This is the Perfume Palace on Victory Base Complex in Baghdad. The story I heard was that this was once where Saddam and his boys kept their extra-curricular female companions. Now, it houses contractors.

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.

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.

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

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 is a typical truck driven by private security. It's armored to some extent, and features a "gun bucket" in the back for a rear gunner's position.

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.

This is a rocket that landed on our base, detonated underground, and did no damage. I believe this is actually a rocket designed to be fired from an aircraft, but Hajji will use anything they can get to shoot.

Here's my section training in house clearing.

Here's a couple of the Iraqi Army soldiers we had living on our base. Not exactly Western standards, but they tried.

That's me flying in a UH60 between bases.

House clearing training.

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.

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

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.

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

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