A picture with my Platoon Sergeant and Squad Leaders. The senior leadership of the Platoon. I apologize to everyone. I have no pictures of my promotion ceremony. I will describe it though. We were called up rather abruptly (myself and a fellow Platoon leader in my Company). The Battalion Commander says some words about us accomplishing what took him 25 years to accomplish, i.e. command in combat, purple hearts, etc. Then he turns to me after pinning my new rank, "1LT Smith, your up, say some words." I just smiled and said "I think since I'm still a LT that it would be better if I just didn't say anything at all." That got a great round of applause and cheering (obviously a joke). But it was a good time. On another note, just another observation that is much more dismal, yet just as important. Motivation is so difficult to maintain in this environment. When you put all your efforts into the preservation of your men's health and well being, success is inherently tied to mens' lives. Regardless of where we are, the network of friends stays close and we are able to keep up with each other, even if we are not in direct contact. The untimely death of friends is so difficult to get over, especially in this place. Something goes wrong or it just happens. Another soldier killed. It literally drains the motivation and causes you to second guess yourself. Simple actions become impossible tasks. Reactions we all have experienced. I've been through it more than once unfortunately and most others have or will go through it in some point in time. Why do I go on about this? I'm not sure. I would imagine it haunts us all. Here it is something that we just accept. It just happens. Yes, to some degree its the futility that exists, but its more the reality of war.

This was only part of the feast they prepared for us. This is towards the end of the meal. You can clearly see that we have not even made a dent into the food. Afterwards, officers and honored guests sat in the lounging room. They proceeded to bring us chai after chai. It seriously just hurt. Then they brought us fresh fruit to eat. I was sickened by even the thought of eating anymore at this time. Its Kurdish tradition and really of this entire region to give to others something that you have great abundance of. Food is a clear example. So they feed you until you are hurting. The Colonel came up to me at one point when I was just staring at the food wondering if I took another bite I would die. He told me it is tradition to wait until the guest does not want anymore food and then make him eat some more. Sitting there in the lounging room afterwards was very relaxing though. We could only laugh. It was just great to relax.

All of us grouped outside of the Colonel's house. Yes, that is marble. It was a very nice house, I'll leave it at that.

We had a change to walk around the downtown market. It was packed and decent. An interesting time. I walked from tea place to tea place. I'm telling you, the tea is great (probably due to the large amount of sugar)

So, they took us up into the mountains. We stopped on top of one moutain. Good view. They told us about a village over the mountain behind me that was subject to gas attacks by Saddam. They went into how they fled into the valley below me and hid in the caves, while Saddam's army searched the area to trying to find them