Thursday, November 1, 2007

31 October 2007: Halloween

After much deliberation and planning, I decided to dress up like a soldier. It must be a popular costume this year. Everyone seemed to be wearing the same outfit. Actually, you wouldn't really have known it was Halloween except for the corny decorations in the DFACs. I did see a couple of civilians wearing costumes. One lady dressed as a devil - horns, tail, and all. Some dude strutted into Victory DFAC dressed as Santa Claus. That was unusual for certain. He may have forgotten what day it was. That's easy to do around here. I heard there were some parties around Liberty (sans alcohol). It didn't seem like anything I wanted to investigate. I treated today like any other day.

You may recall from earlier entries that when I stay in Camp Liberty my hooch is adjacent to several combat engineer units. They used to be Puerto Rican. Now it's a bunch from Louisiana. Having lived in the Pelican State for several years I can understand that accent. Well last night the Coonasses were on the hunt. Just before dusk they were gearing up for some heavy duty action. AC/DC's "You Shook Me All Night Long" was blaring. Some of the guys were tossing a football in full IBA. Others were loading up the MRAPs and Buffaloes. They were laughing and joking. In the words of ZZ Top, "they be bad, they're nationwide." These happy Cajuns were going out on a night route recon. I liked to think of it as this - they were going out trick-or-treating for real.

It was just another day at the office for Joe (or should I say night?). It doesn't matter where he comes from, what his background, or who he voted for. Joe is the king of happy-go-lucky resiliency. He's my hero.

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