This gentleman was herding sheep around our FOB. The area we were in was predominantly farm and sheep-herding country.

A collection of rocket launchers. Hajji will often set these up, put a rocket in it, set up some sort of timer device, and then leave the area for the rocket to fire at a later time.

Here I am at the infamous Abu Ghraib. While in Baghdad, I ran into a friend of mine and was able to join one of his unit's convoys to this prison. This is, of course, prior to this facility being turned over to the Iraqis.

This is me getting the upper hand on one of the guys in my unit. We were learning search techniques for a hand-cuffed suspect.

Here's what it looked like as we boarded the plane to fly to Iraq. I remember being both excited and nervous at the same time.

I was able to visit the Ah Shaw(sp) palace in Baghdad - one of Saddam's old haunts and now the home of MNC-I. These columns were huge.

That's me flying in a UH60 between bases.

This graffiti showed up on some walls in a local national parking lot not long before I left. I was told it is a memorial to locals who had worked for the USA and been killed.

Here's one of my soldiers manning the gunner's post. This was during one of our trips into Qayyarah.

Everyone going overseas, no matter your job, has to learn how to do room clearing. Here we are training a "four-man stack". The squad leader is taking up the rear.

This is a UH60 refueling. I don't recall what base this is on. They kick the passengers off while they're doing this, which is when I got this picture.

This Qatari was selling opportunities to hold his falcon for $5. I didn't take him up on it.

Me in the office. 'BDOC' stands for Base Defense Operations Center.

Believe it or not, it does rain in Iraq, as these poor soldiers found out when they tried to move this large forklift over some muddy ground.

This mosque, I was told, was Saddam's personal mosque near the Al Faw palace. Now, it's located on Victory Base Complex.

I would love to tell you what this mural says, but I never got it translated. I'm pretty sure it dates back to when the Iraqi Army and Air Force were still under Saddam. It was located in a building on our FOB.

We went through training on how to search a suspect and I got to play "suspect".

Me practicing shooting an AK47. As you can tell, it was a hot day. It was fun shooting the AK on full auto, but I still prefer the M4.

The FOB I was on was a former Iraqi Air Force base. As a result, we had a couple of these old Mig-21s laying around. The former commander of the base told me the more modern planes were buried - and then dug up for scrap by the locals.