The Devil went down to Ramadi.

Actually no, we didn't make it. Which was just as well for the last of the guys we're relieving here at Al Asad. My first "mission" and I use that term lightly, was a joke. Though the tension for the Marines we were relieving was very palpable. And while nothing went wrong with our vics, everything else was going wrong for everyone else. We wound up sitting in traffic in the middle of one the last wild parts of the Anbar province twice. Each time our ride alongs from the other unit became visably more uneasy. It's not that what we were doing is really that stressful or dangerous. It's just that it was their last time. Their once last dance with the enemy then they got to go home. How jealous I was. I brought back one of those rare instances of not quite nostalgia, but definately a very emotional reverie. I thought back to my last run in '04, and while I spent that whole deployment openly gunning for a fight, completly stress free, I remember starting to get a certain unease when our replacements finally showed up in country. My hard ass walk became a little more jilted, I actually started seeking cover when we took incoming. All those things I laughed at before, suddenly felt a litter more sensical. And now that we're years and miles away from the level of violence I experienced back then, last night, just for a second, I remembered what it felt like. There's of course more to this story... but as with all of my stories, you'll have to pick my brain for it later. So I leave you once again, horribly safe and bored.

-The Demon