Monday, July 30, 2007

Lieutenant "Trend Setter"

I was never known as the cool kid back in high school, and it was not until I joined the Navy that everyone started to dress like me. As a matter of fact, I would mark "fashion leadership and trend pioneering" as one of my least developed qualities. I don't remember that trait on the aptitude tests results, but I probably never scored high enough to register. Until I joined the Army. As far as I know, no member of my battalion missed service for appendicitis before I did. By the time I got back, two other people had been taken out with what will soon be called "the cool kids infection." Today I went in for work and the sergeant who works the night desk for the intelligence section said she was having generalized belly pain yesterday which localized to the right lower quadrant coupled with loss of appetite. What can I say? They aspire to be me. They flew her out for appendicitis this morning. I expect more will find the golden symptoms in the next few days.

In the nineties the saying was "I want to be like Mike." Here in Rusty at the moment it's "I want to be like Matt." Honestly, if I was in the Army I'd want to be like anyone in the Navy, too. Can't blame 'em.

Sunday, July 29, 2007

The loss of a vital part of the team

I have found out why the showers were down last night, and why they continue to be down today.

My particular bathroom is not hooked into the city water, or wherever the underground pipes run. We are fed by an above ground tank which is a governmentally-wonderful idea in a desert. This causes the cold water to be indistinguishable from the hot water to the point that I still do not know which is the cold and which is the hot water tap in the shower. I probably knew at some point in April, but now there is no distinction and I keep telling myself alternatively that I remember the plumbing following the left-hot, right-cold convention and that I remember it being switched. Maybe they both feed from the same place. I don't know.

There is another design feature to my bathroom's plumbing being separate from the pipes underground: it is required to be filled daily by a truck. I suppose that the truck gets its water from a tap and I prefer not to contemplate the source farther than that. I don't know why they don't just run a pipe out, but KBR in all of their wisdom has decided that it is cheaper (or at least more lucrative) to hire someone to make the water run than to dig a ditch and put in a pipe.

Back to the lack of showers. There is a rumor going around that this water truck got blown up during one of the mortar attacks. The drive was not in it at the time, or I would be able to confirm this by reading the casualty report. So I have no way of knowing whether the truck was blown up or if it is just broken down. The bottom line is that it doesn't really matter since there is no water. Before you start feeling too bad for me, the next shower down still has water so I just have to walk a little farther. Ah, the trials of war!!

Saturday, July 28, 2007

Late post

So as we received the all clear because the mortar had landed far away (aren't you glad your story for today didn't begin that way), I got a call on our "around the FOB" radio for Chief. Normally Chief would be carrying the radio, but since she is at the main base I had it. One of our units had a truck break down and they wanted to know if they could take the truck down to the contractor shop to swap the machine I run from the broken truck to the one that would take it's place in the morning. It was about 8:45 pm, and the contractors would be down for the day. Getting in touch with them would be a pain, and even though by the book all maintenance is supposed to be done at the shop it would be really easy to just go down and swap the thing out myself. So I told the guy that I'd be down at the motor pool in a minute. When I got down there, I saw the perks that Army life (or is it just enlisted life) has over officer life.

Americans go to war with their trucks tricked out. The box I install is just one of about 20 different things that are in every truck that goes out of the wire, in case you were wondering where your tax dollars go. There were probably twenty or thirty people down in the motor pool getting all this gear out of the broken truck and putting it in the spare truck. There was music going, and the guys who weren't moving gear were washing the windows on the truck. In general, the guys were just having a good time. Some guys were getting wrenches for the ones inside doing the installing. The more senior guys were showing the young guys how to install some of the gear. And even though it was well past bedtime in Baghdad, 2007, there was almost a block party attitude.

I got my piece of gear in, and they were about done with the rest of the truck as I was leaving. The down side of course is that walking within three feet of a Humvee in Baghdad automatically covers you in sweat. And for the first time since I've been here the showers are down. So much for my nice new sheets. So goes life.

