Cats & Calzones

The group I came here with from my base invited me to supper at one of the little restaurants on base to get a break from the dining facility. We went to a little italian restaurant called Ciano's that is of course operated by a bunch of Indians or Turkish guys. I honestly can't tell most of the nationalities apart. They all look pretty similar and all of their languages sound like gibberish. If they sound like Apu from the Simpsons though, I know they are usually Indian.

I got a "Number 67", a vegetarian Calzone with olives/eggplant/mushrooms/tomatoes/cheese. Except I'm not a huge fan of olives in the first place and these ended up being whole olives with the pitts still in them, meaning it would be very easy to break your teeth on them. So I left those on my plate. Honestly it wasn't that good and I wish I had just gone to the dining facility where the food is better and also FREE. But it was ok to try somewhere new at least.

 

Here's a little tiny can of Pepsi that one of the guys paid a dollar for. It's the size of a Red Bull. Rip off! Especially since the full 12 ounce cans are free at the DFAC (dining facility). Dummy.

This one looks like a Sprite. And it's a regular size can for the same money.

The group from my base. I know, I should start getting them to take pictures of me since I'm the one that you know, not them. Maybe next time. Look how awesome and safe we are in our reflective track suits. 

Iraqi cats do not say meow, they say "Dirka dirka, Muhammed! Jihad!".

We've been told multiple times in briefings not to feed the wild life around base, so of course the first thing everyone in my group does when seeing this cat is to call it over and start petting and feeding it. 

Here are some old bunkers around the flight line on base. It is quite obvious they have been there for a long time.

Everyone paints the big barriers to represent their squadron/branch whatever.  I'll try to take a picture of ours and post it as well.

The bunkers are all falling apart. Hard to tell if it's just from age or from actual attacks. Some have gaping holes that look like they were probably caused by some sort of rocket, but it could just be a cave-in. According to Wikipedia the bunkers were built before 1985 and were heavily damaged in the first Gulf War.

Also, here is what the base looks like from space, because I know you were all staying up at night wondering what that would look like. As you can see it looks like a huge pile of brown dust with a flight line and a fence around it. Which is quite accurate.

Roaches

Before each shift the people doing my job have to arm up, which means a trip to the armory to receive and load our M16, extra ammunition, ASP baton, radio, etc. After arming up we have to stay armed for the rest of the day, until properly released. This means taking the M16 with you to the bathroom, the dining facility, fitting it inside of the truck, taking it to the BX, everywhere. Ever since basic training when we received our M16s (they were  special ones that didn't fire) to carry around with us during training, we've been taught to keep it within arm's reach at all times. There were severe consequences if a training instructor ever got hold of your weapon because you left it leaning on a tree or something when you went to the bathroom. But anyway, that is beside the point. My point was that we have to stay armed up until released, which means that even if we are technically done working and all of the people we are escorting have gone home, we have to stay armed until we are released. We can go to our rooms or to the Hot Spot to play games or pool or something, but we have to keep our weapons and stay in uniform. We all have radios as well. So at the end of our shift, everyone is sitting around with their radios waiting for the call to be released. The point of my whole story was that it is quite comical to hear the release call on the radio, step outside of my room and see FPs (Force Protection, my job) scurrying out from doorways all over the place like a bunch of roaches. They come out of trailers, they come out of bathrooms, they come from the smoke pits, the Hot Spot, the chapel, the laundry room, everywhere, all headed back to turn in their weapons and radio so they can go back to their room and change into our PT (physical training) clothes and go eat or go to the gym or just goof off. It cracks me up every day so I thought I'd share it.

For those that don't know, this is what an M16 looks like.



It weighs eight or nine pounds when loaded, so it's a pain to carry around and deal with and it's nice to get rid of it at the end of the day. Yes we are at war technically so we should be carrying weapons, but the enemies we are facing are cowards that put bombs inside of dead animals on the road or drive a car loaded with explosives into a building, they are not the type to mount a full ground assault on a base. They also randomly launch unguided rockets at our bases hoping to get lucky and hit something important. They are not going to line up in a formation with their AK-47s and attempt to storm the base, requiring us to fire back with our M16s. But, when we are on duty it is a different story of course. We need protection and having an armed rifle on your back goes a long way to keeping the peace without ever having to use it or even threaten to, when dealing with the people we are escorting.

