Trailer Park

With my arrival in the International Zone, the tendency of the quality of quarters to degrade with my arrival at a new location finally reversed. The IZ is surrounded by numerous residential camps with such inviting names as “The Palms,” “Riverside,” “Poolside,” and “Embassy Suites.” Despite such creative names, all are trailer parks. Still, such trailers are the best quarters in theater.

The day following my arrival, I was assigned a wet trailer, that is, a trailer with an attached bathroom with true running water in the Poolside camp. Such trailers usually house four military or two civilian occupants who share the central bathroom. My side of the trailer measures only 10 x 12 feet, small by terrestrial standards, especially with a roommate, but luxurious and spacious by shipboard standards. The living space features a refrigerator, TV and air conditioner/heater.

After arriving, I quickly received word that my Navy colleagues assigned to nearby Camp Victory (from which I convoyed on the Rhino the night after I arrived at Baghdad) all were assigned dry trailers. Showers and toilets (wet crappers, I’m told) usually range from between 50 to 100 feet away. This makes the four AM visit to the bathroom much more complicated, requiring donning some type of outerwear and some kind of foot ware. In the winter, Camp Victory get notoriously muddy with rain. You get the picture.

Psychologically, it was gratifying to finally unpack with the knowledge I wouldn’t be repacking within a few days and hauling all that gear around. One sea bag and my suitcase were completely unpacked with clothes and uniforms. Two sea bags remain packed with gear I was assigned back at Ft. Jackson and that I won’t be using while assigned to the IZ (e.g., ruck sack, sleeping bag, rain gear, chemical gear, etc.).

When I arrived, I had a roommate, a laconic Army major of the Engineer Corps, who volunteered to come out of retirement for a one year assignment. He wasn’t very talkative and appeared hooked on Soduku puzzles. One night, I went to sleep as he sat on his bed working on a puzzle book and awoke the next morning with him in the same position. He had, of course, gone to sleep. He informed me he was getting ready to go home within the next few days. And after a few, he was packed and gone. It’s been wonderful to have my own room now for two weeks; the IZ is so cramped whenever one goes that it’s gratifying to have a space of my own. I hope it will go on although I imagine I’ll get another roommate eventually.

The Chicken Dance

There’s not much to do here but work. KBR folks here run a great Morale, Welfare, and Recreation (MWR) program that includes Karaoke Nights, Movie Nights, Salsa and Swing Dance Lessons but these activities tend to be frequented more by people with less demanding work schedules than those of us in the military. Still, every night, at 2100 sharp, the North Ballroom formally ends the day’s (and night’s) work with the Chicken Dance. When first described to me, I was sure I didn’t understand. “You know, the ‘Chicken Dance’? they said, “That song they play at baseball games and weddings?” I explained that, having grown up in southern California, I was unfamiliar with it. But, okay, so they play the Chicken Dance. “Oh, we throw things back and forth at each other.” “Like what?” I asked. “Nerf balls, Frisbees, decks of cards, whatever lands in our office area.” This is possible because our office pens don’t have ceilings. Like the ballroom’s original function, no one quite knew who originally started this peculiar tradition or, for that matter, who actually played the music. The wooden office pens prevent anyone from seeing over to the next area.

As it got closer to 2100, one of my co-workers produced a Turkey Call. I heard it before seeing it. This seemed to spark whistling and general anticipation from other denizens of the ballroom. Soon, quite close by, I heard the strains of the immediately recognizable Chicken Dance song. Some people sang along wordlessly, others clapped during the chorus. And, of course, all manners of nerf-like objects started flying through the air. My co-workers produced a cardboard box and passed around tennis balls and other sundry missiles which we launched to other office areas.

At one point, a somewhat substantial ball, a little smaller than a volleyball, bounced close to me. I though, hey, why not launch it like a volleyball? I lobbed it into the air and hit it in an overhand serve which careened just below the wall of our office pen and into a horizontally mounted fluorescent bulb assembly. The force of the collision dismounted the bulb and spun it onto the lip of the office wall. It hovered there momentarily and then fell over into the next office pen. This, of course, elicited great whoops and laughing from my co-workers who were happy to see the new guy commit such a faux paux.

After the song ended, I went to the next office pen and found, to my relief, that the occupants had left earlier in the evening. The bulb however had shattered on impact with a desk that housed their coffee maker and coffee-related materials. Another co-worker and I grabbed a broom and dust bin and we cleaned everything up. As far as I know, they are none the wiser. Thankfully, my actions did not result in any new nicknames around the office. The next night, the Army colonel who runs our office was told about my gaffe. He looked at me sternly and said, “Have your wife teach your kid sports.”