PS These are the doctors at my hospital:
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/27/AR2007072700007.html

Friday, July 27, 2007

A bright, sunshiny day

Today was a not so bad day, even a nice day when normalized for location and temperature. I'm not just saying that because I had lobster and shrimp for dinner. I did skip the steak because the last few times it has had an unsteak-like, almost mealy texture. I'm not saying it was a good day because our weekly three hour, Geneva-convention-banned-due-to-it's-torture-like-qualities Battalion Update Brief was canceled. No, today was a nice day because I woke up this morning with Christmas music running through my head. Must because the new set of sheets I got that are Christmas tree green. Or maybe not. Really have absolutely zero idea where it came from since this Rustamiyah is not normally considered festive or snowy. Nonetheless, it's hard to have a bad day when you have Joy to the World going through your head. Even in the middle of summer. Try to prove me wrong. It's just like the one Lay's potato chip challenge. Of course the hard part is thinking of Christmas music in 115F weather. I don't see it happening often, because if we had Christmas every day it wouldn't be special anymore, would it now? That's what my mom used to say anyway. But once a summer won't ruin it, I hope.

Thursday, July 26, 2007

101st Post

I am tired so this will be shorter than it should be. It's still hot here. I got a haircut today. Still trying to get paperwork in for med school application.

There was another memorial tonight. It is the third I've been to even though there have been many on the FOB. Every soldier memorialized has had in common that they like vehicles, one trucks, one his Passat, and this soldier motorcycles. Internal combustion seems to be a big part of every soldier's life. In addition to planning on getting a Harley Davidson when he got home, this guy also like martial arts and was really excited about the next evolution of his tattoo, or so his friends said. I probably would have had nothing in common with him even though the standing room only in the chapel proves he was a good person. He also had five children, and this was the first memorial I went to that had pictures of family as well as soldier pictures. His youngest was a daughter, Hannah, who was going to turn seven this year, and wanted her dad to be home for her birthday. His oldest son liked art, and his dad had set up an apprenticeship with his tattoo artist. His unit was supposed to have gone home in June, but they got extended from 12 to 15 months. Even so, his wife gave a message to his company about how proud she was of them and how she really hoped her husband's memory would inspire them to keep doing what they are. In short, it sounded like she really supported what her husband was doing. I hope this all ends soon, but even more I hope it ends successfully.

He would have been 28 on August 3.

I just put new sheets on my bed and am going to try them out.

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Slow going

Today's big event, not quite at the milestone level, was that I worked out for the first time since my operation. The operation really took any guilt out of being lazy while at home because I was, after all, convalescing. I paid the price for the convalescence today. I had tried to get back in the routine I had been in before on Monday, but half-way through my run (treadmill) we had incoming so I had to go to the bunker. (Which used to be a right turn out of the gym door but has been moved to the left side of the exit. No one told me.) Being mortared is another convenient excuse to put off working out, so I quit rather than go back in and finish. Blamed it on loss of momentum. Quitting is always easier when you use big words.

Today was the day I would not take the convenient excuse, unless the bad guys offered it. I drank a bottle of water before I left, and after walking the eighth of a mile to the gym almost felt dehydrated again. Luckily the gym has a refrigerator with plenty of water in it. Unfortunately, the refrigerator is set at about 70F which is a good setting for an air conditioner, but by my western standards is a bit high for a fridge. I made it through my three miles, a distance I have chosen because any longer on a treadmill gets boring, about three and a half minutes slower than where I had been. Granted, I wasn't pushing myself too hard, but adding over a minute a mile is pretty pathetic.

It should be easy to drop time now that I have started so poorly. Am I a silver lining guy or what?

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

One more milestone passed

It wasn't really my milestone, per se, but it was a milestone. Since it is a milestone that would inevitably occur before I go home due to Army scheduling and the linearity of time, maybe it is my milestone. One of my battalion's six companies is going home in about ten days, so the training for the guys replacing them started. I have a 45 minute part to play in that drama, and so I did today.

The Army's way of doing RIP training (so named because it is training done for the new unit while the old unit Remains In Place) is wholly appropriate for a large bureaucratic organization. Nothing was learned but a requirement was fulfilled. These poor guys arrived last night at about 11:30 which means that they got rooms assigned and to sleep no earlier than 1:00. Training started at 8:00 although I'm sure they had a standard Army formation at 6:00 and consisted of back to back hours of lecture and the bane of all teaching, Power Point. Oh, there was a break for lunch in case hunger was keeping anyone awake and alert. It also probably didn't help that it was 115F today and inside the Chapel it was in the 90's (guesstimate). (N.B. Training is held in the chapel because it is the only room large enough for company training. Nevertheless, if RIP training had been the first time I'd seen the Chapel, I doubt I'd go back. Miserable memories and flashbacks and such.) So at 3:00 when I started my lecture, most people had heart rates that would classify them as legally dead to any competent medical authority in the states. My training was not the most boring - which is faint praise indeed.

