by Vincent Tellez
It was mid February 2005, seven months into my second deployment. Things had changed from when we first arrived in Iraq. I remember the first day we got to camp, we were welcomed with mortar fire. Everyone was scrambling to take cover and grab their gear. Later those reactions would become the way we would recognize all the newbies. From that day on we would take incoming just about everyday. It would actually worry us more when we didn’t have anyone trying to hit us with rockets or mortars.
After months of this, we could not help from becoming a little complacent. As you can see in this picture, we took a brief break from watching the perimeter of the camp so we could snap a few pictures. Really at this point, we were all just waiting to go home. One day they tell us we only had a few weeks left, the next day it was a month. So you can imagine the frustration. I think this picture captures just that.