Hey - I'm excited and wanted to tell y'all that my best friend from High School is back from Iraq!
He was there for a full year as a combat engineer attached with infantry. His year in Iraq was his 3rd, he wouldve had only one year left sateside, but he signed on for 6 more. About 3 months ago, he got his E-5 (seargent), and is now an NCO.
In his year there, he was attached to some other interesting missions as well. He did some door kicking/house raiding with the marines since they didnt bring they're own engineers. He also volunteered/got selected to attach to a seal team for a semi covert op.
He's now stationed in Colorado and is excited and anxious about re-assimilating back into stateside life.
He did have one piece of bad news, kind of frustrating. All the guys that came back have huge stores of liquid cash, upwards of $30k, and many of them are fresh out of HS into the Army and have never been in the "real" world (was is real...so...no flames on that) as in bills and stuff, and they are blowing alot of their money.
Another bad story he told me was a couple of guys were back, and went to eat and had a few drinks. While walking to a bar, they got jumped and the crap beat out of them, and the punks took all the cash they had, and their wallets and everything. THAT frustrates the mess outta me.
But, all in all, it's good to hear he's back safe, and he should be down in a week to chill and catch up. We're gonna go fishing on an island cove off of matagorda bay
-nick
