Man of Steel

Our soldiers qualify for various awards here that were never available before, because we are in combat. Combat Infantryman, Combat Medic, Purple Heart, bronze star, etc. Well, we all want these awards to mean something.

The word around the campfire is that a previous unit awarded a combat badge to every person on the FOB when a rocket landed in the FOB. Folks asleep and miles from the impact, folks completely unaware of the attack, and folks within sight of the crater, all got the combat award. Which doesn’t seem right. Seems to cheapen it.

So, our parent unit apparently has decided to tighten the screws. I think part of this is that we are National Guard, so we want to make sure that we really earn the award. The old inferiority complex kicking in.

So now we have absurd results. A combat unit commander said the other day, “Awards are the most difficult thing we do in theatre.” A senior staff officer replied, with feeling, “More difficult than planning an air assault.”

Our soldiers and their leaders have had to do and redo the applications 3 and 4 times, and sometimes more. In some cases, the application got kicked back for insufficient justification, to be redone. Well, the war hasn’t doesn’t wait, so while Nero fiddles, the soldiers have continued to do missions, and have continued to get shot at and IED’d. We’ve got soldiers who have been under fire 3, 4, 5, 6 , 7 times, but still fighting for the first award.

I met with a group of these soldiers the other day. In group of 20, per show of hands, the least number of IEDs one of them had endured was 2, and the most was 4. Numerous direct fire attacks added to the total. I rode out and back in their convoy and before leaving looked at their HUMMVs. Bullet holes through the steel bumpers, bullet strikes - gray and black comets stitched across the doors – spidered bullet impacts in the glass, rubber molding blasted off, all testified to the action they’d seen.

I have made this particular trip many times, and usually feel pretty complacent. However, this time I was escorted by the guys who’d raised their hands; they weren’t complacent. In fact, they were dang skittish. They made me nervous. The driver was incredibly intense; an Indy 500 driver could not have concentrated more on the road nor gripped the steering wheel harder than the kid who was driving us. His boss scanned the road, every vehicle, every clump of grass, every dead dog carcass, every plastic bag, everything within explosion range, ordering the driver to swerve one way or ther other. He was so tense I expect that a bullet would have bounced off of him.

Still, not good enough for the REMF sitting in Division HQ to approve the combat award.

More to eat than I bargained for

I was eating dinner the other evening, when a soldier asked to join me for a bit. We were having Asian-Pacific American night, and I was eating tandoori chicken, curried potatoes, and fried cauliflower. He sat down and explained that he is a mechanic, which requires him to work on HMMWVs, including suspension and other parts underneath the vehicle.

He asked about getting a wash rack up and running, or at least a power washer, so they can spray off the bottom of the Hummers. See, the issue is that the sewers don’t work so well in town, and our soldiers often drive through puddles of raw sewage. “It’s pretty nasty under there, sir” he said. With that image in my head I looked down at my fried cauliflower and sighed.

He said the some of the guys in his section have pink eye, and they think it might be from contact with the nastiness. While he was talking, he was kind of rubbing his hands, with his forearms resting on the table. Typical mechanic’s hands, rough and infused with black around his fingernails and in the wrinkles around his joints. He pointed to the nicks, cuts and scabs on his hand, and said “We can’t wear gloves all the time, and we worry about getting that stuff in an open cut.”

I assured him he had my sympathies. I worked my way through high school as a mechanic, and recall plenty of stuff dropping down into my hair, eyes, and on my lips, so I was feeling his pain. I told him that I would check into it and work the issue, and let him know what I find out.

This pleased him. He stood up with a relieved smile, said “Thanks, sir” and stuck out his hand. I looked at it for a second, then shook it. Glad I wasn’t eating finger food.

Technical difficulities

I haven’t been posting much lately, and here come la excuses.

My office internet access has been down el mucho lately. This then kicks me over to the Internet Café to take care of business. Much of my work requires email communication, so I use my allotted half hour of IC, Internet Café, time for work, leaving none for my personal gratification. Or, almost none. I do slip in the occasional email to my sweetheart.

Also, I undertook (a lawyer’s word, like underwent) a project that has overwhelmed me. This project has pretty much Hoovered up all my time in May, and I have a May 31 deadline. So, when I do get time I try to use it to do my job and help soldiers, rather than blog posting.

And, the BIG PROJECT has required travel. I spent last night on another FOB, which took me out of my comfort zone, and out of my ability to get the usual stuff done.

Interesting experience stumbling around a dark FOB that I’m unfamiliar with, worrying about where I’m going to bunk, wondering how I’m going to get through the night without the mosquito net that I forgot to take, wondering about malaria and Leishmaniasis, sleeping in an absent Chaplain’s thin and squeaky bunk, being parched but reluctant to drink water due to not wanting to wake my one-night-stand roommate by going to the bathroom at O Dark Thirty, and dreaming of missing my ride out of there in the early AM.

