Iraq Newsletter, 30 August, 2003
Sand
Iraq is described as a beach without water. That is
incorrect; the soil of this land is not the sand you know from the beach. Beach
sand varies from place to place, true, but its widest range does not extend to
the gritty, abrasive, pervasive, invasive and downright ubiquitous tan-colored stuff
of this land. If this desert soil were to be near water, it would marry, after
a most difficult honeymoon, into a sticky brown quagmire of quicksand. No, this
stuff is not what you think of when you think of sand.
True sand consists of particles, generally greater
in diameter than 1 mm., composed of rock fragments formed as the sea pours its
energy into causing rocks to abrade against each other and fracture. Sand often
ranges in size up to gravel of 1 cm. or more. Sand is gritty, but its size
prevents it from easily penetrating clothing, and it can usually be brushed off
of skin and clothes when it dries.
This soil we wrongly term "sand" in this
country consists, in many areas, of particles the size of talcum powder. It
consists of particles so fine, so minute, so tiny that they penetrate
everywhere, through clothing, through tightly wrapped plastic, through skin,
through your heart and soul. In spite of being so small, the particles are
abrasive, and attempting to wipe them off your skin results in a particularly
painful dermabrasion, leaving raw skin to be attacked by the Iraq national
bird, the housefly.
In conjunction with the heat and humidity, the
dusty sand covers you with an abrasive mud. You have it in every orifice of
your body; eyes, ears, mouth, nose, genitals, anus. You blow your nose, and mud
comes out. You taste it when you chew, when you swallow, when you breathe, when
you hiccup, and when you vomit. When you*re not tasting it, you are breathing
it and smelling it.
You suspect that it contains every type of
bacteria, mold and fungus known to man, and you fear that strange things will
grow in you. Sometimes they do. If you*re a female, you learn to blot, not wipe.
If you develop diarrhea, a not uncommon event in this place, you have the
experience of rectal abrasion, and thank the gods for baby-wipes.
If only you could shower! But that takes water, and
water is often in short supply, needed for drinking. For the war-fighters, and
for all of us until supply lines catch up with the soldiers, the sand is the
perfect complement to the heat, creating an ultimate physical hell. If you do
get the opportunity to wash off, the stuff that pours off you is a sticky mud.
The sandstorms make it even more interesting. There
are few significant terrain features, such as mountain ranges, in this country,
and the wind blows freely. This stirs up the dust, creating a cloud through
which light penetrates poorly, if at all, and which completely hides objects as
close as one meter. Driving in this soupy haze is more difficult and dangerous
than driving in a blizzard, except that the sand isn*t slippery.
Convoys travel with close clearance between
vehicles, but this is almost impossible to maintain without danger of
collision. Its not unusual to have to slam on the brakes when the truck you
thought was 10 meters ahead suddenly is * meter in front of your bumper. On
foot, you can get lost 1 meter from your tent. The sandstorms make breathing
difficult, and you wear cloth, a handkerchief, or a neck gaiter, over your
mouth and nose, but the cloth clogs up quickly. You try to keep the dust out of
your eyes with goggles, but it gets in anyway, and the skin around your eyes
becomes raw with your attempts to wipe the dirt out of your eyes. Wiping this
abrasive dust takes off the top layers of the thin skin around your eyes, and
your salt sweat burns like fire.
You don*t know, unless you have the accidental
experience which shows you, that you only have to go up 3 meters to find clear
air. The dust stays close to the ground, and, if you can find a high spot, you
may be able to wait the storm out. There are no high spots in this flat, flat
land. The elevation, on the road from Kuwait to Baghdad, goes from 20 meters
above sea level, to 36 meters. On both sides of you, in front of you, and
behind you, there are no mountains, no hills, no valleys, no terrain features
at all. With out the Global Positioning System, you could get lost 100 meters from
a road, even without a sandstorm. No, you will not be able to get above the
sandstorm.
Storms last from a few hours to a few days. Sand
provides less disadvantage to the side with the most technology, but generally
inhibits the ability to fight for both sides. You may just have to sit and wait
it out, and keep on trying to breathe.
Sand gets into buildings, into equipment, into
weapons, into everything. Weapons must be constantly cleaned and oiled. Vehicle
parts are destroyed by the abrasive effects. Sand gets into your shoes, your
wallet, your pocket knife, and into your fingernails. Your hair becomes a nest
of muddy sweat. Nothing escapes the sand.
In some areas, the soil is dry loam, in some areas,
fine powder. It doesn*t make any difference. It*s all nasty.
Do not, if you have a choice, visit Iraq during
sandstorm season.
