Operation: New Year, New Mustache

On January 7, I made the "New Year, New Mustache" Proclamation, and am proud to say that near 90% of my platoon and several others throughout the battery have undertaken the great task of growing these fantastic lip-warmers. Being that we are in the Army, they outline very stringent regulations regarding the proper wear of a mustache. What it does is make the wearer of the mustache look absolutely ridiculous, which was truly my intention. When I came up with the NYNM Proclamation, I had no idea that the platoon would follow me down the road of ridiculous...it was merely an idea for me to help keep the morale up. It has worked incredibly well. The mustaches have created an unintentional clique, filled with mustache solidarity. There's the mustachioed, then there's everybody else. Those that see us walking into the dining facility immediately know that we mean business. The Iraqis we meet now take us more seriously. And as an unintended result, I am actually funnier. I will soon gather together those sporting these flashy new soup-strainers for a photo op because I'm thinking that many will soon give up on the things. But for now, I offer you the most recent photo:

Contrary to speculation, my new year resolution was NOT to stop updating this. The fact is, I have been spending more time reading, watching movies, and well, thinking. This blog has fallen an unfortunate victim to a lack of time management. For that, I sincerely apologize. Time management has always been a point I have always needed improvement on.

So, what have I been doing, you ask? Well, missions have been coming in slow, so our platoon has been doing what we (should) do best...artillery. Every six months in the world of artillery, regardless of the location, a gun section (the crew that is required to actually send a 155mm round down range) must certify. What that entails is taking a big metal box on tank tracks with a 20ft tube protruding into a self-propelled howitzer capable of sending 100 pounds of ordnance about 25km. Without going into too much detail (not for you, the reader's sake, but because I'm rather burned out on the whole idea of going into details at the moment), my section qualified. When I say qualified, I might be underselling that a bit. Out of a possible 1000 points, my section received 984. A "good" score is in the vicinity of around 800-850, so...take that as you will. All I see is 16 points that we didn't recieve. Next time, I suppose.

Anyhoo, we've gone back to our original mission over here, which is refreshing in that it allows us to focus on one task, rather than several, at once. Through all of this artillery training, we continued to pepper in missions outside the wire, which required everyone to refocus on the fact that we are still very much visitors in a country that can be very unfriendly at times. This is not an easy task, especially for the younger soldiers, and was evidenced by the mental exhaustion shown by many of us. Even though we do tend to keep pretty "regular" hours, it can take a huge toll on each of us mentally. I pride myself on my ability to "soldier on" through even the most trying of times, but after 84 days without a day off, even I was worn down and simply going through the motions. (I did finally get that day off though, and it was magnificent.) Now that we've had a sort of "reset," we're back on the road, moving forward with getting out of here.