As of today I have now been in theater one month.  For me, it’s easy to be unfamiliar with the day of the week much less the date.  Honestly, these first 30 days went flying by.

I didn’t know what to expect when I came here but I knew I wanted to get over here and help out however the Marine Corps wanted me to.

As for daily life, the positives are many.  Good food, have a pillow almost every night, time to work out most days, time to read a lot when waiting to fly or convoy, and an blatantly obvious commitment by the leaders of 1st MLG to the Corps and Iraq.

Daily life negatives?  Besides missing Family Guy and the Simpson’s I don’t really have anything negative to say.  I do miss being to just pick up the phone and call friends and family and missed a funeral of one of my dear friends and true patriot Ali Jacobson but again there is nothing negative about where I am.

The Marine Corps has offered me many great opportunities in life and are without a doubt one of the keys to my successes in professional and public life.  They say you get out what you put into something and I guess they are right and sometimes you must take chances in order to be richly rewarded.

Being a Marine was certainly a risk worth taking and coming to Iraq is another.  I cannot imagine a life where you say ‘I wonder what would have happened if I did this’ or ‘What if I had…’

In such a short time I have met many new friends, speaking a little Arabic and Swahili almost every day, traveled to new cities, caught up on some of my reading, played with many of the new toys the Marine Corps has purchased, and all while helping the Marine Corps.

If one can properly take into perspective of how well the US military is now fed, protected, and given communication access we our undoubtedly very lucky.  The veterans who passed before us are the real tough-guys.  All but one fallen soldier has been found.  No POWs.  Limited engagements that are almost always on our time-table and in the situation we want. 

Don’t get me wrong Iraq is a dangerous place and we have IEDs going off every day as well bullets or mortars randomly fired towards us but it’s certainly an asymmetric low intensity war for sure.  The generations that went before us fought hard, fought often, and all the while with little to no correspondence home.

I sometimes think if I can even be half a warrior as those who might have eaten one hot meal a month, rarely had a pillow under the head, fought while be stricken with diseases or injured, went to battle with no body armor and inefficient weapons systems, etc… you get the point. 

It’s all relative.

Semper Fi,
GySgt Jonathan Jenkins

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