A Six Day Tour: Day 3-4

Leaving COB Allahlone and off into the hinterlands of Iraq. FOB Stinky, known for the distinctive odor that reminds me of that time the septic tank backed up. To get there we will have to go through a major population center. The favorite past time there is to practice the NBA attack. In other words, from the top of the building with a hand grenade, through the turret, nothing but net! Seeing as the national past time of most arab countries is football (Americans call it soccer), followed closely by rock throwing. I have seen kids occasionally leave a football dirt lot to throw rocks at us, so it may be a dead heat.
On second thought the real national pastime here is begging things off American patrols… but I will get to that later.
As the sun goes down we are rolling out the gate in our brand new smokeless MRAP. “Scotty Doesn’t Know” by Lustra is on the head sets and we are ready to rock and roll. As we hit the suburbs, I lock and load my M4. The M240 is always loaded, but I usually don’t load the rifle. The remote chance of it going off and a bullet bouncing around my turret is higher then that I will need it anywhere but a city.
The bolt does not slide easily forward. I have cleaned the guts so often that it has no lubrication. I reach down into the turret and pull out a spray bottle of CLP. A quick squirt and everything works fine. Of course if I had checked this before leaving the wire, I wouldn’t have one more head ache.
Tall buildings and people on both sides of the street are going to give men neck strain. Every car at an intersection is muzzled as we pass through the city center, and still the HETs get rocks thrown at them. There are no issues until we are rolling out the other side. The IPs have shut down the road for a suspected IED.
US units would cordon off the area, call higher and have highly trained professionals come out and dispose of it. Iraqis are a little more direct. They get behind their trucks and then shoot at it until, either it blows up or is in enough pieces that one of them feels comfortable walking up and kicking it. Iraqi Police marksmanship being slightly better than the Arab world as a whole, this only take three or four magazines.
It only takes twenty minutes to clear things their way, instead of three hours our way. And we are off and into the desert. This is the second most boring road we have traveled yet. So I amuse myself by watching Slayer throw chem lights around in the cab, and try not to sing along to my music. Some people should only sing in the shower. I shouldn’t be allowed to do that.
The problem is that as a white boy with no rhythm I love to sing and dance. Sometimes it results in a doctor being called and someone putting a wallet in my mouth so I don’t bite my tongue. Normally I sing and dance on my bike. Yes you can dance on a motorcycle at speed, it looks stupid but who cares? Gunning is similar, but the mike means they can hear me, and Doc Philly has to watch my feet move to the music. I think I have solidified his PTSD claim.
FOB Stinky has bunk beds and hardened tents. Not bad. There is also the best alterations shop, and the largest chow hall I have ever seen. We all go shopping, when we wake up, then hang out at the trucks. When the convoy is ready we will roll. Inevitably there is a game of rock kicking, which consists of kicking a rock at anyone walking by.
Moto tells us that there was a successful NBA attack 700m form the gate that day. So no singing and dancing until we are a few miles down the road.
Return is reverse of arrival. Back through the city and onto the hi-way. Halfway through the city one of the HETs blows a tire. They limp it out of town. Parked on the side of the road, occupying more than a mile and a half of space the Slayer mechanics go to work on it. This is not like changing a car tire. It involves air tools and three vehicles, including the one being worked on. There are tales passed around the battalion of three hour tire changes. SGT Nasty and his truck pull up to lend a hand.
Someone is a NASCAR fan and it isn’t SGT Nasty, who got his citizenship just before we left to come here. Slayer is trying to get on a pit crew, and we are rolling in 20 minutes. Another leg done, and another good nights sleep.

