Notes from Tommie

posted by tommie on Aug 14

Well once again I’ve missed time with family, this time it was Cameron’s birthday on the 10th. To my surprise when I called to say happy birthday I found out that I was the first family member to actually call. If nothing else this deployment has taught me to better appreciate home and family. As depressing as it is to think about how much I’m missing back home it’s that same thing that keeps me going. To think about where we would be if brave men and women hadn’t served before me.

On that back tat idea for my brother, just incase you hadn’t checked my myspace pictures here it is:

Another piece of information is that my platoon finally got some credit for everything that we’ve done so far with this deployment. 98% of the time whenever we try to put in for an award of any kind we get responded to with “they’re just doing there jobs.” To me that is absurd, we save lives and track down enemy targets but aren’t in the running because we’re “just doing our jobs.” How is that any different then an infantrymen or scout shooting down the enemy, after all that IS there job. Alas, the army too (like so many other things in our society) is more politics then actual war. Here’s a pic of my certificate of achievement, each of the shadow operators was given one…

Still tired and looking forward to R&R, Tommie Lee Roberts (a.k.a. Pup)

posted by tommie on Aug 6

So yea, it has been about a week since my last post and I have gradually got a more and more over whatever sickness found its way into my system. Just in time too; today I found out that I’m changing over shifts again (thus the time of this post) so once more invert everything 12 hours. Also started working on designs for my brothers back tattoo, should have some pics of the rough drafts up soon either here or on myspace. My hope is that we won’t have such long shifts for too much longer and maybe we’ll be able to cut it down to eight hour shifts.



In addition to that I just went downstairs to apply for a waiver for promotion. Basically the way it works is that the entire company got one waiver for e3 to e4 and they pick the candidate most deserving of the promotion to get the waiver. I honestly don’t know what my competition is and don’t know where I stand (so busy working I haven’t actually met too many people) as far as possibly getting the waiver; however, my platoon seargent told me that I have just as much a chance as anybody else.



Not much more to report on other then: Iraq is still hot (110’s is considered cool), still nothing to do, and still looking forward to coming home on R&R.



Tired and sore, Tommie Roberts (a.k.a. Pup)