Random Day

Having failed at sleeping through an entire day here (although we're up roughly one eight-hour nap after each three-hour period of verticality), we futzed around and tried to stay busy.

First, there was the Chair of Death. Buying "local" is encouraged here - anything to stimulate the Iraqi economy. Sometimes, though, it would be nice if we could have gotten some office chairs from, I dunno...another economy that could use some stimulation. See, the local stuff kinda...sucks.



So we tried to fix it. This is the test of the first iteration of repairs.



Back to the drawing board... After about four tries we got it stabilized enough to stop whoever was sitting in front of the secure computer from occasionally being launched backward onto the floor. That pretty much qualified as a "win." So we went shopping!

This is not as exciting as it might seem. We have a "unit-run" PX, which means that every so often, somebody drags a conex up to the Big Base, puts some stuff in it, and brings it back. Normally it gets raided for the good stuff (chips and Ramen noodles) within 24 hours, but it's always got the really important stuff.



There's some word on the street that the Powers That Be have nefarious plans to enact a military-wide smoking ban in the middle-future. I will, of course, not say rude things about any plans coming down from On High. I will merely point out that back when we used to actually win wars, the Powers That Be actually put cigarettes in our ration packs.

Having done field chair repairs and having successfully procured smokes and chips, we felt like winners. I felt like such a winner that I rewarded myself.



That is a peanut butter and thimbleberry jelly sammich. I do not know what a thimbleberry is, but it makes a fabulous jam.

I just don't get it

I just walked into our "office trailer," to find SSG C watching the Michael Jackson memorial on CNN International.

No - we did not participate in the "join hands to pray for Michael" part.

Is it over now?

When posting is light...

When I decided to keep blogging during this deployment, I had to make a decision that ran counter to my every inclination. I was, I decided, going to have to be nice.

Now, you may have noticed I'm not always very nice, but trust me - I'm genetically inclined to be a total ranting bitch on wheels. I am of the school that tells children: If you can't say something nice, come sit by me.

But I didn't know what sort of...tactical situation this trip would present, and so I planned for the worst-case scenario. That one would, of course, involve people dying. And, given my ability to jam my feet in my mouth, I figured that if I went off on a good long rant about how much of an absolute shithead moron Captain So-And-So was, he would be immediately killed the next day.

Then, the way I figured it, his grief-stricken family members would eventually be directed to a post on the internet about him, written only days before he died, in which some random chick devoted paragraphs and paragraphs to describing him as dumber than dogshit. This would, of course, probably make his Mom sad. And really, if there's one thing I never want to feel responsible for, it's making someone's Mom sad.

So sometimes, when there's not a lot of posting, it's because I can't sit down at the computer and generate anything but a seething vat of rage and vitriol. As a deployment winds down, it gets worse. Everyone would rather be somewhere else, all grand ideas have been given up on, and frankly, we grow sick of the people we've been tolerating for months.

So - in summary - everyone in the Army in Iraq who is not on my Civil Affairs Team is an idiot. All of them suffer from cranial-rectal inversion, which might be solved if they extracted their heads far enough for good advice to reach their ears.

But, rather than write mean, bitter posts that would make me feel bad if someone's Mom read them, I will simply take a deep breath and sometimes, rather than write something rude, occasionally leave you with no Bad Dog howling. I think it's best this way.

From Here to Y'all

I cleaned that table two nights ago after we ate on it. The dust has been...very special. It allows us to analyze foot traffic patterns in the gravel.



Hope you all are watching fireworks and cooking out today!

Oh yee of little faith...

My mother, of all people, asked in the comments from the last post...

DID YOU GET MEAT???

We are elite warriors, and, for us, failure is not an option. We brave porta-jons on a daily basis, we face without flinching the dreaded Iraqi City Council Meetings. We grill in the face of sand flies and wear unauthorized hats behind the backs of sergeants major. We carry Beanie Babies into crowds of Iraqi children and come out unscathed.

Chuck Norris can leap six-room schools in a single bound, but we can fund construction of several such schools in one afternoon of paperwork.

We are, in short, really really bad mofo's.

We got meat.



That's 26 steaks of various cuts, and the trusty box of old burgers we keep around for snacking.

We also keep backup meat in the Bossman's freezer, but this is the freezer we filled on our most recent trip.

Some days...