The training came, and it went. All revived. Now there are only five companies that I have to train before I go home. Milestone passed.

Monday, July 23, 2007

Didn't see that one coming

That could really be the theme for all of 2007. 2007 was supposed to be the one full year I had on shore duty and, in theory, was going to be the year that I got to spend the most time with my family. Guess I will never be stoned as a medium or fortune teller. My leave period, in perfect concert with the rest of 2007, was no exception.

Leave itself was wonderful, as you might imagine. It was wonderful seeing the family again, and if you want the details Kate has posted many of them. I know I can't top what she said and the pictures she posted, so I won't try. Sarah was a little bigger than I expected her to be, and Sabrina was smaller. I think I expected Sabrina to have grown a lot physically since every time I talk to her on the phone she sounds much more grown up, but I was glad that she was still my little big girl. There was the normal part leave travel that everyone goes through, and if you want the details on that craziness I will direct you to my friend Geoff's blog. He just got home a day or so ago, and he had many of the same experiences and frustrations I did spending 34 hours in Kuwait to go through customs. They were adamant that you could not bring explosives, live ammunition, or body parts home, which really makes you wonder. I would have thought that went without saying.

The part of my leave experience that is, to me, memorable happened before I even left Baghdad. I did finally drive outside Rusty which was interesting to see the rest of Iraq that our soldiers see every day. Lots of horse carts and people selling things on the side of the road. When I got to BIAP (Baghdad Int'l) I had two days before I was supposed to leave. That first night as I tried to sleep I started to get a belly ache, and by the time I got up in the morning it had localized to the right lower quadrant. Based on my time in the clinic I knew what that was a sign of, so I jumped on my right foot and got the shooting pain that confirmed to me that I was getting appendicitis. I hoped that is was just hypochondria, but I thought I'd go to the aid station just to be sure. They drew some blood and took me to the nearest hospital to have it analyzed.

The interesting part of the story is that the nearest hospital was the Camp Cropper Hospital. Camp Cropper is a camp that has grown quite a bit in the past two years because it became the major detainee facility in Iraq after that whole Abu Graib unpleasantness. I was the only American being treated there, and in fact the only patient who was not in restraints. In the recovery room there were four other beds (mine was actually in a little room off to the side) with three patients who were unconscious and dying, but still tied to the bedrails. One guy had been shot over 30 times (according to the medic) in the course of his pre-capture experience, one had been cured of his terrorist tendencies by getting shot in the head by a helicopter (not sure how he survived that, but some credit has to go to the doctors; the medics said he was as friendly as any other six year old, even though he was in his twenties), and one guy had a flesh eating virus in the advanced stages. I didn't check him out to closely even though it would have made a great discussion topic for any medical school interviews since I did have a fresh cut that hadn't fully scabbed over.

The doctors were great and mentioned that it was nice to operate on a patient who was not tied to his bed. One nurse was a little on the crabby side, but she did give me morphine when I asked and can you really blame her crankiness seeing who she normally has to work with? The medics were also very helpful and they, together with the guards, enjoyed recounting the terribly wounded bad guys who had been treated at Cropper. I suspect they embellished a bit since, as Tim was quick to point out, being shot 30 times means a guy would have had to reload, and as I will point out here, it also means he would have had to hit what he was shooting at for a majority of two full magazines. But soldiers will be soldiers, and they took pride in their job. In a weird way. So I now have a war wound and a story to go with it. One more thing to check off the list of things I never wanted to happen but 2007 has allowed me to experience.

Sunday, July 22, 2007

Not Quite Home, Sweet Home

I'm back at Rustamiyah, and while this isn't home, it is as welcome as any place other than home could be. After the trip back, I'm almost ready to give the Army credit for having a shrewd and conniving plan: make the trip miserable so that even a miserable place seems like an improvement. If that is the Army's plan, they executed it nearly perfectly. But the perfect execution assures that it was not the Army's plan, but just another in a series of poorly planned logistical nightmares. I recount...

