War in Iraq, a Soldier's View

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05-Apr-03 7:54 PM

Still bored.

The last few days have been incredibly hot. They (whoever they is) say the temperature has been breaking 100 degrees, I’m not sure if it has or not but it’s definitely in the upper 90’s if not more. It’s the type of heat that’s just bearable when you’re out of the sun and wind, then as soon as the wind picks up it feels like a blast furnace blowing against your face. It’s really hard to relax when the wind is hotter than the surrounding air.

The way the buildings are built kind of help the heat, they’re made of concrete and they hold the cold air in during the day then hold the heat in at night. The difference is about 20 degrees which feels like a lot. It’s like walking into an air conditioned room after being in the heat, but Layton says that it’s holding too much heat at night now and it’s hard to sleep.

Anyway all of us are getting really tired of this country now that the heat is picking up, if they don’t get some way to give us air conditioning soon we won’t be able to work between the times of 11am and 8pm. Tensions are starting to show in the group; before we were sick of the Army but we would still stick together. Now we’re sick of the Army and sick of each other, we can still stand to be around each other but everybody needs a lot more personal time.

There’s a rumor, from SSG Andersen this time, that SGT Slocum asked Maj. Yarber how long our orders will be for, he said the options are between 6 – 8 months. Eight is a little long but I’m glad that the 12 months on our original orders might be flexible. Six months would be a dream, and it could be possible the 183rd DS Maintenance Company is coming to the airbase so that we will be superfluous. That would mean that we could be flying out of the Gulf region in 2-3 weeks.
That would be AWESOME!!

Seven months would be tolerable but I don’t think we’d have anything to if we stayed any longer than 6. But the Army is fucked up and upside down, they seem to do the most useless thing they can just because some officer feels he needs a wrecker crew attached to his command so he doesn’t have to ask other officers for help when his stuff breaks down. We could be here wasting another 6 months of our time, taxpayer money, and army supplies, just for some officers piece of mind.
(Edit to add: Later I found out just how true this was!)

The 36th Engineers are doing 1 hot meal a day for certain companies in the base and we happen to be attached under one (the 171st) so we have the option of hot chow as long as we give one of our guys over for 3 hours to do KP. But when we got to where the chow hall was there was only 5 people doing KP, and at least 8 different companies eating there. I wonder if 171 is taking advantage of us so they don’t have to send people to do KP. Either way I can already guess that SGT Slocum won’t count the NCOs in the rotation for KP duty even though there are officers doing it from the other companies. That leaves 13 of us to do it so I guess I’ll have KP duty every other week on top of my weekly guard duty. But it’s nice to have hot food available, it’s not much better than MRE’s but you don’t have to heat it up yourself and they have breakfast every other day so there are benefits.

From the look of the way they prepare the meals they just heat a tin of food, open it and empty it into a tray to serve out of. I wonder if the food is prepared in the US and shipped out here just like the MRE’s.

We also started getting Cold Weather MRE’s which sounds really dumb in the desert but it gives a little variety in what menus there are to eat. The only trouble is they don’t come with heaters but you need heated water to add to the freeze dried meals. Luckily the sun is hot enough you just have to set a bottle of water on a black surface during the day then you can have a hot dinner as the sun sets.

I’ve been enjoying the sunsets and stars the last few evenings. Watching the sun go down is really nice here because there are no mountains blocking the last of the sunset like at home so you can see it all the way till it goes down below the horizon, you can actually see the disk without blinding yourself as it gets lower.

Then there’s the point about 5 minutes before the sun goes below the horizon that the reds and oranges suddenly explode across the sky, bathing everything in a dim reddish orange light.

It must be kind of funny from anybody else’s point of view; there’s me standing in the middle of the concrete pad with my hands in my pockets contemplating the sunset as a war rages on in the surrounding country. An attack hit the perimeter at any time causing me to break away from the sun and go running for my rifle and web gear, or a scud attack can have us putting on our gas masks and send us all scrambling for the bunkers. Still I stand oblivious to it all; although sometimes the C-130’s or A-10’s may take off and go flying across the sun sending my thoughts back to the war. In reality I mostly just spend that time wishing I had somebody with me to share the beauty of the sunset.

After the sun goes down we need to follow light discipline so there is no white light allowed especially for those of us along side the runways, so things get really dark really fast. About 1 hour after the sun has gone below the horizon and the stars are out, I go out and sit with the guards for a few hours and talk about nothing or sometimes I’ll just stare at the stars like I did the sun. The stars are so bright you can see lot more of the constellations than you can back home. We could see enough of Orion to see his head, and bow; plus I can actually see the Orion Nebula with my naked eye. Sometimes I’ll just think about how the stars are the same stars my family will be seeing 10 hours later, it’s too bad the stars can’t be messengers to run messages to my family for them to pick up when the same stars come out for them.

Then the rest of the night we have to put up with all the noise coming from the runway. It’s about twice as busy at night so they take off and land about every 10 minutes. You can’t actually see them land unless you have NVG’s on because they don’t use normal lights they have dim Infra-Red lights, but you can sure hear them use their airbrakes to slow as soon as the wheels are on the ground. The racket they make is enough to rattle doors and windows, especially the cargo jets.

I usually avoid the noise by spending the time listening to music on the computer (like I am now). Most of the time it’s techno (Layton’s getting me hooked on this stuff), its really relaxing listening to Heaven by DJ Sammy imagine I was dancing alone with the woman of my dreams.

With the lights out for the night I can close my eyes and Iraq, the C&E trailer and all the rest of my worries melt away and it’s just me and her on the dance floor alone in each others arms.

“Oh, Thinkn’ about our younger years.”
“There was only you and me,”
“We were young, and wild, and free…..”