Deployment Day 58

It hardly seems that Leroy has now been deployed for 58 days. We received a letter from him on Saturday. The letter is not dated, but was mailed on Feb. 15. I'll include some excerpts from his letter.

"As I went outside the wire last week, I thought Iraq is so much different than the US and I really counted my blessings on the way that I grew up. The first ting you see when you go outside the wire, after going through the 50 checkpoints that is, is this really long freeway, and it looks just like the US with Arabic signs on the freeway. My driver say chuckling, 'anybody wants to learn defensive driving needs to learn to drive over here.' The next thing I know this Mercedes Benz goes flying past us like 110 mph. Of course my driver gives him the appropriate California gesture and chases after him! I think I'm going to die but he pulls up right beside him and smiles and the two of them laugh back and forth. I starting laughing cause I think it's a joke. So I asked the driver if he know him and my driver says nope never seen him before in my life. I thought I am so going to die out here....King (his driver) says we're going out to the Flying Man (its a statue in Baghdad) to pick up some exercise bikes from this guy. So we head out and its like a wild goose chase. We are on the phone with him and he speaks only 4 word of English. King gets so frustrated that he hands the phone to me and says you deal with him I can't deal with him. So I get on the phone with this guy and I am like hello? He goes fadja atou and I'm like what? He repeats himself and all I say the only thing I have learned in Arabic and that is "haya akie" which is how are you. He says in broken English what I assume to mean red 5 minutes. King goes ok so it's a red truck in 5 minutes. He patted me on the back and said nice job I was about to scream on the phone. So we get to this little shop where there are these 50 little kids all hanging out and the people are selling stuff (straight out of Aladdin). The one thing I was told was to stay away from the shops. The one thing I wasn't told was to stay away from the kids. These 5 kids come up to me and they're 'American! American" It was too late they all surrounded me and started saying 'money, money' and I said 'I have no money I really don't unfortunately that is something they don't understand. However they do understand when I grab my M-16 and load it. They scattered pretty fast. King said good job next time just load it right away. ...So we finally find this guy and right away he looks suspicious he has no idea what he is carrying (the people we talk too on the phone hire out other people to go take the goods on the base. We have to escort them in. Anyway this guy has no idea what he's carrying and it's covered in burlap bags. So while King has him search the vehicle (that way he dies if something happens (the Iraqi) and I stand guard. It was fun, scary, exciting and cool all at the same time. We brought him back and everything was fine the whole process took 4 hours. Anyway that's the fun stuff that I get to do when I'm here. I do that probably once or twice a week...nothing dangerous but enough that I have to go full battle rattle and go outside the wire.

That's part of the letter from him. Gives an idea of part of his job.