Ash Wednesday

Today was a holy day for me, mostly because I’m Catholic. I spent the whole day reflecting on my life, how much peace I’d like to have, and how to renew my spirit. I was hoping we wouldn’t see any action today. To me it’s a day for blessing and reflection. To me it’s not really a day for combat and I didn’t want to see it. If it came to me, oh well.

Our Army Chaplin gave us a blessing in the morning. He’s never come out before but I think a big reason may be because it is Ash Wednesday. I think it was a good day to receive a blessing since we just happened to be doing one of our most dangerous and most exhausting missions. Another reason he was there was to give the ashes to anyone who wished to receive them. Now I’m in a different period of my year, the season of Lent. I believe Muslims have the same sort of thing during Ramadan.

I’m glad to say that we made it all back home alive. The last time we did this mission we were hit by sporadic gunfire and by an IED. This time we didn’t engage in any incidents whatsoever. Well, we did run into a VBIED but we bypassed the road and went around the thing. The mission tonight was a success and when without any significant events.