Me and some of the guys hanging out after live-fire training at Camp Roberts. We call this one "The Band Picture". September 04.
My pseudo-brother Chris and I doing live-fire in the middle of the Kuwaiti desert. Oct 04.
Mysterious wreckage in Kuwait. Oct 04.
Saddam portrait near Taji. Oct 04.
This is a 26 second movie that I took out of a Blackhawk over Baghdad. Oct 04.
I'm holding one of Saddams' gold-plated AKs. Oct 04.
Taking a ride in the bucket of a frontend loader. Late 04.
My boss Phil giving me a lift. Late 04.
Time to pay some local contractors. That's 1.2 million dollars in $100 bills.
Some of my Iraqi workers. They were very excited to be having their picture taken.
This is what they were doing. This is what passes for masonry in Iraq.
This is their welding machine.
Another one of my projects was building this chow hall for Iraqi SF types.
Sheep: it's what's for dinner.
I adopted this kitten, and named it Mushkela. That's Arabic for "problem".
It was living under a water tank outside the Iraqi chow hall. The cooks were feeding it.
Mushkela lived with me for a while in the storeroom where I was sleeping. One night she was nice enough to crawl down into the foot of my sleeping bag at 3am and pee all over my feet.
This is in Saddam's conference center. You walk through this giant marble & granite falcon to get to the dining room.
This palace complex was a lakeside vacation spot for Saddam, and he often invited unsuspecting former-friends here to have them whacked. There were tons of bodies in the lake.
Step through the falcon and into the chow hall.
Another one of my projects was the worlds largest indoor shoot-house. Iraqi SF types train in here to breach doors, clear rooms, and get bad guys.
My foreman for this project, Fares, was riding home with the foreman of the chow-hall project when they were run off the road and machinegunned to death.
It's made of steel, and lined with rubber bricks to catch the bullets in live-fire training.
You can see where they breached the wooden door in this one. There were some good pictures of this in the New York Times in June 2005.
Chris, Wyatt, and I in the indoor range that was the other half of the shoot-house project.
Some of the Iraqi engineers I lived and worked with. This is the night before I left.
Some Seabees having a Turkish bbq.
Special Forces humvee. Notice the minigun on top.
This is a cat that the SF guys had adopted.
My best buddy Ruben and I sittign on a SCUD missile. Ruben was there as a corpsman with the 2/24 Marines, and we were lucky to be able to hook up right before we left.
Chris and a MIG out in BFE.
Me and my buddy Stir-fry. I was about to get on the bus to go the airport and get the hell out of Iraq.
Just about to get on the C-130.
Chris and I in the C-130 heading for Kuwait.
Getting ready to leave Kuwait for home.
Chris and I settling in for the 18-hour flight to the states.