Dust

Another big dust storm today. This one was closer to an actual dust storm than the last, the last one was basically just wind blowing the dust that the earth movers were stirring up, but this one was all over the base.

An insane Army girl running in the dust storm. With nothing over her mouth. I have no idea how she breathed.
Dust.
More dust. Visibility during the big gusts is only about 15 feet.
Edited version that looks cooler but doesn't show the dust as well. Apparently it gets worse than this though. Sometimes it just comes in all at once like a wall of dust. That would be cool to see. I'll be sure to always have my camera for when it does.

I should note that it's difficult to get a good picture of a dust storm, as dust is very small and just makes it look like I have a crappy camera or that it was overcast. When I took those pictures it was pretty close to noon, so it should have been super bright. Instead I can only see about 15 feet in front of me and everything else is completely obscured in the dust.

Not much else new to report. Just sitting in trucks, watching people work. Yup...

Shave and a beating

Today is my day off, so after working out at the gym I dropped off my dirty laundry with the laundry service lady, went to eat and then went to the BX for a haircut. The barbers are all Indian or Pakistani or something, and apparently have very different traditions than Americans about haircuts.

The first thing that threw me off was just having hair all over my face, as the barbers at the BX at home have vacuum attachments hooked up to the clippers so that everything they cut off is immediately sucked away and sold to the hair clipping gnomes, who use it to make rope. Regardless of where the hair goes, it does not go in my face, which is lovely. I also discovered that the numbers on the clipper guards are different here than they are in the states, so when I told him I wanted a "3" on top, the clippers didn't even cut my hair because the guard was too long. So, we went with a two, for future reference.

The haircut proceeded as normal, except that he cut from the top to the bottom and they usually do it the other way around in the states, but at the end, when I thought he was done, he started punching me in the head! I had heard some strange slaps in the room from other barbers but did not see what they were doing, as I was looking straight ahead while my  hair was cut. But apparently it was part of some sort of scalp massage, perhaps it is common in their country? He basically punched me in the back of the head a few times and then started punching it from all sides with his hands cupped in a way that made a loud popping/clicking noise. He took off the tissue paper from my neck, rubbed my shoulders a few times and then started slapping me in the back with a good deal of force as well. He finished it off with a few open-handed slaps to the back/shoulders and a "Tank you sir" in his accent that sounded just like Apu from the Simpsons. It was a most interesting experience, but I can't really say it was bad at all. Perhaps barbers in the states should start giving a massage after a haircut! I didn't really understand the slapping or punching, but the rubbing on my shoulders and scalp was nice.  He also put some aftershave on my head, I suppose to avoid razor burn, but I swear it smelled just like paint thinner. I should probably avoid open flames for the next few hours, just in case.

I also bought a little travel mouse to use with my computer on my desk, which has improved my clicking speed and accuracy by a great deal. Expect to see a lot more clicks from me in the future.

Another day

Someone asked what I'm actually doing over here, so I thought I should summarize it. Basically the government hires contractors to do most of the construction and manual labor on the base, things like cleaning the cadillacs (toilets), cleaning the runways, building new buildings and roads, emptying porta-potties, etc. Some of them are local Iraqis from the surrounding villages, others are flown in from other countries like Turkey, Pakistan, India, the Philippines, etc. The general idea is that if they pay Iraqis to earn a legitimate wage, then they are less likely to sell information on our troops to insurgents. It also injects money into the economy and gives some people employment. However, the threat of these people gathering intel on the base and selling it to various terrorist groups is still very real, so most of these contractors have to be escorted while on the base. The other people in my squadron and I are that escort. We follow them around on their routes or watch them while they are working in heavy machinery, etc to make sure that they aren't gathering intel on the base to sell to others. We make sure they don't have prohibited items like cameras or cell phones or anything that can be used to record or transmit information, make sure they don't attack the base, each other, try to sabotage the base, etc.

Today I tried to have a conversation with one of the Turkish heavy equipment operators. He can only speak extremely broken English but I was able to piece together enough to get the gist of what he was saying. He's apparently been working in Iraq for 5 years, on and off. He said he first came two or three months after we invaded and usually works for 6 - 8 months at a time and then goes home to Turkey to "sleep (mimicking sleeping with his hands)" for a month or two before returning home. He showed me pictures of his kids and tried to tell me about how much safer Iraq is now than it used to be but that all of the Iraqis outside the base are still "bitches" (his favorite term for anyone he doesn't like much, including his "big bosses") and very dangerous. He asked me questions about myself and home but I'd only answer in extremely vague terms or deflect the question and ask another one about him. Once you start up a conversation it can quickly turn into a very different type of conversation and they can start asking questions like "How many people are on base? Does everyone carry a weapon? How much ammunition do you carry?" which can of course all be sold and pieced together by the enemy to have a very clear picture of how we conduct operations on the base.

