A grunt is infantry.
Yes as artillery we got to do a ton of non artillery shit. My first tour I was based out of fallujah in 05-06. We filled a few different roles. We shot artillery in fallujah and around the Al Anbar province, mainly on camp fallujah but we would take a few guns and go shoot for recon ops in other areas. We also were EOD (the bomb squad) security. We'd be outside the wire for over 24 hrs at a time only stopping to fill up with fuel. So with that we were going to the IED's. I've taken direct and indirect fire. Been blown up, by thankfully small IED's and driven over others that didn't blow up....that was always a good time. We'd also have to secure the area around IED's or weapons caches we had to blow in place. That included clearing houses and other buildings. We also did security at one of the main fob's in downtown fallujah. We mainly stood post around the compound where we took direct and indirect fire. Car bombs, snipers, suicide bombers, nodded out Iraqi military... And some of the best fucking food I've ever eaten from the market out there. One Iraqi got shot standing in line getting us food. We still got our food........and we ate it. We did a lot of ridiculous shit that deployment. Swimming in the Euphrates in the winter. Fights that knocked down tons of artillery rounds. We'd hit used lithium batteries with golf clubs at the other guns and they'd explode on their way over. We'd build these huts by the guns that'd always get blown to shit when we shot high charges. And eventually got so desensitized that we had 2 Chinese 120mm rockets land like 1 meter from our fortified hut thing and we didn't even stop playing cards.
The second tour we were attached to an infantry battalion and I never touched a howitzer. We did patrols, raids, stood post, functioned as an additional infantry company. I got to fish in Lake thar thar which was cool. It was s miserable though. Middle of the summer, in the middle of the desert, living in tents. My platoon mainly went out at night so we'd fuck off and play illum basketball where me and my buddy would call fire missions while on patrol and we'd try to get the canister or the round to land into the canals that were all over the place.
We were on ship that deployment so we also went to Hawaii, Guam, Singapore, Kuwait, Iraq, Dubai, Australia as well. Lotttttts of alcohol was drank, and lots of trouble caused.
The food in California wasn't bad, wasn't great either. On ship it was pretty good. And on the big bases in Iraq it was fucking awesome. Not so much when ur off them though.