The Emerald City

I was awoken to the sound of a Navy Captain, a very senior officer equivalent to an Army Colonel, saying my name. This is not the way one wants to wake up. Given my penchant of sleeping with a watch cap covering my eyes, a habit I developed during my stay in the open bay barracks at Fort Jackson in order to get to sleep early, I had slept until nearly 1130. Having such a senior officer come find me was both disturbing and shocking; I bolted out of my sleeping bag and groggily went through introductions. It turns out he worked in the office I was assigned to and was the only one around that morning to come collect me (the Good Samaritan Navy Commander from the previous night had left a message that I was in the transient tents).

I quickly dressed and accompanied him to the DFAC for lunch. In the daylight, the Palace looked just as impressive only now there was a multitude of people, some in uniform – some in civilian clothes, walking to and fro. Overhead, US Army Blackhawk helicopters flew into and out of nearby Landing Zone (LZ) Washington, located on the other side of the Palace compound. Gators, the same type of armored golf cart I had rode in the previous night, rode past us. Heavily armed, up-armored HUMVEEs, which either had arrived or were preparing to leave on convoys, also were visible parked in recesses along the road and near the palace.

During lunch at the DFAC, the captain told me there were really only three types of days: Mondays through Thursdays and Saturdays were the same; the work day began at 0730 and ended at 2100 with a multi-hour break for lunch and individual physical training (PT). On Fridays, the usual morning briefings took place at 0900 so we could come in late. On Sundays, there was no update briefing and we didn’t start work until 1300. The “Groundhog Day” syndrome took only one week to come into effect, he told me. Cool.

After lunch, we walked the entire lengthwise part of the Palace, starting at the south end, to our office space located in the North Ballroom area of the building. Along the way, we passed the central portion of the building where a 24 hour Green Beens Coffee shop (the most important service in the building) and an Internet Cafe resided in an ornate lobby or ballroom. Along the same hallway was the barber shop and a diminutive version of the DFAC, where one could get sandwiches and light fare. Everywhere, tacky chandeliers hung from the ceilings and inlaid marble floors and ceilings stretched before us. Saddam’s decoration tastes ran squarely in the gaudy category. Perhaps it looked better before the coalition took over. Probably not, I decided.

The building, for now, is the US Embassy and is run by the Department of State. However, the military has many people here running Multinational Force Iraq. A new embassy building is in the works down the street but, as of the time of my arrival, no concrete plans exist for its opening.

We arrived finally at the opposite end of the palace – the North Ballroom. Crossing through another check point we entered the ballroom proper. The floor is white marble with colossal green columns running the length of either side of the room. Each green marble column features a gold colored statue, adorned in a niche, presumably representing some achievement of the Iraqi state under Saddam. The statues have a vaguely socialist realism look to them and could have been designed by some Soviet-era artist: men and women in heroic agricultural and revolutionary poses. The ceiling is equally ornate: a white roof crossed with diagonal beams inlaid with turquoise and gold motifs. Later, someone pointed out to me that the flowery designs in the beams were actually the Arabic script for “SH” Saddam’s initials.

The “offices” here were constructed by building wooden office pens on either side of a long central hallway. Opening a wooden office door leads, usually, into a central office bull pen with smaller adjoining smaller offices for more senior officers. The result is a desk with a view of either end of the ballroom and those gaudy golden statues looking down on you. No one is quite sure what sorts of functions were held here. Likely, grand Iraqi state functions. Ironic now that the US military and Department of State use it for more mundane purposes.

Entering here was not unlike Dorothy’s entrance into the grand chamber of Oz; the color schemes are almost the same although, of course, there was no giant floating head dominating the room. Some people call the Green Zone “The Emerald City,” even though its official moniker is the International Zone, or IZ. Aside from the marble columns, nothing here is green; everything is expressed in shades of brown. Even the palm trees look predominantly brown due to the fine sand dust that permeates everything here.

The Rhino

The IZ is connected to BIAP via a 12 kilometer stretch of highway called Route Irish (during the initial invasion, Main Supply Routes – MSRs – were named after college and professional football team mascots). Initially unprotected, Route Irish was notoriously referred to as, “the most dangerous road in Iraq,” and was the site of many Improvised Explosive Device (IED) attacks on coalition forces. Nowadays, it’s much safer but everything here is relative. Rhinos, a uniquely designed armored bus, regularly convoy, between BIAP and the IZ day and night on changing schedules. For one journalist’s experience on the Rhino, read this article.