Other than that bit of interaction, I spent part of the rest of the day hanging out with a fly, who I found out was named Frank. He was flying around in my truck and landed on my shirt so I watched him for a while. He spent at least 5 minutes washing his hands and then rubbing his head like a cat. He didn't look any different from a normal house fly in the states, which is kind of boring. He flew down to my leg and I very very slowly (I had a lot of time to move slowly) moved my finger up and touched him and he didn't even fly away. He kind of turned around and looked at my finger at one point and moved towards it a little bit, I assume he was saying hello, introducing himself and shaking my hand. I was about to get out my camera and take a picture of him so that I could blog about him on the internet, but then he flew out my window and was gone, leaving me alone again, which was saddening.

After that, to entertain myself I spilled a little hand sanitizer on my uniform and then watched it dry, which was pretty interesting. I'm guessing it will evaporate a lot faster in a few months when it's a hundred degrees outside, maybe I should set up some sort of experiment.

Safety... last?

The Iraqis or Turkish that I work with don't have any safety regulations that I can see. The other day while watching a gate I watched one of the guys step down out of his fuel tanker and light up a cigarette right next to it. I almost backed up my truck a couple hundred feet but he started to step away as I did. I was also at another site and noticed some very interesting uses of ladders, etc. They are safe about some things though, the bull dozer driver wears a flak vest and helmet, in case he uncovers a UXO (UneXploded Ordinance). There is still a lot of it around here from Desert Storm and it gets turned up every now and then.

The actual Iraqis are a very small people. Most seem to be about 5'6" average or so, maybe, and very thin usually. When we go pick up some of them at the gate the taller guys say they feel like giants, standing a good head or two over the entire crowd of Iraqis. I haven't been out there yet but I'm sure I'll feel like that too, as I'm taller than the guys that said that.

There is a big language barrier usually when working with them, but many of them can get their meaning across with a few words and some expressive hand gestures. One of the heavy vehicle operators found a bomblet that had already been detonated and called me over and said "No problem, no problem, rocket... bomb... but already... boom! But, no problem!". He later tried to tell me that two guys needed a ride to the gate, which came across as something like "Two guys! (wild hand motions to mimick driving, squatting to imitate sitting in a truck, pointing, and smiling) but, two guys!". They all wave when driving by, and like to give a good thumbs up, which is kind of our universal "ok, everything is good, go ahead" gesture. 

Had another nice sunset today too!

Dust

I'm currently working at a site where they are doing a lot of excavating and moving dirt around, so thanks to the high winds today we got quite a little dust storm right around that area. From what I hear the "real" ones put this one to shame, but it was still pretty annoying in our little area, down range from all of the dirt.



Here's a shot of the dust, you can kind of tell how bad it is. Before I edited the picture it looked just like a grey, washed out photo because of the dust, but I think this looks better. At the heaviest times I couldn't see beyond 15 feet in front of my truck. Usually the gusts didn't last that long though.



There are piles of water bottles like this all over the base, so people can stay hydrated. This one is very dirty from the dust blowing on it.



Even in my truck you can see all the dust that accumulated on my M-16 after only about 30 minutes.



They left a poor guy out in the storm to watch the gate. I felt bad for him but I couldn't let him in my truck for security reasons. He took that desk out of the guard shack and put it out there to huddle up under. They eventually came and got him and put him to work somewhere else, out of the dust.



The sunset was nice at the end of the day, even here in Iraq. 

Here is a video of the dust blowing, you can kind of see it anyway. You can also see the little guy huddled in his previous spot before he moved.



Being deployed is kind of how I expected the military to be before I came in. Mostly in the way that everything is free, housing, food, snacks, water, rides, etc. It's a self-contained little city and you can just take whatever you want because the military provides everything. But, that isn't how it is back home. You get a couple hundred bucks for food, which doesn't cover what you need, then you get a little pay for housing, which doesn't cover what you need if you live on base, you have to pay for snacks and all food because they are fund-raisers for the squadrons, you have to buy your own uniforms after basic training, unless you deploy, etc. In that way I enjoy being deployed. It's nice to eat what you want and it all be paid for, get free snacks and water, free movies, free bus rides,  etc.