I left BWI on Delta. They bumped me and the other two R&R returnees up to first class. So far, so good. I arrived at Atlanta at about 10:00, and went off in search of my flight back to Kuwait. The logical place to look, so I thought, was in the the international terminal. I had no information on when the flight was, so I walked quickly to get there. When I got to the international terminal, the kindly old gentleman under the information banner told me that, no, my international flight to Kuwait had a check-in in the USO which was in the food court outside the security check-in. That was my second guess - food court = international terminal in someone's mind. So off I tromped, all the while wondering exactly what they could do to me if I did miss my flight - send me to Iraq? That caused me to stop my fretting, slight though it was, since they would just be glad that I was coming back. When I finally did get to the USO, I found out that I had an eight hour wait until my plane left. Not to fear, the Army had conveniently scheduled at least two musters in between. At least the volunteers at the USO were kind and the chairs were soft. As we lined up and walked to the plane, the USO volunteers got the crowd to clap which was cheesy but better than throwing rotten fruit. Guess that's why the R&R hubs are in Dallas and Atlanta instead of San Francisco and Seattle.

The flight back to Kuwait was a little window into the world of socialized air travel. We boarded the plane at 1815 and taxied around the runways for 2 1/2 hours. There were plenty of other planes taking off (all planes which had the paying customers on board), but by the time we reached the front of the queue we had burned so much gas that we had to go back to the gate and refuel. Jim, has that ever happened to you? I didn't think so. Alas, there was no one to listen to our complaints because the plane was chartered by people who were not riding on it. There is a huge difference between passengers and customers, with the latter getting service and the former getting "service." The flight attendants did give us each a cup of water while refueling so that we would not have any heat stroke cases before we reached the desert. Once we finally got airborne, the flight was fine thanks in no small part to Unisom. They did serve us food, timed to coincide with dozing off, but I will not complain about calories freely offered.

When we got to Kuwait I was pleasantly surprised by how decent 95F feels without humidity. It was the middle of the night, but I was expecting 100F+ so 95F was a reprieve. Kuwait was the typical Army rigamarole complete with several meaningless formations a day and a final muster time at least two hours before the buses came to pick us up. When we finally boarded the C-130, all went smoothly until we had been in the air for 20 minutes. I guess that's when Air Force pilots do their pre-flight inspections because they found a broken piece of equipment that made us turn around and land. Our group commander was given the option of letting us off the plane while they fixed this problem or letting us off in groups of five to use the potty. Of course, he when faced with a decision, the proper choice is always the most painful and least logical, so he chose to keep us on board which ended up being too much even for soldiers. When the murmuring turned to weapon cocking, he asked for a show of hands of people who wanted to get off the plane, and it was unanimous that he had chosen poorly. I'm glad we did because it took over an hour to fix whatever it was that was broken, and the back of a C-130 is no place to spend such a significant portion of you life.

I was at the airport in Baghdad for less than 24 hours before I finally got a flight to Rusty. I was tickled pink over this since some people had been stuck there for five days. The soldier in charge of helicopter flights took me and the other two going to Rusty out to our helos and did everything but buckle us in. When we landed at Taji (which in addition to having a different name than Rusty is also in a different location), I said that no, this was not my stop. The flight crew disagreed as this was the last stop of the night. So I spent the night on a bench next to the Taji heli-pad with one of the two soldiers traveling with me. I do not know what happened to the third since I have not seen him since he boarded the helo at Baghdad Airport. This heli-pad is a 24 hour operation with unpadded wooden benches which means that my time was not wasted: I now can give solid advice to a) stay in school so you don't become homeless and have to sleep on benches, and b) do not buy property near a heli-pad. I managed to stay awake for my flight from Taji to Rusty the next day and was genuinely impressed by how pretty some parts of Iraq are and how squalid other are. When I got to Rusty, I was tired (due to stupid muster times, jet-lag, and trying to sleep on the bench next to the heli-pad). I managed to stay awake until 1500, but was starting to be less aware than even I normally am, so I went to sleep. I woke up this morning at 0600, and was glad to see that I was in my little room which is right in the middle of the park bench - own bed spectrum of places to sleep. I don't think I would have been nearly as thankful had it not been for the park bench experience. Anyway, I am all in one piece and will soon be close enough to the end to start counting days.