SSgt AIT, CWO AIT, and Hermie have gone home. I’m going to miss all of them! And it will be awfully quiet around here without them crashing into the office every evening, demanding to play spades and inhaling all our snack food. Most of their team can’t wait to get out of the Middle East but Hermie is annoyed that he has to leave, he would love to stay longer.

The armor plating Marines were only here for a couple months but they knocked out a ridiculous amount of work in a ridiculously short time and I hope they all get some sort of award for what they did. I’m sure a lot of lives will be saved, thanks to them.

The SSgt who took me on my first visit to Victoria’s Secret way back when was also here for a couple days. I didn’t get to see him the whole time he was in Iraq because he was in Grunt Land on the smaller forward operating bases, installing armor plating out there. I still owe him dinner but he says I’ll have to pay up in Bahrain sometime next year, if I happen to get stationed in that little speck of a country on MSG duty.

I also have a new pile of M16 rounds clinking inside my cargo pocket. I’d like to pretend they were a parting gift, but they were from a stranger on the armor plating team who was probably just trying to get the extra weight out of his pockets before he hopped on the C-130 to Kuwait.

Now all I need is a magazine to stash them in and I’ll be ready for my next patrol!