Thursday, August 30, 2007

Keepin' it real in the Gelato

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Abandon all hope ye who enter here.
-Dante Aligheri

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Camp Taji, Iraq is a huge, dusty, fortified slum. Currently, we live out of a warehouse shit-full of cots, bunk-beds, and soldiers--about two companies worth. We have huge AC ducts that blow gloriously cold air all over my cot, so when I sleep at night, I have to wrap up in my sleeping bag. The warehouse is surrounded by 12-foot-tall concrete blast barriers to protect us from the mortars that the bad guys love to fire but never learned how to aim. A direct hit on the warehouse in the middle of the night would punch through the tin roof and probably wipe out 100 soldiers, easily.

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We have an early-warning siren that lets us know when a mortar will land in our sector. The third morning in Taji, someone woke me up and told me to get kitted up in my armor real fast, quick, and in a hurry because the siren was wailing. I didn't hear shit, so I scratched myself and went to the port-a-potty outside.

What I do hear, through the day and night, is outgoing artillery. At first, we thought it was incoming, but our MI (military intelligence) guys assured us that in the first 3 days, there's been only 1 mortar to land remotely close to Taji, and it landed outside the wire on Route Tampa. The outgoing artillery makes the walls shudder and my cot rattle even though the nearest artillery range is something like 5 klicks away. Whole grid-squares of Iraq must be getting pulverized every day.

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Every building on post is fortified with sandbags in the window-frames and surrounded by yard-thick HESCO barriers or concrete blast-barriers. Everything is a dead, sandy color. Random sections of walls show mortar damage: Taji looks like a bombed-out version of Tuscon with sandbags. Some of the Army vehicles rolling around look straight out of Mad Max.

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On the second morning in Taji, my section went on a 3-mile run on the hard-ball road next to the warehouse. About a half mile out, we encountered the Boneyard--both sides of the road lined with the skeletons of dead tanks for a half-mile stretch. If not for the random graphitti tagged up all over the tanks, it'd be creepy.

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Taji has a large PX that houses an ADIDAS and an Oakley store inside. The PX has a large stock of pink iPod arm holsters and three-month old issues of Maxim and Stuff Magazine. The food court next to the PX has Subway, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, and Burger King. The main chow hall can seat an entire battalion at once and offers midnight chow for the night shift. The food selection is so deep, they serve kimchi, freshly-cut fruit, and lobster tail.

We have shuttle buses that run every 5-10 minutes. We have a pool and a coffee shop next door to it. We have one-day-turnaround laundry service. We have an MWR (morale, welfare and recreation) center that provides us with AT&T phones and free 28.8K internet for half-an-hour at a time. The wait is only an hour long, and only once a week do we have a communications blackout because someone from the camp dies.

We have everything we need to live in a war zone but still pretend that we're just slumming it in the States.

Monday, August 27, 2007

In the Aeroplane over the Sea

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Ill winds mark its fearsome flight,
and autumn branches creak with fright.
The landscape turns to ashen crumbs,
When something wicked this way comes.
-Lexus, 1997

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By the time we mustered for movement into Iraq yesterday morning, word had raced through the squadron that our regiment had already been hit: the supply convoy for FIRES squadron got ripped by an IED (improvised explosive device) and 4 of their connexes (shipping containers) burned to the ground right outside the gates of Camp Taji, their new home in Iraq. Taji is maybe 10 miles north of Baghdad proper and also happens to be our new home in Iraq, too.

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At 0034 hours local time this morning, we were lifting off out of BIAP (Baghdad International AirPort) in a Chinook. The bird's gunner scanned the ground with his NODs (night optic devices) from a chair bolted to the back ramp, which was open--you could walk off the damn thing and fall 300 meters to the ground like it was a fucking plank. His machine gun swiveled menacingly at the empty streets of Baghdad.

The WHUP-WHUP of the Chinook's twin rotar blades vibrated through my body. I was shaking--we were all vibrating--from the bird's path through Baghdad's night sky. There was a fucking loud electric screech, like constant feedback from a microphone next to an amp, that lasted the entire flight, but no one cared. We were all soaking in our sweat and amazed we had survived getting onto the bird. A Chinook looks something like a blimp held aloft by twin spinning rotar blades. Entry is through the back ramp, but that's also directly in the path of the bird's turbine wash--the stream of hot air blowing from the Chinook's dual turbines.

