Получил письмо от друга, служащего в Ираке. Кто не знает английского могут прочитать с помощью переводчика от Гугл. Hey Fam! I've decided to do a family newsletter on a weekly basis to send to everybody with general info that anybody can see...feel free to email me and ask questions and I will reply with a personal email and answer everything I can. I would like to keep in touch with people and have people involved with my deployment, this isn't a mission where I can only email once a week for an hour and can only call twice a year, so I think we should take advantage of that and keep in touch with each other more than when I was on my mission. I feel like I got pretty out of touch with the fam. I have started getting back in touch little by little and don't want to undo it in Iraq. So, without further ado... I think every email I recieved from the fam mentioned the heat Yes, it may shock you, but it is REALLY hot here in Kuwait...it fluxuates between 105-125 throughout the day. The good news is almost every building has AC, so it really isn't that bad. Even if you do get hot outside, you can always cool down every couple of hours. In fact, I am starting to get really chilly inside. I think I'm getting used to the heat, because it has started to feel good when I walk outside instead of unbearable. I am starting to love that oven blast of heat in the face...call me wierd. Guess my Siberia days are far behind me They have also come out with better gear to cope with the heat like a new combat shirt...one layer worn under my protective vest so I don't have to wear my regular ACU top and an undershirt. I was even able to get the combat shirts marked at the Salt Lake Temple, thanks to Jes. I have been drinking 4-5 liters of water a day at a minumum, but I have started to sweat a lot less. Every building has a cooler with bottled water, so the water tastes good and it is always cool. They have a lot of facilities here for the soldiers that provide free internet, phones, they have xboxes, ps3s, wiis, big screen tvs and thousands of movies to watch. Austin would be in heaven here Pretty much any game you could possibly want to play. I've played a little Call of Duty with my team (who play 4 hours a day usually). I represented and got the most kills 3 out of 4 times, Casey would be proud. They also have a theater here that plays movies constantly from 0700 till 0100. I saw Prince of Persia, it was pretty cool. The last few days I've been busy from sunup till past sundown with MRAP training, which is a Mine Resistant Ambush Protected troop carrier. Look it up online. It's pretty sweet, has nice AC, and has a lot of armor. I will be driving the CAIMAN plus variant of the MRAP, for those who look it up. I will be a driver in the lead vehicle for my team, with Chief (my team leader) as TC (vehicle commander). That may change however as I have been given a job that may require me to dismount, and the driver almost always stays inside the vehicle. (I can't really tell you about my job...srry) I really like my team, we have a good group of guys (including a married couple, so one female on the team). We all mesh really well and work together well, by far the best team in our company. We are all getting team shirts that say "Chief's Dirty Dozen", with 12 soldier silhouettes and our motto. The motto is in latin, and it says "If I can't find a way, I'll find a way." That is how Chief Bulkley operates...we will get things done no matter what. If we need something to do our mission and the Army won't give it to us, we'll get it. We've got a lot going for us and we're excited to get going with the real deal. I am going to be leaving Kuwait ahead of my team (within the next couple of days) to go to a 10 day training course for my new job. Sometime during that course, my team will go to our FOB (Forward Operating Base) and I'll meet them there. We will be at FOB Warhorse at Baquba, Iraq, which is about 2 hours north of Baghdad. We will meet the team we are replacing and they will show us the ropes in the area. After a week or so they will take off and we'll have full control of the mission and the area. I'm excited to get going and to know more about the area. FOB Warhorse sounds nice, we will be living in trailers, 2 per trailer. We will have a team office where We'll spend most of our time when we are on base. We should have internet connectivity all over, so I will be able to skype then. I haven't had access to skype here in Kuwait. I'll probably have one day off a week. Other than that I'll be on call from 0800 till 2100 and will spend most of that time in the office working (or at least being actively engaged, like learning Arabic). That's probably it for now, hope you guys are doing well, I love and miss you, take care! Reg Hey Everybody! Well, I have been in Baghdad for several days now, almost a week. I think it's even hotter here than in Kuwait. Also, the DFAC (Dining Facility) is literally a mile away, so walking there for lunch in the middle of the day is killer...I can feel sweat running down my back just thinking about it. But, the DFAC is nice and has some pretty good food. Every day for lunch and dinner they have a little hibachi grill place. I eat there most of the time. They'll custom make you whatever you want, they have quite a few options of meats, veggies, and spices. Lately I have been getting beef, noodles, broccoli, onions, mushrooms, garlic, red pepper, and soy sauce. Sometimes their standard food line can be not so enticing. They have served 3 beef meals this week all with different names (like beef brisket, prime rib, and some sort of steak) but it was the same meat every time. It was pretty funny. But they have a custom sandwich line too, so pretty much I can have subway whenever I want as well (minus the really good bread). They always have