As this will most likely be my last email here from the Big Suck be forewarned, it's probably gonna be a bit longwinded...
Having been in this forsaken, 12 hour-a-day office job since May 1st, I've had plenty of time to think...and read...and write...and despair...and go crazy...and have hope...and think some more...and read some more...and write some more...and despair some more...and..., well, hopefully, you get the point.
In fact, considering that I have felt like I was having a year erased, since I've not been doing the job I was trained to do, I've tried to get the most out of this "war" as possible. The difficulty has been that I've tried to keep my sanity in the process, an attempt which, while I'm not so sure of the outcome, I'm still happy with. These bizzarro emails that I've sent out and the emails that I've gotten from y'all have been invaluable for that very purpose. Without getting too smarmy, I'll merely be concise and say "thank you." Were I not to have been able to keep up with y'all, even those of y'all I've only heard from a few times, it would have made this already painful deployment insufferable.
But enough of that. Y'all should know that I think it's all about me, so I'll dive right into the meat and bones. Some general thoughts on my time in Iraq...
1. Dear Lord, you cannot imagine how boring it can get in a war zone! Or perhaps, I should amend that to "in a desk job in a war zone!" Imagine prison... without the threat of getting shanked with a homemade shiv or being jumped in the showers to keep you on your toes and your head in the game. Sure the mortars have been a change of pace, but, wow! I know and understand that the one thing I DIDN'T want here was excitement, since that would mean bad things, but even so, I wouldn't wish this much down time on my worst enemy.
I've managed to teach myself introductory French, write a colossal journal (which I stopped in late june, having gotten up to approximately 350 pages), play damn near every permutation possible of "solitaire", become sick of video games, watch all hundred or so of the DVDs that I brought with me and those that I bought here (plus the ones I borrowed from anyone I could, begging them like a heroin junkie), and read more than I ever have in my life.
To put that into perspective, perhaps this will give a more concrete example of the sort of monotony I've been dealing with:
The Ajax Carpenter "If you're gonna be stuck in a chair for ten months, you may as well get something out of it" book list:
Jarhead by Anthony Swofford
Seabiscuit by Laura Hildebrandt
The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown
A Farewell to Arms
The Nature of the Cosmos by Brian Green
Walking the Appalachian Trail by Larry Luxenburg
Hammer of the Gods by Stephen Davis
Call of the Wild
Bellum Judaicum by Josephus
The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Crime and Punishment
The Aeneid
Angels and Demons by Dan Brown
Discourses 1-4 by Epictetus
Beyond Belief by Elaine Pagels
The Origin of Satan by Elaine Pagels
The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels
The Gambler by Dostoevsky
Ayurvedic Healing: A Comprehensive Guide by David Frawley
The Histories and Annals by Tacitus
Notes from the Underground by Dostoevsky
The Double by Dostoevsky
Memoirs from the House of the Dead by Dostoevsky
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Unabridged; 3600p)
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
The Iliad
Natasha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia by Orlando Figes
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Dog of the South by Charles Portis
The Thought Gang by Tibor Fischer
Gulliver's Travels
The Campaigns of Alexander by Arrian
Adam, Eve, and the Serpent by Elaine Pagels
Dead Souls by Gogol
The Jugurthine War by Sallust
The Conspiracy of Cataline by Sallust
17 of the Parallel Lives by Plutarch
Sayings of the Spartans and Spartan Women by Plutarch
On Sparta by Xenophon
The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius
I partially read the following:
Swift and the Dialectical Tradition
Alexander the Great by Quintus Curtius Rufus
Hindu Scriptures
Moby Dick [I finished Decline and Fall and gave up on this; that should tell you something. Namely, "----- Melville!" <- at="" br="" criticism="" its="" literary="" most="" succinct="">
2. As I haven't ever been fortunate enough to have an IED go off on me on the few times that I was off of this camp, nor was I ever shot at, I can't really comment on what those experiences are like. What I can tell you about is mortars and rockets. Frankly, as you well can guess, they suck. What you may not know is that they're not remotely like what you may have seen in the movies. There isn't that nice two to three second whistle that lets you know to drop for cover. Nope. Mortars don't make a sound til the boom and the rockets go "whiiiiiiiiiizzzz BANG." You get the "whiiiiiiiiiizzzz" for about the amount of time that it takes a major league fastball to leave the pitcher's hand and hit the catcher's glove. That's about it. Actually, say "That's about it" out loud. That's how much time you get.
