Alot of stuff happened since i last blogged. Two embedded people from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Amy Schlesing, a reporter with the paper, as well as a photographer named Staton Breidenthal both came and stayed with Charlie Company for about a full month before going to the crazy world of the Anbar province.

During their time with us, we had our first casualty. Specialist Erich Smallwood was killed when a large IED exploded near under his humvee. I had only seen him a couple times, but it horrible to know that we have lost our first guy as part our own deployed unit since World War 2 (when we were an artillery unit).

On a more postive note, we have finally dealt with the issue of getting an Advanced Combat Helmet (ACH) to Specialist Christopher Centers, who was shot in the head by a sniper, but lived and was even able to come back and continue doing missions. I asked SSG Ewald, one of our radio guys who had simply lost his ACH and who still had a older model helmet as well, to give Centers his helmet. This wasn't much of a problem, as he has stayed inside the base the whole time we have been here, so safety was much less of an issue. So the story pretty much ends for now, although we still haven't heard from our CIF about the ACH they were supposed to get Centers.

It still though should be noted that the fact that the Iraq Funding Bill was over 3 months late due to Congressional squabbling affected one of the avenues of how Specialist Centers was supposed to get a helmet, as there were attempts to get his ACH from a supply sgt's connections back in the US. That route was complicated by the fact that stateside units were in a budget crunch as the Army had to prioritize them lower due to budget problems, and so making it harder to get a helmet to for a guy that just got shot in the head. Just another guy caught in the crossfire of Capitol Hill's political wars I guess, and just another reason why we should all thank our local congressman.