Descriptive Essay: A Day In Iraq

It was a typical fall day in Iraq. The heat was horrible, and dry heat or not, it made you miserable. You could not sweat, it would just instantly evaporate. Your uniform under our body army would be white with dried sweat. Of course, there was the sand, I don't like sand. It's coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere. It gets in your food, your eyes, your clothes, and your mouth. It would work its way into your back and rubs you raw with the movement of the body armor. I often wondered how the Tuskens managed.

I was on the Personal Security Detail for a VIP, and we were going to be transporting him from a Prison in southern Iraq to Kuwait. This was our last mission in Iraq, I would spend the next 4 months in Kuwait before I …show more content…
When cars drove up to our convoy after we had been hit, they usually blew up. The convoy commander brought up his rifle and shot the driver in the head. We then continued our assessment of our damages and casualties. The smell of death was strong, burned flesh, fresh blood pooled up, the smoke from the explosions and subsequent fires. Trash on the roadside was burning, the vehicles were burning, and the smell of the electrical wires combined with the burning trash was horrible. It is not something you ever …show more content…
It was easier than always being in fear. What I had not planned on, or thought about, was losing someone else. Seeing it happen in front of me, to someone who was so happy to just be able to help. I did not sleep for the next 36 hours. I still wake in the middle of the night, the memories haunting me. This was 12 years ago. I have lived through many more situations like that, and buried many friends who did not make it. In Afghanistan, it made Iraq feel like child splay. I have plenty of other stories from Afghanistan, but this KIA reshaped how I viewed death on our missions. I tried to be more prepared to deal with the deaths of my soldiers on our missions, but it never got