We loaded up our gear (recall, three heavy sea bags, suitcases, back packs, weapons, etc.) on a semi truck (also armored) and then boarded our assigned rhino. Everyone who rides the Rhino is required to don full IBA and helmet. Most people looked comfortable boarding a vehicle that looked liked it belonged to the climactic scene of “The Road Warrior.”

We left Camp Stryker in the middle of the night and the convoy made its way along Route Irish. I got a window seat and surreptitiously inserted a loaded magazine into my pistol. Not that having a nearly loaded weapon would make any measurable difference if we were attacked; it just made me feel better. (One would think that, as a member of the military, I would be allowed to carry a loaded weapon in a combat zone but this, paradoxically, is not the case.) There was not much to see during the drive and twists and turns made the route seem ominous that it was.
After about twenty minutes, we began passing through heavily defended check points signaling our arrival at the Green Zone. Eventually we stopped in a lit compound/parking lot and were told to de-board. We formed a human chain and unloaded everything off the armored semi and laid it out along painted lines in the parking lot and were told to stand aside. I looked up for the first time to see the ruins of some impressive building in the near distance, I was told, the former headquarters of the Republican Guard. Was this one of the buildings I had seen blown up live on CNN back during the so-called “Shock and Awe” campaign of 2003? Now here I was.

As I gawked, Dog handlers appeared and their charges sniffed our luggage for contraband. I hoped the dogs weren’t checking for explosives as I knew there was ammunition residue all over my sea bags (and on me). After they were done, we were told to collect our luggage.

There were about three of our group still traveling together. A navy commander met us in the parking lot and told us he would be helping us get settled. It was well past 0230. Thankfully, he had a small 4 x 4 ‘gator’ – a sort of armored golf cart. We piled way too many sea bags and suitcases into its small bed and left the Rhino staging area. We drove, slowly, through the deserted streets. It was only then that I began looking around and saw the palace.

Saddam’s Republican Palace, which functioned as his main seat of power and was untouched during the war because many thought it had important documentation and records housed inside, dominates the central part of the IZ. It was all the more impressive as we drove along side it, lit up by strong sodium lights. Now it is home to the US Embassy and much of the headquarters for Multinational Force-Iraq (MNF-I), the organization I would be augmenting. The building was designed to be impressive; it’s made of sand-colored limestone, and features carved eagle heads and winged gryphons, calling to mind some giant Egyptian or Babylonian temple. The gaudy, Stalinesque, “Saddam the Warrior” bronze head statues, which adorned roof platforms on either end of the palace were removed shortly after the war.

Our guide, took us to the KBR Billeting Trailer, manned 24 x 7, and arranged temporary housing for us. I ended up in a colossal transient tent, more like a small building, adjacent to the south end of the Palace. I dumped my gear, unrolled my sleeping bag on an empty bed and fell asleep. It was 0430.

Getting to the International Zone

Well, before I actually got my actual game on, I had to get to the place where I will work: the International Zone which lies around twelve kilometers east of BIAP/Camp Victory. For the majority of us who arrived today, ultimate work assignments were in Camp Victory proper. Some were met by representatives of the various offices and activities they where here to work for and were shuttled off in small vehicles. For those of us going to the International Zone we were informed we had to board a shuttle to nearby Camp Stryker and arrange further transportation to the IZ. A quick review of articles in the media about getting around Iraq shows a constant theme: hurry up and wait. When our small group arrived at Camp Stryker at approximately 0830, we were informed the Rhino shuttle, a convoy armored buses wouldn’t leave until the early hours of the next day. Ironic that the last twelve or so kilometers would take nearly twenty hours to cross. With lots of time to kill, our group first acquired space in a transient tent to relax and catch up on some sleep. Later, we ventured into the camp and stopped in the food court area since we missed breakfast at the DFAC. After the early lunch I dozed in the tent for three hours to catch up on sleep.

