My Trip to Iraq
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My Trip to Iraq
It was February 11, 2003. My family and I were trying to spend some quality time together before my deployment to Iraq. Time was flying by so fast, yet I knew once I touched ground in Iraq that would all change. Saying goodbye to my newly established family was like taking away medication that I needed on a daily basis. I did not know how I was going to make it out there without them. What made it worst was that Uncle Sam had not even given us a return date to look forward to. So we planned on being in Iraq for at least a year.
I will never look at Valentines Day the same again. February 14, 2003 was one of the most miserable days of my entire life. We arrived at Kuwait International Airport. Then we got herded of the airplane on to these buses with all the windows covered by blankets. It was the bumpiest bus ride I had ever been on. Keep in mind all 270 of us had full battle rattle on and a M16A2 assult rifle on each individual. After the 2 hour long bus ride we finally made it to Camp Udari, the most northern of all U.S. military camps in Kuwait. It was about 15 miles south of the Iraqi border. From the start it already seemed like we were at war. You could here explosions going off in all different directions at anytime. We were very much uninformed. No body knew what was going on, or what was going to happen. We then got situated in our tents and set up our sleeping commendations. We got moved around about 3 times our first week there.
About 12 days later we heard that President Bush was giving Saddam 24 hours to surrender his weapons of mass destruction, or else we were officially going to war. I still had hope inside of me that it was never going to come to that. I prayed daily that everything would be okay and that my family was not worrying sick about me.
The 24 hours came and went and it was game time. It was a game that we had no control over. The first day of war was the scariest day of my life, even still to this day. The first real life scud alarm that I heard was a reality check. While rushing to put on my MOP gear in less than 8 minutes I saw my life flash before my eyes. I was praying to God that if it was my time, to forgive me for everything bad I have done in my life. I thought about my child and asked God to give me a chance to live through all this so I could be there for him. After a while you go insane and you realize that there is nothing you can do. It was not likely that you could protect yourself from an incoming scud or artillery round. It was a hit or miss type of situation. Playing dominoes and talking to my army buddies in full MOP gear was all I could do to keep my mind off of what was going on. I never showed how scared I actually was because if you break down and the soldiers that look up to you see that, then you pretty much let them down. You would