At 1500, Arabic Standard Time, The Iraqi Intervention Force’s 2nd Brigade, 9th Battalion arrives in Camp Manhattan. Ten Advisory Support Team members will be eagerly awaiting, literally chomping at the bit to get some hard core training under way.
But what can four days accomplish?
It had better be volumes, because 19 December is the day we [...]
Camp Striker, Bahgdad. Somewhere beyond the perimeter defenses, surrounded by the low hum of generators and fog swirling round my feet, someone is trying to kill me.
The first mortar round hit while I was watching Spy Game, starring Robert Redford and Brad Pitt, approximately two-thirds of the way through it. The Lebanese militia was prepping [...]
The smell of exhaust hangs in the well deck like a black curtain. The vehicles have been idling now for over an hour and the lower V reeks of diesel. I’m anxious to splash and hit the Kuwaiti pier. Hell, we all are.
I glance from my vantage point in the troop commander’s hatch of my [...]
Fear is a powerful motivator. It has made me run screaming from my basement in the middle of the day, with claws surely grasping mere inches from my shirt collar. It has pulled my bicycle tire at over 50mph down the rocky bluffs of Okinawa, Japan even though my tires were losing their sticky grasp [...]
Published: November 16th, 2004John Klimas. Fellow Marine Security Guard. Connecticut resident. Pimp daddy.
Klimas and I did time together in MSG class 1-02, 1 October 2001 to 15 November 2001. We road-tripped to his hometown of Bristol, Connecticut for Thanksgiving of 2001 and remained scoreless despite his relative luck with the ladies. I made a halfhearted stab at his [...]
My arrival in Quantico, VA has produced interesting results. In the 24 hours I’ve been here, I’ve learned the following things:
Training is approximately three weeks long. We will finish 2 Dec and be in Iraq within the week following.
The “training”, as it were, consists of an over 300 page Iraq transitional handbook, an Iraqi culture [...]
There is no more. There is no “continued”. These few words which you’re reading are all that exists. I’m close enough to leaving I can taste it. I can taste the sand. I can taste the air. I can taste the adrenaline.
Today I leave with but a few words dredged from a drunken mind of [...]
The recent completion of my Lewis and Clark trip has produced mounds of work I need to accomplish in order to get all the journal entries, photos, and videos on the web in some semblance of order.
In the meantime, I present you with something to chew on while you wait.
This article was adapted by William [...]
On 31 August at 1308 Central Time, I fly out of Bismarck, North Dakota and on my way into my own personal cycling history: riding the Lewis and Clark trail.
This tour has been ten months in the making and delayed by two, but I’m doing it at last. I’ve made dozens of gear list modifications [...]
Today is my anniversary.
No, it’s not an anniversary of a relationship or buying a home or even survival, it’s an anniversary of an entirely different sort. Possibly, a new beginning. Maybe something as simple as one of choice. It was a decision that radically changed my life. Seven years ago today, I stepped on the [...]
