Video Home from Iraq from Mike Hubbard on Vimeo.

ITS CHRISTMAS!!!! What did we do? How did it go?? Well with all things considered it was a good day after all we’ve still got a job to do and the insurgents won’t take the day off so we can celebrate… Christmas eve was spent on IRT after our platoon commander dropped a Moral destroying bomb shell! We’d been on Allenby guard for the 24 hours straight after Ritz gate, every one was in high spirits as we were going onto IRT then taking over mobiles 1 on the evening of Christmas day so the odds were high we’d have the evening to have our 2 cans and celebrate Christmas as best we could. Also we’d been informed that officers form DIV HQ had volunteered to take over all our guard taskings for 4 hours on Christmas day allowing the whole company a bit of time to have dinner, gather together for a few words from the OC etc etc…. But to dampen the mood the platoon commander informed us our half of the platoon, multiple Bravo were being tasked to go out on a patrol at 11pm Christmas night! And the other half of the platoon would have the evening off…. Hey thats life, some one had to go out and the best thing to do is “get it down your neck!” and get on with it! Well you can imagine how the mood went from there…. So Christmas Eve night we sat in the IRT room watching Harry Potter and waiting to be crashed out to an incident but gladly that didn’t happen! We had some crackers, sweets and Santa hats to entertain our selves even though the mood in some was more “bar hum bug “than “HO HO HO!” once Casualty came on the TV and everyone’s parents on the show seemed to be dying at the same time we decided to hit the sack!

In the morning the door to the IRT room crashed open and my instant thought was “Bol**ks we’re being crashed!” but it was the OC and company sergeant major coming to bring us our Christmas morning “gun fire” (its tradition for the officers to bring soldiers tea with rum in to there beds on Christmas morning) The good thing was we then changed over and were on 12 hours rest, for once the rotation landed nicely! Once I’d got back to my room, showered, shaved, sorted myself out and opened up my presents my moral was tip top but some were still very “bar hum bug!” my theory is it might be shit but you have to make the best of what ever the situation is and to be fair over here it could be allot worse! Even though we’d been dicked for this patrol why not stick a smile on and enjoy yourself! But after trying to explain that a few times I gave up a mid the refusals to wear Santa hats as Christmas was canceled! and other people trying to convince each other they’re the more hard done by one…. I went of to use the phones, it would be 7am in the UK 10am here but as the rush later would be ridiculous I thought it best to try now. The rush later was big as some people had to wait an hour and a half but they had to wait as they wanted to speak to there children on Christmas day but for people like me without children its not so desperate, I would love nothing more than to speak to Beth, my mum and my brother on Christmas day but I’m sure they’d understand if I couldn’t get to the phone but if I had children I’d queue for and hour and a half. Any way the rest of the day was good me and Warner put up our decorations made a cup of tea, sat down and watched a film “The 40 year old virgin” whilst scoffing chocolates! To be fair a typical thing to do on Christmas day. Then the company had a sing song and Christmas dinner, all in all very festive all things considered!

Now however its back to the job we’re just about to start getting ready to go out on our patrol and it hasn’t stopped raining all day! And it’s hammering it down now so the roads are going to be bad! As sand and water make mud and lots of it!