Sour Swinger Predominantly follows my Army & Iraq Deployment. Also has some Geek, School, and other talk.

Nothing like more photos of the kids right? And I still have one more set after this one. I picked out 4 to show below. There’s about 59 photos total. Click here to see them all. They’re a good mix of kids posing for the camera and from us handing out donations.

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Of all the months we spent in country, seeing camels never happened until the very end of our tour. We payed the locals in food and school supplies in exchange for messing around with them. The camels didn’t mind us until we took turns riding. Boy did they vocally object. Here are two videos of our adventure. You can also see pictures from the event here. There’s about 27 in total.

Feeding Joe Camel from Sour Swinger on Vimeo.

Feeding Joe Camel some crackers from our MREs.

Camel Riding from Sour Swinger on Vimeo.

Everyone takes turn getting on top of the camel. Each time the camel gets madder and madder.

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Throughout most of our area of operations, you could see the Ziggurat. What exactly is the ziggurat was a topic of discussion as each interpreter gave me a different semi unsure answer. According to wikipedia: Ziggurats were massive monuments built in the ancient Mesopotamian valley and western Iranian plateau, having the form of a terraced step pyramid of successively receding stories or levels.

When time was available, my platoon decided to make a pit stop to check out the Ziggurat. After setting up a 360 perimeter, we sent groups of soldiers up armed with their cameras. This was the one and only time I actually felt like a tourist. It didn’t take long for kids to show up from the local village wondering what we were doing. It was pretty amazing to see something so old and yet still standing. One thing you won’t get to experience in the United States. Below are a couple more pics from our trip. Click here to see the entire set. There’s about 35 total.

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You’ll probably wondering why its been one month since my last posting. Well, my computer took a pretty hard crash while I was on the road. I was in a slight state of panic as the remaining photos to post were not backed up. For my computer to get in the shop, repaired, and return to this blog….took a month. So for a second time, lets see if I can wrap everything up over the next week or two.

This is the third set of pictures from my platoon conducting missions. I picked 3 to show below. Click here to see the entire set. There’s about 60 pics total.

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On to the pictures shall we? Today I have for you another set of pictures from the children in Iraq. Only one more left after this one. I picked out 5 pics to display below. You can view the complete set here. There’s exactly 60 pictures. Enjoy!

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These pictures are from a donation distribution mission. We had a ton of donated items to hand out that day. Everything from soccer balls from Kick For Nick to toys and clothing from family back home. We hit two towns that day, one of which was Choyoul. The other I have no idea how to spell. For some reason Combat Camera just labeled all the pics from Choyoul.

The Army has been occasionally embedding Combat Camera in our missions. Photos were taken by Petty Officer 2nd Class Robert Whelan. I linked each pic to its free downloadable high res copy. There’s a total of 12 pics. Click here to see them all.

The DVIDS mission is to serve as a turnkey operation that facilitates requests for Public Affairs video, audio, still imagery and print products; coordinates interviews with soldiers and commanders in a combat zone and provides an archive for ongoing operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain.

Basically, DVIDs is where the military official posts audio, video, images, news, etc relating to any current combat operation. Everything is DOD authorized to be released to the public.

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This is the second set of pictures from my platoon conducting missions. These show more of my platoon and the people in my units AO (Area of Operation). I picked 5 to show below. Click here to see the entire set. There’s about 50 pics total.

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