I'll Never Forget

I'll never forget the time prior to my deployment to Iraq and the time I spent there. In all, I can honestly say that I went through it and actually enjoyed it. By that, I mean that I enjoyed the people I worked with, the people I worked for, and the mission that we were on. The food was better there than in any of my other deployments and the living conditions really were not that bad. To say that I enjoyed Iraq is a bit of a misnomer. I didn't enjoy the fact that there were people dying there, that there was a country torn apart, or any of the other atrocities we hear about but as far as deployments go, it was actually a better deployment than what I expected.

After having done two previous tours throughout the Middle East, I was thinking I was done with all of my deployments. I was what they called "getting short" in my time left and so I figured that since I wasn't due up in the rotation of deployers for quite some time that they would just nix me from the schedule. That would have actually been true had several of the guys I worked with at home not come down with mysterious illnesses, ailments, and personal issues. It never failed to amaze me how many guys all of a sudden hurt their back or somehow had their foot "accidentally" run over by their wife backing out of the driveway.

So, it came down to me as the lone Staff Sergeant who had to go and take charge of a group of guys doing a good job and I just didn't have the propensity or the creativity to come up with a better excuse. I have to admit that I was quite nervous before I left. The guys coming back spoke of numerous mortar attacks, had pictures of barracks that were hit with them, and other various shrapnel damage around the base. So, they gave me the impression that you couldn't walk 10 feet without ducking for cover and hearing explosions like it was something out of Apocalypse Now.

I took a ride on one of our airplanes, a C-130, the long way from Little Rock to Balad AB, Iraq. We made several stops. St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada (one of my favorite places in the world); Prestwick, Scotland; Spanghdalem AB, Germany; Al-Udeied AB, Qatar, and then our final destination of Balad AB, Iraq. In each location, I made it a point to get as stone cold drunk as possible since I would be barred from any sort of alcoholic beverage for a long time. Thankfully, my duty was only going to be about 100 days and they were going to send one of the guys who had the "accidental" flattening of his foot come over to replace me so that I could start my discharge paperwork and get out on time. For that, I actually give the military a ton of credit. They made a special concession for me and I think that was a pretty noble thing for them to do but I also know my command felt bad about giving me the short-notice (1.5 weeks) prior to my deployment and felt they should make up for it.

Anyway, as we left Al-Udeid AB in Qatar, my mind started to wander a little bit. I had a hard time sleeping on the plane even though I had a hammock strung up in the cargo compartment to sleep on. Hey, it's my airplane, I fix it, I'll do what I want on it! So, I looked out the little portal "window" on the side of the airplane once we hit Iraqi airspace. We knew when that was because we went completely dark. All lights went out. So, I stared at the countryside at night. There wasn't much to see. A few lights but mostly blacked out cities that you could somehow make the silhouette of from the moon. There were occassionaly some very largescale fires and I wondered what they were from.

Otherwise, it was a rather uneventful flight, and we landed in Iraq, I'll never forget, at 2242 local time. We departed the airplane, picked up our weapons, and went to our inprocessing briefings. The next few days would consist of some sorts of orientations that went over the rules and regulations, the warnings, cautions, the sirens and the alarm codes. What critters to watch out for and what diseases to take note of.

Our first briefing immediately after departure consisted of the alarm sirens for incoming mortar attacks. The three important ones were "All Clear" (if you heard this it meant you were still alive - that's a good thing); Alarm Red - Multiple mortars, unable to track them, seek cover immediately. And then there was the claxton. It sounded like a mixture between a bell, a siren, a horn, and something else that I can't quite describe. But, it was extremely noticeable and you only had to hear it once before you never forgot it. This meant that the mortar was basically going to land in your immediate vicinity and you should dive on the ground, cover your ears and eyes with your hands (I only have two hands... I'm still trying to figure out how that is possible) and hope it didn't hit you.

