Day 390

Aco. 4-9 will spend the next month getting ready to return home. We sprayed fresh bumper numbers on the Strykers so they can be shipped from Kuwait by boat. Some men will have to stay with the vehicles on a special detail and return home a few weeks later. It takes about a month to make the trip. I heard today that the 4-9 battalion advance party is already back in the states. That party is mostly the people that do all the paper work, lucky them.

Two new mortarmen have arrived and been incorporated into our platoon. One has college credit and has been given the rank of Private First Class. I came in a Specialist for completing my degree. It is odd to get new people so late in the deployment. The day after they arrived our platoon went back to Camp Warhorse and began packing our extra equipment into shipping containers, theirs included. That's the way the Army runs things. No point in having them sit back at Fort Lewis until we redeploy.

The Iraqi Army continues to improve their operations here in Baqubah. More and more they look like professional soldiers. It isn't just their conduct but also their numbers that will determine when U.S. forces can hand over control. I heard that as of now there are enough IA to cover 50 percent of Iraq. I spoke with one IA Lieutenant that is a professional soldier and served in the Iraqi Army under Saddam Hussein. He says there have been drastic improvements made to their forces since we stepped in, both training wise and in regards to equipment and organization. Iraqi soldiers now carry M16s and officers have M4s. They patrol in our humvees and old armored personnel carriers. I have seen them in MRAPs as well which is a big deal.

Iraqi Army outposts are not up to par however. They continue to patrol out of old buildings without necessary fortifications. Road checkpoints are guarded out of small bunkers, parked vehicles or from behind concrete barriers. I'm guessing that the construction and engineering section of their army is ailing or nonexistent. Whenever we pass their posts in our Strykers we wave to them. They seem content with their situation but obviously they do not have the training and work ethic that we do. I'm not sure their situation can even be improved greatly, the cultural standard for their army is just more relaxed.

My main concern is still to get out of here unharmed. Pretty soon a new unit from a different brigade will show up and start doing our patrols. I have managed to make it through this deployment without firing my personal weapon (M4). I haven't been in a vehicle when it hit an IED. I have not been in a firefight and there have been no training accidents in our platoon. With all that said, I will not consider myself safe until I am on the tarmac at Balad and board the plane for Germany. Not much more to go, just hanging in there bearing the heat.