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U.S. forces are scheduled to depart Iraq in December. But on the giant concrete barriers that still ring the constellations of bases around the country, their artistic footprint will remain.

Over the past eight years, all around Iraq, troops turned the jersey barriers and t-walls designed to protect them from insurgent attacks into concrete canvases. Sometimes the pictures they painted chased the monotony away from the landscapes of their deployment. Other times they spelled out what their service meant to them, honored a fallen friend, pined for home, or bragged about their units.

Someday, the barriers will come down, and Iraq’s thoroughfares won’t be restricted by rings of heavy concrete. That’s why the veterans who run the Graffiti of War Project are compiling images of the best painted and tagged walls from around Iraq, an “unconventional historical record of this generation’s war.” They were kind enough to share some of them with us.

–Spencer Ackerman