When I arrived at Cedar, Iraq in the early spring of 2004, it was in the midst of the rainy season. The base at Cedar is all dirt roads and I got to live in a tent, too. That was ok for me as I had a partitioned 5 x 6 ft section with a sleeping bag and mattress under that, which was up off the floor. Most of the vehicles there had inches or more of mud on them. My new clean Suburban stood out in the parking lot. I wasn’t there a whole day when I was approached by the medics on base. Their Ambulance was gone for repairs and they wouldn’t get it back for two weeks or more. Yes, they wanted to borrow my car. In exchange, I got to use an old dirty Pajero SUV that had a broken windshield. No problem I thought, I’d get it back in a couple of weeks and they needed it a lot more than I did.

Cedar was usually a dustbowl with lots of biting insects but now it was just puddles of water everywhere. The soil there seemed to be a mix of sand, soil and clay. It stuck to everything when it was wet. Even with the use of the Pajero, I was still able to do my work there. It helped that the people there, both soldiers and contractors were very nice and friendly towards me. On Palm Sunday, I went to a church service in the chapel on base. After the service, the Pastor said to stay because there was going to be a special movie showing that hadn’t been announced. This is where I got to see my first viewing of The Passion, which was brand new at that time. I was certainly glad that I had gone to church that Sunday!

As I said before, outside of Talil A B at Adder, Iraq is where the birthplace of Abraham was located. Talil was an airbase that is now used by the US Army and also Coalition Troops from So Korea and Italy. Every day, the Italians would set off controlled explosions. You never knew when they would go off and we could hear them five air miles away at Cedar. They were very loud detonations and sometimes caught us off guard. The soldiers were destroying old bombs and ammunitions that they got from all over that area. There were a lot of ammo dumps and mine field nearby in those days. The South Koreans stayed mainly on the base there, building sidewalks and doing other projects. I liked to go over to Talil, especially because they had a Pizza Hut and Burger King there, as well as a larger Post Exchange than the one that we had over at Cedar.