I was sitting out at the retrans camp for our base in central Iraq, north of Baghdad. This year, I’m sitting in my office in Ohio, having spent most of the last year back home re-normalizing. I have a few pictures with the date 12/19/04 on them of the retrans site that I’ve been looking at today. It’s a bleak brown wasteland. I remember it was still quite cold there despite the lack of snow (though probably not quite as cold as Ohio is today), and of course the general conditions weren’t nearly as comfortable as what I can enjoy now in my own home. I know some other soldiers are sitting out there right now (or some other site like it if that one’s been abandoned in the last year), and my heart goes out to them. I’d post some pictures but since it’s such an exposed place and may still be in use, I’d rather not risk the OPSEC of the area. Suffice to say, it’s barren, brown, bleak, and quite lonely (when I was there a year ago, it was without anybody from my own platoon, so while the guys I was with were a good bunch (including Ryan toward the end) it wasn’t like I was with my guys).