We spent the day walking around Camp Stryker, alternately visiting the small food court area, the PX, and the transient waiting lounge/tent (nicknamed, "The Stables"). At 2000 we formally signed up for the Rhino. The lounge was full of other transients, both civilian and military, also waiting to get to the Green Zone. I played cards with two women who work for Kellog, Brown & Root (KBR), a contractor who provides major services support for the Green Zone. One was finance manager and the other was a contracted fire fighter who was returning from a vacation in Australia with her boyfriend, also a KBR firefighter but who is assigned to Baghram, Afghanistan. We only had time for a short game when, in the early morning hours of 11 NOV, the Rhino convoy arrived.

Flying to Baghdad

We returned to Camp Virginia the evening of 10 NOV expecting to leave for Iraq the next day, giving all time enough for repacking and some rest. Instead, we were informed that those of us going to Baghdad would be leaving at 0245 hours, technically, yes, the next day, only closer. We all rushed to dinner and then took showers to get several layers of fine Kuwaiti sand out of various parts of our bodies and started repacking. I grabbed three hours of sleep, woke up, grabbed my gear and loaded it onto yet another bus. We drove to another air base and boarded an Air Force C-17 transport for the one hour flight to Baghdad. We left around 0700 on 10 NOV. Thankfully, the flight was uneventful.

We landed around 0800 at Baghdad International Airport, referred to collectively as BIAP, which, in turn, is surrounded by the vast Camp Victory Complex. When the rear half of the C-17's loading hatch came down, we all got our first look at Iraq. It smelled different from Kuwait, more urban, with copious palm trees on the horizon. As we walked out of the plane, two AH-64 Apache attack helicopters flew nearby over the adjacent runway, banked right and flew off over the city. It was a powerful visual. We were here. Game on.

Convoy Exercise - Udairi Range

The next morning, we boarded our HUMVEEs at 0630 and continued our practice session. We ironed out problems not covered the previous day and, at 0900, rolled out from another simulated FOB onto the real range which featured role players, good guys, bad guys and pyrotechnics. It was great but, since it deals with real operational techniques, I won’t elaborate. However, we solved four of five technical problems (that is, we were blown up only once).

Camels!

During our CQC exercise, we saw our first camels. A herd appeared on the far berm which caused a temporary shut down of the range. Our instructor explained that Udairi was all open range and that indigenous camel and goat herders had right of passage here. We all gawked to see them; even far way they looked big.

In the late afternoon of the next day, our section boarded nine HUMVEEs and practiced maneuvering in a different part of the range. While stopped to review one of the convoy problems for tomorrow’s exercise we spotted another herd. We didn’t think much until all of a sudden, the camels were in our midsts. They are BIG. Compare them to our vehicles. Thankfully, none of them spit at us.

Udairi Range - Kuwait

The following day, we packed yet another sea bag for our two and a half day stay at the Udairi Range complex. We traveled for about forty minutes north into the desert. Udairi Range is vast, so large in fact, that is covers two thirds of Kuwait (this is the part that has neither cities nor oil). As a result, there is no fence, per se, just a series of sprawling training complexes. We were at one particular complex that simulates life at a typical Forward Operating Base (FOB) in Iraq. In fact, we were only eight miles from the border with Iraq.

FOB life is austere; there is no running water but there is generator-provided power. Buildings are the current descendants of semi-circular World War II Quonset huts and are (thankfully) air conditioned. Our classroom also functioned as our sleeping area. After our first afternoon, we stacked chairs in the corner and spread out sleeping bags, while keeping our sea bags outside. We also set a rotating watch for our gear. No one really slept well and we looked back nostalgically at our bunk bed equipped tents at Camp Virginia.

The next day we woke at 0400, ate an MRE for breakfast (penne pasta in spicy sauce, for me), put our on IBA and marched in the pre-dawn darkness to a weapons range. Udairi is run by a contracting company whose staff consists of retired senior army enlisted personnel. My section’s instructor for the day was a retired army first sergeant (E-8) who saw action in both Iraq and Afghanistan. We shot a close quarters combat (CQC) course. While at Fort Jackson, we learned basic marksmanship with our pistols and rifles. CQC stresses fighting at much closer ranges, typically moving while firing. We each received sixty rounds of ammunition for the day (not that much but better than nothing).

Like many army activities, our drills were done via exercise commands, not unlike our PT exercises at Fort Jackson, shouted first by our instructor echoed back as a group. For example, the instructor would shout, “The Walk Stop Turn and Shoot!” Us: “The Walk Stop Turn and Shoot!” Him: “Fighter Stance!” Us: “Fighter Stance!” Him: “Ready!” Us: “Ready!” Then we would walk away from the targets, pause, look over our shoulder at the target, pivot 180 degrees, fire two shots at our targets, and pivot back the other direction. Accordingly we spent a lot of time on safely executing these firing drills as we were close together.

