“Very long periods of extreme boredom followed by bursts of extreme excitement.” This is how I have heard life during a military deployment explained by many people, and I would have to agree that that is a fairly accurate assessment. Granted, the periods of excitement were unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before, and the periods of boredom reached a level that is really tough to comprehend. Fifteen months in confined spaces with the same people will certainly leave you feeling a little trapped. Though we didn’t get to spend much time on base, there were a few things available to pass the time and we were often on call so to speak, so we got even less time to utilize those options.

Sports have always been an outlet of mine for as far back as I can remember. The base we stayed at in Baqubah had an outdoor basketball court on a concrete slab. We didn’t get to play a lot since we weren’t on base much, and when we were we were either sleeping or it was 110 degrees outside. Whenever we did get to play we had a pretty good team and managed to beat the team that won the base tournament that we weren’t able to participate in. Unfortunately one of the guys who played on our makeshift team was killed and we kind of lost interest in playing after that.

Time spent on missions could be like this as well. It wasn’t at all uncommon to go several days in a row with fighting or being ambushed. Sometimes this would last for twenty minutes, other times the fighting could last for a couple of hours, or sporadically happen throughout the day for a couple of days in a row. But between these times there was usually some downtime. We were very effective at what we did, and we were fighting a pretty determined enemy, but we were all people. People need time to regroup. At first we did normal things to pass the time such as playing cards, but you can only play the same game against the same people so many times before that becomes more of a chore than an enjoyable pastime. Towards the end of our deployment we got a bit more creative in ways of passing time. Most missions that lasted multiple days we would set up camp in people’s houses. At night we were lucky we’d be in a house that had a TV set, so someone got the bright idea to bring an XBOX 360 so we could sit around and play video games when you weren’t pulling guard or sleeping. This was probably in violation of some obscure Army regulation, but it was a relatively harmless way to make yourself comfortable.

The same can’t be said for our last few missions when we came up with a new way to entertain ourselves at night. One of my good friends who was also our medic was quite a talented musician. I was not so talented, but that never stopped me from trying to learn. On the last few missions during our tour he found a way to strap a guitar and amplifier to his medical bag and carry it along with him, so after a long day we would sit on the roof trying to play an obnoxiously loud guitar all night. But desperate times call for desperate measures.