a salad bar too, as well as an awesome dessert bar. I've had some triple chocolate cheesecake that rocks my world. A nice change here in Baghdad is that we have air conditioned toilet trailers instead of porta potties. In Kuwait everybody would try to avoid going to the bathroom in the middle of the day. If you did, you came out SOAKED in sweat from head to toe, not to mention if you had to sit down you had to be treated for 3rd degree burns...So needless to say it has been really nice having the freedom of going to the bathroom whenever you want without burning inside a porta pottie. Also, the showers have air conditioning here, which is AWESOME. In Kuwait, you could never get dry because as soon as your towel left your skin, you were sweating. My towel would dry out on the walk back...the irony. The building where we're bunked at is one of the Ba'ath party's old summer houses where they would come on vacation and stuff. We are right next to Saddam's Perfume Palace, named for the perfume of the concubines he kept there. There are guard towers all over, built by his regime, as well as walls and prisons. It is wierd, there is a dark history here, and it is strange sleeping in the same place as the leaders of Saddam's regime. I think I will be glad to leave. You can still see damage to some of the buildings from where we bombed them. When we were riding in on bus from airport I saw several old military bunkers that had been destroyed by bombs. It is pretty here though, it's sad to see the damage all the wars have caused. The lake here could be a tourist attraction if things had been different. Apparently Saddam and his sons had a pleasure boat they would cruise around on here. Someone pointed out one of Saddam's son's houses on the lakeshore. Anyways, you can probably see why it's wierd. Also, it feels like a ghost town here. There are tons of abandoned buildings and there is hardly any activity. At night when you look across the lake there are tons of houses but only a couple of lights. I don't this place will ever be like it was. Which is probably a good thing, because even though it is pretty, some pretty horrible things happened here. So, I'm sure most of you have heard about what has happened with my class, but here is the story after all the dust has settled. I arrived only to find out that some red tape hadn't been taken care of (which would have been extremely easy to do when we were in FT Lewis if someone had used a little bit of foresight) and that I could not take the class by the start date. Myself and one other soldier, Joe Adams, were in the same boat. Everybody else was fine because they had been taken care of, but myself and Joe were added to the roster later and no one thought to take care of the paperwork when we were added. So, to make a long story short, they are currently going through and processing our paperwork and we will start our 10 day class on the 6th. We will then fly out (hopefully) on the 16th to our seperate bases and join up with our teams. Joe and I have been trying to find things to do with our time (since we literally have nothing to do until our class starts). We found a theatre that plays movies from 1600 on, but before 1600 you can just go in and ask for a movie and watch it. So we were having trouble finding a movie we wanted to watch, and I asked Joe if he had ever seen The Blind Side. Since it is kind of a touchy feely movie, I was going out on a limb suggesting two soldiers sit down and watch it together. He had never heard of it, I told him what it was about and he agreed. During some of the more emotionally intense parts, I could tell he was having a hard time not crying. At the end he was like, "man, that was a tear jerker! Not because it was sad, but it was just good." He really enjoyed it, and it made me feel a little better about the Army. Most guys try to suppress emotion. It made me feel better that they are still capable of feeling it. I went to church yesterday and it was really good. The chapel is located in the lake, and there is a little walkway out to it. The walls are mostly glass so it almost feels like you're on a bout (minus the rocking). There were only about 5 of us there, which surprised me, I expected more. But the guys there were really good guys. I think only the stronger members were going. It reminded me a lot of Russia. Besides the fact that it was hot and there were palm trees and a tropical lake around me It was good to be surrounded by good people. They seemed excited to meet me and were sad to hear I was moving on and not staying. They asked a lot of questions and had me participate in blessing and passing the sacrament. It was a nice break. Hope everything is going well, and thanks to everyone for sending emails, they are the highlight of my day and I love hearing from you. Love, Reg Hey Everyone! I just got back from church and it was really good. It's fast Sunday, so instead of a speaker we had the opportunity to share our testimony's of Jesus Christ. There were 9 people there, from the Army, Air Force and Navy. Almost everybody got up and shared. The spirit was very strong and all of us felt very close to our Savior. It was a humbling experience. There was so much faith in God, that He would watch over us and our families. It was certainly a breath of fresh air and as we walked back to the barracks everybody was in a good mood, laughing and joking around. Speaking of religion, there is a mosque right next to us. I attached a picture of it, it is an interesting building. I haven't had any experiences with any locals yet, I am on a fairly remote area of the base with only Americans. In fact, I don't think that mosque is even in operation, and hasn't been for some time. One thing we do hear every day is the call to prayer. I looked online and found a good one, you can go