Interestingly enough, there was a downpour last night which, combined with the constant moving of our vehicles, left most of the parking lots around our living areas in a muddy mess. Good news is that things don't take that long to dry here. Bad news is at least every other night or morning it rains again. Apparently, some areas of Iraq can have quite a crazy rainy season, as this place right now reminds me of what I expect Seattle, WA to be like this time of year.
In other news, a guy to the supply room to have his weapon fixed. You see, his M4 didn't work quite the way it used to before he DROPPED THE THING OFF THE SIDE OF A GUARD TOWER. The rifle had to be turned into the post arms room for repair, and which led to me having to explain what would cause an M4 to be either bent or cracked in seven different places. While it is now repaired for about 2 days now, everyone including me, my supply sergeant, the armorers at the post arms room and the soldier assigned to the weapon all neglected to notice that there was a part not put back on when it was repaired... Back to the arms room tomorrow...

Whew! Thank goodness it's the weekend! That whole week of working in the Army was
really starting to get to me. Glad to be finally doing pretty much the same exact thing as I did then. Anyone that has done a tour here would have caught on to that bit of sarcasm fairly quickly. One of the things of a deployment is how days seem to merge together, sometimes to the point to being not unlike the movie "Groundhog Day", where the same day repeats itself over and over again.
Sure, you could try to change up the routine by spontaneously going to the gym instead of the movies one day, and there's always "Mexican Food Night" at the chow hall, but every now and again, there will be those long stretches of time where you find yourself writing down a date that was a week before, or trying to remember whether or not you gave flashlight batteries to someone, only to find yourself trying to filter out a half-dozen moments of deja-vu, and people will actually try
to use that to their advantage on getting more stuff. These people just happen to be closely related to the masterminds that say "Hey, I lost my Oakleys, can I have another pair?" The battle never ends.

OPSEC DISCLAMER:

By the way,it should be known that even though I will be constantly looking for OPSEC(Operations Security) problems with my entries, anyone who notices any problems with OPSEC should try to contact me so I may check it out. I'd rather not have my blog shut down before I really even started it.

Hey folks, I'm Hunter Shumard, Armorer for the Charlie Company(Paragould, AR) unit of the 875th Engineer Battalion of the Arkansas National Guard, currently deployed in the wonderful resort land known as Iraq. I figured that it was more efficient to simply use a blog to communicate with all my friends and family since it takes me about 3 hours to write a decent letter. Also, I've finally received internet access after being stuck in the dark, barren stone age world that is without the world wide web(the horror...the horror), so I'm now on as much as I can be. Hopefully, I can share my experiences, stories, and pictures along this journey through this place.