Letter 1 from Son in Law in Iraq

I'm back from the field and finally got a shower and a hot meal and answered a few emails. There wasn't too much going on out there in the sand. We did some weapons training on the first day, running through different drills such as walking and shooting at the same time. We were out in the middle of nowhere and there were Beduins off in the distance watching us the whole time waiting to pick up our spent brass. I don't know where they came from, but they were driving old cadillacs or new SUVs, yet they live in the desert and herd goats and camels. When they hear us firing, they come out and wait all day for us to finish so they can collect the brass. I have no idea what they do with it, unless they make camels and elephants out of it and sell it back to us. The second and third day was machine gun training and convoy training. I got stuck in the gun turret even though I'm not a gunner. The gunner's weapon was broken and th en he didn't bring anything to protect his face such as goggles or a bandana, so I ended up in the turret. Everyone else had large machine guns such as the .50 cal. and all I had was my little M4 rifle, I didn't even have ammo for it. All my time was spent watching everyone else shoot at the targets as we drove down the road and getting a facefull of sand for my troubles. We also did some training where the locals were sent as actors to either harass, attack, or beg from us. We had a dirt road we were supposed to follow and as we went through the towns they would attack or whatever. Since we were out in the middle of a desert and there was nothing around us, we would drive off of the road and go completely around the little towns they had set up. Nobody had ever done that before and the locals were completely surprised by our actions and we ended up not getting bothered at all by them until we were forced to stop at one little town and the locals crowded around our convoy, we managed to keep them under control and everything went smoothly. We found out later that they would get paid a little extra if they could draw an X on our vehicle with chalk, none made it that close though. Another group doing traing with us, was the Puerto Rico National Guard. They went through the same stuff after we did. We saw their vehicles and there were Xs all over the place, the locals had even played tic-tac-toe on some of them. Didn't find any scorpions or camel spiders though. I did see some camels and I tried to catch a lizard, but that was about it. Once I get my pictures to download I'll send some. Talk to you all later.
love,
Billy