It sounded like a good idea when the opportunity came up yesterday. We were low on meat, I wanted some new white socks, the boys needed snacks and magazines featuring scantily clad wimminz...there was a convoy headed up to Big Base for the afternoon. We'd load up our trusty Maxpro Plus MRAP and tag along. It'd be a hoot. And, as always when we roll our vehicle, good training.

I rolled out of bed in a decent mood, and headed outdoors. The dust was a little thick, but I was Abby the Optimist today - well, the guy in the gun won't roast, I though.

We picked up some mail, then SSG C and SGT B went down to move the truck over to the line, Bossman and I finished up some coffee and prepared to get a little paperwork we were taking. Just before we headed off, SSG C came over with a question - did we know, he asked, if this particular truck had a set of slave cables?

(those are basically a giant jumper cable for military vehicles, which tend to have a special port designed for "slaving")

It started yesterday! I pointed out, which forced SSG C to point out that although yes, he had started the truck yesterday, it apparently had decided to take today off.

(and no - we didn't get a set of slave cables when we signed out the MaxPro)

We found a set and jumped the truck. The boys drove it around to the line, and the Boss and I grabbed our paperwork. Along the way, they grabbed ice for our cooler and returned the cables.

We met them at the staging area (we were still early - our truck has been, on occasion, prone to commo disasters - we budget extra time).

My pants gave out!, announced SGT B, hopping down and indicating the signature ACU failure - a spectacularly blown-out crotch. It was, we noted, a blue underpants day.

I hopped in the back to put the water and Gatorade in the cooler with the ice while the guys handled their gunner and driver chores. Except the cooler...I'd never seen a catastropic cooler failure before - cracked plastic and a separated insulating layer. The lid wouldn't fit. And when it's over 100 in the dust at 0900, a non-sealing cooler is a non-starter.

It was not, the Bossman noted, starting out as a particularly super day.

The blue cooler (which we loved - it was the perfect size) ended up in the Dumpster, and I trudged off to fetch Second Best Cooler (it's red and just smaller enough to suck). We got that loaded, the commo checked, the gun up, my high-speed warfighting Tom Tom system up and running. We hit the test-fire pit and rolled out the gate.

Hey, C, I asked, you smell something?

Smells like brakes, the Bossman volunteered from the back.

Burning brakes, said SSG C, piloting out the entry maze.

The radio chatter turned to the weird burning brake smell, and we made a quick stop outside the gate to check the emergency brake on a trailer in the convoy. It was semi-engaged, so it was blamed for the smell. We had no idiot lights or odd gauges, and Old Faithful was handling in her normal, godawful manner. We continued on.

We reached Big Base, established a linkup time in six hours, and and parked near Finance so the boss could go in and grab some cash. I crawled out of the front to stow my body armor in the passenger compartment. SGT B pulled down the gun and SSG climbed out of the driver's seat to stretch.

Only there was this smell...

SSG C and I circled the vehicle. His background is in the motor pool, so when we noted a good, solid, Class III leak around the inner edge of the inner rear tire on the driver's side, he was about to expertly diagnose it as probably the problem.

Fortunately, we were parked right across from the Maintenance section for the battalion we support. Cooking with gas, hey? Well, not so much. See, they don't keep parts on hand for the Maxpro varients of MRAP...

[insert sound of head hitting wall here]

But maybe they had what we needed. Of course, it being Sunday on Big Base, the maintence crew didn't actually show up till 1300...

We went to lunch, sent the Bossman to do officer things at Higher, and linked up with the truck bubbas at 1300.

Nope, said the staff sergeant in charge of the section. They didn't have any hub seals (aha! Now I knew what we needed!) for a Maxpro, but there was an outfit a couple streets over that worked on Maxpros...

(figuring out which little garage does what to which vehicles and for whom could be a full-time job. It's not mine, so this part is always frustrating as Hell)

Fortunately, while we were at lunch, the whole wheel/brake/hub/axle area had cooled just enough to unseize (a lovely development as soon as we had parked the truck). So we could move it to the Possible Maybe Guys Who Could Fix It.

I walked into their bay, which was full of civilians, and started telling my sob story:

Hi, my name is Abby and I'm with the CA team supporting the Cav guys down at FOB McSleepy. We seem to have developed a hub leak on the way up here, and the Forward Support Company people here don't have what they need to fix it. They said you all might be able to help. Did I mention our SP to get back is in 3.5 hours? And we really really hate our Higher and didn't pack our toothbrushes, so I'd pretty much sell my soul to you if you can fix my truck.

And you know what? God love those guys at ManTech, because they did.