A Six Day Tour: Day 3

Leaving COB Allahlone and off into the hinterlands of Iraq. FOB Stinky, known for the distinctive odor that reminds me of that time the septic tank backed up. To get there we will have to go through a major population center. The favorite past time there is to practice the NBA attack. In other words, from the top of the building with a hand grenade, through the turret, nothing but net! Seeing as the national past time of most arab countries is football (Americans call it soccer), followed closely by rock throwing. I have seen kids occasionally leave a football dirt lot to throw rocks at us, so it may be a dead heat.
On second thought the real national pastime here is begging things off American patrols… but I will get to that later.
As the sun goes down we are rolling out the gate in our brand new smokeless MRAP. “Scotty Doesn’t Know” by Lustra is on the head sets and we are ready to rock and roll. As we hit the suburbs, I lock and load my M4. The M240 is always loaded, but I usually don’t load the rifle. The remote chance of it going off and a bullet bouncing around my turret is higher then that I will need it anywhere but a city.
The bolt does not slide easily forward. I have cleaned the guts so often that it has no lubrication. I reach down into the turret and pull out a spray bottle of CLP. A quick squirt and everything works fine. Of course if I had checked this before leaving the wire, I wouldn’t have one more head ache.
Tall buildings and people on both sides of the street are going to give men neck strain. Every car at an intersection is muzzled as we pass through the city center, and still the HETs get rocks thrown at them. There are no issues until we are rolling out the other side. The IPs have shut down the road for a suspected IED.
US units would cordon off the area, call higher and have highly trained professionals come out and dispose of it. Iraqis are a little more direct. They get behind their trucks and then shoot at it until, either it blows up or is in enough pieces that one of them feels comfortable walking up and kicking it. Iraqi Police marksmanship being slightly better than the Arab world as a whole, this only take three or four magazines.
It only takes twenty minutes to clear things their way, instead of three hours our way. And we are off and into the desert. This is the second most boring road we have traveled yet. So I amuse myself by watching Slayer throw chem lights around in the cab, and try not to sing along to my music. Some people should only sing in the shower. I shouldn’t be allowed to do that.
The problem is that as a white boy with no rhythm I love to sing and dance. Sometimes it results in a doctor being called and someone putting a wallet in my mouth so I don’t bite my tongue. Normally I sing and dance on my bike. Yes you can dance on a motorcycle at speed, it looks stupid but who cares? Gunning is similar, but the mike means they can hear me, and Doc Philly has to watch my feet move to the music. I think I have solidified his PTSD claim.
FOB Stinky has bunk beds and hardened tents. Not bad. There is also the best alterations shop, and the largest chow hall I have ever seen. We all go shopping, when we wake up, then hang out at the trucks. When the convoy is ready we will roll. Inevitably there is a game of rock kicking, which consists of kicking a rock at anyone walking by.
Moto tells us that there was a successful NBA attack 700m form the gate that day. So no singing and dancing until we are a few miles down the road.
Return is reverse of arrival. Back through the city and onto the hi-way. Halfway through the city one of the HETs blows a tire. They limp it out of town. Parked on the side of the road, occupying more than a mile and a half of space the Slayer mechanics go to work on it. This is not like changing a car tire. It involves air tools and three vehicles, including the one being worked on. There are tales passed around the battalion of three hour tire changes. SGT Nasty and his truck pull up to lend a hand.
Someone is a NASCAR fan and it isn’t SGT Nasty, who got his citizenship just before we left to come here. Slayer is trying to get on a pit crew, and we are rolling in 20 minutes. Another leg done, and another good nights sleep.