As I've moved around the base I've seen a few convoys on their way out for a patrol, I'm definitely glad I don't have to do that. The trucks they use in the convoys now remind me of some sort of crab that just finds any random object on the bottom of the ocean to live in and carries it around on its back. There are all kinds of things on those trucks that look like they were just randomly welded on. It's quite clear that the overall design was not there from the beginning, they've just pieced things together as they became available, adding extra armor here and there, various antennas and jammers, etc.

I've had a little interaction with the Army as well and am glad I picked the Air Force. They are much more "military" and it's just a completely different culture than the Air Force, especially the Space Command that I work in. We are probably some of the most laid-back in the AF as far as military behavior is concerned, so even a little interaction with the Army is strange. They swear that they know all about our secret "fan-girls" in our rooms that fan us while we lounge on our bed, and bikini parties on the weekends. Obviously they feel that we are pampered and spoiled compared to the Army quality of life, and we probably are in comparison to what they go through. But hey, they weren't drafted, they could have tried to get into the Air Force instead and enjoyed the same benefits!

Internet Back

Hooray, the internet finally came back on in the rooms. Hopefully it'll stay on for a while this time. Here are a couple of pictures.



The group from my base.



Some Iraqi palm trees and a giant fork lift.



"Cadillac Row". The restroom trailers are called cadillacs, and this is the row of the compound where most of them are.



Tents.



Inside the "hot spot", the morale tent. Has ping-pong, pool, game room, internet, movies, etc.

As you can see, everything is surrounded by huge concrete t-walls. They surround pretty much everything so it's really hard getting around at times because everything looks the same. You can't tell what a building is by its architecture or anything because they are all surrounded by the barriers. The barriers are to protect against shrapnel from rocket attacks. If one were to hit it would hopefully be contained to one building or land outside a building and not hit the building itself, only the t-walls and sandbag walls.



Some nice blisters I've been developing from my boots. Every step is a delight!



My closet.



Desk. The TV and microwave are my roommate's, so I won't always have them.



Door out and closet.



My bed with fashionable blanket.

It's not a bad room. It's clean and plenty big for one or even two people. Much better than a tent full of 10 people. The cadillacs are pretty gross, I don't understand why people are so destructive and disgusting. I'm not a super neat freak myself, but being too lazy to even raise the toilet seat when you pee is another thing entirely. Half of the toilet seats are broken off, the urinals are broken, there is always water all over the floor and toilet paper laying in the water causing a soggy mess, bleh. Good thing I bought shower shoes in Qatar.

Connectivity problems

Hey dudes, sorry for not updates for a few days but the internet in my room has been out for a couple of days, kind of a bummer that I'm paying $88 a month for it when it goes down for days at a time. But I can't complain when it's lucky that I have it at all, with my own room in a trailer instead of being in a dirty tent with no internet ever.

I won't be posting any pictures, as I'm on a government computer and we can't hook up cameras or thumb-drives for security reasons. I also won't be posting as many pictures in general, for security reasons. Don't want to give out intel on the layout of the base, etc. But I should be able to post a few here and there.

The past few days I've just been in training, mostly Powerpoint slide-shows, learning the layout of the base, learning what we can and can't do, what we need to watch for, etc.

I did have additional weapons training to learn the ASP police baton though, which was pretty intense. It is by far the most hands-on training I've had with the Air Force so far.



It's basically a collapsible nightstick, made of metal with a rubbery foam grip. We practiced extending it, doing strikes with it on a guy holding a pad with it open and closed, etc. Then one of the trainers got dressed up in a full "red man" suit, with pads over his entire body and we played out scenarios using a padded baton. It was full contact and also included role-playing such as setting up scenarios like "You see one of the guys you're escorting running towards the runway, towards an airplane, what do you do?". At one point the "red man" grabbed my ASP and we ended up rolling around on the ground fighting for it. In two out of the four scenarios I actually talked him into compliance, which I thought was cool. After all of my scenarios he told the other instructor I had excellent voice control and he actually couldn't even find a hole to initiate a physical confrontation, so I thought that was a nice compliment. I've never been in an actual fight so it was my first time really being in a confrontation with someone, even if it was just a training environment. It was helpful though and I learned a lot about the weapon and about how quickly those situations can go down and how hard it is to keep cool and really be in control and not just start flailing your arms around.