My chalk of 12 had lined up at the edge of the helipad, each of us in full battle rattle (weapons, body armor, magazines, helmet) and carrying a full duffel bag and assault pack. When the Chinook touched down and dropped it's ramp, we dashed for the red glow of the bird's open belly. The rotar blades blasted hot, summer air in our faces, and our bags slowed us to a hopping run. One of the flight crew stopped us 10 meters short of the ramp and motioned for us to wait. The roar of the rotar blades deafened us, and the turbine wash roasted us.

I dropped my bags and brought my arms up to shield my face and any exposed flesh from what felt like an invisible stream of fire gushing from the open ramp. Jesus. Fucking. Christ. I wasn't wearing gloves, and pretty soon my hands hurt, like I'd been holding them over a bonfire. I backed off to the end of the chalk to put as much space between me and firestream as possible. I'd spent the past two weeks acclimatizing to the Arabian sun, so I was fine with the 100°F night air. But the turbine wash easily hit 150°F. I turned away from the Chinook and tried to fixate on the rhythmic thump of the rotar blades slicing through the hot, thick air. When I realized that'd been angrily yelling, "FUCK!" I tried to think of the turbine wash as just a breeze. A withering breeze that gave my flesh the smell of bacon! I've never wanted to quit so badly in my life as I did right then and there. I was ready to throw my weapon, abandon my bags, and run away, man, I don't know why I didn't. Probably because someone might call me pussy.

Over two minutes! One-hundred-twenty-seconds! we cowered and burned behind the Chinook. They made us pass our baggage forward onto pallets, and finally we were allowed to board. By red light, we crowded into the seats along the sides of the bird and strapped ourselves down. The crewman that had stopped us dragged an iron chair onto the middle of the ramp and locked it down onto the ramp. He went over to a panel, flipped a switch and ramp began to raise. The ramp stopped when it was parallel to the ground. Then the crewman brought out his machine gun and strapped himself to the bird. The Chinook lifted steadily into the air, and as we bobbed and floated across the night sky, I gazed down at Baghdad and wondered if I was staring at the same streets I would be patrolling.

Friday, August 24, 2007

Wronger than two boys kissing in church

SPC Dallas and I were at the gym, loading plates onto the bar for the bench-press. "I haven't done this since last deployment!" he declared.

"Yeah, it's been awhile since I lifted anything," I admitted.

"Fuck, that looks like a lot of weight to start," he said. Then, as he began lifting, he grunted and said, "Tell my Mom if this kills me that I died in a firefight! And that I saved someone's life! Your life!"

"Haha, all right. And if I die... tell my Mom that I died because she didn't love me enough!"

He let the weights slam onto the bar, laughed, and asked, "What the fuck was that? Oh my God, you must hate your Mom, man!"

"Hahaha. Nah, I love Mom. I always joke with her like that. I'm just kidding, don't say that to her."

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

They Don't Serve Beer in Hell, Tucker Max


We landed in Kuwait at 2236 hours local time on 13 August 2007. Though it was night, temperature on the ground was 105° F.

Here are some things you might not know about the heat in Kuwait:

  • The wind blows, but it's feels as good as having a full-body blow-dryer on you when you're already standing inside an oven.

  • The heat is dry, so that I just wither. Most of the time, I don't even feel like I'm sweating--the air just sucks the moisture right out of me. It's only when I step inside an air-conditioned area that I become covered in sweat.

  • I can't open my mouth or speak for more than a few sentences without coating the back of my throat with a layer of dust.

  • There is sand everywhere, and it is very hottt sand.

  • I sleep during the worst of the midday heat (120° F+!!) inside of a tent with A/C. I lie 5 feet from the vent and I'm still sleeping in my own sweat.

Other than the weather, things are fine here. We have the option of four meals a day here if we want (midnight chow!).

I got very depressed on the plane ride over here because I wanted a Vodka tonic very badly and it really hit me that I won't be able to drink for the next 15 months.