Entry 6

2100 hours          May 12th 2007

Today was your average non-combat day except for one incident. I arose at 6:30 AM, when my squad came to, I told them all to clean their Kar98s and to clean the Kar at least once each day. The sand really can distort your weapon and face it if your weapon doesn’t function soon you won’t either. I did my routine perimeter check, walking through the trench barracks. Everyone with a lower rank saluting me along the way. When everyone was awake at about 9:30, the combat engineers and Seabees began to arrive. They would now take over a majority of the trench reconstruction. They would install new firing steps facing the enemy, put up barded wire, and restock our sandbags. They would also clean the trench of dead bodies and Arab machinery. So all day all we did was try to kill time, we had target practice, the MG42 crews restocked their belts, the Mod 16s slowly rolled into position. Really nothing to do all day but just lie around and tan. You could go into town, but the closest town was hostile friendly, if you went, you didn’t come back. Anyway we laid around all day, I was burning a Koran and a “US most wanted” deck of cards when a PFC (Private First Class) from my squad approached me and asked for orders. “At ease, dismissed,” I told him. I couldn’t help, but raise the question what those anti-war, pro-drug traitors were doing at night, they usually hit the hay last. Later on about 2000 hours, an anti-war draftee emerged from his trench barracks, drunk and shouting. “Go to hell!” he was shouting Then he staggered over to an MG42 and began firing, swinging it wildly. Shots flew everywhere. My canteen next to me caught a round. While others yelled for him to stop a PFC from my squad and I took up arms and fired on him, killing him. The anti-US friends of his began shouting in disbelief. My squad and I just saddled up and hit the hay and now I am here writing this.