Other than the training I've mostly been eating and sleeping. The dining facility is very good, much better than Qatar. Just simple things like the mashed potatoes are much better here. We eat with the Army as well as Romanians and whoever else is stationed on the base. The Army vastly outnumbers the Air Force here, by a huge amount. We have our own little area inside the larger Army base with our own gates and everything. The dining facility has a huge variety though, with three main lines, a short order grill, a hot sandwich bar, a cold sandwich bar, salad bar, fruit bar, dessert bar, "healthy" bar, etc. The dessert bar has ice cream, pies, they'll make milk shakes, ice cream sundaes, anything you can imagine. I plan to avoid it and not even look at it again. The healthy bar has fresh salads, fresh cut fruit they cut right in front of you, etc. They also have signs up with a suggestion of what you should eat at each meal in order to stay under 1800 calories a day, which is a helpful starting point if you want to keep your calories low. The dining facility is run by Army personnel, but most of the actual work is done by Iraqis. They are very friendly and understand English pretty well. From what I've seen they are always very happy and eager to work.

Everyone carries a weapon here, which is a little weird considering I hadn't seen one since basic training, being stationed in the states. The Army has to carry a weapon 24/7, but we only carry them when on duty. I feel sorry for the guys with the big M60 machine guns, as they are much heavier than the M16 or M4 and they still have to go everywhere with them.

The BX is pretty nice, they have just about everything we need, food, uniform items, movies, music, toiletries, etc. There is a Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, some italian restaurants, etc. I don't plan to eat there though, as I get all I can eat at the dining facility and there is no point in wasting money on food. Maybe once in a while I'll try a burrito and see how it compares to the ones at home. The locals also have various little shops selling souvenirs and jewelry and rugs and electronics and things like that.

Hopefully my internet will be back up soon and I can post a few pictures and more updates. Things are good though, so just wanted to let everyone know I was OK. Hope things are good in the states!

Iraq!

Well I finally arrived in Iraq. That's about as specific as I can be because honestly I don't even know what day of the week it is or what the date is without looking it up online on my blog or somewhere else. Weekends have no meaning here (not that they did back home either, when I worked on crew) so it's hard to keep track of days.

In Qatar we got about 30 minutes notice that our flight was coming in, so we rushed to pack and track down everyone, as there are no cell phones or other way of communicating easily. After finally finding everyone and getting checked out of our tent we barely made it to the terminal in time to... wait. It's commonly heard about the military that there is a lot of "hurry up and wait", and it is 100% true. We rushed over there and then waited probably 20 minutes to go to the next stage of the process where we got our gear (Helmet, individual body armor, etc), then went back to the terminal and... waited. Then we got our weapons out of the armory and... waited. Then we emigrated from the country, went to the gate... and waited.

Finally the plane came and we got formed up in a little formation and walked out to it. We rode on a C-130 which is by far the worst plane in the history of the world, at least for passengers. I will never again complain about cramped quarters on a commercial flight or even a sitting next to a screaming baby on a flight. We sat on basically cargo nets, squished together as tight as possible with our helmet, carry-on bags and body armor on. It's a super loud plane (props, not jets), we all had to wear ear plugs so our ears wouldn't be ringing for days afterwards. All together we spent hours and hours of time traveling. That's a lot of hurry-up-and-waiting.



Here are some pictures of when we first got on the plane and were still excited about it and thought it was cool. That lasted about 5 minutes. If I took a picture at the end of the flight you'd see a bunch of really unhappy, tired, cranky, annoyed people. It was fun at the beginning though, I felt like I was about to jump out the back of the plane like in the movies.






Sorry the video is really dark, but it was dark in the plane. That's me waving at the end.

After the flight from hell we finally arrived in Iraq in the middle of the night, and boy was it nice to arrive in this barren desert, war-torn, hostile country of Iraq! Compared to that plane anyway... We did some in-processing, met our supervisors, went to eat at the dining facility, then came to our rooms and went to bed.

I have to go for now, have training all day today. Hopefully tonight I can talk more about the base and my room and what's been going on. I don't have a lot of pictures of the base yet as I've just kind of been getting familiar with things, but I'll get some up eventually.