Two years ago on my first deployment, I was assigned to Bagdad to serve as journalist and photographer during the Surge of 2007. It was one of the darkest years of my life. Ironic, that the first thought in my mind when I think about the desert was the unrelenting sun constantly beating the sweat from under what we called "samurai" armor, and a cool night to follow with stars in perfect clarity overpowering the night sky.

When I first arrived, the unit we replaced would train us at our jobs and let us know what we should expect for the next 12 months.

"If you're going to deploy, this is the place to do it," a soldier told me. "This place never gets attacked. We got one mortar in almost the entire year."

Oh God... were they wrong. It started slow at first. Something sporadic that would happen in the first few months, but then things picked after about 3 months.

Every day, almost every hour followed with an indescribable sound and scream of a whistling mortar and rocket and the near-yet-far sounds of impact. This was life for a year, and as far as any solider you asked, if you had any future plans, be prepared to let those go.

I worked nights most of my time there and sometimes there was a break, and sometimes there wasn't. While the night might have been quieter, that meant that I had to sleep through the day...

You started to develop little habits in observing the motions around you. If the birds flew together, nothing was wrong, but if birds suddenly flew in sporadic directions as though they were in panic, it's time to hit the ground.

One day, I was sleeping and my air conditioning had broken down for the third time that week. I had just come off a mission and I hadn't slept in days. When A/C broke down, that hooch turned into an oven and 120 degrees outside easily felt like more inside.

I called the repairmen to fix the A/C and this time instead of trying to find out what was wrong, they took 15 minutes just to replace it. It was still hot so I slept upside down placing my head where my feet would have been.

Three hours later, my roommate outside screams "Hudson! We've got incoming!!!!"

I didn't wake up...

As the mortars impacted the ground with sounds of awesome fury, the screams of "Incoming!" followed.

"Hudson! What the fuck?!? Get the fuck out of bed!"

I suddenly woke, and ran off the bed. I hadn't realized I slept upside down and ran face first into a wall knocking me out cold... again. My roommate splashes water on my face and I get up disoriented and not sure where the hell I was and what the fuck was going on.

"Dude! What the fuck is going on!" I yelled.

"Dude! It's over, go back to sleep."

So I went back to sleep.

6/25/2009 6:24:54 PM

Summary:

You went to sleep, then you went to sleep again.

6/25/2009 6:30:45 PM

lol

6/25/2009 6:47:40 PM

more like a bore story amirite

6/25/2009 6:59:21 PM

6/25/2009 7:06:12 PM

6/25/2009 7:08:16 PM

Then he stole some cigarettes and held up the ice cream man.

6/25/2009 7:09:08 PM

haha yeah i was about to say, where's the part where you stole from the ragheads

6/25/2009 7:18:18 PM