A Six Day Tour: Day 2

A Six Day Tour: Day 2

FOB Junkyard, is a hole, without the redeeming qualities of cool local shops. On the smaller FOBs there are little local shops that have cheap and cool stuff. Six days and three more bases to shop at. The Movement Control Team (MCT) wants us to wait until 2300 to leave. Moto and the HET commander decide to try and sneak out early. As Lifeguard and I get to the gate. (Might Mouse was back at the fob so he could compete in some hoorah thing, and learn how to use a new weapon system.) Our guest driver Ms. SPC is doing well when the HETs call Moto and ask if we know that we are smoking. I look back and see a cloud of smoke.
This is our first trip in an this MRAP, but I am certain that giant clouds of white smoke are not normal. Not like campfire clouds, or a guy smoking a cigar smoke. You could signal Geronimo’s boy that the cavalry is coming with this cloud. I can’t even see the truck behind us. It is lucky for us that the Slayer recovery truck is right behind us. The hop out and run up to lend a hand. Lifeguard gets out takes a look at the smoke and begins to swear as he pops the hood. The radio is alive with suggestions of what to check. Is there water in the oil, did we put MOGAS in a JP8 vehicle? The mechanics come up as Life guard pops the hood.
This is not the way to sneak out the gate. Almost thirty giant trucks, stacked up behind an escort truck that is doing its best imitation of a smoke generator. Our only hope is that the gate guards can’t see the unit markings. I watch as Lifeguard pulls the dipstick and looks at the color of the oil. Then he offers the business end to the Slayer Mechanics. I watch in amazement as the first one, looks at it with his flash light. Then he touches it and rubs it between his fingers and smells it. Finally he sticks his tongue out and tastes it. Like a vintner checking the vintage.
He makes a face then offers it to his partner in crime, who also tastes it. Lifeguard, who is the opposite of Hick, whatever that is, looks shocked. I have seen my brother in law do this. Now I know these two hill billy mechanics at least enjoy their work.
Slayer one and Slayer two have us fire up the truck to the accompanying cloud of smoke. Then run around and put their hands in it to check for moisture. The step back and yell at me to have the driver rev the engine. When she does a series of perfect smoke rings fly out of the exhaust pipe. They have me do it again, and more rings fly out. They watch the rings and have me do it again.
“Are you just doing that to see the rings?” I yell down from my perch, half in jest.
They look sheepish and nodd. One is about 5’6” and Two is over six feet. One yells back “She should be good, there isn’t anything in the oil! Probably a blown injector!” With that they are back into their truck where I will watch them throw chem lights at each other and occasionally reenact Wayne’s World’s head banging scene.
We leave a trail of smoke from the middle to the end of the convoy all the way home. Back at COB Allahlone we roll through the gate as slow as possible, smoking out the guards.
When Moto finally lays eyes on the truck he says, “Holy shit, I thought it was like a little smoke not that!”
Day two ends back where we started prepping our second truck, and moving all of our crap to the new truck. Four more days to go. I think I like these guys.

