September 13, 2004

Our company’s callsigns are organized thus: 1st platoon is Red, 2nd platoon is White, and 3rd platoon is Blue. HQ is Black, Mortars Brown, and TOWs are Green. Each vehicle within each platoon also has a numerical designator: Red 1, Red 2, Red 3, Red 4, White 1, White 2, etc. Our new bastard platoon consists of old Red 4, White 4 (me), and Blue 4. Officially we’re Gray platoon, our vehicle being Gray 1, but we’ve been called everything from Pink to Purple to Rainbow.

Also, because of the lack of enough officers to go around, our platoon commander is a staff sergeant, making our platoon comprised entirely of enlisted men. Which we prefer.

Anyway, yesterday, our second day out in our Area of Operation, a bunch of the leadership were out with a 1LAR guide element doing a leaders’ recon, while the rest of us stayed in a defensive coil somewheres. Less than an hour after they left, the vehicle our platoon sergeant was riding on hit a double stack of landmines and the vehicle our platoon commander was on was hit by an IED.

Our first full day out in the field and we’d already lost our new platoon’s entire chain of command.

They’re actually ok, though. Sgt. T_____ has two ruptured eardrums and a contusion on his posterior, and Ssgt. B____ got hit on the helmet with shrapnel or a rock or something and has moderate whiplash.

It’s been a pretty rude welcome.

So now we’re in the rear, back at the firm base, until our chain of command recovers, which shouldn’t be more than a few days.

It all still has yet to really sink in, and I doubt IEDs will really feel like a real threat until I see one firsthand, and maybe not even then.

I see a lot of the guys I went to School of Infantry with here in 1LAR. It’s strange seeing my peers here as basically the main workhorses of the unit. But then I look around and realize that it’s the same in my own unit. We’re not the ignorant inexperienced boots anymore, bumbling around trying not to get into trouble. We are now the main body, keeping things running, teaching the newer Marines, setting examples. I don’t remember that happening. But suddenly, here I am, about to hit my two-year mark. They say it’s all downhill from here, but I imagine this deployment will provide some uphill yet.

The joy in the Marines of 1LAR is palpable, but it’s mixed with a slight apprehensiveness, I think. No one wants to be the one to get killed just days before getting to go home.

We’ve been issued these awful, ridiculous shoulder-pad attachments to our flak jackets. These things just keep getting more and more cumbersome. Just to make things that much more ridiculous for us, it’s impossible to get them on properly by one’s self, so now we actually have to help each other don armor. It’s pretty nuts.

I downloaded my first ‘roll’ of pictures onto my ipod today. 227 pictures fit on the 256 MB CF card. I’m wondering how long all my electronics will last in this invasive dust, though. My iPod’s already acting just a little funny, and I can feel grit in the moving parts of my camera.

I apologize if these posts are kinda retarded. I’ve been writing stuff down in my notebook whenever I can, and I haven’t had time to consolidate the stuff into coherent, uh, compositions or something. Plus, we only get 20 minutes at a time on these crappy laptops, and we have to wait in line for at least like an hour to get on for each 20 minutes. I hate laptop keyboards.