Kelly Smith Weblog Aficionado: Just a guy vs. Life

The "N" Moments of the Lost Boys..... Unfortunately there is a population of young males in the United States who boast a significant few who seem to have no care about themselves, their race, their future, or even what discredit and hardship their misdeeds bring upon others. Years ago I used to scoff at the notion that rap music, video games, or racy movies had anything to do at all with influencing the behavior of individual people. To a large extent I still feel that way, however, I do acknowledge that people of weak mind, spirit, and moral makeup attempt to "emulate" what they see, because somehow many of these negative behaviors are perceived. The medial seems to reinforce the notion that somehow because you are a black mail, you have had a rough life and grew up in "hell". That may be true for some, but I think there is a large majority that step into that position as an actor steps into a role. There are few occassions when a person is so poor that ...

Al Furat, Muhalla 893, Baghdad Province, March 13th, 2007....Sniper....[PART 1] On March 13th, 2007 the day seemed like every other day in Iraq.....hot and dreary. The winter was over, the rains had stopped, and the temperature was climbing back toward the unforgiving and miserable level that it had been when we first arrived. I was the 1st Platoon Leader of Alpha Company 1-149th IN. My platoon was in charge of patrolling Al Furat, Al Maksasib, a tiny sliver of Al Jihad, the operating space of AO Mutt, and a daily route clearance on stretches of Route Yankee and MSR Tampa. (This intersection of both places was once called the most dangerous intersection in the world because of all of the IED emplacement.) In addition to this, a small contingent of my platoon was tasked with operating ECP 7 which was the entry point for military convoys onto Victory Base Complex. What was unusual about this day was the fact that I was on the FOB in a Company meeting and my platoon Sergeant was out on pa...

Japan Trip I am nearing the end of a training rotation in Sapporo Japan. Over the course of this two weeks in the field, the weather has gone from single digit to fifty degrees. From clear skies to hard rain, from blowing snow, to sleet. I am glad that I came on this mission, however, I am glad to be going back home. I am only going to have a couple of days before I have to report back to work, and I am probably going to try and sleep the entire time. I have been eating MRE's a few times a day, and I am SO ready for a nice ribeye steak, baked potato, and a glass of bourbon. In the picture above, we were trying to reinforce tent stakes because the blowing wind and heavy snow was making the tents collapse. This is a picture of me with two Japanes scouts before we did a recon of one of the objectives. The Japanese Infantry is pretty hardcore. The snow in a lot of places is so deep that the patrols have to move with skis or snowshoes. As you can see in this photo, knowing how to ski is...