Thanksgiving in Iraq - the Pictures

First of all, those of you that read the Omaha World Herald may have seen this already, but I've gotten some more free pub this week. This story was to run in Thursday's paper with a quote from yours truly. If you have a copy of it, and don't mind giving it up, I don't have one so if you could hook the wife up with it that would be pretty cool.

Thanksgiving was pretty much business as usual here. I actually had a pretty busy day and the day went by pretty quickly. Normally, we go to lunch in shifts so we can keep someone in the office at all times in case anything goes down. We decided to go ahead and get a little risky and went to lunch as a section. The only person we were missing was SSG Johnson who was enjoying the holiday back in Nebraska. It was nice to go as a group, it is the first time we've eaten together since, well, probably back at Shelby. Beans and Hammer have a post up too with some more pictures. Make you sure you check out Beans's post to see the tribute to SSG Matt Maupin, who has been MIA since 2003.

Flecker, me and the Burnometer getting ready to roll out.


The group on the .75mile (one way) trek to the chow hall that we make twice a day. In case you are curious I measured it on my Garmin Forerunner 201 one night while out running.

Some Thanksgiving decorations in front of the DFAC. We had a great plan, we went down early and didn't really have to wait in line

My plate. I saw no reason to mess around and had them load it up. They had prime rib and turkey with all of the fixings, and it was all really tasty. You can barely see it but there is a nice cut of prime rib under everything else. It wasn't as good as what you get at home, but much better than our usual meal.

They also had the chow hall all decorated up, and the workers were dressed in holiday attire as well. Some of the higher ranking officers even served us, so that was pretty neat. They put a lot of time and energy into the decorations and really did a nice job.

A decorated cake with some fun Army stuff on it.

So, after lunch, which was fantastic, we went back to work. SFC Kerchal cut us loose about an hour early and I went to run off some of the 2000 calories or so that I had for lunch. I wanted to continue the tradition that JAg and I have been doing the last few years, busting out a run in the morning as a pre-emptive strike against insane eating. This was also to make way for dinner as they had the same menu. I switched it up a little bit at dinner and had the pecan pie instead of the pumpkin, which was a nice move. It was much better.

After crushing another meal, we headed down to our entertainment for the night, which was a little USO show. Unfortunately, I was too far away to get any good pics, so this is the stage with the mosh pit in front. The rest of the ones I tried to zoom in on, but I got a little bit too crazy and they are all pretty blurry.

The opening act was the New England Patriot cheerleaders. They were of course a crowd favorite for the mainly male crowd. They did their thing, and then they had an Air Force band out there. They were actually pretty good. Next was John Popper. He really rocked. He played some great tunes that I really enjoyed as back in the college days I rocked quite a bit of Blues Traveler. He used the Air Force reserve band as his backup and they sounded great as well. This is where the night started to get a little bit strange.

Delilah, the radio gal that plays love song requests, came out next. I'm looking for the right term here, but she had a rather seductive outfit on. And her act was a little bit, umm, racy I would say. Which was a surprise. She did a little kit where she tried out for the cheerleader squad which was amusing. One part that was pretty cool was that she had recorded some phone conversations from 2 soldiers' husbands back in the states, and she brought them on stage and played them. Last but not least was 4 time Grammy nominee Jamie O'Neal. She sings country music, but it still sounded great and we enjoyed it. All in all, it was a pretty fun night. The crowd wasn't quite as big as Toby Keith, but everyone seemed to be having a pretty good time.

Here are some pictures of the coins I mentioned early in the week. The top one is a Brigade deployment coin that we were able to purchase as a souvenir. The one on the left is the one I got from MG Lempke, and the one on the right is from CSM Beam.

Here are the backs. the NE TAG has a nice Red Husker N so that is cool.

We received two of what we call "gimmee" awards today. These are the ones that you get for doing duty in a combat zone. The one on the left is for fighting in the Global War on Terror, and the one on the right is the Iraq Campaign medal. Afterwards, MAJ Teegerstrom gave us a little pep talk about staying focused over our last 4 months. We are starting to get in sniffing distance of talking about going home, but we still have the mission to think about first. It is exciting to start talking about getting out of here though.
Last but not least for those of you that have made it this far, today is our 8th month anniversary. And of course the Buffalo game. We are going to get pizza, watch the game, and drink a few NA beers. Maybe smoke a cigar. OK, definitely smoke a cigar. It is 1130pm tonight but that won't slow us down. Except for Chief, that is too late for him, but the young guys and me will be up cheering on the Big Red. We have a pool where we guess the score beforehand, and I have 60-0 Skers so I am hoping that we pour it on. Go Big Red!