The afternoon was spent indoors with another, charismatic, instructor, Mr. Massey, another retired Army First Sergeant with a lot of combat experience, who prepared us for the culminating convoy exercise to be held the next day. He taught us about how convoys have adapted to the enemy’s tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs), how our own TTPs changed in response, and how the enemy counter-responded. HUMVEEs today in Iraq are third generation, up-armored variants (M1114) which are very blast resistant to roadside improvised explosive devices (IEDs). Our convoy course would run though simulated Iraqi towns and feature five check points where different problems, all drawn from real life operations, would be encountered.

In keeping with our training program’s focus of encouraging junior leadership, a female junior officer was designated as our section’s convoy commander. She quickly rose to the challenge and we spent the rest of the afternoon and evening mission planning. My assignment was easy; a passenger in vehicle three whose focus would be as a gun truck and traffic control. My responsibilities were too easy, as they say in army training: scan five meters out in the event of a vehicle stop and dismount and patrol out to twenty-five meters in the event of a prolonged stop.

Camp Buehring - Kuwait

After a few days of adjusting to the time difference we had our first real training evolution, HUMVEE Evacuation Training, held at nearby Camp Buehring. We boarded buses and traveled there in the afternoon. Since there were three sections of us and only two simulators, our section had to wait an hour and a half. Camp Buehring looked a lot like Camp Virginia only all the familiar components (port-o-lets, wet crappers, prefab buildings, etc.) were arranged differently only slightly reinforcing the concept we actually were, in fact, somewhere else. It did have a bigger BX/PX (Base Exchange) store. Informally rating a particular base or camp’s PX seems to be the yard stick of one’s relative level on the standard of living scale. In this case, Buehring rates higher than Virginia.

We reported back and took turns sitting in a HUMVEE simulator that pivoted along its central axis and that turned a full 180 degrees, simulating a vehicle that has completely flipped over. The regular passengers don’t have a problem, provided they are wearing their seat belts. It’s the vehicle’s gunner, who sits/stands in a turret who faces the most risk. He/She calls, “Rollover!” if the vehicle tips more than 25 degrees off axis and drops into the crew compartment. The rest of the passengers grab the gunner’s torso and legs accordingly during the rollover to keep them in place. We each got to perform the drill once. Although the simulator’s rate of turn was very slow it still managed to completely disorient us. Operating the HUMVEE’s doors upside and down and turned around was a lot more difficult than anyone thought. I hope this doesn’t happen to me. Still, the training was fun.

Camp Virginia - Purgatory

Speaking of shell shocked, I’ve noticed a peculiar phenomena intrinsic to Camp Virginia: it’s a sort of Purgatory. The Marine Corps and Army personnel are returning here from extended combat tours of duty in Iraq or Afghanistan (often of fifteen months or more). The Navy personnel are arriving here on their way to extended Individual Augmentee tours between six and thirteen months. Either way, our existence here at Camp Virginia lies between the paradise of back home and the hell of Iraq/Afghanistan/Horn of Africa. We’re all here awaiting some kind of fate -- either the joy of returning home or the hardened resolve of going to get a particular job done somewhere in-country.

This manifests itself in the way people here carry themselves. We all walk, but mostly plod, through the shallow sand drifts on our way to and from the Dining Facility (DFAC) and the PX and the USO tent and the mini-mart. We’re constantly all walking somewhere but going nowhere. After all, we’re surrounded by, and in the middle of, nowhere. Everyone in my IA group desperately wants to be somewhere more real.

Camp Virginia Denizens

Camp Virginia is quite cosmopolitan; there are Coalition members here from Great Britain, Republic of Korea, Republic of Georgia, Poland, the Czech Republic, and the Fiji Islands. Of these, the Fiji Islanders are most ubiquitous, especially at the DFAC (curiously, no one seems to know what they actually do). Inside the PX, there is a wall were previous visitors have left name tags and ID pictures. I even found a sticker from the Naval Air Station Fallon, NV Search and Rescue Squadron; I was assigned at NAS Fallon as a reservist for four years between 2000 and 2004.

The DFACs are staffed with Asian Indians and the local maintainers of the camp (truck drivers) appear to be Kuwaiti.

