a picture from Iraq

[dragonlady7]

Got another e-mail from Katy. Contained little information of note-- mostly requests for things from Mom-- but she attached a photo of herself in Baghdad with one of the company commanders.
The picture's big but relatively low quality, under a megabyte.




On the left is Laura DePalma, one of the company commanders. On the right is Cap't Kathleen Smith, my dear sister. Not like you can tell, what with all the gear. Sexy getup, no? Am v. jealous that her uniform is so much sexier than mine.

Comments

[kittyc1978.livejournal.com]

Is it just me or does it freak you out when you see your relatives holding a huge gun? Pics of Billy always make me squirm when he has a gun in his hand...He usually only sends me the non gun pictures. I own a rifle, I can shoot pretty well, but the whole machine gun rapid fire thing? YIPES!

By the way the only thing I shoot at are clay pidgeons...didn't want to freak anyone out...I would die if I killed a living thing!

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

No, guns don't really freak me out much. My sisters and dad and I used to go out shooting all the time. I've never shot at anybody, and a major portion of all the gunplay was learning proper gun safety and the like. We'd go in the backyard down into the ravine and set up targets and shoot at 'em with the .22 rifles, or the .9mm pistol. Once Dad had us use his .45 pistol, and that was really hard to handle. That thing's heavy.

No. I mean, I suppose it's kind of a reminder that she's over there to shoot and get shot at. But that's as much as it freaks me out. it's weirder, to me, to see her in the desert uniform. I got used to the forest-camo one, just-- I see her and think it's Dad. (They wear the same size uniform. he's an inch taller than she is; she's ten pounds heavier. but they look very similar, in their uniforms. A touching side-story is that when Mom and Dad were first dog-sitting Scout, Dad changed into his uniform for National Guard and Scout went nuts because she was so excited to see such a familiar thing, and she associates those uniforms with her mommy and daddy.)
It's definitely a bit weird to see her armored up to her chin, though.

Katy said one of the hardest things for her to get used to after her last tour was not having her sidearm. She just was used to it always being there, and she habitually always checked up on it-- if it wasn't in the holster, it was on the chair or on the desk or leaning on the file-cabinet or something, and it was just natural to always be sure where it was. When she didn't have one anymore, it kept panicking her for a second-- where is it? Oh, back in the armory. Oh. Oh, it's OK then.

[kittyc1978.livejournal.com]

It must be the fact that MY cousin is holding the guns, I grew up with him and know the guy...I wouldn't want to be around him and a gun! (I am sure he is well trained and all, but he was a rowdy boy!)

Awesome puppy story! poor baby misses his parents!

Oh and I think the sidearm thing would make me go nuts!