We pulled down the wire mitigation system, I shuffled some paper, we debated a grumpy staff sergeant from a nearby maintenance section from which the ManTech guys actually liberated our part...we watched gallons of water (to cool) and degreaser (to, I suppose, degrease) go into the afflicted area of Old Not-Quite-Faithful. At a couple of points, there were six guys cranking on our truck to get us out the door in time to get home. They seemed mildly amazing our rear axle hadn't burst into flame or something similarly horrible on our trip up there.

In between the debates and forms, we had time to get each of us past the real PX and to reassure our fearless leader that he would not, in fact, be trapped at Higher for the night.

We rolled out of their compound at 1615, picked up the Bossman, fueled up (no way we were rolling out with the needle anywhere to the left of "F" with the day we were having), made our linkup, and got back to our dusty little home.

Soaked in sweat and thankfully ditching our body armor, we stood next to the parked truck (who has a followup visit with our local maintenance guys tomorrow).

Next time, the Bossman ventured, when the truck is dead in the morning and there's a pants failure and a cooler breaks, all before we even saddle up...

Right, we agreed. The next time that happens, it's a sign we all just need to go back to bed.

Bingo, he said.

(note - I wanted to link to the ManTech folks because they went a lot farther than they needed to with a lot less paperwork to help us out. Maybe I heard the name badly, because the only ManTech I could find with a link to the defense industry didn't sound like the same folks. Pity, 'cause this was a great group of guys)

Just FYI

In case my US readers thought they were the only ones...we have satellite feed TV here sourced from somewhere in the middle east. We get CNN International, the BBC and Al Jazeera (in English).

When the Michael Jackson Grief Festival got to be too much on CNN, we switched to the BBC. When it overwhelmed us there, too, we went to Al Jazeera.

The good news is, it's not just the US that's overwhelmed with this godawful contrived celebrity media seizure that's become the norm whenever anyone who's ever made the cover of the National Enquirer gets athlete's foot.

The horrifying news is that it's everyone in the world who gets their news in English.

The worst job in the Army

belonged to the platoon medic for the guys we were out with the other day. We had to sit in a small meeting room (cushions on a concrete floor, etc etc), drinking even-less-trustworthy-than-usual tea and talking about water projects. We had to continue said discussion even when the power went out and the flies tripled in number.

But unlike the medic, we did not have to examine the muktar (town headman) as he lay sprawled out on the floor, wincing.

Unlike the medic, we did not have to have the level of highly personal physical contact that allowed him to declare "torsed testicle, he needs to see a doctor."

We don't smell very good, and we have access to sufficient water for a daily scrub. I don't envy the man whose job took him into a crotch without that resource.

Mail Call!

Bossman and SSG C went out to look at something this morning, so that left SGT B and me on mail detail.

Sometimes we ignore the mail ritual and let the little HHC gnomes schlepp our stuff back through to their headquarters, but this morning we thought we'd join our teammates in the spirit of up too early doing stuff, and, after an awful attempt at what passes for breakfast here, we lurked outside the mail conex to be offer our help.



That's four days worth of mail. This is where it gets fun. We hopped in (much to the confusion of the mail guys - "why are there two sergeants helping us?") and joined the chain passing boxes out and stacking them.

"Alpha! Alpha! Bravo! HHC! Alpha! K-9!"

You don't know how many weird little subunits you have until you start making piles.



It starts small, but you schlepp packages and packages...and then you get to the rear of the conex and start coming back toward the door on the other side...



As the piles grow, people start showing up and sub-sorting. Because, hey, if you're with Second Platoon, Alpha, you're sure not schlepping mail for those Third Platoon bastards.



We made it to the end of the conex, gathered up the stuff for our team, and loaded it into a handy plastic footlocker the Bossman had shipped in. We were preparing to lug it back to our area when a little karma tapped us on the shoulder.

"You guys want to just throw that in our Gator?" A civilian worker grinned. "It's no problem."



Hooah, not dragging boxes through gravel. That's a win, kids.

Hey, Dads!

You guys are great. A good Dad is just about the best thing a kid can have. So you all get today to put your feet up, hoist a cold beer and tell yourself, "Self, I rock."

In that spirit, here's a picture of my Dad, wrestling some dogs in the snow.



And once you're done relaxing...there's a possum in the garage, the lawn mower won't start, there are sparks coming out of my breaker box, somehow your axe has a broken handle, I have a sliver in my finger, we're out of beer and someone - I'm not saying who - may have wrecked your truck.