So, let’s just say that events have conspired to interfere with my blogging. “I will work harder.” (A nickel to the person who recognizes the reference.)

I went to post this yesterday, but, lo and behold, the network had crashed, delaying this post by about 12 hours.

Bleah!

Today I was drinking some of the good coffee that the generous folks back home sent me. I like coffee strong, and dark. Once in a while the filter collapses and some grounds end up in the coffee. No big deal.

I got to the bottom of my cup, and drained the last bit, and felt a good sized coffee ground on my tongue. "Dang it", I thought. I rolled the ground up on my tongue and spit it out, and noticed to my disgust that the ground had wings and legs. A small fly had drowned in the coffee, and sunk to the bottom, where it laid in surprise for me. As if flys aren't annoying enough just buzzing around your head.

Guitars, bunkers and depressing music

Rocketman struck again the other night. I was sitting in my office typing an email when a BANG rattled the windows and sent my heart to racing. After a couple of minutes, I hadn’t heard the alarm, so assumed it was outgoing artillery. About the time my heart slowed back down, the “Alarm RED” voice blared at us to seek shelter.

My office is more or less sheltered, so I stayed and worked for a while. Before too long I heard the all clear signal, so I closed up and headed for my room. As I rounded the corner by my CHU, I heard guitar music. I listened, and determined the sound was coming from a concrete shelters.

One of our captains had brought his guitar to pass time while waiting for the all clear signal, and just stayed on a bit. He was sitting alone in the dark, on a bed someone had discarded in the bunker, holding his acoustic guitar, with his case and rifle propped against the bed next to him.

The bunkers are U-shaped concrete placed upside down, about 6 feet tall and 10 feet or so long, open on the ends. Usually several are placed together to form longer bunkers. Inside are just the concrete walls and ceiling, the dirt floor, and sometimes a few chairs or the occasional bed.

I asked the captain what he was doing, and he said “Just practicing. The acoustics in here are great.” He shut off the red-lensed flashlight he had aimed at a music book, and started to strum his guitar. A little star light reflecting into the end of the bunker took the edge off the dark, but I still couldn’t see the captain’s face.

We chatted a moment, and then he played and sang “Stairway to Heaven.” He sings better than me, which isn’t saying much, but his playing was excellent, despite his apologies that he could do better if he had some light. He played “Aubrey” and “Diary”, both by Bread. If you know the songs, you know “Aubrey” is about unrequited love, and “Diary” is about a guy who reads his sweetheart’s diary and finds that she loves another. After finishing singing the songs, the captain chuckled and said, “Boy, the guy who wrote those was depressed, wasn’t he?” After a few more songs, AC/DC, Bon Jovi, a couple of others, he packed away his guitar and we left the bunker.

Anticipation doesn't always lead to action

Now that it is warming up, the vegetation is drying out. During spring, February through April, it was very green here. Grasses and weeds sprouted everywhere. There are large unused areas of the FOB which are just left fallow, and were carpeted with tall, green grass. There are also many varieties of wild flowers, or blooming weeds.

Some look like golf ball sized tulips, right red. Some have tiny yellow flowers, or tiny white flowers. I ran down a long road that reminded me of the field of poppies in the Wizard of Oz, acres and acres of densely growing yellow blossoms.

There are also some prickly weeds. One impressive weed grows about a foot tall, and about that big around. It is a light mint green, with yellow spines on the end of its leaves. The yellow really stands out against the green, and I wonder why. What natural selection force was at work to make the visible spines good for reproduction. I’m guessing that sheep can’t eat it, since sheep have been here for about 10,000 years and over that length of time a plant could adapt.

Unless, of course, you live in Kansas and don’t buy the whole evolution argument. In which case, I guess, we attribute the vibrant yellow spines to the work of a creator. Although why a creator would purposely create something as obnoxious as these nasty thorns, or mosquitoes or flies for that matter, is beyond me. Surely an intelligent designer could design an organism that fills the ecological niche as well but isn’t so unpleasant to encounter. Wait, there I go again, because isn’t ecology just a hand maiden to evolution?

Anyway, back to the point. All that wonderful green has now turned brown, and folks living in arid areas know what that means. Apparently some time back, when a previous unit was here, one from a humid area, the dry grass lit on fire and it burned into the ammo holding area and caused an explosion. Took them by surprise, and blew out lots of windows. I guess they didn’t anticipate the combustible nature of fields of tall dry grass. Admittedly, we’re not out there mowing, either. Like Mark Twain said about weather, everyone complains about it but nobody does much about it.

