After I returned from the Iraq War I put myself through a Personal Security Detail (PSD) school called HD-SOC out of Nevada. Doing well in the class allowed me to make network connections which got me my first contract job in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina on September 4th of 2005 with Blackwater, barely a week after the storm hit. I spent 6 months there till the end of January 2006 doing various missions such as Bell South PSD escorts, area patrols and damage assessments, hotel room clearing, and FEMA site security.

  Immediately upon leaving New Orleans, I was hired by SOC-SMG, who owned the PSD school I had attended, and deployed to Iraq with them in February 2006 to work on the CMC munitions clearance project. Saddam Hussein had accumulated large stockpiles of various weapons and ordinances and stored them in Ammo Supply Points (ASPs). After the Iraqi Army melted away the ASPs were left unguarded and were looted by insurgents who turned the munitions into IEDs to use on our troops. The point of the contract was to take these locations over and then EOD technicians would gather up all the munitions and destroy them all before moving on to the next site.

  I conducted PSD security, area security, convoy operations, scheduling and administrative duties, and FLIR camera/Manstar radar operations. It was during this time I found myself running over an anti-tank mine buried in the middle of our ASP's border road which destroyed my vehicle and injured my Sri Lankan friend Nihal. I left SOC-SMG in October 2007 and went to work for the British.

  Armor Group, London needed American contractors to run the FLIR camera/Manstar Radar systems due to DOD security clearances, and they offered more money, so away I went. Though primarily focused on the FLIR and radar system, my duties were exactly the same as with SOC as it was the same greater contract. I worked for Armor Group till July 2008.