Road Trip

Today was a very interesting day because I went to Abu Ghraib confinement facility in Iraq. You might have heard of this place in the news where a lot of detainee abuse occurred. Well, all that bad has been resolved for some time now and they are doing an excellent job there! CPT Mike Jones and I were able to visit the compound and have a guided tour. I cannot go into very much detail, but the people who are working the site are true professionals.

The day began with a mid morning flight by Blackhawk helicopter and we flew to a few other places first, one being Fallujah. Not the first place I would have picked to visit. We spent the majority of the day in the uniform above and did I mention that the temperature was close to 100 degrees? We drank close to a gallon of water throughout the day. CPT Marguerite Mogul was our tour guide, she has worked there for quite a while and she has a very demanding schedule. As she was showing us around, we met a lot of great people and were humbled by the experience. It is hard to see how hard these people live each and every day. After touring the part of the compound, we attended their staff meeting where Marguerite informed us that we were going to miss lunch. The look on Mike's face said exactly what I was thinking. We were hungry, but it would be at least another 4 hours before dinner. After the meeting, Marguerite took us back to her office where we had a Twix bar and some type of power bar for lunch. After lunch, we were back out visiting the other areas of the compound. It was a long be rewarding day there. We did not have a flight until later that evening, so we had a little time to kill, that is when we posed for the picture above. We were shown some of the less traveled areas of the base and then watched part of a movie at their "movie theater." Their movie theater is a laptop, projector, speakers, and a wall. There were people gathered around watching this movie for their entertainment. Before we knew it, it was time to head out for our flight. We walk over to the helipad in the dark and waited. While we were waiting, the rain began to fall, it was nice because we had been very hot all day.