I guess I should take a moment to dispense with some of the nitty-gritty about how things are organized around here. Some terminology and a time-line may help as well.

We flew over and into Kuwait first. From the air, Kuwait is a very beautiful city. (It is a city within a country by the same name.) It looks just like Miami does from the air. It has palm trees and brick homes. Tall blade like bushes and grass, as well as nicely manicured lawns. I hear that they irrigate the crap out of the place so that all the vegetation will grow.

Then a very unusual site occurs. Just as you fly over the edge (and I mean “edge”) of the city, it abruptly stops. The grass and everything! It doesn’t taper, or become increasingly sparse. The grass/greenery doesn’t slowly become more sporadic. It just stops! A perfectly demarcated line exists between the very last blades of grass a the vast desert that lies beyond. You could actually step off the city!

Another way to describe it is if you brought a few hundred strips of Sod to the beach and laid them down. Then you built a little scale model city on your freshly laid sod. The remaining beach around the little blanket of grass that you laid down would be the rest of the country and the strips of Sod would be the city. That’s how it looks.

Wouldn’t you know, we would be living out in the desert part. Figures.

We landed at the only Kuwaiti airport, were transferred to busses and then drove in the desert for about an hour. We drove alongside the main road, instead of on it. We did this because the flat desert was a smoother ride than the pothole ridden swath of pavement that guided us there.

What we arrived at was a two-three square mile arrangement of tents called Camp New York. In the same general area were other such camps. (camp Virgina, Texas, New Jersey etc..) These camps were the main staging ground for the first invasion, so they were fairly well established.

Established…as far as tents. What they called the PX, Burger King, Nathan’s Hot Dogs, and Coffee Shop, were more like trailers with inexcusably long lines of soldiers waiting for service.

I guess if you can’t tough it out and eat in the chow hall, an hour or two wait for Burger King is worth it.

In truth, the chow hall is rather nice. It’s on par with a Golden Corral or Morrison’s Cafeteria.

The other day I commented that there was no melted butter to go with my crab legs. Can you believe it? Crab legs without butter. I was very upset. The Sergeant sitting next to me replied, “War is Hell, ain’t it Doc.”

I guess that put me in my place.

I’m not complaining about the food anymore.

Even the MRE (Meals Ready to Eat) aren’t bad.

To continue,

We spent about a week in camp New York, living in those tents, trekking about a mile to the dinning facility three times a day. I gained some weight.

The time was spent, waiting for our equipment to be downloaded off the boats that came across the Atlantic. I wasn’t really involved in the download. Instead I wandered around a bit. Not much to see, but tents. If you’ve seen one tent, you’ve seen them all.

We slept on cots. The cots aren’t bad. The sleeping bags are actually fantastic! They are a three part system. The inner bag is down. It is “mummy” style. It provides considerable warmth. It can be encased by the second layer, which is also down, just more of it. The two get pretty hot together. A third water-proof layer can be added. The water-proof part does not breath however, so now one is really cooking. On the ride up to Baghdad, I had to sleep outside on the hood of my HMMVEE (Hum-Vee). The temperature dropped to well below freezing that night, but I did just fine.

All Bundled Up

Eventually, all our equipment was unloaded and accounted for. Except for the already mentioned injury to the local, no one else was hurt.

Everyone (and I mean everyone) did develop a terrible cough from all the sand and dust in the air. It was a monumental achievement in itself, for me to convince people that they didn’t need antibiotics. We all got better in a couple of weeks, after we acclimated. There was one non-believer in the group however.

So, we started off.

Our battalion left in two convoys, or serials, for Baghdad. The plan was to make the trip in three days. Day one would get us only to the border of Kuwait and Iraq. Day two would get us to a base half-way to Baghdad, and day three would get us here.

It was about this time, I started to notice a few remarkable things that Saddam did for his country (and Kuwait). It seems blasphemous to even utter the possibility that some good things would take place under an evil dictator, but structure despite its intent, can still be a positive thing.

This structure that I am talking about, began with the roads.