Fortunately, I've only heard of one person being injured by mortars since I've been over here and that was early on when I was at the other camp and was still a platoon leader. Even that was a relatively minor injury from what I can remember. The big thing then is that they're not really that effective, at least as far as causing casualties. How they are effective though is that they can get in your head, so to speak.
Being over here long enough, I got used to the various explosions, were they from IEDs, VBIEDs (vehicle- borne Improvised Explosive Device; the Army tries to sound impressive and so makes a five word label necessary instead of merely saying "car bomb"), rockets, or mortars. Awake, that is. There's no way, that I've found, to get used to being woken up by an explosion. Really, I'd come to the conclusion early on that if I heard the explosion, I was good to go, but I don't get to rationalize when I'm asleep. More than a few times I've woken up on the floor of my hooch lying on my belly, my arms wrapped around my head, my feet still draped on the bed, feeling like my lungs bear-hugged my heart. It happened in May, it happened in January. I just don't get used to that. I can't imagine it would be very healthy to do so either.
3. It actually gets a bit tiresome to be reminded of dead people all the time. I don't mean to sound as though I want sunshine blown up me all the time, but I just don't need the constant reminders. I'm not even talking about the news. I'm talking about the fact that every structure here is named after a fallen soldier. I know it's a tradition. Heck, Kosovo's posts are named after fallen soldiers from WW2, I believe. The difference is that I wasn't there at the same time as those soldiers; it didn't connect the same way it does when I pass the Holmes Helipad, or work out in the Cash Gym, or make a phone call at the Nordquist MWR Center, or go to work in the Phantom 4 TOC, or eat at the Wood Dining Facility. Actually, those don't even drive it home for me as much as the Faulkenburg Movie Theater, which is named after the Sergeant Major that I rode up with from Kuwait who was killed in Fallujah in November.
4. Being here at the Brigade Camp I'm essentially what is referred to in the Army as a REMF (Rear Eschelon MF). That means, of course, that I'm surrounded by REMFs. My biggest complaint of the REMFs? The fact that they can't go anywhere at night without flashlights. I know that sounds piddling, but it just aggravates me to no end to get blinded by some schmuck's flashlight on a night when the moon is so bright that I not only see shadows but can even discern colors. At first it just annoyed the living hell out of me because I thought it was ridiculous to be that brazen in a tactical environment, then it just annoyed/annoys the living hell out of me. (In my reading I learned that the Spartans outlawed the use of torches. Their opinion was that they'd have to be able to fight in the dark so they should be able to do everything else in it also. That makes me think two things: 1) that the Spartans were on to something, and 2) that I read too damn much.)
5. Men and women do terrible things to each other. Especially at a distance. Fortunately I've been here so long that I've gotten over having my heart broken, but I cannot list all the terrible stories I've heard. The winner? The 44yo Sergeant First Class I work with, whose wife not only cheated on him while he was here..., but got pregnant in the process..., by an expatriate IRAQI. And that's just the big- stroke description of it; it's actually much worse than even that sounds. The SFC has taken her back...
6. Since this has been a relative bummer of an email (calm down Mom, I'll be back in Germany very soon), I'll finish with my favorite Iraqi accusation against us evil occupiers:
A former Diyalla Province Council Member came forward with his neighbor to accuse the US helicopters of dropping spiders on their farms. They claimed to have witnessed the helicopters fly by and dump the spiders. I'm not kidding. Really. We have nothing better to do than load up our Kiowa helicopters (which have about 4 square feet of storage space) and torment farmers. The Diyalla Province Council decided that that the farmers' accusations were "obviously ridiculous". I have the sneaking suspicion that if the media had gotten wind of this we'd have had Geraldo doing an expose.
Ca suffit. That's it. Done. Goodbye, Iraq. Thanks again for everything all of you have done for me while I've been here. Thanks for putting up with all of these.
