For years I have used Facebook to share OIF experiences with friends, family, and my brothers in arms. I firmly believe that stories of war need to be told by the people that were there or important lessons of history will be lost forever. I hope to capture as much of my experience here as possible as well as the experiences of my comrades in arms.
Who am I? I was a Marine who served on active duty from June of 99 through May of 2008. I did three deployments during my time in the Marines. My first was a Western Pacific Cruise in 2001. My second deployment was for the invasion of Iraq in 2003. My final deployment was to the city of Fallujah for the heavy fighting there in 2004. I went on to serve several years at the Marine Corps School of Infantry on Camp Pendleton before leaving the service in 2008.
I went into these deployments knowing that they would be life altering events, particularly after the attacks on September 11, 2001. Knowing we were headed to a war zone I wanted to be in a position to record as much of it as possible. To that end I brought a video camera, some disposable cameras, a journal my wife (girlfriend at the time) had bought for me, and an eye to hold on to mementos that I thought might be pertinent to the experience. Now, more than a decade later, I still have over a dozen maps, 11 hours of digital footage, hundreds of physical pictures, over a thousand digital pictures, my journal, and a collection of artifacts that caught my eye.
I hope that this online war journal creates as many questions as it answers.
Ryan
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Gunsmoke Journal 
Who better to write history than those that were there, you. Thank you. This is beyond paramount. While you were fighting, I was at Bravo Surgical in Camp Fallujah. Covering life there. A lot of 2/1 Marines & your Corpsmen came through there.
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Claudia, I would be very interested to hear about some of your experiences at Bravo Surgical – I dropped more than one Marine off there.
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Yes Claudia we will need to hear some of yours! Ryan, she has done her own writing. Ryan, your writing is very eloquent and I truly do feel as if an important prayer of mine has been answered. It took Pam Zembiec’s book first, to get these kind of accounts, something Aaron failed drastically at providing. I’m so anxious for each account!
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Our son is currently serving in a 2/1 CAAT platoon. I appreciate you sharing your experiences, pictures, and videos. It helps us to understand possible CAAT missions. Thank you and we hope you will continue to write up more of your experiences.
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