A 6 Day Tour: Day 1

A 6 Day Tour: Day 1

OPMOVE, that simple word brings joy to the heart of any convoy escort team. Six days of peace and quiet on the road. Once you kick off it is just the convoy commander (SSG Moto) and his team. Higher is far and away, at the end of the Blue force tracker, sort of a combat email system. No stupid details, no formations, just you and the job. Of course you have to work with an army trans unit. We have been hit and miss with the Heavy Equipment Transport (HET) companies. Some have been good, some not so good. The guys who had a rear ender that stranded the convoy on the side of the road for twelve hours were some real winners.
Even with that the squad is eager to get on the move. Most important is that each trip is a RON (Remain Over Night) not a turn and burn, you drive a hundred miles or so and then go to sleep in whatever transient quarters are available. Think of it as a guided tour, but with machine guns and the occasional IED.
We wake up on day one and start the load out. Every thing packed, an extra can or two of ammo is snuck out of the ammo locker here and there, then off to the intel brief to meet our charges.
When you walk into a room with another unit in it you can immediately tell what that unit thinks of itself. Most of Moto’s squad walk into the S2 building like we own it, because, well, we do. Who ever else is in there reports to our boss. We are the gun slingers, the escorts. We don’t wear reflective belts, body armor or any crazy COB requirements once we leave the barracks. We are on the way to the office, outside the wire where at least you know what to expect from Hadji. The HET drivers are in body armor with reflective belts on. Their battalion policy. There is a low roar of banter when we walk in. Insults and inside jokes are flung back and forth. The think they are pretty good. Works for me. We sit down for the latest list of bad news. Increased attacks here so be careful, no attacks here, so we are due one soon, and this area hasn’t changed in a while so expect them to try some thing different. Then we get to all the new and interesting way they have come up with to blow us up. A few new twists, no big deal.
After the brief comes the Chaplain. I would call myself an agnostic, if I took it that seriously, or a pagan when they are shooting at me if I thought it would help. Our chaplain is a former marine, he brings a certain earthiness to the prayer. We get their chaplain, who had to have been a youth minister in another life. If I want to be preached at I will go to church, and I don’t. He doesn’t give a prayer, he gives sermon, then the longest prayer we have had yet. Whatever.
Then we are up and out to the trucks, a group shotguning of Rip Its, and then up into the trucks. My body armor weighs about 40 pounds, then there is the balaclava, and fleece hat to give some padding under the helmet. Gunners lay out armor, and adjust their nest. The trucks are ready and we roll, leaving COB Allahlone in the dust, and all the frustrations with it.
Rolling out, behind our truck is one of the two wreckers. Ten ton trucks with all the things you need to fix, drag or carry a broken truck down the road. I put my ear phone in and am about to press play when I hear music. Is that? It couldn’t be? It is! The wrecker crew is playing Slayer of their PA. I turn around, flip the horns at them and head bang my way out the gate, until my driver hit’s a bump and I almost fall down and break my ass. Time to get to work.
Leg one is a trip to FOB Junkyard, a little further down the road from our usual stop. Housing is a tent with cots, no biggie. We get there before 2am and that means time for a little reading and bullshiting. The HETs are professional and fun. I could get to like this. We added on additional medic. Doc Pusher sitting in Moto’s truck is backed up by an outsider, Doc Philly. A second tour guy who is more than grateful to be away from the BS of his unit.
Doc Philly fits right in, halfway through the trip I hand him music and he DJs us through the rest of the trip. FOB Junkyard has only one thing to endear it to us, a giant grave yard of Iraqi Armor. Having trained my entire professional life to do to these tanks what some other lucky bastard got to do, the entire squad stops for pictures on our way to the chow hall.
That night we head back home before the next leg.

Nationalism

A fish does not see the water and we do not see the air. It is so part of our environment, so fundamental that we don’t notice it. Like gravity, or the stock market and the effect of the price of a barrel of oil. It is accepted that these are part of our western lives. The rest of the world does not necessarily see it that way.
I was a literally a child at my fathers knee, trying understand what he was teaching in his high school history class. Like any child I was trying to understand the world I lived in, but the concepts were beyond my reach. Why was a revolution in France over a hundred years ago more important than a revolution in the US? We were the super power not them, how could the cheese eating surrender monkeys be mor important. At the time with his infinite patience, he replied simply “Nationalism”.
I am sure that there was an attempt to further explain that I never quite understood. Two decades later, I came to understand. It took stepping out into the water to see how air effected me. I had to go to Iraq in order to understand one of the building blocks of the world I grew up in. Maybe if I had traveled to the third world at a younger age I would have seen it earlier.
In my world the state, the nation was a given, an accepted thing like gravity. Even those who opposed the state wanted to change it, to run it themselves. There are a limited number of exceptions to this, but they are generally considered wing nuts. If I had had the personal experience to process one of my favorite authors I would have understood it. Ralph Peters was trying to explain to the US military in the 1990s that most of the third world does not take nationalism for granted.
Here the tribe, the clan, the religion is takes is the given. A person may want to take the tribe out of the state, but would never consider taking themselves from the tribe. I hope there are brave sociologists and social anthropologists who have a deeper understanding of this and are talking to our leadership.
A few weeks ago I was standing at an Iraqi controlled gate near COB Allalone. It is basically a US Army supplied Pick-n-Pull. A truck leaving did not want to stop. The driver gunned the engine, and the guard got out of the way. The response of my self and the PFC with me was predictable. It was demonstrated in no uncertain terms that to attempt to continue would result in the drivers death. A search of the vehicle revealed that they were trying to steal parts from the yard. This is unimportant.
What is important is that I felt perfectly justified in enforcing the laws of this state and my own: “You do not run check points” The trial and punishment is immediate. The Iraqi guard thanked me for not shooting the man who tried to run him down.
“It would be very bad.” The guard said.
I agreed with him, I would prefer not to shoot someone over stolen truck parts. Then it hit me when I was talking to the man who controlled the lot. It would result in tribal problems, clan problems. The rules of the tribes are more valuable, more important than the rules of the state.
The Iraqi Army paints their flag on everything, they are more compulsive about it than marines with the Eagle Globe and Anchor. This very well may be a deliberate attempt at fostering nationalism in the army. Like putting Napoleon’s eagles at the front of his regiments. Building an identification with the state through a symbol. Is there really that deep of strategy going on here?
The difference between nationalism and a cult of personality is that the image of a person is replaced with the image of a symbol of an idea. It can’t be that simple. Maybe I am over thinking the whole thing, and need to stop listening to philosophy audio books while on patrol and go back to Kim Harrison.

Women

No matter how many women have entered the military it remains a male dominated organization. Why? Too much to go into at this time. Living in this all male sausage fest can be a disorientating. Our medic is female, and the only female in the squad. Watching guys in this environment can be amusing, if you have a sick and twisted sense of humor. We are starved for the female of the species. There is at least two attractive females at the combat stress unit on post. It makes Doc Feelgood’s job easier to get guys to go over there.
You see changes in the soldiers TV and movie watching habits also. We still buy and watch the action flick with big stuff blowing up and a high round count and mortality rate. Then there are movies where a hot actress spends most of the time running around in tight or revealing clothing. (This is how I ended up with five seasons of Alias) But there are also an increase in ‘Chick flicks’.
I find this last trend to be the most interesting as it would seem that it is most prevalent in the younger troops. Is there a need for the softer side of life, maybe a desire to look into a world that is beyond our reach? I really don’t know. I do find that after a long chat with any of my female friends I end up thinking about them long into the next day.
I ended a long term relationship before this trip because I didn’t want the distraction. I have been through the heart aches and pains being married and deployed. This time I walked away clean. Still I find myself enjoying the long conversations with female friends about their relationships and trials. It is a world that is so alien to me as to seem almost like fiction.
The events are no different than they were back home, but I have no frame of reference. My world is so removed from dating, and all things social involving the opposite sex. Maybe it is different in some of the support units that can run up to half female. That, I have heard, brings its own issues.
Like any good grant writer I can only say that this line of thought deserves more investigation. Now if you will excuse me I need to reconsider ordering 7 seasons of Buffy.

A note to the reader

Half of my reason for writing this blog is for my own personal record. This place does funny things to my head. I want an accurate image of where I was and what I was thinking. Therefore I write and post without editing. Going back over the posts, I realize that this leads to more than a few typos. Deal with it. I am however considering going back and maybe tidying some things up.
I think all the readers for not commenting on these not so minor errors. Most of the other reasons have to do with keeping friends and family up to date on how I am doing, as I am really horrible about writing letters. The last bit is probably a desperate cry for attention… but who knows?
For those of you who are not here, but have loved ones here, let me say a few things about letters. Letters are the best way of telling someone that you care. There is something incredibly special about having someone take a piece of their day, put it in an envelope, and sending it to you. There are a few letters that I have that stay in my bag, so I can take them out and read them over and over again. E-mail, VOIP, and chat programs just are not the same.
I was asked by a friend back home about what to write. I thought about it, and finally like many of my best answers, I told them what my dad did. Start with what you did today, then what was going through your mind when you started writing, and finish with your short term plans. A little slice of home. I have heard of this in other words from other sources, but he said it best, and does it the best.
Better than boxes of candies, or care packages, a little piece of home goes a very long way. This by no means should imply that I do not love home baked cookies or hand and foot warmers arriving here. But if someone you care for is over seas, go old school, put pen to paper and drop them a line. If they don’t write back you can gently remind them that they don’t even have to buy stamps.