Fruits of Our Labor

Fun and Games

23DEC2007

            It’s our final day in Kuwait and the unit has completed all its final training required before deploying into Iraq.  Training prior to enter Iraq included activities such as role over drills, a final zero and qualification of your assigned weapon and final weapon qualifications on assigned vehicles. 

The task of zero and qualify takes about three days for this company and after week two in Kuwait all soldiers are anxious to get off there cots and get on with mission.  If anything we are all just anxious to leave this god forsaken tent.  The heater refuses to blow warm air and temperatures barley rise above 50 degrees inside our tent. Seeing your breath each morning makes the simple task of just getting out of your sleeping bag a nightmare.

            On the day we are scheduled to leave Kuwait the tent is cleared of equipment.  Cots are stacked along the walls and a quick sweep does the trick to clear.  For the next four hours we stand in the wind and cold waiting for busses to arrive. 

            Soldiers smoke and dip in small groups telling stories.  Huddling together seems to be the preferred method to say warm in these conditions. Standing for four hours with nothing to do but wait of course leads to playful silly games.  It was on this cold day that the Hammers discovered that yes indeed you can fit 12 personal with weapons in one port-o-john.

            Busses finally arrive and within minutes us and four hundred other pax are loaded and begin the journey to the airport.  The dessert in this area is barren and nothing grows there is nothing in all directions but sand, yet amazingly every ten to fifteen minutes our bus passes a goat heard with a single man and his dog tending his heard.  I don’t understand how these people find waster and food to support their animals but there they are non the less. 

The sun sets on our bus ride and the sky becomes a fire red with hues or vibrant blues, oranges and pinks.  The earth here is completely flat, the only land feature are the nomads and their herds. My only thoughts are of the people standing with their herds of goats these nomads who appear to have nothing yet daily they witness the greatest sun rises and sunsets imaginable.

Once at the terminal we are given the quick need to know flight information before entering Iraq.  Basically no seatbelt required but Kevlar helmet, body armor and loaded weapons are your boarding pass. 

Once on the runway we wait to board our C-130 plane.  It’s a literally a scene from any military movie.  Soldiers form into chalk lines and begin to load the plane from the rear as jet engines roar as lions.  The back ramp is open and an American flag flying never more proud glowing from the interior lighting from the plane. 

We are quickly seated, ramps close and the C-130 roles down the strip.  Lights quickly go out and the only light visible is the green go and red stop light inside the plane.  The flight last about an hour before beginning our combat descent in to Baghdad International Airport, BIAP.  The pilot maneuvers the giant plane like a child maneuvers a paper airplane; this is to avoid a rocket attack on landing.

Blood rushes from your head as we descend at such a rapid rate, you feel faint and sick as you grit your teeth trying to keep yourself from blacking out.  As the plane jerks and tosses solders around we level out just in time to make a perfect soft touchdown. 

We are only 15 min from Camp Taji but do to mass influx of personal we stay a night a camp Stryker. The day at Stryker is spent chatting and playing ping pong at the MWR tent.                                                                                                                                    

                                                                                                                                                                                                          Stroke of the Brush

24DEC2007

            Tonight we sit on the runway of Baghdad international, a giant airfield that equals that of any major airport in the US.  Soldiers and I alike sit in awe at the immensity clearly shown in America’s ability to seize and permanently alter something as immense as an airport or a entire country. 

We sit on a runway of an international airport seized just a few years ago.  This Airport was a major operation that required tanks, the 101^st Airborne and Ranger Regiments working together to seize.  This runway was a strategic point allowing personal and equipment to enter the country. 

I sit and chat to a soldier in my company that was on the operation to seize the airfield.  He tells stories of fellow soldiers giving the final sacrifice and how they cleared rooms in the airport not through doorways but instead breaching right through walls.  In less than five years this soldier has found himself on the same runway looking at spending over a year of his life in Iraq again. He is not an exception but the norm.

 

Merry Christmas

25DEC2007

Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas

This is a poem I received before I left that was written by the young daughter of close friends of mine.  It is the only Christmas card I received this year.

            To: Uncle Will

Good luck Will and Merry Christmas!  Hope that god is with you!  Please don’t die.  Don’t do anything or get any ideas of how to kill yourself, or inger yourself.  I love you!

P.S. Don’t leave.

 

This is the first of two Christmas’s I plan on spending in Iraq.  Christmas on Camp Taji feels like Tuesday.  The morning started at 0230 with downloading Strykers in the freezing cold arriving from Kuwait.  Breakfast involved standing in a line for an hour to get hot chocolate that tasted awful and eating a cold cinnamon roll.  On the bright side eating frosted covered cinnamon rolls reminded me of home.  My mother made a point every year to ensure we had hot cinnamon roles on the morning we celebrated Christmas.     

Early Christmas dinner was an attempt to make soldiers feel good on the holidays but no matter how hard a chow hall cafeteria tries to spice up their food it still taste like chow hall cafeteria food.  Lines for food were long and painfully slow, and as you can expect soldiers again are required to stand in cold.  This is not something the Army soldier complains about instead this has become the norm and accepted as Standard Operating Procedure. 

 

Junk Yard Dawg

27DEC2007

            Camp Taji feels more and more like home every day.  The Camp is located in what most consider the country and the level of violence in our area of operation is almost to the point of non existence.  Camp Taji is nothing pretty tough and there is plenty of beautification and fortification still needed to be done. 

            The streets are made of mud and it is clearly visible that during the rainy season the camp will turn into a soupy mess.  There is trash and crap littered everywhere.  Cement barriers, abandoned bunkers, concertina wire, and just military abandoned crap is everywhere.  I would describe my new living condition as a giant junk yard and I the junk yard dog. 

            This type of environment is an XO’s dream, with little to no accountability of buildings or equipment the camp becomes a wonderland of parts and supplies. If there is something you need it can easily be acquired here.  The ability to scrounge for items becomes a daily activity and you never now what type of treasures might be waiting for you in the next warehouse. 

            Unit after unit has moved through this camp and after so many rotations stockpiles of equipment stacked to the ceilings of abandoned warehouses.  The inability to maintain accountability of so much equipment ordered so fast has resulted in vehicles that cost $400,000 or more apiece unaccounted for.  These trucks become a soldiers personal camp vehicle for to chow, the gym, and movie theaters.  My new personal goal is to acquire a Golf cart so I don’t have to do any more walking on this camp