Much is said about the dangers the troops face, but understanding the nature of the threats is difficult, the news reports will often give numbers, but without context those numbers are just another series of pixels on the bottom of the television. Things like IEDs, EFPs, and small arms fire are easy to conceptualize, but without seeing them firsthand any sense of danger or urgency is lost.

I know this because I haven’t seen any of these things firsthand. My father has, but for me, things are reduced to stories, pictures and video.…

Our meeting with Colonel Hort was later in the day, and turned out much differently than I had expected. These types of meetings are built on a solid routine: you go in, talk to the commander, we discuss our project, he discusses his OE (Operational Environment), a little back and forth occurs on specifics, and we are sent on our merry way. The meetings are unvaryingly informative, yet except for the details, interchangeable.

The meeting with Col Hort veered from that formula in two important ways.…

After waking up and having some breakfast I took sometime to explore War Eagle, to poke my head around and get a sense of where I was. We were due to meet Colonel Hort, the Brigade Commander, later in the day; I figured that now was as good a time as any to be nosy.

War Eagle was a much different FOB (Forward Operating Base) than others I had been to. Taji and Falcon had seemed more like small cities than military bases, War Eagle lacked the size that made the other FOBs overwhelmingly large at times.…

We left the dining hall, our stomachs feeling like we had just eaten a bowling ball and all ten pins in the lane. We had received word that the convoy that would take us to War Eagle was spooling up, and we quickened our pace; we had no desire to get marooned at Taji, and I was eager to get Apache. We picked up our gear, got into our IBAs (Body Armor), and headed out toward the trucks taking us to War Eagle.…

Shadows had lengthened by the time we left the building; the induction had taken longer than any of us had expected and my father and I had grown hungry. We had been to Taji, the airfield we were at, once before, but we were on an entirely different side and had completely lost our bearings. Sgt Mott was quick to come to our aid, and led us towards the nearest dining hall, which turned into a much longer walk than we had expected.…