rockets reprise

The insurgents felt I needed one last round in the days before I left so last night they rocked us…a little. Of the first two rounds to impact one was a rocket that shock the walls of the room I was in. The alarms sounded sending us to the basement where I stood around talking with people. When I saw Amb Negraponte and his staff come down I figured we’d be there for awhile so I wandered into Saddam’s theatre and fell asleep.
Around 2200 I left the palace but couldn’t get past the gate to my camp because of unexploded ordinance nearby which had to be blown up. So I walked back out to the pool and sat talking with people until midnight. Pierce was there so we sang some songs. One guy kept requesting me to play “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” and I’d have been happy to oblige but under the circumstances everybody wanted to keep the show upbeat. One guy we sat with had been in his tent when an inbound mortar round landed in it between two guys who were on their laptops. Luckily it was a dud. I finally walked back to my trailer around midnight and slept well because it was a quiet night.
This morning I did some more turn-over with the new LtCol. He has an interesting job back home in Puerto Rico: he designs and cuts pattern’s for women’s dresses and then gives the patterns to women who work for him to sew in there homes. But NAFTA is hurting his business like it hurts everyone elses. This morning the LtCol said, “I’ve never been shelled before. If you think about that it could drive you crazy.”
Yeah it could I told him. Its best to take cover then let it go.