As my brother commented on the “Art of Tactical Acquisition” post, the four of us seem to have mastered the art of making life far more fun than it should be in our little section of the war zone. But every time we issue a vehicle or a weapon, we are reminded of our main purpose here: replacing combat losses.

Yesterday Jimmy drive one of our AAVs onto a trailer for transportation to another base and afterwards he commented that he was sad to see it go because it meant that somewhere out there, one of his beloved AAVs had been blown up so badly it could no longer be used. Captain SweetTooth noted that of the AAVs and LAVs we have issued, none went to replace a vehicle a Marine had died in. But then he added that he couldn’t say the same about the Humvees. I think our Humvees have even replaced Humvees from units on our own base that were struck by IEDs strong enough to kill Marines riding inside.

I was going to say I didn’t really have a point, but I do: I might write funny stories and post funny pictures, but we wouldn’t have a job out here if it weren’t for those nasty IEDs.

What an IED can do to a Marine’s M-16: