War in Iraq, a Soldier's View

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24-Apr-03 9:20 PM

The boredom continues.

Not much has happened in the last few days, they all seem to blur together when they’re the same. I had KP Duty, it wasn’t as bad as back in Basic and AIT, but you can’t do much when cooking consists of boiling a tray in water and serving from it. All I did was take out the trash which I only had to do once. I saw a huge convoy coming up the highway while I was waiting for the garbage to fill; it had all kinds of vehicles. Since it had been in the news that the Marines were pulling out of Baghdad and the Army was going in I figured this was all of the replacements coming to occupy till the new government is in order.

All of the Bradley’s were on Super HETs but they still had all of the infantry and drivers in them, I guess the thinking is that if the convoy gets attacked the Bradley has all of its firepower to fight back, even as it’s being towed. But since there’s no resistance along the highway all of the tankers were just chilling out and watching us get warm meals. There was one girl in line that was pretty attractive and I saw one of the tankers pointing over to her and his buddy got out the binoculars and the sat there looking at people through the binoculars. I thought it was pretty funny that they were spending the half hour stop on the road checking out chicks.

I also saw the EPW holding area with some guys in it, the sun was beating down pretty hard and I was having trouble being in the sun and these guys had to sit cross legged facing out through the concertina and they couldn’t move from their place all day. They could lie down or sit cross legged but it looked really uncomfortable with their hands tied behind their backs. One guy was bound at the hands and feet and he had a gag on, he just kept lying on his side in the heat, I heard that the reason he was gagged was because he had been yelling all night and they had to keep him quiet. But the MP’s weren’t just letting them die in the heat; they’d come around every 30 minutes and give the prisoners water. I thought it was kind of strange that the MP’s would put rubber gloves over their hands before giving them water, I wonder who’s benefit it was for.

Getting on the internet and phone has been nice, it’s always great to talk with the family every week and have them email you what the current events back home are. They said they finally got the first part of the journal I sent home that described the beginning of the war. They said it was pretty interesting, I wonder how good these last 41 pages will be.

Living around here is getting pretty normal now, I’m used to our self made latrine but we’re having trouble burning all of the crap out of it. It just won’t burn no matter how much fuel you dump on it and how long you let it go; we’ll have to find a better solution. The shower is nice but it’s a pain to get everything ready so I only take one every 3-4 days, I’m not sure if it’s the dust or something but you don’t stink as much as normal out here. Back at Arifjan if I went 3 days without a shower it was pretty obvious, here its not.

Even though we’re used to our crappy conditions here everybody keeps talking about what it will be like when we get home. Everybody just wants to get out of these field conditions and get a normal shower and take a crap with something more than a hole in the ground. And everybody is still pretty sure we’re leaving soon, we keep trying to get some information out of our leaders but they just say that they don’t have any news like that. Now that the war is over all soldiers in camp are hearing rumors that orders have been shortened to 6 months maximum which we’ll be reaching in about 4 days. The thing is that most people that we know have known a rough estimate of when they’ll be out as far as a month in advance. If we’re here a month from now I’m going to go crazy.

Today has been a day for me to really hate the MP’s; I never really liked them because they seem to be kind of whiney. First they made us set up fighting positions near our area even though we already had a good berm that would protect us in emergencies. They wanted more permanent fighting positions which makes sense when there is an emergency, but the chances of me every going to a fighting position is nil plus 0. The locals around here are pretty friendly, they don’t really want anything to do with us but they ignore us and we ignore them. Except for one kid who has come up trading cigarettes and Iraqi Dinar for US dollars. I got a few Dinar for souvenirs, I traded 2 US dollars for 500 Iraqi Dinar, but considering the Dinar is soon going to be obsolete the kid probably made a 1000% profit off of me, but I got my souvenir with Saddam’s face on it.

Anyway back to the Jackass MP’s, they made us set up useless fighting positions but it didn’t take us long so no harm done; then they wanted to do some positions for them. The way I see it whoever is going to be in the position should be the one to make it, I made mine in front of my tent why couldn’t they do theirs? They seem to be more lazy and shiftless than anybody else out here.

The next straw was the fact that they obviously don’t have any work to do, they spend all their time on the telephone. I go in there every other day to use the internet and I see the same MP’s in their every time, and they spend plenty of time on there holding up others in a line that they wouldn’t have to be in if the MP’s showed any restraint in calling home daily (maybe more).

