Relief in Sight

It has been a 115 degrees (46 C) or hotter every day since I returned from leave in June. I have scanned the sky every day, looking for clouds, but have seen none. None. I had thought that we’d have a summer storm or two sweep through, but no. Just an unbroken string of cloudless hot days.

The last couple of days have been a little cooler, 112 or 113 F, but last night and today I saw a harbinger of relief on the horizon; clouds. Not a lot of them, but some, and they’ve built up today so that instead of just a couple, we now have quite a few.

I’m hoping that the clouds mean cooler weather is coming.

Tent city

We are going to get to leave here one of these days, I can’t say exactly when, but it’s coming up pretty soon. As part of our transition out of here almost everyone will move into a tent city that is being set up.

I wrote about the earth moving and dust creating a few days ago, and that was part of setting up the tent city. The field was flattened and graded for run off, and then wooden floors constructed. Now the tents are being erected.

Each tent is about 20 feet by 50 feet, and made of fabric with a rubbery coating. These are brand new tents, provided by the Air Force. They are tan, and each has a fly above it. The fly is the same size as the roof, and is held about 10 inches above the roof so air can circulate and reduce solar heating. Inside the tents are black, but all have in inner white liner, again for insulation and to lighten up the inside. A divider cuts the interior in two, with a door between.

Each tent comes with an air conditioner/heater and a light set, and a large air plenum runs down the middle of the ceiling to distribute the air. All in all, pretty nice, for tents. Way better that that nasty greasy canvas stuff we used to have to use.

The tents open onto a concrete walkway, which will be nice during the muddy season. There are lots of tents, but we also have lots of soldiers to pack into them, so I guess each tent will house are least dozens of soldiers. Exactly how many per tent remains to be seen. Our stay in the tents should be short, maybe a couple of weeks.

Slug it out

Our FOB held a “smoker”, an amateur boxing match, the other night in the gym, and it was the most well-attended MWR event ever. Hundreds of spectators came to watch about 12-14 matches, two of which featured female fighters. One female match was planned in advance, but the other was just two soldiers who got inspired and decided to box. The skinny fast female won that, because she’d throw a few punches then run behind the referee.

Weights ran from a low of 145 pounds to a high of around 250 pounds, and most of the matches were pretty even. One match, a grudge match I guess, was between soldiers in the same unit. However, one fighter weighed around 200 lbs and 6 feet tall, the other 250 lbs, 6 ft 6 inches. The big guy won.

Most of the fighters just went out and flailed away, throwing a spectacular number of punches. All of them were exhausted by the last, the third, round. Round were two minutes with a one minute rest between. The referee was pretty aggressive about protecting the boxers, and he stopped over half of the matches. Our surgeon was there and checked out the pugilists as well.

The rounds started off with an air horn to start and stop rounds, but it ran dry and they ended up using a whistle. Only two helmets and two sets of boxing gloves were available, so the time between fights was a bit slow.

The guys who spend lots of time in the gym preferred to fight with their shirts off. One of the female boxers has her dad here, and he was in her corner giving her the benefit of his boxing wisdom. Another boxer, one of the heavyweights, has his wife here, and she was in his corner.

You’ve heard the saying, don’t bring a knife to a gun fight. Well that night, most people brought guns to a boxing match.

Circularity

President Bush was in Idaho last week, thanking the Idaho National Guard and other service members for serving in Iraq. As he pointed out, of all 50 states Idaho currently has the highest percentage of its Guard force on active duty. There are a few Idaho soldiers serving elsewhere, but almost all of the state's Army Guard is now in Iraq.

So, the people George Bush was thanking weren't there because they were away doing what he was thanking them for. Still, it was nice to be recognized and thanked, though a bit surreal. The President was in Idaho thanking Idaho soldiers who were in Iraq watching the President on Al-Jazeera TV.

Modern medicine

Today a couple of soldiers told me about one of their many visits to the hospital in Kirkuk. They didn’t exactly describe things as I am here, and they saw this stuff over several visits, but for the ease of telling I’m going to write it as one visit. All the facts and info came from the soldiers. I just added the narrative.

The soldiers took an Iraqi to the hospital to be treated for a gunshot wound. When they first pulled up to the hospital, they saw bloody bandages and dressings scattered around the outside. They saw a bunch of needles lying on the ground. The hospital is run down, dirty and trashy, inside and outside, and has a terrible smell.

Once inside, they saw more bloody bandages on the floor in the hallway and rooms. They laid their patient on a gurney made of plywood. The top was dirty and had fresh blood on it from another patient. The patient lay bleeding there quite a while with no medical personnel paying attention to him, but with his family standing around him, wailing and crying and adding to the chaos. The people standing around him were smoking, and the patient was having trouble breathing, but his family continued to smoke around him.

