The End is in Sight

The end is in sight. I finally was able to go on my mid tour leave in early November to celebrate my 30th birthday with friends n family. I enjoyed spending time with my family and relaxing at home. I did not get out much, so if I did not see you we can catch up in March/April. I did finally (after about 8 years of having a motorcycle endorsement on my license) buy a motorcycle. The nice weather in November allowed my so get my fix of bike riding to last me until spring. Leave went by very fast and I look forward to getting home again.

At the rate of my posts this could be my last post, but I have a little catching up to do. Things up until I left had not really changed that much. I was working in the temporary badging area at the entry control point and I was in a pretty comfortable routine. Work, eat, n workout....pretty simple. Now that I am back in Iraq, I have been switched to a new job at the ECP and is a consolidation of two peoples work in the permanent bading area. In addition to the new job, we have started the process of packing up some of our equipment to ship back home. It is amazing how much stuff a person can accumulate over 9 months. (please do not send anymore packages)(but thanks for everything people have sent) Also in addition to the two above mentioned things, I have decided to compete for the NCO of the Quarter competition for our company. If it goes well, there will be more competitions and less time. Basically my plate is spilling over, but it makes the time go by. I am looking at being stateside by the end of January and have some military schooling to take care of to finish up this adventure. I have been pleased with my experience so far, and I can say that I have had the opportunity to do alot of different things that are positive in nature. I can say that I was pesimestic about leaving the motorpool (thats what I came here for....to be a mechanic), but have had opportunities to grow that the motorpool could not have offered me.

The weather here pretty much sucks now. It seems like it rains everyday and I will try gather some interesting pictures of what rainfall does to Iraq. It makes a dirty place even dirtier. Water does not absorb into the ground and the concrete barriers have a hard time staying in one place when the ground gets soft n muddy.

I have enjoyed the opportunity to work on my physical conditioning. I believe I am in the best shape of my life and hope I can maintain my body once I get back home. I have lost about 40 lbs and had to buy new clothes when I was home on leave. I cant imagine what my work suits will look like when I try them on when I am ready to go back to work. I guess that will be another shopping trip.

Hopefully some more posts to come,

Sam

I love my day off

Hello All,

It has been a few weeks since my last post, but has not seemed like that many. Days seem to fly by....I am in constant motion up until I run out gas with me trying to write on last email or look at one more website.

Things are well. I am writing this on 9/11, a day all of us will remember. The operating environment here shows hope for change. I work with local nationals (Iraqis) everyday and have developed a couple of new friendships. The 34th ID is here not in a search and destroy mission, but a training and relationship building mission. It will be easier to come back home with a clear head knowing that we made a positive (maybe neutral, but surely not negative) impact on the area we were placed in.

Today, I will go thru a ceremony placing me in the Non Commisioned Officer Corp. More of a formality, but there will be pleanty of senior NCO leaders there and one of them mentioned that this would be kinda like a college graduation ceremony. We had a rehearsal this morning and have a live event this evening.

I had the Division Sargeant Major come out to our ECP yesterday to tour the area and see how the process works. With about an hours notice, we had our place shining and were prepared for anything. Timing was perfect. We were fully staffed and we had a bunch of people waiting to go through the ID process. With a few basic questions and some small chat, he thanked us for our time and left with a handshake (in the hand shake was a CSM coin). Coins are kinda a wierd thing for the military and I have maybe a dozen from different people, but is kinda of nice to collect and remember stories. It is also nice to get some from people high on the foodchain.

Overall, things are going very well. My job is going well and I have a sense of job satisfaction & pride in the area I oversea. I have things to look forward to: I have my leave in November and I have been registered for a NCO developmet class in WA at the end of this deployment (it was nice to see a date on paper of when I would start something on the states). I continually get to see new pictures of my beautiful children (and wife) on facebook. Those pics are good n bad: it gives me a sense that time is passing. I have not experienced any changing of the seasons here. It has rained twice since early May and it only changes from hot to really hot to really hot n humid. The bad part about it is that I see my children growing up so fast and hate not to be there with them. Alex is starting middle school and graduated from RAAA football program to Rosemount Middle School program. He is super excited and thru text messages it sounds like he is enjoying the change to middle school alot. Annika is starting 1st grade and will be away from mom and little sister for a full school day now. I think she is having the hardest time with me being gone and I hope me being back in Nov for a couple weeks will help. Mia is a crazy little monkey and is enjoying her one on one time with mommy when the two older ones are at school.


Well thats all for now...not alot of new pictures as we are not allowed to take any pictures at our work site. But I will try to get some more up.

Later,

Sam

Goodbye Motorpool

Hello All,

It has been a long time since my last post. The is mostly in part because I had been doing the absolutely the same thing every day....which was trying to stay busy in the motorpool, where we had almost too many bodies compared to work coming in.

I guess a couple small things have happened....
-i have been promoted to the rank of Sargaent
-we have been mortared/rocketed several times, in which on one event we lost 3 of our fellow soldiers
-i have been assigned to work at the ECP (entry control point) where all LNs (local nationals) enter onto COB Basra.

