This is a small section from a journal kept by me during my time at Camp Fallujah, Iraq with Alpha Company, 3RD Reconnaissance Battalion based in Okinawa. These are my opinions and tough love if you don’t like them. The marines in this company were totally professional and I am grateful for sharing those times with them.
This is a rough cut of my diary and no attempt has been made to change some of the more obvious repetitions and take 2s if you will. Some entries are similar but temperatures are always indicative of how some things seem worse than others. The fact is the temps could be at 115 by 8am in August, the ground so hot, your feet felt like they were burning. And it would stay hot until ten at night. Ghastly shit. The Iraqis don’t like it either. They adapt to it. There is a lot more I will post later.
I have no idea why I waited for so long to post this. Probably because I didn’t know how. My experiences were very similar to Sebastian Junger who gets better press and is a good storyteller. And he gets published. I wanted to understand war and I did. I understood fear and resentments of the enemy as well.
The video I shot there was made into a three -hour series called Alpha Company: Iraq Diary. I believe this journal was better written than my voice-overs but print is better for expression for a guy like me. I love pictures but I was taught to write the old fashioned way. Express yourself.
Excuse the spelling and typos and sometimes the repetitions. I’m working on turning this into an article or book.