I’m now about two months into my second tour in Iraq. During my first tour, from April ’03 to April ’04 I was in Baghdad and Babylon, but I convoyed to several other areas of the country. As a result, my family and friends often ask me how the country is different now from what it was then. Iraq has definitely changed, in some ways for the better and some ways for the worse.

One thing that is definitely worse is the power of the IEDs, or improvized explosive devices, on the roads. During my first tour, some were strong, but most were small explosives. One that hit one of my vehicles was nothing more than a coffee can, filled with nuts and bolts that became shrapnel when it was detonated. It injured one of our soldiers, but he was back in our unit after a couple of weeks of clean sheets at the hospital.

Now, some of the explosions are much more powerful, due in a large part to Iranian interference in Iraq. At the same time our training, equipment and tactics are much better. When I was here in 2003, we were learning as we went, figuring what worked against the IED threat and what didn’t. Now, before any unit enters Iraq, they go through weeks of anti-IED training. Now everyone learns to look for indicators during training. As a result, U.S. soldiers are a lot better prepared than in 2003. If you also add in the fact that most units now have a high percentage of veterans, each unit tends not to have as steep of a learning curve as we used to have.

One thing that hasn’t changed is that morale is generally pretty high. It’s hard to explain, but for soldiers, being here is a chance to make a difference in something important. Of course, no one really wants to be here – I’d much rather be chilling in my apartment, or (gasp!) even studying, than calculating out the effective range of one of our radios in the middle of a sandstorm, but I also know which one is more important. I know I don’t have the words to explain it, but the “Band of Brothers” spirit that got our grandfathers through World War II is unchanged.

Our equipment is a lot better now than in the initial invasion, and it continually gets better. Admittedly, during my first tour here I crossed the border into Iraq wearing a Vietnam-era flak vest (which, for the record, smelled like it had been in Vietnam) and canvas doors on my HMMWV (high mobility multipurpose wheeled vehicle). Now I have the advanced body armor and helmet, which is one of the main reasons that U.S. fatalities in Iraq are at the lowest level they’ve ever been in one of America’s wars. Every vehicle that leaves the wire (or leaves a base) is up-armored to provide a large level of protection from various explosive devices.

A final thing that hasn’t changed, and probably never will for as long as there are American GIs, is that we all miss the little things about the United States. One of my sergeants and I discussed soft pretzels. We both really miss soft pretzels. The War on Terror ground to a halt as we discussed various ways that we could get soft pretzels here. We have a microwave, but getting frozen soft pretzels in the desert is, of course, difficult. We could vacuum pack them, suggested another sergeant. And then we got a call that a radio wasn’t working right, and we all sprung back into action. We’ll finish that discussion another time. We’ll get our pretzels.

That gives you something of a snapshot as to how things have changed for GIs. Next time I write, I’ll try to talk about what Iraqis think of us, based off of my interactions with them. Hope everyone’s having fun in the November weather; it’s getting colder here too. It was almost below 60 degrees last night. Almost.

77 days down, 287 to go.