Home for a few days

Well I have been home for a few days before I go to Mississippi. Nicole and I have been doing many things together before I leave. It has been great to spend time together. I sure will miss her.

Here we are at the Darryl Worrely concert in Boise. Darryl came to Boise just to put on a concert for the troops leaving to Iraq. It was a good time and it was great to see my wife after having been gone for three weeks.

Nicole made me this quilt while I was gone. I will take it to Iraq with me. This way I do not have to sleep in my sleeping bag for a year. She is so good to me.

I head out on the 21st of September for Mississippi. We will be there until the middle of November. I will post more progress on that when I get there.

Annual Training 2010

Well training in at Orchard Training Area for 3 weeks was not all that great but it could have been worse. The temperature wasn’t too bad and the living conditions were better than I am used to but we averaged about 4-6 hours of sleep per night. We were able to get a lot accomplished. We did weapons training, improvised explosive device training, among many other soldier tasks.

SSG Dennis Shumway, SSG Warren Smith, and SGT Russ Madsen.

After this training we are heading to Camp Shelby Mississippi for additional training prior to our deployment to Iraq. We leave for MS the latter part of September.

SSG Warren Smith SSG Matt Vanderen

The Orchard Training area is nothing special. It is flat, dusty and hot. I have spent a combined 6 months out in the OTA over the past 12 years of my military service. I learn to hate it more each time I go there.

SFC Paul Marley and SSG Warren Smith (Yes I am growing a mustache)



SPC Owen Tapp

Here we are getting ready to go out on a sustainment gunnery run. This is where we maintain our skills on operating the truck and weapon systems on the truck. It is pretty fun. Mounted on top is a .50 Caliber machine gun. We had a news crew ride with us on this run. He interviewed me and it was on the 10 o’clock news here in Idaho.