Some Random Facts

• 2-34 Armor Battalion is out of Fort Reilly, Kansas, home of the Big Red One, 1st Infantry Division.
• 3rd Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division is based out of Fort Benning, Georgia. Fort Benning is also where I attended basic training June - September of 2002, under 3ID.
• Despite popular belief, not all of Iraq is a desert. The Diyala Province, though disgustingly hot during the summer, has a good amount of vegetation. This is largely due to the countless number of rivers and canals that run through the area.
• The Diyala Province is mostly agricultural, growing lots of dates, melons, and other good stuff.
• Canals can prove to be quite an obstacle when driving down unlit dirt roads at night, with the headlights off and your Night Vision clouded by the dust of the truck in front of you.
• The Iraqi Army, despite being somewhat rag-tag, does exist and does execute a substantial number of combat ops each night throughout Iraq.
• The pending Iraqi consitution states that it will be illegal to enter someone's home without their permission. I wonder what we will be doing if it passes?
• We do have TV's with the news playing in our chow hall. The TV's play the Armed Forces Network (AFN) news, which is a collection of different station's news clips pulled together. Yes, the information I recieve is filtered.
• In Iraq there is such a thing as a sand flea, and it likes to infest your sheets and give you small bites all over your body. I thought it was baby mosquitoes that were too small to see. It took me weeks to realize I was wrong.
• The Iraqi city councils have weekly meetings and they drive me NUTS!

Gonna go hit the gym.

Ryan