As many of you know, I served in the Army for 5 years. During this time I deployed to Afghanistan once and missed out on a deployment to Iraq due to a back injury (that later led to my discharge from the military). For me, this time of my life was a huge period of change. And while I consider my service to have played a huge role in this change, I feel the greatest catalyst for this change came during my deployment to Afghanistan from March 2005-March 2006.

This period of time with was filled with trials and tribulations, joy and camaraderie, sorrow and soul searching. I must admit that I am one of the lucky few who never ended up seeing direct combat despite being a gunner for well over 200 different missions.

These tales that I am going to share are more Jarhead than Blackhawk down; more about the mission and the companionship built  than anything. Seeing as there are a lot of stories to tell, I am going to spread the stories out a bit. I'm not going to give a definitive time line for releasing these stories. Just check back from time to time to see if I have posted a new one. That said, I believe that I should give you a bit of back story leading into the start of my deployment.

*Note* I would like to make it perfectly clear that these stories are my personal take on my experiences and in no way reflect upon the U.S. Army as a whole. So, do not take anything I say out of context and lay it as a generalization for the entire military. I am merely one of hundreds of thousands.

I was born in Lincoln, Nebraska in 1984. My father was a railroad engineer and my mother worked at a local bowling alley as a bartender. My life was fairly normal until the age of 10. It was around this time that my older brother started running with local gangs and developed a methamphetamine addiction. During this period of time, it was commonplace to receive beatings from my brother that would often lead to my parents calling the police on my brother. As a result of the abuse I often disconnected myself from things around me, leading to a decline in school work and eventually experimentation with drugs in high school.

After graduating with a 2.2 GPA in June 2003, I was forced to take a look at the direction my life was heading in. I could continue living in Lincoln (my parents were offering to pay for me to go to college), but I knew I would likely continue with my drug use and possibly drop out. Not seeing this as a valid option, I decided to enlist in the Army that September. It was because of everything that I had experienced with my brother, that I decided to choose military police as my job (although with a 99 percentile score on the ASVAB, I could have taken any job).

After completion of Basic Training and AIT (Advanced Individual Training), I was stationed in Baumholder, Germany. My first month with my unit, I earned the honor of being patrolman of the month for the Baumholder community. From there, we changed our mission from garrison law enforcement to training for combat operations.

After a year of training, the time for the deployment arrived. The date was March 29, 2005. I hadn't slept at all the night before. I decided to spend my time cleaning my barracks room one last time, check my gear, and talk to my girlfriend all night.

It is very difficult describe the feelings I had that night. The majority of my knowledge of how things were in the country were from my peers that had been in the country during Operation Anaconda. So for all I knew, I was going to be living out of my vehicle in a country with nearly 10 million unaccounted land mines from the Russian invasion in the 80's.

Despite my own fears of what was to come, I did everything I could to try to remain calm and be reassuring to my girlfriend. I never once talked with her about what would happen if I didn't make it back. In fact, on several instances I found myself singing "I'll Be Coming Home Next Year" by the Foo Fighters. We continued talking until 5AM rolled around and I had to report for formation prior to taking a bus to where my flight was leaving from.

The bus was completely packed but I managed to position myself in such a way to fall asleep. When I awoke we had arrived at the airport and had to go through security before waiting for our plane to come in. The entire time, I sat there with my computer, playing Celebrity Jeopardy SNL skits and music videos to try to help people relax. I had no idea how we were going to get into Afghanistan. I knew that the flight we were getting on initially was not a military flight, but beyond that the rest was a mystery.

Finally the time came for us to get onto the plane. It was cramped and not many people were sleeping due to nervousness of what was to come. The first flight lasted only a few hours before we landed in what appeared to be an airport in the middle of the desert. It wasn't until we left the plane and entered into a terminal that I realized that we had landed in Turkey and had to wait for a connection flight. Again, I had no idea where we would be flying to. I decided against using my computer during this waiting period just because I didn't know when I would be able to charge it again.

So there we waited. No one really said much. We realized that we were no longer in Germany and one more step closer to a combat zone. I looked around for a phone to use, but couldn't find one. The next two hours were a painfully slow wait. There was nothing to eat or drink, no place we could go to smoke, we just sat there waiting in uncomfortable chairs knowing that at anytime we could have our flight arrive and have to load up and go. This was by far the worst part of the trip.

Finally the plane was ready for us and we loaded up and after a short wait we were in the air again. With this flight, I was out cold shortly after lift off. When I awoke we had landed somewhere and it was dark. We got off of the plane on the tarmac and got directly onto buses and were taken to a base. Once there, we were given a briefing and found out that we were in Kyrgyzstan, and that the government had just been overthrown.

"Great" I thought "we are in a country that just overthrew its government and we aren't entirely sure how well the new one will work with us." Sounded like a great place to be right before flying into a combat zone. By this point though, we were all hungry and tired, so we made a quick run through the chow hall and then tried to take a nap in the MWR (Morale Welfare and Recreation) tent. Unfortunately they had their weekly game of Bingo going on.

You cannot believe how difficult it is to sleep when every time I-anything is called there is someone in the back that has to yell out in a high pitched voice "That's what she said." Needless to say I was getting pretty irritated by this point. It was nearly 4 AM local time. It had been nearly 48 hours since I had a full nights rest with only a couple hour naps in the middle. Eventually we got irritated to the point of yelling for them to shut up every time they yelled out.

Just as I was about to fall asleep, at 6 AM, we were informed that it was time to get ready to go and that the buses would be there shortly. So we all got up and grabbed our gear and got staged. When the bus arrived, we filed on and were taken back to the airfield. Once we arrived, we were shuttled straight onto the tarmac and led straight from the bus and onto a C-130. Once we had all packed into the plane and had our gear packed in between us to the point that we couldn't move our legs it was time to go.

As the plane took off it occured to me that the next time I touched ground, I would be in Afghanistan. One full year in a combat zone. As I contemplated this thought, I began to think of the song by Marilyn Manson and the Sneaker Pimps on the Spawn soundtrack.

I want to live, I want to love, but its a long hard road out of hell.

Let the games begin.