to this link and listen to it: http://www.toursaudiarabia.com/audio/adhan.wav The translation is: God is most great. God is most great. God is most great. God is most great. I testify that there is no God except God. I testify that there is no God except God. I testify that Muhammad is the messenger of God. I testify that Muhammad is the messenger of God. Come to prayer! Come to prayer! Come to success! Come to success! God is most great. God is most great. There is none worthy of worship except God. Another building nearby is the prison that Saddam Hussein stayed before he was hung. I just found out today. I walk by it four times a day to and from lunch and dinner. He was literally taken straight from one of the cells there to where his sentence was carried out, from what I am told. It is really odd to be here where all of these things happened. I'm not sure how to describe it, but I feel out of place. It is sort of surreal. So...something else kind of creepy. We had a Camel Spider pay us a visit. It wasn't a huge one, but it was easily bigger around than a softball. It was chasing these little desert lizards (which looked exactly like geckos). It didn't catch one, but both the lizards and the spider are REALLY fast. They were on the wall on the front of my building. After a little while it got on the floor and crawled right under the door inside the building...It came right out, thankfully. That night for some reason it wasn't as easy to fall asleep. A few nights later I wake up with Joe screaming and running around the room. Something had been crawling on him. He wouldn't go near his cot so I got a flashlight and looked around. And then I saw it...the biggest cockroach I have ever seen in my life. After rather brusquely escorting our night time visitor to cockroach heaven we were wide awake, not because we were nervous to go to bed...soldiers aren't scared of things like massive bugs crawling all over them...so we watched a couple episodes of the Office...because we felt like it...ya... Lately I have been using ear plugs when I sleep. You'd think I'd be used to snoring growing up with dad, but there are people here who put dad to shame when it comes to sheer volume. I can't believe they survive the night. It's like listening to someone slowly choke to death, but they somehow, to my dismay, never die. Ear plugs aren't a perfect solution however because I often wake up with some discomfort, perhaps I need to find some smaller ones. I went to sleep one night after putting a pair of ear plugs in. They were a bright, fluorescent orange you could spot a mile away. When I woke up, they were nowhere to be found...there has been absolutely no sign of them for the last week and the only conclusion I can come to is that I took them off in my sleep and ate them. Which is why they are made non-toxic, just like crayons. Most of you have probably heard a lot about how Combat Operations in Iraq have stopped, and that there are no more Combat Troops in country. Well, it's true. Sort of. Operation Iraqi Freedom is officially finished and I am now part of Operation New Dawn. The significance of the change is that we have completely given the reigns over to the Iraqi's and are only here to support them and help train them. We will be working with the Iraqi Army on any operations that they want us to be a part of and will be conducting training for them to make sure that they are as prepared as possible for when we leave in December of 2011. There is still a lot of activity going on, but most of the attacks have been shifted over to the Iraqi Army, Police, and citizens. The reasons for attacking Americans was to get us to leave, and we are, so now the insurgents want to change the government. I only hope that things will end up better here for the Iraqi people than before the U.S. came. It would be sad for so much blood to have been shed on both sides for nothing. Well, I think that's about it. I am starting my 10 day class tomorrow. Everybody I came with is leaving today (except for Joe, who will be going through the class with me). I really wish I was going to join my team, I miss those guys. But the deployment clock is ticking, so it doesn't really matter where I spend it. It is interesting to be here in Baghdad. Come to think of it, by the time I get back to Warhorse it will be almost October, so I only have 5 months till my R&R in March to welcome our second little buddy into the family. Then I'll have April and May and I will be done. Not too bad. Very doable. I hope this email finds everybody well; take care and I look forward to hearing from each of you. Love, Reg
В Афгане строили школы и больницы, ах какие мы хорошие, а что миллион афганце убили это так щепки летят - а плохие америкосы ничего путного не делают. Мнеи самому претит агрессивная внешняя политика США, приводящая к многочисленным жертвам и крови и страданию невинных людей. Но внешняя политика осуждается и в самих штатах многими людьми, да и Обама уже выводит войска из Ирака. Так что нет в мире только плохого и только хорошего. Мир не чёрно-белый и США - не воплощение всемирного зла, как пытаются тут некоторые представить. США - просто страна захватившая мировое лидерство, и поэтому их многие ненавидят. Лучше бы не тратили энергию не на ненависть, а обустраивали свою страну, хотя бы дороги построили бы как в США, и то было бы большим делом. Макать кого-то в дерьмо, как любят делать у нас в Рашке - у нас все мастера. Потрындим на кухне (форуме) и разойдёмся спать, вместо того чтобы поднимать свою страну. Дело не в Америке а в нас - потому что мы банально завидуем статусу сверхдержавы и мощной армии. Так в чём проблема - сделаем Рашку сверхдержавой и не надо будет обсирать Америку на форумах. Но ведь нет же, тут же найдутся крикуны что ничего не получится и мы так и будем сидеть в чане с гов....