If it's Thursday, it must be Iraq

I've received all kinds of advice - frequently contradictory - regarding how and what to communicate to family and friends back home. Obviously, there are lots of things that I can't talk about because it would violate operational security, and I try to be very careful on that point. I know some soldiers write that it is very boring here, that nothing ever happens. Their perfectly justified rationale is that they don't see any value in causing loved ones to worry any more than they already do about those of us over here. Truth be told, it is a fact that life IS very boring here for a lot of soldiers. I am of the opinion, however, that it is not just the soldiers that are making sacrifices. Our families, friends, and loved ones are making sacrifices as well for us to be here. If we as soldiers are going to honor those sacrifices, then we owe them some return on their investment. It is incumbent upon us to lend value to the disruptions in the lives of our families and to the worry in their hearts, and to communicate to them as much as can prudently be told about our experiences.

 

I've been told that an involuntary physiological reaction to one's first combat experience is a sudden urge to defecate. (I would love to hear the anthropological explanation for this phenomenon.) This occurred to me a couple of nights ago as I was lying in an open field watching a farm house through night vision goggles, and the commanding officer crept up next to me and whispered in my ear, "...the enemy is right behind us." What followed were a series of instructions for movement and security. However, my mind was suddenly preoccupied with a rather complex and unwieldy plan to poop. (Yeah, well... see what happens to you the first time you find yourself the target of an al Qaeda ambush!) Fortunately, the sensation passed quickly and I was able to function as instructed. A notable exception was when I stumbled, fell into a full irrigation ditch and got stuck. While I managed to keep the cursing to a hoarse whisper, the flailing and splashing surely violated noise discipline.

 

The exfiltration from the mission brought a surreal moment. I was walking through a large field of waist-high wheat with a platoon of soldiers. We were moving slowly and widely spaced, scanning for movement in the palm groves abutting the field because we knew al Qaeda were out there. Our field of vision was limited to the circle of phosphorescent green provided by our night vision goggles, and the only sound was the rustling of the grain against our uniforms. It could have been dogfaces moving through hedgerow country in Northern France more than half a century ago, or it could have been grunts moving through rice paddies in Vietnam. Then a loudspeaker popped, and a call to prayer rippled across the landscape from a nearby mosque. It is one of those moments when a big part of my civillian brain suddenly stands up and shouts, "What in the world am I doing here?!"

 

The only other moment of note was when our guys did a controlled detonation of an IED that the bad guys had placed near the entrance of the base we were at. I missed the announcement, and was walking nearby on my way to talk to the Iraqi Army commander when it went off. Suddenly the universe cracked open, the sky went black, and it started raining debris. I dove for cover, then noticed the Iraqi soldiers just lounging around, talking and smoking. A quick glance around revealed that nobody witnessed my dramatics, so I brushed myself off, shoved my hands in my pockets and continued on my merry way.

 

Mostly these past few days have been exercises in soul-crunching boredom and tedium. When you wake up in the morning knowing that you have absolutely NOTHING to do until after sundown, and it is going to be hot, with precious little shade, it totally drains your energy and motivation. That said, when we did go out on missions, they physically smoked you. Duane and Bob went out on the first one, and returned in the early morning looking like they'd been dragged across Iraq from the back of a humvee. Then Duane and I got suckered into going out the next night, and returned in similar fashion. Duane took a beating on this trip. In addition to his standard equipment load, he threw on an addition 40 pound pack with our specialized equipment. Humping that kind of load over some of the worst terrain I've ever seen was quite a feat. Of course, he did do a couple of spectacular full-throttle face-plants (one of which broke the mount for his night vision goggles), but he came out of it with little more than a few muscle aches.

 

I'm sure more anecdotes will occur to me as time goes on, but for now it seems to me that this posting is pretty lengthy, and this is as good a time as any to pinch it off. God bless, and, in the words of the immortal Dan Rather, Courage.