An Infantryman's Tale: First Patrol of my 2nd Tour

If you are expecting a story in chronological order, you are going to be disappointed. I'm writing these stories as my mind suddenly is reminded of them in one shape or another. So, fast forwarding a year and half or so...i give you the first patrol of my second tour....

Dec. 3rd 2006
Sunday morning, December 3rd "Chaos" platoon heads out for a mission. Looking for trouble. In the meantime, Bravo Company Bulldog’s 1st Platoon ("The Myrmidons"), are preparing for a normal everyday combat patrol, our first one. Everything is going on just as it should be, until "Chaos" finds the trouble they’ve been looking for. As I.E.D.’s and RPG’s explode and gunfire rings out through the day, "Chaos" finds itself in a world full of just that, chaos.
I was mounting my gun with another 2 hours to go, when the call came through that a national guard infantry platoon turned M.P.’s was under heavy attack in the city and needed help. With quick reflexes and good leadership our platoon was out of the wire within minutes. My truck in the lead. We rolled out in the middle of the city with such quickness and force, we found ourselves a little disorientated and had to find our way back to where we needed to go. Mind you, this is the first patrol that most of our guys had ever been on in Iraq, period. So, most of them, including the higher leadership, didn't know what they were doing.
Anywho, traffic was heavy. My driver did an excellent job (considering it was his first time leaving the f.o.b.). He honked his horn and moved the truck in and out of the traffic. I had to stand up and threaten people to stop or pullover and let us pass. I found myself in my element. I was home again. I was comfortable. Shots started ringing in every direction. Bombs started exploding, but I wasn't scared, I was having a blast! I’d done this too many times, and even though it had been two years (give or take) since I was here, I felt right at home again.
And then as we were driving, I saw something laying in the middle of the road. My driver saw it just in time to swerve the truck out of the way, before running it over. I looked down in the truck at my driver. "Did we almost hit a dead body, just now?"
"Um....yeah, I think so." My driver replied.
I have to say, I haven’t seen too many dead bodies just laying out there in the middle of the road while out on patrol. In fact, I’ve never just seen one just laying there, that we didn't put there. Apparently, he was a bad guy, that the Iraqi army killed a couple of minutes before we got there. He was one of the guys who opened up on "Chaos", and was trying to flee the scene of the crime.
Well, we showed up, pulled our security, while they blew up the rest of the car bombs in the area. All the time we were there, we heard gunfire in the near distance, but I think most of the bad guys ran away before we got there, they must of heard, i was back in town (because I am something like a super hero, you know.)
Anywho, that was my day and first time back out of the wire in my second tour. I was proud of the new guys, they didn't freak out too much when they were being shot at, and that's always good. I remember at the end of the day, when i took my gun down from the truck, i looked at my driver and said to him, (quoting a true American Hero): "Combat, don't you just love this shit." I'm pretty sure he thought i was crazy, but God, I really do love this stuff.