The change from wrenching on the overnight shift (mainly keeping myself motivated) to working at the ECP has been a pretty drastic, but good change. My new job, which i do not know what kind of title it carries yet, is more of customer service/security job. I oversee a team of about 4 soldiers and make sure the badge issueing and control process works well. Alot of basic fundamentals from the bank work well in here. It is pretty neat to interact with the local Iraqis entering this base for work on a daily basis. We have several 'terps (interperters) working with us.....often during slow times we discuss different aspects of each others cultures. I am trying to learn some arabic first hand and it is coming in little bits. I have picked up some greetings, shut the door, open eye, right hand, and left hand. Those are all kind a wierd phrases u might think, but work well in the biometric screening of the indivuals that are entering.

The days for this job are quite long....we are working approx 13 hour shifts and start when the sun is coming up and end when the sun is coming down. Although, I swear the shifts go faster than when i was at the motorpool working shorter hours. Most nights after work I try to do 2 things - go to the gym and check my email. I often still make it to the gym, but I have been known to wake up with the computer on my lap after I had passed out from an email session. My days usually start with the alarm clock going off at about 4:30 and so I about an hour of time to talk to my roomate that is still working nights at the motorpool.

The trailer/office that I work in is nothing fancy and i will try to get some pics posted of my new work area. i have several work orders in place to get some of the minor cosmetic repairs completed. i will try to get something up sooner than later. i am assuming that i will have more to talk about working in this area than the last area i was in.

later-sam

Happy 4th of July

Hello Everyone!

Alot of time has passed since my last blog update, but things remain fairly consistant where I am at. I am still working in the motorpool and now have switched to the night shift to avoid the Iraq heat. I was pretty hesitant to starting nights, but love it now. Things are still being developed for us soldiers here in Basra, but seems like if we dont have it yet, we really wont need it. Everyday seems to roll together and I just try to keep busy. It seems to work out as I hit the gym often and makes sleeping the time off easy. I will have to say that it is nice having a good group of friends around here to make this whole process easier. Most of us worked together back home and it makes days better when you seem to have an off day.

I have my CHU (containerized housing unit) 99% the way I want it. We have even made a patio for the front of it to make hanging out that much nicer. I recently bought a small fridge to make beverages cold on demand. I have had the opportunity to get internet wired to my room and have a phone to make outgoing calls for free whenever I want to (as long as the internet is working). I am doing well and am in the best shape that I can remember. I have my 2 mile run time down to about 14:30 and set a personal best of 301 straight sit ups. I am motivated by boredom and the opportunity to have my dad send out a new christmas card with my new and improved body. (a couple years ago he sent out a picture of me at the lake about 35 lbs heavier) ohhhh well. I just got done talking to my family at the lake.....it was nice to hear everyone and it will probably be one of the hardest holidays to get through. Probably the one week out of the year when I got to do nothing, drink beer, fish, tube down the river, and enjoy the company of family n friends.

If there is anything else that you would like to hear, let me know. I look forward to being back home sooner or later. It is nice to see that it is already July and this is flying by. I have Fridays off, so I hope to have atleast a weekly update.

Until next time,

Sam

Bashra Life

Hello Everyone,

Sorry it has been awhile since my last post....I am still waiting for internet to my room. Things are going well here. We have seemed to get into some type of routine for our days. I am evening getting back into to the gym. The heat here is intense and many people say it will only get worse. I think it was about 115 degrees yesterday.....and during that time I was working outdoors in the shop and suntanning on my lunch break. I think being in shape helps a person alot with handling the heat. I am actually used to having sweat dripping off my body most parts of the day...although we have had some soldiers with some heat injuries, none have been severe. Just need to push lots of fluids all day. We still have 3 people to our 2 person CHU (containerized housing unit). I am excited to get some internet in my room to post some pics off of my camera.

I am doing well and do not need too much. We have pretty much everything here and the cannot have any liquor or alcohol. Grandma Jo - thank you for the mop. I will be sure to post some pics of our CHU when I get internet up.....I even took some today while I was tanning/working on my weapon.

Later,

Sam

100th day??

Hello All,

I am checking in from Talil, Iraq aka Camp Adder. I think according to Jess I am approaching the 100th day mark for my deployment. We have spent most of the time up until now working to be ready for our "special purpose". We are still unpacking boxes and cleaning/rearranging our shop to our liking.

Living conditions in Camp Bashra are improving. It had been under British control up until now. I am not sure what they soldiers on this base were used to, but there is not much as far as extra activities to keep urself busy. It is by far the most basic base I have been to on this journey. They are in process of expanding the PX here. Right now they have problems keeping many items in stock for soldiers to buy. At Bashra, I couldn't buy a broom for my room or even an air freshener. You can imagine how we get to start smelling after a long days work outside. But they have told us that they will be building one of the biggest PX's in Iraq by the end of July/August.

I should have an internet connection to my room within a week....I should have much more time to keep updated on the internet. I also have a TV coming from Jess (thank you to Best Buy for paying for shipping)....things should be on the up n up with in a week or two.

I miss everyone and cant wait to enjoy a summer at home....I will miss spending Memorial Day with family up at the lake.

Thats all for now,

Sam

Updated Address

Here is a poster i found in one of the shower/latrine trailers. I did not have the temptation to wash my feet in the sink because I used my hands to wipe. lol.


Anyway the moral to my new post is that my mailing address has been changed slightly for increased effientcy in receiving mail.

The new address is:
Holl, Samuel
HSC, 34th ID, MAINT 1, UNIT 117
APO AE 09374

Feel free to mail away.....I will be at that address soon.