__________________________________________
Recent Travels
Dateline: Al Fallujah, Iraq, 20 August, 2003
I am in a 12 x 15 room in an Iraqi military
building which has been looted to the windowframes, but still has electrical
wiring. The electricity is off now, so it*s warming up; the air conditioning
was on all night last night, for the first night since I*ve been here, but the
generator shut off about * hour ago, for unexplained reasons. I came back from
the "internet café" to make coffee; that isn*t going to happen,
unless the generator gets re-started.
I got here last Thursday, and, for the first four
nights, we slept outside, because it does cool off a bit at night. Who is
"we," you ask. The CSC team here consists of four persons, a
psychiatrist, a social worker and two mental health specialists. The
psychiatrist and the two 91X (mental health specialists) here previously have
rotated out, as it is not command policy to keep teams together for long. The
social worker had been left to fend for herself, which she does very well.
Last Thursday, their new psychiatrist and two 91Xs,
(mental health specialists), came in to fill out the team. I came along for the
ride.
Al
Fallujah may be a familiar name to those of you who follow the news broadcasts.
It*s a hotbed of resistance to the coalition, and the population is mostly
tribal Arabs, who have a strong ethic of honor and blood revenge. This causes
problems, because they feel honor-bound to avenge any relatives killed by the
coalition in the invasion. Resolving this issue will be difficult.
The area is dangerous to travel in. The convoys are
frequently attacked by small-arms fire, by RPGs (Rocket Propelled Grenades), and
by IED (Improvised Explosive Devices).
The team travels weekly to a site half-way between
Al Fallujah and Ar Ramadi, and, although the convoy is experienced, has MP
escort, and has helicopter air escort, I am concerned for their safety whenever
they travel that route.
It was
good to visit with the team; one good friend I hadn*t seen for months, one new
friend who promises to be an excellent psychiatrist and team leader, and two
excellent enlisted soldiers.
I am especially close with one; we had been together
for a long time until recently. I will miss all of them, and look forward to
our next visit.
On Thursday I flew back to Al Asad.
Al
Asad, 21 August
I just got settled back in at Al Asad when we got a
call, Saturday night, that they needed a CID team at Buzz base, near the
Jordanian border. There had been an incident. At first, it seemed that there
were two incidents, an IED attack, and a soldier who was traumatized by killing
an Iraqi. We arranged to fly out here, and a 91X and I came out yesterday
morning (Sunday).
It*s a long flight, but much longer convoy. By
land, it takes about 8-10 hours; it took 1* by chopper. I found out something
about the Blackhawk seats - the straps are made for shorter people. Although
I*m 6 feet tall, my legs are relatively short for my height, and the difference
is made up by the length of my back. That means that when I sit, my shoulders
are fairly high up. The shoulder straps in the Blackhawk seats attach about 4
inches below my shoulders, and pull me down by making me bend at the
waist. This gets to be a real pain after 15 minutes, then is miserable for the
rest of the time. Loosening the straps and sitting up works for a while, but
the seat backs are vertical, and I can*t really straighten up completely. Also,
the seats are hard, and a literal pain. But it beats road travel, anyway.
The western desert is desolate, flat, and empty.
There are very few signs of life, just a few jeep trails through much of it. In
some areas, there are houses, and fields have been plowed, although it*s
bone-dry. When it rains, if the ground isn*t broken, the water will just run
off; there*s a better chance of enough water soaking into plowed ground to
actually raise a crop before it dries up.
We stopped for refueling briefly at a site near the
railroad lines to Jordan. This was the first time I*ve seen any rolling stock
(cars or engines) on the railroads in Iraq. I*m a railroad fan, and I thing the
coalition should put more effort into the rail system here; there*s a good
start on a system, but nothing has been done for the past 20 years. After
refueling, we continued on the second leg of the trip. The land became much
more rough, with canyons, mesas and rock formations. In some ways, it reminded
me of the Dakota Badlands.
As we continued, the chopper pilots had a good time
flying through the canyons, below the rims, winding and weaving through the
twists and turns. I had a good view from my seat (facing backward - there
weren*t any seats in the last row - that was cargo space), so motion sickness
wasn*t a problem - I don*t get sick if I can keep visual orientation - but my
companion got a bit queasy - didn*t hurl, but didn*t have much appetite for
lunch. For me, it was a better ride than any amusement park I*ve ever been in.
