Brian the Beard

The last few weeks have been pretty boring. Not too many new or interesting things to report. There was one interesting event that took place the whole time. Over the years I have acquired quite a few nick names such as BJB, big brian, bucky, b, bbux, krie, and a few others I can’t remember. I get to add to those ‘Brian the Beard’ and ‘Haji Terrorist’. The last one isn’t so much a nickname as more of a description that was given of me. Those who have seen pictures of me with a big beard can understand why someone might say I look like a terrorist.
It all started when I found out that my company was going to start maintaining an additional electronic system in Ramadi. Part of this system is on the top of this really big water tower. In order to get familiar with the system I asked one of the Marines to take me up and show how every thing worked. Another marine, Cable, joined in on the excursion and we headed up the water tower. The view from the top was not that impressive. It was late and everything was dark and dusty. Cable brought a camera and took some pictures of the view. This turned out to be a bad idea.

Shortly after we got to the top a vehicle pulled in at the bottom and a guy with a walkie talkie got out. We assumed that it was some kind of security for the water tower or something and would go explain what we were doing when we were done. Shortly after that a Humvee pulled in and a whole bunch of fully armed and armored soldies got out. It looked like our situation was more precarious then we thought. Cable decided to climb down and see what the story was. Once we were done we climbed down only to find that everyone was gone including Cable. We joked that Cable had gotten arrested and taken in. This was in fact not far from the truth.

Later in the evening Cable stopped by my room. Come to find out, they thought that I was a ‘Haji Terrorist’ and that the two marines were going to throw me off of the tower. That and we weren’t allowed to be taking pictures of the base from up there. They took Cable to the base police station and made him delete all the pictures he took off his camera. When the story of what happened got around they came up with the name ‘Brian the Beard’ to commemorate the incident.