The Adventure Continues

Quite some time ago, after much discussion, the Mister and I decided to part ways after this deployment. No hard feelings, etc etc.

This was a personal decision, and is not, directly, the subject of this post.

However, although we're not done here yet, the end is in sight. I'm starting to do some post-Iraq planning, which involves post-Texas planning. You, the American Taxpayer, are a generous sort and, what with a nice little program we call PDRMA, I will not be broke or unemployed immediately upon my return.

Unfortunately, almost all the employment prospects I'm finding are...well, civilized. You know - decently-paid positions leveraging my PAO background to represent some worthy agency or organization.

Which is fine. Great. I'm not turning up my nose, so the Gods of Employment shouldn't be offended.

There are also some Army opportunities, which is slightly-less-than-appealing, but still...it's there, which is good.

But...you'll never know if you don't ask, so...

If any of you happen to live someplace in the southeast, and happen to know of any vacancies at...oh, I dunno...beachfront bait shops, campgrounds, that sort of thing...the sort of work that might appeal to a mildly grumpy thirty-something woman with a big black dog...you could shoot me an email. I'm not saddled with a tremendous amount of debt, so - if you know someone who wants to pay minimum wage to a marina caretaker...



I can also spread gravel.

[hack!] frickin' lovely

Dust storms by themselves are pretty awesome, let me tell you. Fine powder, oozing under the door and around windows. But tonight, we're extra lucky, because we're having dust and pretty impressive wind.

Now, keep in mind this entire FOB is covered in camo nets, tarps and cobbled together cheap-nail-and-plywood construction projects. So in addition to being pretty much country dark out there, we now have obstacles lying around.

I just made my way to my trusty porta-jon, where the dust had worked its unique magic. I could have written my name on the toilet seat, so thick was the dust. Considering the level of GI distress and the traffic that brings to the green closets, that's a pretty clear statement about the volume of dust.

And no - I did NOT write my name on the toilet seat. Ick.

Happy Birthday to me!

31 years ago today, Mom and Dad peered into my little, howling red face, glanced at each other and decided to have dogs from there on out.

And what fun activity did I engage in today?



Why, I went to the GYM! Which is, oddly, slightly less buring-in-hell hot than trotting around the perimeter of the FOB, stumbling over loose gravel.

And this evening we'll celebrate with meat. Could be be worse.

I am NOT coming here on a vacation

We made it back home after the great Customs Adventure, and have fallen right back into the same do ten minutes of paperwork then stare at the calendar routine.

The only break in the monotony came when, looking down to lace up my running shoes, I spied something moving on my sock. I grabbed, killed and examined. When I found two similar wee little beasties later the same day, it was confirmed.

Your Author has fleas.



[sigh]

Seriously, is there anything not to hate about this place? I just triumphed over the sandflies (using a mosquito net that creates a really adorable "princess canopy" effect over my rack), and now I have fleas.

Fortunately, the Bossman had some sort of liquid insecticide in a spray bottle, and after three treatments of my floor and what I expect is the true culprit - my blue rug - I have now been flea free for 24 hours.

The beginning

of the end has, it seems, arrived.

We're all up at the Big Base, since we loaded out our big shipping boxes this morning for redeployment. No - we're not actually close to redeploying yet, but it seems as though the boxes will be handcarried by gnomes from Iraq to the US, so it's going to take a while.

All the stuff we no longer need and are allowed to be without, we stuff into Contico boxes and duffles, and load into the containers. Before we can load them, of course, we must be subjected to the Customs inspection.

We had a very nice MP sergeant first class come out and explain all the things we are not allowed to take back with us (camel saddles, human skulls, and livestock semen were particularly intriguing items on that list). We emptied out our boxes for inspection. Before the oh-so-human and thus oh-so-prone-to-overlooking-things inspector, the contents were perused by...Capka the Customs Dog.



What a good dog, huh? And a pretty cake job for an MWD, too. She comes out, gets introduced, then sits in an air-conditioned SUV until it's time to sniff some piles of soldier crap. Then it's back into the SUV while the next group drags their stuff out.

However, as a note for all involved, perhaps we should try to remember that even high-speed badass uber-ninja military working dogs require the occasional bathroom break.



Otherwise, the customs tarp gets peed on.

It really was a reflection on the degree to which we're all a bunch of dog people when, from our required position off the customs tarp, half the company shouted to the handler that a little dog pee was, in fact, ok, then dispatched the specialist whose stuff had been narrowly missed to get some paper towels and take care of the puddle.