The Navy uses the camp primarily for incoming personnel while the Army and Marine Corps use it for outgoing personnel. That is, the Army and Marine Corps use this pace to decompress before going back home. The Navy uses it to prepare and give final training for its personnel coming into theater. There is a constant litany of moving armored HUMVEEs and Armored Personnel Carriers (APCs) rumbling through camp. Their electronics and communications gear wreak havoc with the tenuous WiFi network which I am using to keep the blog up to date. Some of the Marines I’ve seen look like they’re ready go home. They don’t look shell shocked, just ready to leave. I wonder if I’ll look like that a year from now.

Camp Virginia Training

Here at Camp Virginia, we’ll conduct one more week’s worth of training before reporting to our respective commands in Iraq, Afghanistan or Djibouti. We’ll get more HUMVEE instruction, including how to egress a HUMVEE that has flipped over -- an unfortunately common occurrence in theater -- and another convoy exercise which will include live fire and role players (the two of course, are mutually exclusive). The convoy exercise, to be held later this week, will be held in a remote area called the Udairi range where we will sleep over two nights. Udairi has none of the palatial amenities that we enjoy at Camp Virginia, thus preserving the trend of encountering worse quarters at each subsequent stop on this deployment.

Yesterday, we kicked off with the time honored practice of filling out travel claims that covered the first part of our deployment. If one has been in the military for more than week, one already knows that this process hardly ever works the first time. Yet, we have been assured the finance people here take great pride in fixing pay problems and executing travel claims.

At present, I’m only $125 in the hole, which was the charge for my week’s stay at the Bachelor Officer’s Quarters (BOQ) at NMPS, San Diego, whose lavish indoor plumbing, cable television, large bed, and hard wire Internet access, are now but a halcyon memory.

Crappers

Just as my three weeks at Ft. Jackson made me appreciate the plight of the common infantry man, so my day-and-half at Camp Virginia made me appreciate the genius of indoor plumbing. The crappers here come in two varieties: the common port-o-potty, or, as my attractive wife refers to them, port-o-lets, and the more Gucci wet crappers which feature flushing urinals and toilets.

The wet crappers (there must be a better name for them) stand imposingly two to a unit and have a stairway leading up to them. This gives the illusion one is arriving at some important place (all too true, of course, depending on one’s current biological condition). Inside can be found a sink, urinal and toilet and copious air fresheners. Trucks arrive in the morning and fill up a water tank at the top of the wet crappers and, separately, to pump out the septic tanks.

When either the sink, toilet or urinal is operated, gravity fed water flushes the corresponding apparatus and feeds to a septic tank below. I’ve already learned it is advantageous to use the facilities in the morning hours when there is still water available for flushing. An informal survey last night showed that most of these units run dry later in the day, effectively demoting the wet crappers into clogged up versions of the port-o-lets.

Camp Virginia - Kuwait

We previously were advised to prepare for an eight-hour evolution after landing before we could sleep. We arrived at 2330 local on 2 NOV, effectively losing a day in transit. I, along with thirty-nine others, volunteered to be baggage handlers. I don’t know what I was thinking as, one, I am not that burly an individual, and two, I was still suffering from acute tendonitis in my right forearm. Along with three others, I climbed up the conveyor belt into the belly of plane where we were greeted by a sheer wall of green sea-bags. Every third one or so was filled with heavy IBA. As we cleared more and more bags, we established a daisy chain where, to my horror, I found heavy sea-bags being hefted at me. I’m happy to report I was not knocked over.

After unloading sea-bags and weapons, which were in locked cases, into a awaiting trucks, we boarded air conditioned buses and drove for an hour to Camp Virginia, a staging camp for personnel coming into and out of theater. Our first real views of Kuwait came from behind curtained windows on the buses. Not much to see at night of course.

After arriving at Camp Virginia, we gave awaiting personnel our ID cards which were electronically swiped into bar code readers officially recording our arrival. Later, we learned that our Boots on Ground (BOG) counters started the date of our arrival -- 2 NOV. Only 349 to go.

Next, we unloaded weapons and sea-bags onto the sandy area in front of our twelve-man transient tents. Under less than ideal lighting conditions, I eventually reclaimed my three sea-bags and one rolling suitcase. Originally, I thought the rolling suitcase was a good idea since it had wheels. I round said wheels were useless in sand.

