Point of No Return

Today marks our 6 month mark in having deployed to Iraq. It marks our halfway point.

There is more, much more, that I want to comment about all of this, but now just isn't the time. I do want to bring up a few statistics however:

In the 6 months we've been gone...

We've had 2 original team members removed by the chain of command (Old White Man, Sirsquatch).
We've gotten 4 new ones (The Scream, Skitzo, Mr. Pringles, and a 4th who arrived two days ago).
Not counting any convoy's we've been on, collectively our team has gone out around 12 times on missions.
Of those 12 missions, we've brought back detainees on 4 or 5.
Of those 4 or 5, 1 time we caught who we were looking for.
While on mission we've been shot at once, and someone near our vehicles was shot at once too.
We returned no fire.
We're currently being put in for 4 combat action badges, from getting shot at.
We started out with zero vehicles, were given 3 in Balad, another one in Kalsu, had one taken away in Balad, and leased one out in Mosul. We currently have 3 vehicles, and are slated to lose more if RUMINT (Rumor Intel) is correct.
We've completed 1 Physical Training test, and had 1 practice test.
We had 1 failure.
We all have lost weight, except for Traitor.
We have never had the opportunity to do a "multiple follow on target" mission, as our leadership would lead us to believe happens all the time.
We have been visited numerous times by varying levels of the Chain of Command:
Company Commander: 2
Company First Sergeant: 4
Battalion S3: 4
Battalion Sergeant Major: 3
Battalion Commander: 4
All of those involved attempted at each visit to convince me of the benefits of re-enlistment. Most of my teammates have also been harassed regarding this.
We have had 2 members re-enlist (Thin Mints, Blue).
We have had an infinite number of minor arguments, fights, squabbles, and rants against one another.
We have moved locations 3 times, and have been told we were going to be at 7 different locations.

We've done alot of different things, but we've rarely done anything close to the MFT concept.

In the 6 following months we will continue to do our job, for almost 2 of them. Then the accords will come into place and we will be relegated to our posts, and outside of cities. And then we will see what fun Iraq brings.