The Last Week

Suddenly, I find myself in my last week in Iraq. It snuck up on my in way I didn’t think it would. After all, I’ve been looking forward to the end of my tour – everyone does. But to be actually faced with its impending completion leaves me feeling, well, strange.

I had my outcall a few days ago with the Army colonel who runs my shop. He asked me how I felt and I told him I was surprised I didn’t feel like I thought I would. In fact, I had mixed feelings. Not about what I have done or accomplished but with the simple act of leaving behind the people I’ve worked so closely with over the past year. As I look around my office, I am the senior guy; that is, I can remember the day everyone walked into the office. I can remember the guy each of them replaced when they arrived. I explained to him that the biggest surprise was that each of the people who walked through the door was as good or better than the person we said good bye to. How was that possible? How long could that keep up? And yet it did for the entire year I was here.

Years ago, I served in a Navy tactical helicopter squadron. It was a great assignment and when I finished I thought I would never experience that kind of camaraderie again. I was wrong. The people who end here consistently are excellent and enjoyable to work with. Maybe it’s the fact we are in a war zone and were occasionally shot at. Maybe it’s the subject matter. The prospect of rebuilding a country and government from scratch is daunting but we were surrounded by smart people who generated a sort of collective wisdom that informed our actions, our planning.

Last Friday, it was my turn to stand up, receive my end of tour award, and give a brief speech. It echoed what I wrote above: it was always about the people, in Navy parlance, my shipmates, which made the experience worthwhile, satisfying. I won’t miss many aspects of Baghdad but I will miss the people I served with: Americans, Brits, Aussies, civilians from the Department of State, Treasury, Justice, civilian translators, the local Iraqis who work in the International Zone, and all the Third Country Nationals who keep everything running.

Today was my last Sunday mass at the Embassy Chapel, located in a large trailer outside the palace. At the end of mass, the priest always asks if anyone is leaving the coming week and invites them forward to receive a blessing. There were quite a few of us this week and it was with that same feeling of now it’s my turn that walked up to receive a blessing in the name of Saint Christopher, the patron saint of travelers.

Finally, another milestone: it was one year ago today that I reported for active duty at NOSC Alameda. A whole damn year.

I’ve only got a few more days left in Iraq. I better get packing. There’s a lot more ground to cover, and many miles to go, before I sleep at home.

The Heat

The iron grip of the Iraqi summer finally seems to have broken. Looking back, it was the day of that dreadful sand storm, the worst I experienced while in Iraq, that was the turning point. After that day, the daily highs dropped and hovered just above 100F. It was a palpable difference from the seemingly endless 120F days of high summer. Slowly, there were other signs: early morning and late evening weren't oppressively hot, the cold water tap wasn't hot anymore, I had to actually start using the hot water while taking a shower.

Last Sunday, when I returned from my TDY to Qatar, walking around BIAP and Camp Victory wasn't that uncomfortable, even while wearing body armor and lugging around my assault pack. I later found out the high for that day was actually below 100F.

This week, the highs have been been all below 100F. It's the first time we've enjoyed double-digit temperatures since spring, it seems. It feels wonderful. We've taken to eating lunch and dinner outside now and marvel in the simple pleasure of not sweating.

Caught Sleeping

This is one of my favorite photos from my tour. I didn't take it, nor was I there when it was took but it's two of my coworkers. The guy on the left the gal on the right's team chief.

Has Been

My friend, Mark W. sent me a hard drive full of music early in my tour (strictly a backup of selections of his music collection to be stored with me in case of a catastrophic earthquake in California, you understand). It's larger than the hard drive on my laptop and way more than my iPod could ever store so I've been perusing it for new music.

Just before leaving on this trip, I loaded William Shatner's 2004 album, "Has Been." Everyone knows about his kitschy spoken word album from the 1970s, "The Transformed Man," which has such hits as "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and "Tambourine Man."

