Verbal wrote:Sounds about right; I heard mortars were the biggest threat to US ground units in that area.
getting mortared is no fun. I saw six people die from one hit. after a while you get so used to them that they seem more inconvenient than scary because each attack takes away from your precious sleep time.
it is not just the wake up from a deep sleep and go hide that is annoying. you have to put on your entire battle rattle regalia run to the bunker that is like 1/2 a mile away then wait about 1 hour for the attack to stop, then search the perimeters for damage and casualties for the next 3 hours until they give the all clear before you can go back to sleep.
Verbal wrote:I heard food's gotten better, too.
the food it self was never bad, it is definitely better than NAVY food because the ARMY is not self reliant. they rely on caterers from KBR to make their meals unlike the NAVY that it is self reliant because out to sea nobody can cater your food.
Verbal wrote:Did y'all have chill-out bunkers like Charlie Sheen had in "Platoon"?

similar, but not the same. it was not under ground. it was above ground and it was a shelter made of cement. they are very small and cramped and they didn't have enough so if you took your sweet time to get there you were SOL.
we had 4 that were assigned to my unit that held about 6 people in full battle rattle and there were about 100 of us. most people just hung out outside the bunker smoking cigarettes and bsing with the females trying to get some.
Verbal wrote:Whoa.
How did you know the Army was paying $34 for a meal that's worth no more than $5?

A scam is right.
during my time there we had a controversial situation that affected our meals and while trying to find a solution the dollar value of the meals became common knowledge that was acknowledged by the the Commanding Officer.
during the surge of US personnel in Iraq somebody decided to bring in more civilians to our base to do non combat jobs that military personnel were doing. one of the problems was that all their bloated salaries were coming out of the bases allotted budget. so to compensate our lunch meals got "suspended" to save money on food and gas for the trucks to deliver our meals.
the problem was that while we were at work we had no access to any kind of food for 14 hours so we could not even spend our own money on food. so while some 300 pound guy was earning over 100k a year to pass balls a the gym (not to mention another 100k that was going to KBR for hiring the fat guy). there were a a bunch of military people angry that they could not eat. eventually a solution was found at the tax payers expense.
Verbal wrote:Halliburton, eh?
I have as much faith in them as I do in FEMA.

the thing about that corporation is that they are reliable as far as doing the work, but they are way overpriced. the non-bid contracts that they got from the government gave them a well deserved bad rep. I could tell you first hand horror stories about how evil their over charging is.
Verbal wrote:Do you prefer active duty on water (navy) or on ground (infantry)?
You said you were a veteran, what's your field of specialty?
I will start by saying that sea duty is not for everybody. it takes a special kind of person to be able to live at sea. with that said if you are one of those people then you would probably prefer sea duty to infantry.
I have also talked to soldiers that claim they would not last a week in a ship after I told them what life in a ship is like. also there are some sailors that never get used to sea life and end up leaving the NAVY because of it.
I used to think that it would be easier to do the infantry thing because you are on solid ground at all times, you get to walk to places, meet new people, sleep on a bed in your room, it is easier to fraternize with the opposite sex, and eat what you want.
after I experienced it I came to the conclusion that I prefer life at sea. I found that the advantages of infantry life are not worth it.
by nature I am not the outdoor type so staying inside the ship for extended periods of time do not bother me at all, in fact I prefer it. I work in electronics so I am usually in air conditioned spaces and I prefer that over the desert heat. I have gone over a couple of months without seeing the sun and not even realizing it.
the time that you spend away from home in infantry is tripled than sea duty.
although you do six month deployments at sea you are always going somewhere. usually you are not at sea more than a couple of weeks before you stop in a foreign land, but sometimes the mission requires you to stay at sea for over a hundred days.