Annals of sucky deployments: The life of a major marooned in southern Iraq

While Tom Ricks is away from his blog, he has selected a
few of his favorite posts to re-run. We will be posting a few every day until
he returns. This originally ran on September 21, 2011.

Army Maj. Jayson Stewart summarizes
his 2008 tour of duty as an advisor to a unit of the Iraqi border patrol that
actually was based more than 40 miles away from him. "There was a period there
where I didn't get out for four months, and I was only able to entice them to
come and see me probably once every two to three weeks."

I see this maybe as a Tom Hanks
movie. Or John Candy, if he were still with us.

I hope that nobody else has to go
through that same experience, because it did suck. I was able to build my own
little stadium seating inside one of the more concrete rooms and turned one of
my Armed Forces Network receivers and hooked it up to the one-eyed monster and
put it on a seven-foot by eight-foot screen and was able to watch football,
because I couldn't go anywhere and I couldn't do anything.

I think that fits my definition of
hell: Isolated in southern Iraq with nothing to do and a year to do it in.