12 MAY:
Shortly after we got there, the mosquitoes started to come out. I don’t know if it was something that normally came and went seasonally in Iraq, or if it was just because of us, or that little stretch of “Gollum Swamp” we had near Pad 8, but we started getting swarmed with the little devils. We’d been taking our anti-malaria meds in preparation to going there, and some of us probably thought the chain of command was just being overly cautious– malaria is something that only happens in jungles, right? But we were sure glad we’d taken them once we got there and got swarmed by these flying blood-suckers.

Although, truth be told, I think we’d have rather had the age-old anti-malaria treatment discovered by the British Empire years earlier: gin and tonic, heh… can’t be too careful, after all, right?