleep for two days at the MOD, until there was nothing left, till my lungs felt like raisins and my blood felt like gasoline and I could feel the little capillaries opening up turning electric in my fingertips and everything but my brain screamed for me to stop and I kept running and it got dark and the stars came out through the red shiny mackerel skin clouds and the smoke on the horizon and the painful thought of Wild Bill being gone forever drifted away.
The next two years will almost certainly bring another tour in Iraq or Afghanistan, or some other nation of oil-producing non-whites that’s ripe for our brand of freedom.  That’s fine with me, as long as I’m not in Baghdad again.  An interesting city, to be sure, but not so much that I want to do this tour all over again.
The worst problem with Baghdad is one of statistics.  Approximately one percent of soldiers who do daily patrols for a year in Baghdad die.  It’s been true for every unit that’s operated here.  So when the number of missions you’ve been on climbs past 100, past 120, up around 140 for me now, it wears on you terribly that you’ve been lucky, and might be beating some odds that don’t abide being beaten.
With four weeks left I’m not going out much, just packing up and getting ready to fly to Georgia and rent a doublewide on three acres of land in the endless pine forest and swipe some old humvee tires and grow some garlic and basil in em.
So hopefully I won’t have any more tales of madness and chaos to mass-email about for the rest of the year.  Thanks to everyone for writing me, it’s great, it’s the best, if you know anyone else far from home in some strange land write to them, even the very intrepid need letters from home.  Thanks.