Until we started on our road march to Iraq, the Kuwaiti roads were inexcusable. For an oil rich country, it still seems each-for-his-own and no-one for all. But then, in the middle of nothing, a beautiful strip of custom carpeted asphalt emerged. It was the road that Saddam paved to roll his tanks into Kuwait. Nice road…no cops.

Of course speeding wasn’t an option. We drove at about 30 mph. Which turned out to be too damn fast anyway.

Suffice it to say, if you put two-hundred eighteen year old boys behind the wheels of very big trucks, one of them is going to rear end someone. Even at 30 mph.

Then, just when you think you have accounted for all of the bad drivers. Some-one goes and builds a better one.

The best one of them all, didn’t just follow too close, and drive too fast, and react to slow, but he swerved.

Now actually, the swerving wasn’t really a bad choice, given the fact that he was following behind a fully loaded fuel tanker! I’d have done the same thing. Except that I wouldn’t have been tailgating the tanker in the first place.

He swerved, the laws of physics took a vote and decided to continue to enforce themselves, and the rest is history. Here is a picture of what happens when 5 tons of steel, moving at 30mph tries to turn 90 degrees off a road-bed 1 foot above the dirt in sits upon.

The driver, lacking in all common sense that day, was also not wearing his seatbelt. Thus, figuring he had a clear trajectory, had ample opportunity to vault out of the open gun turret and land some 15 to 20 feet farther out into the desert. He wasn’t badly hurt, but certainly felt stupid.

The gunner, fortunately, was not at his post. He was in the passenger seat taking a brake. Good timing huh? The .50 cal machine gun and rotating part of the turret were also went gallivanting about the desert, but had the courtesy not to land on top of the driver as he was leaving the vehicle.

Well, being as equipped as we are. The tow truck and crane weren’t far behind, and we had the whole mess cleaned up in about three hours. (Note to self: it’s always a good thing to travel with a personal tow truck and crane)

We started off again. This time at 10 mph. I needn’t comment any further on how awful the last 50 miles of our journey were at that pace, but at least no other morons were given any unnecessary opportunities to do their thing.

So now we’ve made it to Iraq. We are living in a Forward Operating Base (FOB). Each FOB has a code name. The original code names were pretty cool. Things like Assassin’s Palace, Hell Bringers, Temple of Doom. The Department of Defense (DOD) however, decided that now, since our mission is a peace keeping one, we need to have more inspirational names. We are therefore living on FOB Prosperity. There are also FOBs Union, Freedom, Honor, Independence etc.. How nice. Anyone want a hug?

Our FOB is one of Saddam’s old palaces. It was his second or third nicest palace. “Was” being the key term here.

What once might have been a really lovely palace, is now a big, ugly, poorly constructed, cold, concrete structure recently redecorated by the destructive effects of four to five J-DAM missiles launched from a few F-16 fighter planes last year.

The palace and most of the grounds have been looted of everything that a human could possibly rip off or up. The furniture and paintings are gone. The toilets and fixtures are gone. The lighting, including chandeliers, are gone. The wiring has been ripped from the walls! The doors are gone. Anything wood is gone. Its just a shell of a poorly poured concrete structure, with about 50%-60% of its marble facing still stuck on. The once beautiful marble floor has been re-carved by the now hundreds of metal objects that US soldiers have slid along its surface.

I took one look at the crap construction hidden behind those precious marble slab facings, and decided that I would reside in the guard tower. At least the tower wasn’t hit by a two hundred ton war-head. There’s a chance it might survive the next year. I worry about that palace.

The engineering corps says that they checked the place out, and it’s structurally sound. I hear that they have some big ex-football player named Bubba that jumped up and down a few times on each floor to verify its integrity. Still I’m not buying it.

(Note to self: Lowest bidder or not, Iraqi’s are not building my next house)

There is one downside to my choice of residence. Please don’t tell my mom, but…the tower I am in, sits along the north wall adjacent to the red zone. There are a few dozen bullet holes in the wall opposite my window. I figure as long as I limbo under the trajectory the bullets took through my room, I’m safe.

Enough for now. Be back later.

Iraq Home Page