A Letter From Scott

This is a letter Scott wrote for a family reunion my parents went to in November. Thought I would share with everyone.


well hello my deariest family, im sitting here in afganistan writing you all a letter that my mom would liketo share with you. i hope you all enjoy and i hope ive kept it short enough thati didnt bore any of you.

but before i begin my stories down memory lane to thecurrent events. i want to make a clarification. the last time i was in Utah withmom and dad. i remember barbara asked me why i was joining the service. iremember i gave a very uneducated typical highschooler answer "seems likethe cool thing to do" i just want to clarify now that the reasons i joinedare much bigger then that. i did it then because i wanted to be part ofsomething much bigger then i could possibly imagine at the time. i did it causemy dad and grandfather did it. i did it cause i wanted to do my duty to mycountry and to myself. Now that im here im doing it for the men i serve with andfight along side with. men that have become my brothers and best friends. also,cause its just the cool thing to do.

army starts in basic. there isnt a whole lot i can say about basic. other thenit sucked and the first night i was there i put my face in the pillow and reallystarted to question what i got myself into. physically and mentally it didntbreak me or bother me. but emotionally for the longest time i was wrecked. id goto church every sunday and id find a seat in the back and put my face in it andcry. i dared not cry around the guys i was going through with. but at church itwas cry fiesta. it all got better though when i got a letter from my bestfriend. he was just a week behind me and he told me he was going to be coming tochurch. when i saw him the sunday i jumped out of my chair and went up to himand gave him a big hug. after that i was golden. nothing was gettin to meanymore, cause now every sunday i had someone from home to talk to. like i saidthough. there isnt alot to talk about when it comes to basic. just funny storiesthat would take to long to type out.

after basic i got to go home for two weeks and do some hometown recruiting.that sucked. nobody wanted to talk to me, and then the only people that did wantto talk to me, asked me questions only recruiters could answer. id have to tellthem im a fresh out of basic private and i dont know anything about the armyyet. made me feel really stupid, but i understood real quick why they throw newprivates out there like that. peoples interest get sparked and if they wantanswers they got to go talk to a recruiter. nothing much more to say about that.

after HRAP i finally reported to my unit. i was only there for a month beforewe all shipped out to Iraq. leaving that night was hard. mom and dad dropped meoff at base, and we said our hard goodbyes. the only good thing about that nightis that i got to spend the last few hours with them sitting in a hotel roomcounting down the hours. the time came and i didnt even bother having them getout of the car. i just reached in through the window gave em both a hug toldthem i loved them and would see them soon. turned and walked away as fast as icould before starting to think to much.

when we got into kuwaitt, well there isnt nothing much to talk about there.its nothing but a hot desolete waste land inhabitated my BMWs. thats it. myplatoon was the first to go down range(thats iraq). we left a day after theiraqi elections. we got to our FOB. it actually wasnt to bad. running water,good food, internet in our own rooms, laundry points. this may sound a littlecrazy, but iraq was fun. we did over 400 combat patrols so countless hours ofcombat time outside the wire. saw alot of crazy nasty things and even did somedaring things that i havent even told the guys in my family about. by the end ofthe tour i personally had hit 5 IEDs. the platoon as a whole hit 18. we had twonames throughout our company and later caught on to the rest of the battilon. wewere bomb sqaud cause we hit the most in our entire battilon. and we were themorticians cause we saw so many dead bodies in our sector. shittes and sunnisjust took turns killin eachother at night and leaving the bodies out for us. yeah, iraq was fun ihate to say it, but i wont lie either. getting on that bird home though was anamazing feeling and non stop smiles across the atlantic.

after gettin home, things were pretty weird. i couldnt be in a car and berelaxed. i watched the side of the roads and the other drivers. i didnt evenlike to be the passenger in a vehicle. i had to drive or i wasnt going. i eventried to go to a christmas parade with some friends and all the sirens and loudnoises were really starting to get to me. i was pretty bummed that maybe thedeployment had messed with me. after a few weeks though everything was back tonormal. i met a girl whos now my wife. we're gettin ready to go on two yearsof marriage. i thought everything was good until we had our firt july 4. againall the booms and whistles got to me. but after it was all done i was fineagain. i had a good long year back at home. but the entire time preparing for mynext one.

thats where i am today. in afganistan. leaving this time was twice as hard.had to say goodbye to my wife which wasnt an easy thing to do. wanted to go AWOLso bad. she sat with me all day while we preped and did last minute "heyyou" projects. thankfully her dad and one of her sisters was with her forwhen i left. we had a big platoon prayer for all the soldiers and their lovedones. after we said amen, i watched her get in the car tears streaming down herface and off we went. we started our deployment in kandahar. we were there for amonth did a big long mission. were we did absoulutely nothing. just drove aroundsouthern afgan for 21 days. when we got back we cleaned our gear fixed ourtrucks then told we were going to visit the rest of the brigade in the east.thats where i am now. sittin 5 miles away from the pakistani border doingnothing. couple of TICs(troops in contact) here and there, but for the most partnothing. the only cool thing to happen is general petraus came out to see us. even that was a breif momentthough. but seriously all in all thats the extent of this deployment. NOTHING!!! well it has been quit a pleasure and joy to write this. i hope you all enjoyedit and i hope i didnt bore you. mom and dad love talkin about it and im surethat if you got any questions they would love to answer them for you. be lookingfor my books in the years to come. one is From Basic to Bagdad. the other is ASoldier and his Boredom. (maybe)love scott