Overseas Again

Here is an aerial shot of Southern Iraq, where I'm currently flying........................suckers, this is Ireland. We stopped there on our way to Kuwait. It was only supposed to be for a few hours, but our plane broke so we were there for two nights. Unfortunately, while the Government of Ireland supports the US in the war in Iraq, the people of Ireland are vehemetly against it, so we were not allowed to go anywhere but the hotel. It is illegal to be in a foreign military uniform in Ireland, and that's all we had, so yet another reason we could not leave the hotel.

Good old Shannon airport. The Shannon area was beautiful, but someone told me Ireland is one of the least affordable European destinations for tourists, so I may never make it back.

This was the hotel we stayed in for two nights. The Clare Inn, with the attached Poacher's Pub established in 1790. This Pub is about as old as the United States. Now I am not a drinking man, but it was really hard for the others to not drink real Irish Guinness. As soon as we left Fort Hood we fell under General Order #1, which includes no drinking alcohol. We had all of our meals here and they were very good. Predictably there were a lot of potato dishes, but that was fine with me.

I did feel bad for the people who were there on vacation. In US Dollars it was about $450 a night as it was also a golf resort. In one fell swoop 200 US soldiers decended upon them crowding the whole place, especially because we couldn't leave the hotel property, and the best internet signal was in the lobby. Most of the people tried to ignore us, but there were a few that got drunk and went off on a soldier about how wrong the war in Iraq was, etc.... There were also a few very nice people, including two young teenage girls who just wanted to get all of our autographs. I gave them my velcro American flag from my uniform as a souvenir.

My hotel room. This place had 4-6 beds per room, as is normal in Europe. I lucked out and only had one roomate, so we weren't that crowded. Again, this room would have been $450 a night for a tourist. It had a very small TV with 10 channels, and small bathroom.

The view from the hotel. This was a small putting green, with the Irish countryside in the background.

This was a castle that you could see from our hotel. It was burning me up that I couldn't go down there and check it out. I seriously debated breaking into one of the hotel's utility closets and throwing on some janitor's cover-alls, just to be able to go check stuff like this out. I made up my mind that if we were going to stay one more day, that is exactly what I was going to do.

On July 16th I arrived in Kuwait. We had to do some training here before we could go into Iraq. This is my Brigade's concrete baricade. These baricades are everywhere on US bases in Kuwait and Iraq. They ensure that no vehicles can approach buildings. It is tradition that each unit paints one. This one is not my Battalion's because we haven't done ours yet, but our Brigade has been here longer and as you can see we are comprised of 11 state's National Guard aviation units. My North Carolina unit is represented on the far right.

This is our shooting range in Kuwait, and some of the many "Scooby-Doo" buses that drive us around. We just showed up, shot some, and then left. All in a morning's work. Kuwait was nice and all, but I was here for 7 months in 2001-2002. Time to go see what Iraq is like.