Iraq War, 2005, by Alex Brown

From MemoryArchive

Who: My Cousin
What: Combat engineer 
When: 2004
Where: Baghdad

In the summer of 2004 my cousin who had recently returned form Iraq attended my family's annual summer party, before he had joined the army he was quiet and shy, usually kept to himself during family gatherings but this time he was different. He wanted to talk about his experiences, which had been pretty dull for the most part. A story that he was fond of sharing involved the demolition of several tons of explosives that the combat engineers had separated from the thousands of land mines and explosives that dotted the area. Once the explosives had been removed from whatever device they came from, they were stacked in a ditch some distance form the military base. Once the ditch had reached a critical mass the combat engineers would detonate the explosives. From what my cousin said it was one of the coolest things that he had ever seen, whenever they would detonate the explosives crowds would gather and it became a social activity. Although I'm sure that there were many other things that occurred during his time in Iraq,I think that he liked to share the story of the explosive disposal because it was one of the more pleasant memories.