Having been in this forsaken, 12 hour-a-day office job since May 1st, I've had plenty of time to think...and read...and write...and despair...and go crazy...and have hope...and think some more...and read some more...and write some more...and despair some more...and..., well, hopefully, you get the point.
In fact, considering that I have felt like I was having a year erased, since I've not been doing the job I was trained to do, I've tried to get the most out of this "war" as possible. The difficulty has been that I've tried to keep my sanity in the process, an attempt which, while I'm not so sure of the outcome, I'm still happy with. These bizzarro emails that I've sent out and the emails that I've gotten from y'all have been invaluable for that very purpose. Without getting too smarmy, I'll merely be concise and say "thank you." Were I not to have been able to keep up with y'all, even those of y'all I've only heard from a few times, it would have made this already painful deployment insufferable.
But enough of that. Y'all should know that I think it's all about me, so I'll dive right into the meat and bones. Some general thoughts on my time in Iraq...
1. Dear Lord, you cannot imagine how boring it can get in a war zone! Or perhaps, I should amend that to "in a desk job in a war zone!" Imagine prison... without the threat of getting shanked with a homemade shiv or being jumped in the showers to keep you on your toes and your head in the game. Sure the mortars have been a change of pace, but, wow! I know and understand that the one thing I DIDN'T want here was excitement, since that would mean bad things, but even so, I wouldn't wish this much down time on my worst enemy.
I've managed to teach myself introductory French, write a colossal journal (which I stopped in late june, having gotten up to approximately 350 pages), play damn near every permutation possible of "solitaire", become sick of video games, watch all hundred or so of the DVDs that I brought with me and those that I bought here (plus the ones I borrowed from anyone I could, begging them like a heroin junkie), and read more than I ever have in my life.
To put that into perspective, perhaps this will give a more concrete example of the sort of monotony I've been dealing with:
The Ajax Carpenter "If you're gonna be stuck in a chair for ten months, you may as well get something out of it" book list:
Jarhead by Anthony Swofford
Seabiscuit by Laura Hildebrandt
The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown
A Farewell to Arms
The Nature of the Cosmos by Brian Green
Walking the Appalachian Trail by Larry Luxenburg
Hammer of the Gods by Stephen Davis
Call of the Wild
Bellum Judaicum by Josephus
The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger
For Whom the Bell Tolls
Crime and Punishment
The Aeneid
Angels and Demons by Dan Brown
Discourses 1-4 by Epictetus
Beyond Belief by Elaine Pagels
The Origin of Satan by Elaine Pagels
The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels
The Gambler by Dostoevsky
Ayurvedic Healing: A Comprehensive Guide by David Frawley
The Histories and Annals by Tacitus
Notes from the Underground by Dostoevsky
The Double by Dostoevsky
Memoirs from the House of the Dead by Dostoevsky
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Unabridged; 3600p)
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
The Iliad
Natasha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia by Orlando Figes
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Dog of the South by Charles Portis
The Thought Gang by Tibor Fischer
Gulliver's Travels
The Campaigns of Alexander by Arrian
Adam, Eve, and the Serpent by Elaine Pagels
Dead Souls by Gogol
The Jugurthine War by Sallust
The Conspiracy of Cataline by Sallust
17 of the Parallel Lives by Plutarch
Sayings of the Spartans and Spartan Women by Plutarch
On Sparta by Xenophon
The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius
I partially read the following:
Swift and the Dialectical Tradition
Alexander the Great by Quintus Curtius Rufus
Hindu Scriptures
Moby Dick [I finished Decline and Fall and gave up on this; that should tell you something. Namely, "----- Melville!" <- at="" br="" criticism="" its="" literary="" most="" succinct="">
2. As I haven't ever been fortunate enough to have an IED go off on me on the few times that I was off of this camp, nor was I ever shot at, I can't really comment on what those experiences are like. What I can tell you about is mortars and rockets. Frankly, as you well can guess, they suck. What you may not know is that they're not remotely like what you may have seen in the movies. There isn't that nice two to three second whistle that lets you know to drop for cover. Nope. Mortars don't make a sound til the boom and the rockets go "whiiiiiiiiiizzzz BANG." You get the "whiiiiiiiiiizzzz" for about the amount of time that it takes a major league fastball to leave the pitcher's hand and hit the catcher's glove. That's about it. Actually, say "That's about it" out loud. That's how much time you get.
