"My goal is to stay alive and uninjured until Christmas..."

Today my friend Eric from kung fu, currently stationed in Iraq with the Kentucky National Guard, posted the following sobering piece on his LiveJournal.

I don't mean to say this casually, but our odds of losing people in the next two months is very high. Of course no one can predict that kind of thing and I genuinely hope I am wrong. One guy said to me today "...I just don't think there is any way I can tell you how bad this place [where we're going] is...". If we had a mission up there I still probably wouldn't feel better, but we don't. Someone told me that every other National Guard unit from KY that's been to Iraq was only in country ten months. So much for precedence. :P My goal is to stay alive and uninjured until Christmas...if I can make it that long I should be alright. Every day that I wake up I know I am one day closer to my wife and family and that keeps me going. This kind of warfare typically won't involve protracted gun battles or even present the opportunity for us to return fire at our enemy...it's just bombs. One minute you're driving along talking about going home and the next you're permentely handicapped or worse. These people have been doing this for several years now and they're good at it.

Stay safe, man.