We landed, got off with our gear, and there we
were. 100 meters from a wall with a gate, and no-one in sight. (Just like our
landing at Al Fallujah, except at least here we could see some buildings.) We
walked to the nearest building, which turned out to be a barracks, and
eventually found our way to the FST. Not surprisingly, no-one knew we were
coming; the phone lines from Al Ramadi were not working, apparently. (The
request for us to come to Buzz had come from Al Ramadi Rifles West.) After a
while, it got sorted out, and we got the CID set up. The team involved was to
go out on a mission in the afternoon (we got there about noon) so we set it up
for 1800.
We had junk food (of which there is a great
abundance at the FST) for lunch, and slept, read, and talked with the FST staff
for the afternoon. They have a DEFAC serving T-rats, and I was again afforded
the opportunity to eat T-rat chicken and stuffing. I have had enough of T-rat
chicken to last several lifetimes.
It turned out that the team we were debriefing had
had both issues in the same team, same incident. They were hit by an IED
(planted in the side of a high-crowned road, so it blew mostly up and away from
the convoy, and was detonated early, about 2-3 meters in front of the lead
vehicle). The gunner on the lead vehicle got some shrapnel in his cheek, but no
injury to anyone else or to the vehicles. The trailing gunner had been
observing two vehicles, a taxi and a white truck, following the convoy, and
taking great pains to keep close to the convoy, which had made him suspicious.
When the IED went off, the truck and taxi attempted to get off the road and
turn around. He emptied his SAW into the taxi, killing the passenger. It was
clear to him (and to me, when I heard the story) that these vehicles were
involved in the IED. Their attempt to flee, IMHO (In My Humble Opinion)
confirmed this, and he was justified in firing. He has a great deal of
emotional conflict about this, which is understandable. The entire team was
supportive of each other, and clearly cohesive. No-one appeared to be in need
of additional treatment, although, of course, we made ourselves available. It
was a good CID.
We*re awaiting a flight back, maybe today, maybe
tomorrow. Meanwhile, it*s not a bad place to be. The weather is 10-15 degrees
cooler than Al Asad (the altitude is about 2500 feet higher than the 64 ft.
elevation at Al Asad), the people are friendly, and it*s quiet - no mortars or
RPGs fired into the compound. The entire population of the base is about 135.
There*s no A/C, but no need for it, because it*s not that hot. We*ll enjoy the
R&R, watch movies, and relax.
The FST is depressed and pissed off. They*ve been
here like, forever, and have absolutely nothing to do. They*re homesick and
angry, but appear to be handling it as well as can be expected.
They*re USAR also, as are most medical units. Some
of them have been assigned to the 21st CSH at Balot, and hope that
there is some work for them there.
Al
Asad, 23 August
When I got back to Al Asad, I found that the
ambulance people across the hall from us had installed air conditioners in the
walls which pumped the heat into the hallway, and, of course, into our rooms.
Let me describe the layout - from the main floor,
you descend a flight of steps, about 2 meters wide, which makes two 90-degree
turns by the time you hit bottom. From the bottom of the steps, you have a
corridor in front of you, about 30 meters long, with doors on both sides. To
your left is a corridor leading to a doorway - if you explore this, it leads to
a long ramp to the outside surface level. Continue straight ahead down the
corridor. At the end, on the right, there is a door; about 7 meters before this
is another door. The last door on the right is Mac and Akins* room, the next-to
last is my and Reid*s. Across the hallway from my door is a double door,
leading to a single large room. Now we go back up the hall toward the stairs;
about 10 meters up, there is another double door. Now we look again at these
double doors, and discover that one of the doors has a large hole cut in it,
and, in the hallway, a wooden brace assembly is supporting a large A/C. This
arrangement is identical for both sets of double doors. Both of these large A/C
units are pumping out heat at an alarming rate. Walking down the corridor from
the steps, the temperature rises by at least 20 degrees when you pass the 1st
A/C. Keep in mind that this is an underground floor, with no windows. The only
ventilation into our rooms is from the hallway. There are ventilation ducts in
the ceiling, but no air comes through them; the building A/C system has not
been restored. Our rooms, therefore, are downright HOT. And these
ambulance-drivers have no idea what we*re upset about; their rooms are freezing
cold. (In Arkansas, apparently, they don*t understand that A/C units don*t
"make cold" but pump heat from one place to another. The heat has to
go somewhere. I respectfully suggest that thermodynamics be made a part of
their school curricula, if they*re going to try to pull off this kind of thing.)
I went to the captain in charge of the building, and registered, in my own
subdued way, an objection to this. The ambulance people were/are upset with me,
but at least they, and their A/Cs, are out of there. They were moved to a
barracks building nearby. Maybe we should do the same, and get our own A/Cs.
