Jim Bouchard began his first week in Iraq with an unbelievable sunburn.

It came after a 24-hour road trip from Kuwait to his Army base in Iraq. He drove his Humvee straight through, from 5 a.m. to 5 a.m., without time to rest or stop.

"The first time we crossed the border, it was culture shock immediately - Third World country - I had no idea what I was getting myself into," the mechanical engineering sophomore said. "All these people on the side of the road, some throwing rocks, some trying to pull gear off the vehicle while it was moving."

Bouchard said he fell asleep in shorts from sheer exhaustion on his vehicle after he arrived at his Army base, Al Kut.

"I was so red I couldn't move," he said. "The pain lasted three days. I couldn't have comprehended what sunburn was."

As his unit's first road trip, he said the 300-mile trek was filled with inexperienced soldiers, and the convoy would slow down to 10 mph at some points.

"You're checking all these things - all these vehicles passing; you don't know what to expect," Bouchard said. "You're sitting there basically ready to pull the trigger."

Bouchard was deployed to Iraq in March 2003 - two days after coalition forces' initial invasion - for six months after serving as a specialist for the Army National Guard. The now-21-year-old was part of a squadron specializing in bridge building.

But in Iraq, Bouchard worked a host of jobs outside of his discipline, initially transporting ammunition by convoys.

"It was a lot of ammo transportation," he said. "You know there's nothing more annoying than being in the military and not doing what your (mission) is."

Bouchard described the almost commonplace guerilla attacks near Iraqi roadways. A truck in his convoy was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade, but fortunately, he said, the truck was carrying supplies for bridge building, not ammunition.

"We're carrying all this ammo, and the truck gets hit by an RPG, so the convoy comes to a halt," he said. "It's almost incapable of moving, but it wasn't a direct hit, it just blew the windows out.

"The convoy slows up drastically, so now I'm worried because we are carrying depth charges, and say an RPG takes the truck out behind me, I'm going to blow up. But since we're bumper to bumper, the vehicle in front of me gets blown up, too. That's the one time I was afraid."

He analogized the tension from sitting in a standstill in his convoy to the feeling on a roller coaster: "Your stomach's up; you don't know what to expect. You're planning for the worst and hoping for the best."

Bouchard said enduring Iraq's intense heat was one of the most uncomfortable parts of his deployment.

"At night, you're hearing all this gunfire, and you're not sure where it's coming from. You hear helicopters laying down fire from every which way," he said. "You have to picture that during this, I'm laying in my cot, either fully clothed laying in the sleeping bag - roasting - or sleeping in shorts, and not in the sleeping bag, getting eaten by bugs. You're either sweating or being eaten by bugs: no happy medium."

At his base in Al Kut, Bouchard said he woke up nearly every morning to the sounds of helicopters laying down fire.

He said there was an initial fear of death when he arrived, but after a while, it slowly subsided as he could control any trepidation he had.

"Initially, my mind went through the worst case scenario first," Bouchard said. "The initial fear of death is something you can't control, but once you get a feel for the terrain and get a grasp on what exactly is going down over there, you get over the fear and make yourself think that you're going to be OK."

His interactions with Iraqi citizens led Bouchard to categorize them into three types: those who were truly thankful for American troops, those who were nice for food and water and those who were truly thankful and then asked for food and water.

"And that's the one that gets you because you understand that they're thankful," he said. "They'd always have a kid by them. How are you going to say no?"

Bouchard said in one of his first convoys, he and his vehicle partner gave away almost all their food and water to the citizens.

"We'd give away most of our water - it was kind of like a parade," he said. "The commanders hated it.

"Right when you get over there, it's like you want to help out all these people, so you give away whole meals," he said. "We didn't eat for two days because we gave away all our food and water."

As another odd job, Bouchard transported prisoners across a river in the boats his unit used to build bridges. He recalled the 3 a.m. trips and how Marines treated the Iraqi prisoners of war.

"One group of Marines were making prisoners wet themselves because they were being so mean. And then the next night, the Marines were very civil and OK to these guys."

But with the anxiety of convoying some restless nights, Bouchard was able to highlight some of the subtleties that free soldiers from the day-to-day stresses.

"I became really good at chess," he said. "And the points when I was cold in the tents was awesome," he said about air conditioning systems installed shortly before he returned to the United States in August 2003.

Now, Bouchard is a full-time student, with the Army paying for his tuition. He said he's not going to rule out a second deployment, but he's glad he was deployed when the war started because "now there's so many guerilla attacks. (Then) you kind of knew who your enemy was."