First Miles Down

Well I figured I needed to update everyone on how things have been going here in Iraq.

We flew into Joint Base Balad (JBB) from Kuwait back at the end of July.

Once we got on ground we started the Relief In Place (RIP) process. This process is how units change while they are in country and it culminates with a ceremony called Transfer of Authority (TOA) ceremony. Our TOA ceremony which is pictured below was in August.

Once done with the TOA ceremony you are pretty much on your own to accomplish the mission. We actually have two missions here on JBB the main one is running the Phipps Troop Medical Clinic and secondly we run an ambulance service.

So things here are going very well. I have included a picture of how we live. Imagine shipping containers made into rooms and stacked on top of each other with everything being surrounded by huge concrete walls. It sounds crazy but it actually is not that bad. Actually overall life in Balad is probably about as good as I expected.