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

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.

House clearing training.

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

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

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.

In this photo, I'm in the lower right pulling perimeter security during a short halt in training.

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.

Iraqi Police having their vehicles checked prior to entry to the base. We trusted the Iraqi Army in our area better than the police.

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.

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.

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.

my new rifle

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

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 ammo can was on the top of one of our HMMWVS and took the force of a IED attack. It probably saved the life of the gunner.