We went through the whole process and we got our shift schedules. I wasn't due in to actual "work" for another 24 hours and neither were several of the guys I was with. So, we decided to travel the base and figure out what the heck we were going to do for our duration. In the back of our minds, I think we were all wondering when we were going to hear the first mortars come crashing in. But, we walked throughout the night and found our way around sort of aimlessly without hearing a thing.

I stayed up that entire day to get myself onto the local timezone, and went to bed early in the evening a little bit worried about a mortar crashing through my roof. I just figured it was bound to happen but it never did.

As we became acclimated to the base, we started wondering when we were going to hear these mortar attacks that were "SOOOO PREVALENT" over here. It was two weeks before I heard them come crashing in and by that time I had become a little complacent about them. I was lying in bed one night just about to nod off. I wore ear plugs to stave off the sound of fighters taking off all throughout the night. Through muffled auditory perception, I heard the claxton going off and I didn't know what to do. I was lying in bed. My flak vest was underneath my bed; and so I just laid there. What the heck, right? It was about 3-5 seconds after I heard the claxton that I heard *BOOOOM* *BOOOOOOMMMM* *BOOOOOOOMMMM* and they were shaking my bed like they landed right outside the door. But, I was surprisingly unperturbed by it. I was alright. No strange pieces of metal sticking into me; and so I went to bed with the pleasant noise of our Army boys and gals returning fire. The returning fire was a little more than three *BOOMS* by the way. It was a fussilade of return fire. It sounded like someone shot something through a blowgun about 50 times and what seemed like an eternity later, you heard about 50 explosions cascading throughout the night but they were much further in the distance.

It was at that point that logic and ration set in on me. I'd been here for two weeks and I'd heard these *BOOMS* once in that time. Sure, they seemed close, but the base was as big as Staten Island (roughly) and of all the square mileage on the base, I realized that even though the base was attacked on an average of about 3-4 times a day, I often never even heard the alarms because the base was so big. So, for me to be in just the right place at just the right time for a mortar to come crashing into my chest would be a pretty bad stroke of luck. I used that as my weapon against the fear of it and it worked. I heard the ominous claxton noise several times throughout my trip but none of the explosions ever seemed as close as the first ones. The last time I heard it was the day before I was going home. They launched quite a few mortars at us that day and I naturally ducked (I was satisified they weren't going to hit me; but I wasn't stupid) only to hear something "thud" about 300 yards from me. At least, I thought I heard a thud. But, I arose, we received the all clear and I went back to my routine.

About thirty minutes later I saw a bunch of MP's scouring the area between the tarmac and the runway where there was some tumbleweed and dirt. They started to cordon off an area with tape and it was then that I realized the "thud" I heard was a dud mortar that the Iraqis never armed when they launched it over the fence. Had it been a live round, I would still be here writing this. It wasn't close enough to have done anything to me, but it surely would have made the story more interesting. It would have been loud. I have no doubt about that. But, it was a dud, and so that was that. In all, I dealt with the mortars rather well even though there was that slight crinkle in the back of your mind. But, one can't live their life in fear of the small stuff. I'd much rather worry about the water bill forgetting to be paid than whether or not a mortar was going to snuggle with me in bed.

Other than that, the deployment wasn't bad. There were some annoyances. As I mentioned, the F-16's taking off constantly began to get a little old. It's cool to watch them and hear them the first few thousand times but then it gets pretty annoying. We also had to carry or wear our flak vests and helmets with us everywhere we went which can be a bit bothersome. It's not like that stuff is lightweight. We went through a water crisis while we were there. Apparently, a group of insurgents got the brilliant idea of driving a truck laden with explosives into the water pipe that supplied the base with water from the Tigris River. So, for a while, we were on a very heavy water restriction and they threatened to shut the showers down. But, somehow or another they figured out a way to fix the pipe in time and although our showers were limited to only a few minutes at a time, at least we were able to shower. The food, while better than other deployments, did get a little tiresome after a while. It was the same menu every week (or was it two weeks?) and it began to get old.

I'm at about 10,000 characters. That's all I can write for this blog.