Oh, Joe Rock, putting such an American spin on the issue.

We didn’t get as much cultural training as I would have preferred, but then I was (and still am) a Middle East culture & history buff. And, to be honest, we weren’t going to be doing a lot of the “meet & greet” stuff with the locals– our jobs were going to be hands-dirty Combat Engineer work, which at the time meant convoys and route clearance. Still, this was likely our one and only time in Mesopotamia, an area of great historical importance, and it was a shame to miss out on some of that.