Memorial Day

Alright lots of stuff happened today.

The day started out with my group of guys doing a presentation for our fallen soldiers. It was done before our first meeting of the day and went off pretty well. I have posted pictures of the display that we put together. We each placed an item on the table as the COL read the narrative. We took the display to the DFAC afterwards and it was amazing at how many people stopped to look and read about the display.

After our presentation the Polish put on their presentation to honor our Memorial Day. I thought that was quite nice. The Polish really are quite gracious hosts and are very accommodating and understanding. I am very fortunate to be stationed here at Camp Echo as part of the multinational division. The things I am exposed to on a daily basis is astounding. The challenge of working through the language barriers and accomplishing a military mission is quite rewarding.

After the Polish ceremony for our Memorial day I took a trip over to the flag pole and began to flay the flags my dad had sent me. I have been waiting for this day thinking that there is no other day that better represents what our flag stands for and the sacrifices that have been made. It is a significant day and that’s what I was looking for. I took each flag and raised it up all the way then down to half mast, tied it off then saluted and began to prepare the next flag. This took me about an hour but I enjoyed it and felt so proud every time I raised our flag. It may only be a symbol but the history behind the symbolism is what makes it so great. To fly those flags on Memorial Day brings a lot of that history to light. I think I could go on and on but It’s getting late and I still have more to write about.

After my flag flying, I began to work on the deck project and worked on it most of the afternoon. It is nearing completion and should only take a couple more hours. I don’t know if it will ever really be done. I think this is something like an adult tree house and I’m sure we will continue to make improvements as time goes on. Now a funny story occurred while we were working on our tree house… I mean deck. Now some days they make announcements that there will be controlled detonations which usually involve one or two big booms for some ordnance the EOD guys have collected. Well today we are standing on top of our trailers and here the first one go then another and another. Difference here is we can see the blast and there are several. We then see some dust kicked up between us and the helicopters which are about 600 meters away. We do a quick assessment and decide that isn’t right and decide to unass the project and hit the bunker. We continue to hear a series of thumps and explosions. We come to find out that the Polish were doing a mortar demonstration. Controlled det does not equal a mortar demonstration. You would think they would make that a little bit more clear. So we give ourselves the all clear and go back to work. Others start grilling and everyone breaks open the near beer.

In the end we had a little Memorial day celebration. We had steaks brought in from Baghdad and although they weren’t as good as the ones from home they are the best I have had in a couple months.