And, finally, just in case you ever wonder what we do with extra care package stuff...we save it for the next deployment .



Hooah, emergency Chapstick!

Sad News

My great-grandmother passed away two days ago. A week short of 106 years old, so she had a good, long run.

"Grandma Walton" was a character. She was a twiggy woman who walked several miles a day to keep in shape, but I remember her as a voracious carnivore - ordering large slabs of rare beef at any occasion (preferably rare). She tended, as she aged and her appetite diminished, to prefer her deserts first.

She made major in the Army Nurse Corps in Europe in WWII, then left the service when the war ended and pursued a career in school nursing and its administration.

I was fortunate to have been able to hear her stories. She was a treasure, and will be missed.

Look what I saw!

On the way to the green closet in the small hours of the night, I shined my light over near where the kittens hang out - you know, to see if they were doing anything impossibly cute (as kittens are wont to do).

And I spotted something snuffling around a pile of meat scraps...



That, folks, is a long-eared hedgehog. And it's cute. Way too cute to be hanging out in Iraq.

In the news

We don't have much to say (that we really ought to say) about this piece of shit who shot a couple of Soldiers in Arkansas.

Police think the shooter acted alone "with the specific purpose of targeting military personnel," Thomas said.
...
He [the shooter]"stated that he was a practicing Muslim, that he was mad at the U.S. military because of what it had done to Muslims in the past," homicide detective Tommy Hudson said in a police report.

Whatever the military has "done to Muslims in the past" pales in comparison, I would say, to what a lot of members of the military would like to do to one, paritcular Muslim right now for killing one young private right out of Basic and wounding another.

A crying shame. Bad Dog hearts go out to the family of Private Conway and we wish a swift return to duty for Private Ezeagwula.

In better news, we note with approval that Princess Leia made it to the States, albeit without her person. MAJ Huchinson sounds he was a helluva guy, and the sort of character that gives the Army a lot of its soul.

In one of his biggest capers, he adopted a dog. A stray crossed his path and from then on, Hutchison brought it scraps from breakfast, lunch and dinner. He wrote a memo authorizing the dog as a member of the unit and requesting it get shots from the base’s vet. He signed it himself.

Fitting that, although the Warrior didn't make it home, the dog that brightened his days did. For those interested, Princess Leia made the trip from Iraq to Michigan courtesy of Operation Baghdad Pups. Not that there aren't enough worthy causes out there, but...well, if you happen to find some extra cash under the couch cushions...

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright,

In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

I was sitting on my porch, reading. SGT B was sitting on the other side of my porch, reading. The sun was down, darkness had settled over FOB McSleepy. Since we were reading, my porch light was on.

One of the laundry gals who lives across the way stepped outside and headed in my general direction. There's a very nice porta-jon next to my area, and the quickest route there is either across my porch or the porch of the first sergeant who lives behind me. The laundry gal, seeing my porch occupied by NCOs, altered her path to cut across the first sergeant's vacant porch. Then she stopped and switched back.

"Can I cut through here?"

Sure, I replied. Public property, cut through any time!

As she crossed my porch, she looked at me, shame and terror in her eyes.

"I'd go back there," she indicated the first sergeant's porch with her chin. "But there's cats back there. I don't like cats."

She hurried on her way. I looked at SGT B, he looked at me. We sat there perplexed until Laundry Gal finished in the porta-jon and trooped back through. Then I had to ask.

She doesn't like cats, I asked? As in, afraid of cats?

They're not even cats, SGT B pointed out. They're kittens.

I was, until last night, unaware of the threat that very small kittens pose to America's Fighting Men and Women. I knew combat deaths have dropped off significantly here in Iraq, but I wasn't aware that we were losing Soldiers primarily to suicide and, after that, to kittens.

But, admit it, they are kinda scary.



With twenty razor sharp points before they even open their mouths, they're like wee little demonic tigers. And while you may be able to escape one of them, rumor has it they hunt in packs. And, due to their feline grace and cunning, they retain the element of surprise, particularly in the dark.



Note how that one is lurking behind a piece of webbing?

I have also heard that their whiskers ooze poison, ala the greater weever fish, and that, possibly, kitten tails have spikes cleverly concealed in the fur.

...When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb, make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright,
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

The horror

Look what was in my CHU.



Of course, it was alive when it first zoomed by my head. Now I'm afraid of my CHU, since insects that large make my soul shudder.