We piled into our air-conditioned tents and found more bunk beds and a few lockers. Since my bunk was nearest the door, I just set my bags nearby. After some perfunctory unpacking, we walked in darkness to the Dining Facility (DFAC) for breakfast at 0630. After a surprisingly good meal, I walked back, in emerging daylight to the tent to sleep.

Flying to Kuwait

The next evening, 1 NOV, we said goodbye to our drill sergeants and McCrady Training Center and boarded buses to Columbia Airport where a chartered MD-11 waited. We had a final good bye from the Task Force Marshall Company A commander, an aged Army Captain with bushy eyebrows, gray hair and a distinct Southern Carolina accent who quoted from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar:

Farewell! And whether we shall meet again, I know not.
Therefore, our everlasting farewell take:
For ever, and for ever, farewell!
If we do meet again, then we shall smile;
If not, ‘tis true this parting was well made.

We loaded our four to five sea-bags plus personal luggage into the plane and took off at 2245 local. Our itinerary took us to Bangor, ME for refueling. We arrived nearly at 0200 local and were met by Troop Greeters from the local Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) post. They were lined up, six or seven deep, and shook everyone’s hands as we deplaned. Most were Vietnam vets but there were also some were graying World War Two vets who, to a person, greeted us using army ranks (after all, not many planes arrive solely carrying Navy personnel). Although we were tired from just a few hours sleep, it was very touching indeed to see these vets who clearly cared deeply about what we were headed out to do.

We were ushered into a large waiting area which had open restaurants, coffee shops, and souvenir stands, all for our plane. I chatted for a time, with a Troop Greeter about local resident/philanthropist Stephen King; the Troop Greeter wore a black baseball cap that featured an LED flashing American flag. As I’m not a Stephen King fan, per se, the flashing flag served to keep me focused and awake. He was nice enough guy who, I’m sure, had better things to do than hang out at the Bangor Airport at two thirty in the morning.

After about an hour plus layover, we re-boarded and flew across the Atlantic to Leipzig, Germany. I managed to sleep through two in-flight movies but caught the hot meals. We landed some six hours layers in a light drizzle. My only other time in eastern Germany was in 1991 when I drove with my college roommate, Victor, in a rented Fiat Tipo from Paris to Prague. Sadly, all we saw on this visit was a special Leipzig/Halle airport lounge that caters to transient troops. It also featured a souvenir shop and beer, which we were not allowed, of course, to partake with.

After another hour, we once again re-boarded and flew another six hours to Kuwait. We enjoyed two more hot meals and two more movies (Live Free or Die Hard and Blades of Glory). As we got closer to landing, I noticed lights in the darkness below, my first view of Kuwait. Upon closer examination, I saw they were not lights at all but licks of flame coming from oil wells, natural gas burn off. These were same wells infamously torched by Saddam Hussein’s army as they retreated from Kuwait in 1991.

Southern Comfort

The night before our departure, 31 OCT, eight of us, primarily from my barracks, grabbed a cab and went to the Tombo Grille in Columbia for dinner. The restaurant featured a “Spook Easy” in honor of Halloween -- all of the waitress were dressed in coordinated 1920s flapper dresses. A jazz guitarist/vocalist played in the lobby next to an ornate (and fully stocked) bar. We ordered entrees that cost between $20 and $30 plus two bottles of California wine (Benzinger Cabernet and Coppola Claret) and desserts (real Key Lime pie, for me).

Midway through dinner two ladies came to our table, introducing themselves as Louann and Rita. Louann was dressed as a witch and Rita as a flapper. They asked what eight men were doing dining alone at Halloween and we told them it was our celebratory, pre-deployment dinner before flying to Iraq. They were instantly very concerned and wonderfully respectful -- a marked and welcome difference from the average person in northern California where I reside. They thanked us for our service and asked us to join them at the bar after dinner.

At the end of our meal, our waitress announced that we didn’t have a bill; Rita and Louann had taken care of it. Our waitress began to tear up and thanked us for our service. We were, to a man, shocked; an informal calculation of bill should have been upwards of $350 for the eight of us. We lamely went to the bar, where we were applauded by the people there, cheered on by Rita and Louann. We immediately bought a round of Kalua shooters for them and our waitress as another waitress sang “Ain’t Misbehavin’” in our honor, accompanied by the jazz guitarist. We stayed on for two more rounds. When we left, Rita and Louann hugged and kissed every one of us.

Never, in my seventeen plus years of military service, was I treated so well by perfect strangers. We love you, Rita and Louann, and the good people of South Carolina.