bubba

scraps and bruises

normally watching crashes and wrecks isn't very fun, but with a punchy lively soundtrack it'll keep you entertained

my days off

hey guys, sorry it's been so long. i've gotten caught up in all the business and craziness that has been going on over here. looking at the calendar it's hard to believe that we're way more than half way done with our tour, and that pretty soon we'll be RIP'ing in our replacements. So far it's hard to say that we've had much of an impact in our area of operations. It consists mainly of a large gravel operation up north with few traversable roads and a few small towns on the way to baghdad. thankfully most of the attacks have been targeting the iraqi army and the iraqi police, but it's still an attack on the people who are working hard to bring this country to unity. there have been a couple incidents with our strykers, most of them were just getting stuck in a canal after a road had collapsed or something like that... except the one that hit my patrol set back in april. hit my squads truck, messed it up pretty bad. it had to go back to the state because it had a cracked hull. no one was killed thank God, but there were some pretty serious injuries that sent some guys back home for the rest of the tour. i'll put up some pictures once i find them again. but we got a truck to replace that one and are back out working full force again.

 a few months ago i took over as the platoon RTO ( radio telephone operator) basically this means that i'm in charge of all of the internal and external communications of my section. this involves changing the fills of every single radio when our comsec changes, maintaining a "fleet" of radios, batteries, antennas, microphones and headsets. This also means trouble shooting everything when something isn't working right. sounds like alot of fun right?

well i'll try to keep this updated more often, bug me if I don't

my email address

my new address:
Camp Taji
Spc. Clinton Bettner A Co. 1/112th
Unit 6260
APO-AE 09378

feel free to send non-perishable snacks and food, pens, batteries, dvd's , cd's, cookies are always a favorite. if i need anything specific i'll let some of you know.
some big things that would be good to have are cleaning wipes for electronics, and good gun cleaning supplies. there are pretty loose restrictions on what you can send, just no explosives, or weapons or stuff like that.

i'm doing very well, and the food here is very good, and we can eat 4 times a day... so i'll be sure i'm making it to the gym everyday too.

goodbye kuwait!

hey everyone! this will probably be my last post from Kuwait. we're supposed to be heading to iraq sometime today but we'll see when that actually happens. it's been really warm the last week, highs in the 70's everyday. I'm not sure when we'll be in our actual housing for the next 9 months but hopefully soon. i'm kinda tired of being moved around every couple of weeks and just wanted to be settled down for a while.
well hopefully i'll be in contact with a few of you pretty soon :-)

so we've been in Kuwait for one week. there hasn't been a whole lot going on besides killing time. but that's all fine and good in my book. It's been in the 50's and 60's and dry the whole tine. there is a lot of stuff to do here compared to most places we've been but going shopping at the PX gets old after the first couple of times. but there is a Starbucks and kfc and burger king, but they all have there own unique characteristics from being an foreign business too.
what it's looking like so far is that we are going to be in two man chu's ( room) at a pretty big base so there should be pretty good ammenities there and be pretty safe too.
my posts will probobly be trailing off for awhile until we get settled in at our new homes.
bettner

trip to kuwait

well we're here... the flight was very long and very cramped. we flew from new jersey to shannon ireland and then after a layover to kuwait city. we're living in tents again, but at least they have concrete floors here and real doors so it keeps the sand out pretty well. we haven't had any sandstorms yet, but it started to rain a few minutes ago while i was outside. i guess we're in the rainy season right now, i guess i'll find out what that is like pretty soon.
the steelers are playing the ravens right now, but with a handful of tv's on the camp, as expected there are about 200 guys crowed aroud every set. i'll just look up the box scores later.
As far as i know we don't have too much planned for us the next couple days, so i may or may not update this, as there probably won't be too much going on.
thanks for your prayers
clinton