On this date in 2003, the ground-war in Iraq began in the wee hours of the morning. I crossed the border as a team leader with 2nd Sqd, 1st Plt, B Co, 11th EN BN, TF 2-7INF, 1st BDE, 3ID on the initial invasion. I was the second Engineer from my company to cross the border (my driver crossed the border just before me). I was the TC in my M113 (call sign Bulldog 1-2 Alpha) and the .50cal gunner. I didn't know it at the time, but I would cross that border 3 more times before it was all said and done. It seems like ages ago and yet it seems like yesterday

I'm posting this because this event set in motion the events that changed my life forever, and it is therapeutic to me to post about it.

I'm cross-posting on the General, Politics, and Military boards

This is Bert. My squad caught him in Kuwait about a week before we crossed the border into Iraq back in 2003. He became our squad/platoon and eventually company mascot. He would sleep in our tent, and would ride in our M113. He was about two and a half feet long from nose to the tip of his tail and weighed about 25 pounds. After we first caught Bert, we had him tied up in a large wood ammo crate so he wouldn't crawl away. One day after we caught him, I decided to see if the lizard would eat the cucumbers that were in the salad that was served with chow. He did. After that, we didn't to keep him tied up. That's when he became my squad/platoon's mascot. As word got around about this huge lizard we had caught, other people from other units would catch lizards and bring them around thinking they had caught a bigger lizard. The closest any of them came was one that was about 6-8 inches smaller.

He didn't bite, but he would arch his back and hiss at you (like a cat) if he didn't like you. There was one Soldier in my squad that Bert would hiss at anytime he would walk within 4-5 feet of him. We would always joke and say "damn Waak, even the lizard thinks you are ugly."

We made a "kevlar helmet" for Bert out of a Plastic container for a 203 round , complete with his name, battle roster number (Bert1), blood type (lizard) and 1LT rank. He would actually wear it for a little while. We tried to make him a 'flak vest" out of corrugated plastic, but he wasn't having any of that.

We ended up releasing him a couple of days before we took the Baghdad airport. We tied his "kevlar" to his head before we released him., for safety reasons. When we sent him on his highly secret covert ops mission to infiltrate and subjugate the Iraqi reptile population he was First Lieutenant Bert. He's probably General Bert these days.