"Has Been" was produced by Ben Folds who I believe wrote a majority of the songs. There are guest appearances from Aimee Mann, Lemon Jelly, and even Henry Rollins. I am here to tell you it is sheer, unadulterated genius. I love it.

The title track's music is set to a spaghetti western soundtrack riff, complete with mariachi-style trumpets and percussion that sounds like a horse's hoofs. Shatner's narration confronts three strangers who he thinks he heard call him a has been:

You talkin’ to me?
You talkin’ to me?
You callin’ me ... ‘Has Been’?

I've heard of you, the ready-made connecting with the ever ready
Yeah, 'Never Was' talkin’ about 'Still Trying'
I got it, 'Forever Bitter' gossiping about 'Never Say Die'

What are you afraid of? Failure? So am I
Has been implies failure, not so
Has been’s history
Has been ... was
Has been ... might again

I ended up listening to most of the album while making my daily walk between the billeting building and the conference building. Great stuff.

So Say We All

Present at the conference are a group of people I first met last March on my first visit (and TDY) here. Among them is my friend Francis, one of the smartest army officers I have met. Period. He is assigned to Afghanistan. This would be the last time, for the foreseeable future, to see each other given the impending end of tour in October.

Francis writes an occasional newsletter/missive, distributed exclusively via email, called “The Litany” which is bitingly funny if you 1) are in the military, and 2) know anything anything about military planning. Having only been a planner for the past year some of the dialog transcends my poor understanding but, given Francis’ excellent writing style, the gist is always clear.

Many of his colleagues have told him to turn it into a book. Already at twelve chapters, The Litany is well over one hundred single-spaced pages long. Reading it has taught me a bit about what is means to be a planner, what to avoid, how to compensate for bureaucratic inefficiencies, how to look at operations, how a well-written order should look, and how to stay sane. He usually ends each chapter with the phrase, "So say we all," which is homage to Battlestar Galactica. He also is a fellow blogger.

Thanks, brother. Stay safe.

As Sayliyah Again

So I’m back at Camp As Sayliyah. It’s much cooler (only between 100F-110F) and less humid than the last time I was here in August. Everything here -- the surroundings, the enlisted kids on four day passes, the Toyota mini-buses driven by Third Country Nationals -- is same as before. The familiarity is strangely comforting. I’m here with three other people from MNF-I, two of whom I met along the trip down here.

This time the trip wasn’t bad; it just happened to run overnight which made it extremely inconvenient. We left Baghdad at at 0030 on 22 September on a C-130 with not too many passengers and flew to the western airfield of Al Asad where we dropped off some passengers and then proceeded southeast to Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. Because there were so few passengers, I was able to lay down on the canvass like “seats” on the plane and actually fell asleep. I woke up some time later freezing my ass off as the cumulative effect of the plane’s air conditioning and altitude combined to make the cabin quite chilly. Lacking a blanket, I grabbed my body armor and laid it over me in a sort of ersatz, thirty pound blanket. I was able to get back to sleep. As I dozed off, I remembered my friend Lance’s Five Rules of Airlift:

1. Eat when you can
2. Sleep when you can
3. Piss when you can
4. Crap when you can
5. And always, always, always, bring a jacket

I had heeded the first four rules but failed utterly on the last one since I had wanted to travel light. Lesson learned.

We arrived at Al Udeid Air Base around 0430 on 22 Sep. By the time we met our ride and got to Camp As Sayliyah it was 0530. I grabbed an hour’s worth of sleep in my assigned shipping container, went to breakfast, and then rolled into the conference where I had to give one of the opening briefs. Fortunately, I remained coherent and the brief was well received.

The Last TDY

So I'm headed out on one last TDY to Qatar. I'll be out of pocket for the next day or so on travel. Expect another whiny post about why traveling in theater sucks so bad. Despite the advent of bad travel, it will be good to see the people on this trip; I've worked with them remotely since last January. A good bunch they are. I'll miss them when the tour ends here in less than thirty days.