I*ll explore this further when we get back. There*s no excuse for being this
hot unnecessarily.
Now that we*ve mentioned heat, let*s go further
into the subject.
HEAT
The heat is everywhere. In Arab tradition, humans
were created from mud, the Jinn from fire. Its easy to understand - Jinn are
the most likely creatures to live in this fiery heat. Humans must hide from it
or die. This is not your ordinary heat - this is boiling-water, frying- egg-
on- the- sidewalk, tire-melting, blast-furnace, unrelenting, unforgiving, 60 C
(140+F) Hell. If you don*t take precautions, you will die. Not "you
might die," you will die.
Maxwell*s demon plays an important role in
thermodynamics, posing thought-problems, the answers to which are fundamental
to understanding the subject. We will not talk of thermodynamics here, but only
explore the demon herself. She sits at the fork of a tube, through which passes
one molecule at a time. She sends the cold, low-energy molecules down one fork,
and the hot ones down the other. At the end of the hot fork is Iraq in July and
August.
This describes the physical dimension of the heat.
The physical is the simplest to deal with, and presents no basis for the author
to share with you, the reader, the experience of this heat. The other
dimensions; physiological and psychological, are the regions in which lie human
experience. We could discuss these in scientific terms, and will, to some
extent, but the objective scientific viewpoint is not as real and vital as the
personal experience.
You cannot drink enough water to keep up with your
sweat. Your body cannot absorb enough. You must drink constantly during the
times it*s not so hot, to store up enough water to survive the mid-day hours.
Shade does not help; the air is as hot in the shade as in the sun. Light
clothes help - the traditional Arab white gown-like garment for men reflects
some of the heat and passes the sweat. The women wear black. This is not a land
of equal opportunity for the sexes, and it shows in many ways, including
dressing for survival in this inferno.
The heat drains your body, dulls your mind,
destroys your appetite, damages your thinking, and decimates your ability to
enjoy living. You may think, for a minute, that you can tolerate it, while
you*re sitting in the shade, but when you walk out into the sunlight, it*s
walking into a wall of pure heat.
With only a little imagination, you can see the
demon throwing pitchforks of pure hell-heat into every square millimeter of
your body. Your eyes burn from the constant sweat; if you are able to think at
all, you understand the reason the creator gave us eyebrows, but, no matter how
bushy, they*re not enough. You wipe your face, but the skin burns worse from the
constant wiping and being drenched in salt sweat.
There is no escape, no hiding, no respite, and you
know that all your tears, all your threats, all your shouting and swearing,
will only make you hotter. Sweat drips from your face, your nose and chin, your
glasses, your earlobes. Not slow, occasional drops, but a constant, incessant
slow pour. In terms of water, your body is being turned inside out.
You drink and drink, but you go all day without
urinating, and when you do, it*s the color of dark tea, and burns on the way
out. You read letters from home, and laugh bitterly when writers complain of it
being too hot to be outdoors "it*s over 100." If it were that cool,
you think, you would have to go get a sweater. The heat turns you from your
friends and from your pleasures. You are too sick to be miserable.
This, gentle reader, is heat. The warm days you
used to know and complain about were nothing compared to this. You look
forward to playing tennis in 110 F. weather; you enjoy the fantasy of being
that cool.
Heat does not limit her devastation to humans and
other living things. Heat destroys equipment. Cameras, vehicle parts, wires,
plastic pipes, electronic equipment, all melt in the furnace. Moving parts wear
out quickly, because the oil breaks down in the heat. The heat can cause
windows to break from expansion, can melt tires on HMMWVs, can cause weapons to
jam. Heat is the Enemy, the Great Destroyer. Only those plants with deep roots,
adapted through thousands of years of evolution, survive without human
assistance. Everything, if unprepared and unprotected, shrivels and dies.
Of
course, the humidity doesn*t help. This is not a dry land. This is not the
Southwest US desert. This is the middle of a huge valley, fed by two large
rivers, with countless miles of irrigation ditches, untold acres of vegetation,
crops, trees and lakes, all transpiring water into the air in this hottest of
all places. Evaporative cooling, whether by "swamp coolers" or sweat,
is not efficient in this humidity. Your sweat doesn*t dry or cool, it just
soaks and drips. Your clothes are drenched.
Later, when it cools off a bit, and your t-shirt
actually has a chance to dry out, you will find it to be stained white with the
salts from your body. These salt stains are heavy and hard to remove; you have
to soak your clothing overnight to extract the salts and oils. Your shoes feel
as if you have walked through a swamp, but it*s just your sweat. Your trousers
and blouse are drenched; the next day, they feel as if they had been starched,
and get stiffer through the week. There*s no sense in washing them out every
day, they just get soaked the next day.
