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

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.

House clearing training.

Here's my section training in house clearing.

This photo was making the email rounds while I was in Iraq. Reportedly, it was a wolf captured in or around Baghdad. I don't know that wolves are indigenous to Iraq, so it could have come from the zoo.

QWBC, the FOB I was on, was an old Iraqi air force base and there were some of these old, beat fighters still lying around.

While in Iraq, you get a one-week MWR trip to Qatar. On one of the trips we were allowed to take, this Qatari was selling camel rides. I didn't bother with it.

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.

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.

During training, we fired our weapons many times. Here I am getting in some practice firing three-round bursts for accuracy.

This a friend of mine, working for EODT security. He was actually deployed with me, but retired as a Sergeant Major after coming back and starting working for EODT back in Iraq. He's striking a tough-guy pose, but he's really the nicest guy you could meet

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

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.

I took this photo while flying over Baghdad. It is the Grand Mosque which Saddam was building when the invasion occurred. When finished, it was supposed to be the largest mosque in the world. I doubt it will ever be completed.

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.

Me with one of the local kids in a nearby village.

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.

A McDonald's sign I saw at Ali Al Salim base in Kuwait.