Thank y'all

Greetings from Camp Striker. Yes, Joyce, thank you for the card. Mom and Dad, gonna' get up early and call y'all around 4am my time so maybe it'll be late enough to catch mom at home. Granddaddy can mail the card with the check to Macon since I'll be home by Nov 6 for leave and I can't really deposit a check here, nor do they cash third party checks here.
The other day, we finally got our Combat Action Badges for getting hit with the 2 IED's a few monhts ago. Now I have a play pretty to wear on my uniform. I still think the Army should've gone with the Combat Action Ribbon for the dress uniform like the marines, instead of coming out with a Combat Infantry Badge wanna'be to pacify all the whiney non-infantry guys who wanted one too. But I'll get off that soapbox.
I'm here for a few more days then heading south to my new home for the second half of our deployment. I'm not going as far south as I thought. Our new post is near a major Shiite city, not Karbala, but another one that was a thorn in the sides of the marines in 2003 during their march to Baghdad. According to one of the translators, Pope John Paul II wanted to visit a nearby area, the land thought to be the home of Abraham, before he passed away. But Saddam Hussein refused, saying that the christian leader refuses to stand up for the rights of the suffering people of Iraq (that Saddam caused to suffer)against the UN embargos. Abraham's town was Ur. Evidently there may be tours available to check it out. If so, I plan on going. We'll be doing the same thing that we're doing now, security escorts, but our "package" won't be civil affairs officers; we'll be escorting supply convoys. Well, we're prepared.
Y'all take care. Love y'all.
Love,
chris