Today was the last straw, apparently an 11 year old Iraqi boy was taken into custody and MP’s had control on him. Anyway one of the MP’s was violently pushing the kid around, enough to get SGT Garcia pissed off enough to go yell at the MP’s that was rough-handling the kid. I guess they treat most prisoners pretty violently as they move them from place to place, and they don’t even let them have their dignity as they use the bathroom. I remember when the guys were in the EPW holding area, they didn’t speak Arabic so they’d just point at where they wanted the Iraqis to go and start yelling, if they didn’t move fast enough they’d start screaming in their ear like the Iraqis understood a word they were saying.

None of this would bother me if all of these people were looking to harm those of us over here, but the MP’s aren’t the judge and jury of this country and some of the people they bring in thru turn out to be innocents that were caught doing something that looked suspicious but turned out to be benign. Personally I’d be pissed to high hell if I was brought in even though I was innocent and the MP’s treated me the way they treat the prisoners here.

Then for icing on the cake, we were told that all of the warm chow was being moved to the MP’s MKIT so we had to go there for dinner. So we went in our normal DCU uniform, but when we got there we were told that we couldn’t eat till we put on all of out gear: flak vest, mask, rifle, Kevlar, LCV. The Master Sergeant there told us that it was the “Camp Uniform” put out by the camp commander himself. But we knew the camp commander and had seen him out and about and he didn’t wear all of that stuff and he didn’t have a problem with soldiers wearing as little as PT uniforms. After talking with the normal cooks that we had been going to (and I had done KP for) we found out that they weren’t going to be combining the MKITs because they thought the MP’s were dicks too. So I guess I’ll just keep going there and if I’m ever forced to go to the MP’s I’ll just start eating MRE’s. As for the MP’s, if they want any help from us they better be ready to bend down and kiss our asses.

On a more personal note, I’ve been thinking of girls back home again, especially the one that’s always on my mind (no I won’t tell you her name). I was wondering if she is still single. This whole time I’ve kind of assumed that she’s single or that if she was with a guy it wasn’t serious enough for it to matter, but I started thinking what will happen if she is in a serious relationship with another guy? What if she comes to my welcome home party in the arms or somebody else, what if their engaged or married? I don’t want to ruin anything for her but I wish she was with me, I guess deep down I want her more than most of the other girls I know. But if not her then who? And what if they were all hooked up? I’d have to go back to looking for women wherever I could and it’s so hard to meet good women.

They only want one night stands at the clubs and even if I could meet lots of women its hard to find the ones that have the same tastes as me. The trouble is that things I like to do aren’t in places that there are a lot of people like bars or clubs. I like to go hiking, camping, driving in the X, biking, running. But it’s hard to meet a woman as you go rushing past her on the Jordan River Parkway. I guess I could be a little more aggressive but that’s not my style. How will I handle that night when I find out if all this time I’ve spent thinking about her is all for nothing or all for everything?

10:34 PM

I put away the computer and started getting ready for bed (which included going out and using the bathroom) and I just noticed what a beautiful night it was. The daytime here makes you wish more than anything that you were back home, but the night isn’t bad at all. It’s one of those nights that you can’t take a picture of; and no matter how hard you try to describe it you don’t give it any justice.

The stars are out and you can see so many of them, not quite as many as in the Uintas but there’s more than enough to fill your eyes when you look at the sky. The temperature is perfect, I’m not sure what the exact temperature is to be perfect but it’s that temperature tonight; where you can just stand there and you’re not hot and not cold. It’s the kind of temperature you get on the beach in California on a clear June night. And the breeze is so faint that you can only feel it when you close your eyes and focus on it.

The noise from all the soldiers around having conversations gets a little annoying at times but most of the time they fade to the background and all you can here is the noise coming from the marshes. There are so many different noises coming out of the marsh that you have to concentrate to pick out the frogs from the crickets, every now and then you hear a sound from some insect that you thought only came on old 80’s video games, and the faint breeze rustles a few reeds every now and then to remind you its there. On the horizon you can see the dark outline of the palm trees against the slightly lighter starry sky, and the stars light up the reeds enough that once your eyes adjust to the dark you feel that you can see everything out there.

I can’t wait till I get home but on a night like this I can wait a few more hours.