They saw a dead young girl lying on the blood stained cement floor in the hallway. No one paid much attention to her, either. Locals bring in blankets for their relatives, as the hospital has none. The locals also tear up sheets to serve as bandages, again, because of shortages.

They saw a dead patient be lifted from a bed and carted off to lie in the hallway. The bed was soaked with blood. A new patient was put on the blood soaked bed.

They took a recently arrived lieutenant with them, and he emerged white faced and shaken. The soldiers wondered what rural hospitals are like, if a city hospital had these conditions.

For better or for worse

As I exited the chow hall tonight carrying my foil covered chicken breast and broccoli, a soldier said hello. I’ve gotten to know this soldier fairly well on the deployment, and I asked him how things have been going.

“I was on emergency leave” he solemnly informed me. Emergency leave is granted when the soldier has a serious problem back home; a death in the family, a life threatening situation, or some emergency that requires the soldier’s presence. I have worked several emergency leave cases, and usually it’s a matter of the commander trying to decide if the request meets the criteria required by the regulation.

Death = approved. New baby = maybe. Post partum depression = doubtful. It’s almost always bad news. The run of the mill new baby doesn’t rate emergency leave; the ones that almost kill mom leaving her a basket case incapable of caring for the other kids, and no other family is around, can justify the leave.

I said “Uh oh, that doesn’t sound good. What happened?” As I’ve written, I think people don’t bring this stuff up unless they want you to ask about it.

“My wife burnt down the house and blew up my pickup” he replied, calmly. Immediately I thought “Man, this guy is going through a REALLY nasty divorce.” He added “And she got pregnant.” Of course, I thought that not only was she really mad at him, she was sleeping with some other guy. Even though the person might want to talk about it, you still have to be sensitive. You can’t just say “Jeezus. What a b*tch.” You never know.

I said “Well, I hope you were there when she got pregnant.” “Oh yeah” he said. I thought, this guy’s soon-to-be-ex torched his house and bombed his truck, and he gets her pregnant? “What were you thinking?” I blurted, shocked. He showed me a new wedding ring he was sporting, a beautiful Titanium and Platinum ring, three bands in one ring, grayish, lighter in the middle third. “Feel it” he offered, and handed me the ring. I hefted it and handed it back, by now really confused.

Turns out that on the Fourth of July, his wife left the garage door open. Some kids threw fireworks in the garage and got things going. A propane bottle exploded and took out his truck. The garage burned. The rest of the house was spared, but smoke damage pretty much ruined everything.

Good news; insurance will cover the damage. Bad news; with the new baby, they now need a minivan. Goodbye to the pickup days.

Bottoms up

We are supposed to drink only bottled water because the local water is suspect, and this rule is easy to comply with. Pallets of bottled water are frequently deposited anywhere that soldiers congregate. Lots of them in the living areas, many near offices and the gym, and I even saw a pallet next to the running track.

Most of the bottles are 1.5 liters, but half liter sizes are available and much sought after. If you get a cold 1.5 liter bottle (about a quart and a half), it gets warm before you can finish it. Also, because you can’t drink that much very quickly, you always end up setting it down somewhere, like everybody else, and then you can’t remember which water bottle was yours. I guess the Army buys the large bottles because they’re cheaper, but in the long run I doubt it saves much money, because of all the wasted water in the big bottles.

These pallets unfortunately just sit out in the sun and wind, so if you grab a bottle during the day it’s going to be 120 degrees or more. After not too long the bottles are dust caked, which makes them look like they’ve been sitting in the heat for a long time. No one seems to want to drink water that’s been sitting in the sun for weeks, so the dirty bottles tend to build up and hang around for a long time.

The water doesn’t seem to go bad, but who knows? Maybe that is the source of an ongoing gastrointestinal problem that plagues the FOBs. Or, maybe it is the non-potable water we have to use. Showers and bathrooms use non-potable water. It’s tough to keep water completely out of your mouth and off your lips when you shower, if you try to take a good shower. Some soldiers brush their teeth with the sink water. And, since we wash and rinse with the non-potable water, how clean can our hands be? Let all the eye rubbers, nose pickers and finger lickers be warned.

I talked to a soldier whose job it is to run a high-volume water purifier. They do what they can, but they don’t make enough water for showers and bathrooms. He told me that local well water for soldiers’ use is pumped into an open topped tank on one of the FOBs, so bugs get in the water, and birds swoop down into it. Recently they found a dead cat in the tank.

