Dust Again

I don't know if you've been watching the news lately or not but there has been a great big dust storm over here for a while now. I hate to bring up the dust stuff again but I have to. I don't think I'll ever get used to these dust storms. They roll in and settle for days. We are in our 4th day of this stuff. The picture I have today is from our rooftop looking toward our flags. I got a package today from my buddy Spike in Phoenix who sent me 12 cigars, a hat, and a box to store the cigars. So I wanted to take a picture and send it to him to let him know how much I appreciated the gifts. But if you notice on the tiles on the ground in the picture, you'll see the dust. The dust went flying around when I sat down, and it really does make imprints in the dust like you are on the moon. And walking around outside is tough. You can't breath in deep because you will suck in enough dust that it feels like you have a brick in your mouth. I hate to feel dust on my eyelids also, it puts a grit in your eyes and it makes it difficult to focus on something. I wonder long term what is going on inside me and my lungs full of dirt.

We have been getting attack daily during for a while now. It makes sense for them to do that with this dust, and we still are able to fight back with the howitzers. I really like the sound of those counterfire shells as they leave the gun. It literally rattles the room or building and makes a definite sound that you know it's ours. I was involved in the improving the way the counterfire battery gets approval to shoot. It was a little cumbersome until I got the principle players together to make sure we knew all the players and what each of our parts were. We have alot of different types of aircraft flying out of this place and the restrictions for counterfire were ineffective for fighting against a moving enemy. All I did was to facilitate a discussion and we all agreed that we need to get better at what we do. I hope the changes we are making will make a difference to how many attacks we are getting. We need a let up. It is a good tactic by the bad guys to keep us up all night but we keep the pressure back on them and we are getting much more of them then they are of us. They have only hurt a few of us lately with the mortars and rockets. That is that.