Here I am during a trip to Qayyarah to check on a water-pumping station.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

House clearing training.

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

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

This is the Al Faw palace at Camp Victory in Baghdad. Saddam used to occupy it, but it's now home to MNC-I.

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

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

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.