If I could put theme music to this, then AC/DC would be a good choice. I write this at 1 Am on april fool's....how appropriate! Just trying to get caught up, cuz what a week it has been!
25 March – Some people call it fate, others speak of destiny. I get the feeling from time to time that there is a galactic network in which we are all connected and/or ensnared. When things are going bad, you feel trapped and caught, and Mr. Murphy tends to have his way with you. When things are going well however, we see the nets. Like grouper, or schools of fish, we learn to live with the great nets, and sometimes even to ride them for a while. It is amazing that I am at 32,000 feet above the Atlantic ocean, on my way to
Leaving never gets easy. As a matter of fact, it gets harder because as time goes by we only become more aware of the ravages of time and how short our time on this ball of mud may be, or more importantly, the time left for our loved ones. I can’t imagine how hard this must have been for my Great Uncle Jeff. For those reading this who aren’t familiar with the story, he was my Grandma’s little brother. They had a big family – six or eight kids I think. Anyway, he left to go fight the Japanese in the South Pacific, while everyone else stayed back to manage the ranch. He would write with stories and scant details, but when he put the date in the upper right corner of the letter, if he closed the top of the number four in the date (i.e. 1943) then they were to go to every tenth word and write down the first letter to spell out secret codes as to where they were. By the end of his hitch, he had become quite the codemaster, I am sure. He always claimed that McArthur was an idiot. “Every time we landed on an island, there were two ways to attack – up the smooth beach, or up a cliff, and that bastard always had us go up the cliff”. In this age of cell phones, computers, MP3 players and the like, I wonder how they ever got by being away from family. Hopefully, Uncle Jeff has had the opportunity to make amends with the General, and is now enjoying his ranch in a better place… (albeit with unlimited water rights, huh?)
We landed for about an hour in
I was going to say that we all run on our own internal clocks, but in Jimmy’s book, Tully Mars (the cowboy) speaks of a conch shell that his dad gave him when he was eight years old. His dad and a war buddy (a medicine man from
26 March – Oh what an adventure. Once again on the plane, winging our way past
Sigonella was a good reprieve. We left the BOQ tired, but determined to fight jet lag at about 1130. The bus service was poor to non existent, but there is an interesting trick to the area – we were on NAS Sigonella, Base #2. The newer and better equipped base is Base#1. So you walk out to the front gate, and hold up one finger to the string of cars, and a fellow shipmate offers a ride! NAS #1 was nice, but like any base, a little boring. 50 euros later (split amongst the seven of us) and we found ourselves in the old city of
So here I sit once again, winging my way towards an uncertain future. What
27 March - Arrival in Kuwait, or Adventures in Army Bureacracy!!! They have a "grid" of tents here ordered by letter and number, neatly assigned to rows. We show up, and have all our bags loaded into a truck, where we smartly proceed to the air base. As we pass concrete bunkers that look like (and later confirmed) that they had been punched clean through by Tomahawks from 15 years ago (my god, has it been that long???) and never fixed. Not sure what to be more impressed with, the accuracy of the weapons, their penetrating capability, or the steadfast and determined Kuwaiti spirit to never have them repaired!!!! Once in the compound, we offload and claim our bags into nice neat little piles until we are told that we can wait around for an hour until the Gator trucks can come pick them up and take them to our tents, or we can hump them there ourselves....45 minutes later, drenched in sweat, I finally assemble my bags in a tent with eight others.
28 - 31 March - Change.....whatever..to the schedule. Today, we were told that we would be processing pay data, and turning in our travel claims.....only to be told that we have four hours to pack our campout gear for three days, because we are training in the desert!!! Can you say Fun? Last time I checked, I was a submariner for a reason - hot coffee, hot showers, and Air condamnditioning!!!!. Yeah, I know I whine, but if I didn't then this blog would be pretty boring. So we pack up and head out to the desert, where a company made of ex Army types are teaching us everything we ever wanted to know about convoy operations, but were afraid to ask. We get classroom training on types of IED's (improvised Explosive Devices), convoy tactics, close quarter marksmanship (shooting, while walking, running, and all sorts of interesting stuff), and communications. All in all, pretty good training. It was all the MRE's, living in a tent with fourty of my closest buddies, not showering, not shaving, and having the constant river of sweat run down my back that I can do without. On a serious note, God Bless the Army for taking that off of our hands - there are actually those that enjoy this crap and want to do it. It is because they like to sweat and stink, that the rest of us can shower and remain cool in peace!
1 April - 0139 hours. Lots of stuff going on, and I am just wrapping this week up. I would love to post pictures, but for some reason, the website (or my computer) is slow today. I am still looking into a means of sharing pictures, and I might have found it, I just need time to work out the bugs. When I do, you should enjoy the pictures of Sigonella, etc. In the meantime, I may be winging it to Baghdad tomorrow or Sunday. More to follow of course, but until further news, I will be seeing you!