Y'all get cleaned up for dinner

A graveled field separates our chow hall from the soldier housing area, and many soldiers walk across it on the way to chow. Others, like me, stumble across it because it is nearly paved with large rocks, some as big as your head, most about fist size, smaller ones mixed in. The rocks are a way of avoiding walking through mud when it rains.

Lately the field has been prepared for future operations by grading it flat and mostly level, with some slope to account for run off. The rocks have been turned under and covered with dirt. As part of the process, Hesco barriers are being erected to protect soldiers from rocket attacks. Hesco barriers are 6 foot cubes made of strong wire mesh lined with a heavy fabric. Picture making a thick flexible fabric out of cement. The barriers are shipped folded flat. After being unfolded and emplaced, usually several in a row shoulder to shoulder, the cubes are scoop-loaded full of dirt. A quick, and I suppose relatively cheap, way to shield soldiers from indirect fire.

Soldiers continue to walk across the field as it is prepped, but risk getting dusted. A stiff breeze blows across the field, and as a scoop loader gobbles up a huge bucket of earth from the trucked-in piles, a thick cloud of dirt kicks up. This cloud rides the wind and attacks across the field, engulfing unwary soldiers and completely swallowing them, like The Blob. After disappearing briefly, the soldier reappears, usually stumbling, head down, face and eyes twisted shut, and often waving at the dust like it’s smoke in the face.

At dinner time it’s usually about 115 degrees, so even after the cloud moves on much of it is left stuck to the perspiring soldier.

Moral quandry

Our chow hall has a one way flow through it. Once you exit the back door, the only way back in is to go around, show your ID card, and reenter through the front. Tonight I walked outside, dumped my plastic plate into the trash, and headed for the parking lot. I turned back to look at something and saw a couple of soldiers walking toward me. One was carrying in his left hand a plate of food for his buddy, covered with aluminum foil, and holding the napkin and utensils on top of the plate with his right hand. He saw me turn to look at him, so he snapped out a salute. Of course, the no longer secure napkin and utensils blew off and tumbled into the dirt at his feet. I wonder if he went clear around and back through the chow hall to get clean utensils, or if he just dusted them off and didn’t say anything to his buddy. What would you do?

Dahling, you've never looked so lovely

I had to use the internet café to post a blog, not my favorite thing to do. The A/C is weak and I was perspiring before I even got fully logged on. You have only a hard wood bench to sit on, and if it’s too close, or too far away, tough, because 3 other soldiers are sitting on it as well. The person next to you is just inches away; sometimes you bump elbows.

The last time I was in the internet cafe the guy next to me was a two finger typist. He typed fairly quickly using just his two pointer fingers, but that method requires a pretty close focus on the keys, so he was glaring down at the keyboard. What he lost in typing speed he made up for in vigor. He’d stab out a few letters, then WHACK the space bar, type a bit more and WHACK the enter key. I started to feel sorry for the keyboard. I’ll bet his two pointer fingers are shorter now than when the deployment began. Because both arms were pumping up an down, the guy's upper body was rocking from side to side.

I looked at the magazine rack on the way out, and noticed that someone had doodled on a picture of a famous actress. With the goatee, I think she nowe looks like Dennis Miller. I also saw similar doodling on a cover photograph of the new Pope, but that was a week ago and the magazine was no longer there on my most recent visit. I wonder if that had anything to do with the two little devil’s horns someone drew sticking out of the Pope’s hat.

What did Dewey do?

Between where soldiers live and the chow hall, wetlands have developed. Gray water, water from sinks and showers, drains into a large holding tank. The gray water used to be pumped out and into tankers to be taken to a sewage treatment facility, or at least off the FOB. Black water from the toilets is still pumped and hauled away, but they quit trucking off the gray water because of lack of trucks, I think.

A large drainage ditch cuts across the path from the living area to the chow hall, and into this ditch the gray water is pumped. The water flows down the ditch and ends up in a holding pond, where it seeps into the ground, or evaporates. The ditch is uneven and the low spots always contain standing water because the holding tank is emptied daily. Reeds and plants are growing, and it attracts birds, so a little habitat is developing.

The gray water is laden with soap, phosphates I guess, which is nutrient for aquatic plant life, algae looking stuff. The ditch and ponds are lined with sheets of algae, the rocks thorough and over which the water flows are green and scummy, and the water smells like the drain in your kitchen sink.

People being human, they do not want to walk around the ditch so they cut across it. At two or three crossing points, large rocks form stepping stones. Since the rocks can be slick, and since the water is nasty, you tend to pay attention to where you’re stepping. Crossing the ditch on the way to lunch today, I noticed that someone has left a message written on one of the stepping stones, where it is sure to be read: “F**k off, Dewey!” Not exactly a message in a bottle, but it gets the point across.

