Here's my address in Iraq:

SFC Wyatt, James
Troop A, 1-124th Cavalry
Camp Slayer
APO AE 09342-1400

On my wish list:

- Golf balls (old beat up ones from the driving range so I can hit them into the lake)
- Fabuloso deodorizing cleaner (the purple one. It smells nice and plumbing here is terrible so it tends to stink up the houses)

I really don't need much of anything else. I have a truck that I can drive around on the camp and eating snack foods is just going to make me fat. I'll add to the wish list once I've moved in and figured out what my platoon will need.

Did I mention I'm living in a lake house? I managed to get my entire platoon to fit into four lake houses. I wouldn't call them the greatest houses in the world. They may have been at one time but five years worth of soldiers living in them has pretty much torn them up. We're trying to acquire lumber to build shelves and beds because the beds we have are falling apart. Unfortunately, with everything under contract, it's expensive to get lumber, much less anything else. The markup is ridiculous on everything here and we can't really do any of our own work without breaking the contract. The catch-22 is that the only things in our houses under contract are the electrical (another nightmare) and the plumbing. Everything else is basically whatever we can scrounge up either by dumpster diving or "re-appropriating" from elsewhere. I'm trying to work some magic with the civilians to get what we need. While on the subject of civilians, they outnumber us on Camp Slayer. And they think they can get away with everything. The Platoon Sergeant I'm replacing explained their attitude well. On other, more remote basecamps, civilians realize that the military is there to protect them because there are bad guys out there. In Baghdad, they forget that there are people out there trying to kill them and their only defense is the military. On Camp Slayer, that's us. We're their protection but they don't appreciate it. It became an issue with the previous unit and I'm sure it will continue to be an issue with us.