Rocket attack

I was sitting in my office on the FOB the other day, a little after noon, and I heard a rocket come sizzling overhead. It struck with a bang that shook my building. Daylight rocket attacks are pretty rare, so I was kind of surprised.

I looked outside and saw a pillar of dust about 50-60 feet high, slowly drifting. Looking around, I saw several soldiers looking around, trying to locate the point of impact. The dust pointed us in the right direction, to a small crater in a dirt road about 100 yards from my office and about 75 feet from where I sleep.

A few of us walked toward the crater, which was surrounded by a debris field of dirt clods and rocks. A soldier was standing over the crater, acting official, apparently trying to mark the crater and preserve the site. I saw the crater and chucks of the rocket and engine lying nearby. None of the soldiers were wearing body armor, but we were all wearing our helmets. About this time the Big Voice announced “Alarm Red,” meaning we are supposed to seek shelter.

However, by then it had been several minutes since impact, and no more rockets had arrived, so we weren’t feeling all that threatened. I took a couple of pictures, and about then the Air Force came hustling up in several armored Hummers. They jumped out and started bustling around, assessing the situation and doing a crater analysis to determine the type and origin of the rocket.

The Air Force guys were all wearing helmets and body armor, which they normally don’t do. One of them, the one who was moving the fastest, running from crater to debris to Hummer and back, and looking kind of freaked out, started yelling “Take cover, take cover!” I’m sure he thought we were idiots. Most of us moved off, and before long the all clear was given.

My wife; I think I'll keep her

“Well,” a soldier said to me yesterday, “I miss my wife.” Then he smiled, looking pleased and surprised. “Did you tell her that” I asked? “Yes I did”, he replied with a wider smile and a little chuckle.

Although this rotation can be hard on marriages and relationships, it can also work the other way, as it has with this soldier. He and his wife have had rocky patches over 10 years of marriage, including one short period when he moved out of the house. But now being apart from her, he has come to realize how important to him she is.

Soldiers here need, and usually get, support from folks back home, and especially from the significant other. It’s difficult here to get many of the things we are used to having, even simple things like batteries or coffee. Our environment is not austere, but it is not particularly comfortable, so little comforts really make a difference.

When someone at home thinks of you, and helps by sending needs and comfort items, it feels good. I think it is often easy to take your partner and the things he or she does for you for granted. Being so far from home gives a distance that illustrates how much a person relies on a partner.

Stressing a relationship as this deployment does may cause weak ones to fall apart, but it can also show how strong a relationship is, even if one or both partners didn’t realize it.

Back to the laundrymat

I wrote the previous post while waiting for my clothes to dry. After writing it, I returned to get the dry clothes, and the soldier was still there, finishing cleaning his pistol.

I asked him how his rifle got so muddy. He said that his unit did an air assault to do a cordon and search, and they had to cross a river between the landing zone and the objective. That is, they took helicopters, flew to the area, dismounted, and encircled the objective on foot to keep anyone from getting out. They then conducted the search, and apparently rounded up one of the guys they were looking for. I said, "Well, you must have had pretty good intel." He said, unimpressed, "Well, we didn't the get the other guy we were looking for so it can't be that good."

Having noticed that he only wiped off the rifle, and didn't clean the firing pin or other of the parts that get dirty when the rifle is fired, I said "You didn't get any shots off, I guess." "No sir, we're not in a shooting war." He sounded kind of disapppointed.

Laundrymat

I went to the laundry facility today, to do "the whites." Using the kbr bulk laundry, they are turning into the grays, so I tried hot water and lots of bleach. That seemed to help, but not as much as I was hoping for.

What do you do in a laundrymat? In the civilian ones I've gone to, like the one in Alexandria Louisiana when we were there, I saw folks watching TV (jeez; wasting time while you're wasting time), reading, playing cards or video games, eating, or just watching other people.

Today, I sat on a bench to read "The Stars and Stripes", and after a little while a young soldier came over to me and asked if I was using the table in front of me. "Nope. It's all yours." "Thanks, sir". He dragged the table off a little, I guess to get some space, and set down two brown towels. Next to them he laid his M4 rifle. I noticed it had mud on it, and briefly considered saying something about it to him.

He spread out one of the towels, and commenced to strip down his rifle, laying the parts in a neat order. He then opened up the other towel, and rolled out cleaning supplies; Q-tips, cotton patches, a couple of rags, toothbrush, wire brushes, and a tiny bottle of oil. He wiped the parts clean, dusted the crevices, and put a little oil on eveything. While he was reassembling it, his pistol slipped from his holster and clattered to the ground. Before he looked down at it, he quickly looked up and around to see if anyone noticed him drop his pistol. He saw me looking at him, and he got a sheepish smile, then picked up the pistol, unsnapped it from his lanyard, and laid it on the table to be cleaned. I guess the 10 second rule doesn't apply to weapons.