Wrinkle free

I watched a soldier carefully fold his tee shirts in the Laundromat. His entire laundry consisted of five brown Under Armor tee shirts, the tight stretchy kind that fit sort of like spandex. He carefully laid out each shirt and smoothed out all wrinkles with the side of his hand. He tugged at the seams, pulling each straight and flat. Once he got the shirt lying as flat and wrinkle free as a piece of paper, he folded up the bottom 2-3 inches, creating a cuff around the outside of the shirt. Next he folded it into thirds, vertically, taking care to keep the sleeves unwrinkled.

As I watched, I wondered why all the effort at avoiding wrinkles; it’s a stretch shirt and any wrinkles it might have will disappear as soon as he puts it on. Once he got it neatly into thirds, he started tightly rolling it up at the neck, pressing down so hard that his fingertips whitened. When he got to the end, he tucked the folded shirt into the cuff and was left with a neat 4 inch long tee shirt sausage, suitable for inspection.

That's bloke, not mate

Right now, Iraq is a multi-culti paradise. Folks from all over go through our chow hall. Brits, Aussies, Fijians, Irish, Indian, Pakistani, Pilipino, and all kind of racial and ethnic groups. I sat a cross from a guy the other day, and overheard him talking to his friends. He sounded Australian to me, so I asked, “Are you from Australia?’ He looked at me like he was Jerry Farwell and I’d just told him I’d seen him leaving a gay bar. Stunned incredulity, with no small bit of irritation mixed in. “No, I’m British” came the clipped reply. We got past the poor start and ended up chatting about the insanity of American security measures at airports.

Stop the horror

Walking on my way to lunch today, I neared three porta-pottis stationed at the edge of the chow hall parking lot. A HMMWV skidded to a stop in front of the blue plastic latrines. A soldier standing up in the gun turret bracing himself with the grips of his .50 caliber machine gun hollered down “Stop the pooping!” A couple of seconds later a soldier burst out of the potti, clambered into the front seat of the HMMWV, and it roared off in a cloud of dust, gunner still standing tall.

****

I have been having a great deal of technical difficulties lately, which has made it difficult to keep up regular posts. Also, I was recently criticized for revealing too much sensitive information, and was threatened with having the blog shut down. This kind of chilled my creativity, so I have been struggling lately with ideas to post. I hope and plan to continue the blog, and apologize for the lack of posts recently. Please don’t give up checking in from time to time.

High Tech

I was driving back to my office today, and picked a soldier, to “Share the Ride." I know this soldier just from living and working on the same FOB for a year, although not well. He said he was going to change into his PT uniform and go back to work. I asked about what type of work he can do in PT clothes, and he said he works in supply.

He then asked me if I have one of the new space age pens. “Nope.” Well, I needed one, he assured me, and he began to root around in huge green back pack. He fished out a pen packaged in a blister wrap, handed it to me, and said that they’d just come in today. “That’s one of those space age pens NASA spent millions to invent, that will write in hot, cold, upside down, and in zero gravity. You know, what the Russians do with a pencil.”

Sure enough, the package listed those virtues, and well as having a pressurized cartridge, permanent ink, and the ability to write under water. It claims to write in temperatures from -50 to +400 degrees (we’ll see about the latter, probably any day now). It’s Nitrogen pressurized at 50 psi. I’m about half afraid to use it; think of the permanent ink stain I’ll have if that baby blows out in my pocket. It’s a cool matte black with a non-skid gripping surface, and all metal clip and exterior.

It’s the perfect companion to the “Rite in the Rain” All-Weather Field Book the soldier also gave to me. Nothing like a friendly supply sergeant. The Field Book has paper “created to shed water and enhance the written image.” Hot damn. That book is a good piece of gear, the kind of thing you wonder how you ever lived without.

The beige pages are lined horizontally but also feature dashed vertical lines, dividing the page into squares so you can make scale sketches. It has a conversion table and a seven inche ruler along the front inside cover and a 16 centimeter ruler on the back. The last few pages have helpful info, like Tactical Mission Graphics (Breach, Counterattack, Cannalize, etc.), Friendly and Enemy Unit Symbols, a sample Sector Sketch and a checklist for preparing one, a Range Card guide, steps to evaluate a casualty, effective ranges of weapons systems, and more. It comes in two colors; woodland green, and desert tan. Hope I don’t drop it. I’ll never find it again.

So, my random act of kindness in sharing the ride paid off big. That’s how life is supposed to work.