We just got back on base. For a while there, I didn’t think that would happen. We got ambushed yesterday, except it was a twenty-one hour ambush. We made CNN, except of course they got it wrong. They said that the Ukrainians have left my city. This is not true. We had to evacuate the compound. If you see first a clip of a guy in a white shirt running carrying an AK next to a railing, that’s my city. That bridge behind them? The insurgents mined it.

At about four AM the other day, the Ukrainian force rode out the gate and took back the town. At nine thirty we rolled out, arrived at our usual destination, and by ten thirty, we were under fire. We were in a compound of five or six major buildings, large enough to be hotels, not quite large enough to be palaces, that had once been owned by Chemical Ali.