If you haven't encountered CBFTW's war-blog yet, today's as good a day as any to point it out. He's a machinegunner with the Stryker Brigade in Mosul. Soldiers who blog or journal in-theatre almost always get into trouble when folks notice them, and it gets back to their chain of command that they've been broadcasting in technical defiance of rules and regulations on the subject of operational security. CBFTW came to the attention of his superiors after his vivid description of an early August firefight made the rounds of the war side of the blogsphere. Unlike most soldier-bloggers, he managed to come to an arrangement with his superiors, in which they'd let him know if he overstepped operational security, and, apparently, he wouldn't identify localities and specific actions. He's covered that by usually talking in terms of "Today we drove around somewhere to do something."

Today's entry is a surreal story of the usual routine of infantry in Strykers in hot pursuit of insurgents with mortars, half of them immersed in various books - a survey of western philosophy, an Anne Rice novel, George Carlin, and our correspondent with Homage to Catalonia - while the driver furiously races through the mean streets of Mosul. I have to respect a soldier who would read Orwell while on patrol. That's sangfroid.