Fortunately, I've only heard of one person being injured by mortars since I've been over here and that was early on when I was at the other camp and was still a platoon leader. Even that was a relatively minor injury from what I can remember. The big thing then is that they're not really that effective, at least as far as causing casualties. How they are effective though is that they can get in your head, so to speak.
Being over here long enough, I got used to the various explosions, were they from IEDs, VBIEDs (vehicle- borne Improvised Explosive Device; the Army tries to sound impressive and so makes a five word label necessary instead of merely saying "car bomb"), rockets, or mortars. Awake, that is. There's no way, that I've found, to get used to being woken up by an explosion. Really, I'd come to the conclusion early on that if I heard the explosion, I was good to go, but I don't get to rationalize when I'm asleep. More than a few times I've woken up on the floor of my hooch lying on my belly, my arms wrapped around my head, my feet still draped on the bed, feeling like my lungs bear-hugged my heart. It happened in May, it happened in January. I just don't get used to that. I can't imagine it would be very healthy to do so either.
3. It actually gets a bit tiresome to be reminded of dead people all the time. I don't mean to sound as though I want sunshine blown up me all the time, but I just don't need the constant reminders. I'm not even talking about the news. I'm talking about the fact that every structure here is named after a fallen soldier. I know it's a tradition. Heck, Kosovo's posts are named after fallen soldiers from WW2, I believe. The difference is that I wasn't there at the same time as those soldiers; it didn't connect the same way it does when I pass the Holmes Helipad, or work out in the Cash Gym, or make a phone call at the Nordquist MWR Center, or go to work in the Phantom 4 TOC, or eat at the Wood Dining Facility. Actually, those don't even drive it home for me as much as the Faulkenburg Movie Theater, which is named after the Sergeant Major that I rode up with from Kuwait who was killed in Fallujah in November.
4. Being here at the Brigade Camp I'm essentially what is referred to in the Army as a REMF (Rear Eschelon MF). That means, of course, that I'm surrounded by REMFs. My biggest complaint of the REMFs? The fact that they can't go anywhere at night without flashlights. I know that sounds piddling, but it just aggravates me to no end to get blinded by some schmuck's flashlight on a night when the moon is so bright that I not only see shadows but can even discern colors. At first it just annoyed the living hell out of me because I thought it was ridiculous to be that brazen in a tactical environment, then it just annoyed/annoys the living hell out of me. (In my reading I learned that the Spartans outlawed the use of torches. Their opinion was that they'd have to be able to fight in the dark so they should be able to do everything else in it also. That makes me think two things: 1) that the Spartans were on to something, and 2) that I read too damn much.)
5. Men and women do terrible things to each other. Especially at a distance. Fortunately I've been here so long that I've gotten over having my heart broken, but I cannot list all the terrible stories I've heard. The winner? The 44yo Sergeant First Class I work with, whose wife not only cheated on him while he was here..., but got pregnant in the process..., by an expatriate IRAQI. And that's just the big- stroke description of it; it's actually much worse than even that sounds. The SFC has taken her back...
6. Since this has been a relative bummer of an email (calm down Mom, I'll be back in Germany very soon), I'll finish with my favorite Iraqi accusation against us evil occupiers:
A former Diyalla Province Council Member came forward with his neighbor to accuse the US helicopters of dropping spiders on their farms. They claimed to have witnessed the helicopters fly by and dump the spiders. I'm not kidding. Really. We have nothing better to do than load up our Kiowa helicopters (which have about 4 square feet of storage space) and torment farmers. The Diyalla Province Council decided that that the farmers' accusations were "obviously ridiculous". I have the sneaking suspicion that if the media had gotten wind of this we'd have had Geraldo doing an expose.
Ca suffit. That's it. Done. Goodbye, Iraq. Thanks again for everything all of you have done for me while I've been here. Thanks for putting up with all of these.
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