By the end of three days, they actually do stand up
by themselves, all because of being soaked in salt water, then dried out. They
have been measured to double in weight if you wear them for a week. There is no
escape.
Ask the local population how they deal with this.
The answer is: "we go to our air-conditioned homes and rest during the
day." That*s fine, as long as there is air conditioning; with the current
problems with power in Baghdad, they don*t have dependable A/C; we, on the
other hand, have no A/C at all.
Sleeping, whether by day or night, means lying in a
puddle of sweat. Your skin breaks out with heat rashes, irritated by the salt.
Pillows get soaked and, if they can*t be washed, have to be destroyed. You lie
on your bunk as close to naked as your sex-preoccupied command will permit; the
blue-noses insist you wear PT shorts and a shirt, but, when possible, you sleep
in underpants and, if female, a sports bra. If your bunk is next to a female,
it*s not a sexual turn-on, it*s survival. It*s too hot for anyone to get
aroused, anyway. So you set up your team*s bunks so as to be out of sight of
the prudes.
Fans are everywhere, and help only a little, by
blowing the hot air around. The moving air gives the illusion of coolness, but
it*s just an illusion, albeit a pleasant one. By the time dawn comes around,
the temperature may go as low as 90 F., and, at that temperature, you actually
feel comfortable, at least until the sun comes up. As the temperature drops,
the humidity rises even further. You repeat this cycle for what seems forever.
Of course, during the day, you work, do laundry,
eat, clean, drive, walk, and do the hundreds of little things that you must do
to take care of daily life. You have the pleasure of standing watch, 24 hours a
day, in 3 to 6 hour shifts, every 2 or 3 days, then trying to catch up with
your sleep in the heat of the day.
This is how we lived for the first month in
Baghdad. When we got electricity running, we were able to rig up some A/C
units, and actually get a good night sleep. By July, the central A/C was
working, and life, at least inside, became tolerable. Then, not surprisingly,
we got kicked out of our quarters, but that*s another story.
In terms of physics, the region has some of the
hottest surface temperatures of anywhere on Earth. Temperatures in Baghdad have
exceeded 60 degrees C., or 140 degrees F., without the benefit of the extremely
low humidity that accompanies such temperatures in other parts of the world. In
addition, it doesn*t cool off much at night; lows in the high 90 F. (High 30s
C.) range are common, and it frequently doesn*t drop below 100 F. The human
body is about 98.6 F. How can we keep from developing runaway hyperthermia and
destroying our brains in these temperatures?
The answers are: sweat, and technology.
In this climate, sweat is different from the
perspiration we experience in milder climates, where exercise, "hot"
weather, and emotions cause us to secrete more water through the skin than
dries up immediately. Here, sweat is measured in quarts, not droplets. The
sweat, however, doesn*t work very efficiently in these extreme temperatures,
and is produced faster than it evaporates. In these temperatures, we sweat up
to two quarts of water an hour. Considering that our gastrointestinal system is
only capable of absorbing 1 * quarts of water an hour, it becomes apparent that
death by dehydration is not far away if exposed to these conditions for a
prolonged time. Sweat contains electrolytes, chemicals such as sodium,
potassium, and chlorides, which also must be replaced in order to stay alive.
We drink bottled water, and the US Army probably
consumes the entire output of bottled water for the entire Middle East. We have
water from as far away as Greece. We drink a lot of Gatorade, which comes in
powdered form which we add to the 1 * liter water bottles. Carbonated beverages
are available from the local population, but form only a small part of our
water intake. Coffee causes diuresis, and doesn*t result in much of a gain in
water. Those who take diuretics for hypertension have to cut the dose in half
to prevent severe drop in blood pressure.
Technological solutions include design of
dwellings, air conditioning, use of plants and trees, and common sense.
Traditional Arab houses are designed to maximize ventilation in hot times, to
store up coolness at night in the foundations and masonry, providing some
relief during the hottest parts of the day, and use of shade plants to keep the
masonry from being exposed to the sunlight. Masonry which has been in the sun,
is still very hot at 0600. It radiates heat into and out from the building all
night. The walls keep the inside of the building warm, and, in a big city such
as Baghdad, keep the entire city about 10-20 degrees F. hotter than the
surrounding countryside.
Electricity here is unreliable but cheap. This
results in the population having a lot of air conditioners, but little in the
way of insulation and thermal design with which to increase the efficiency of
cooling. It*s just easier to get another, or a bigger, A/C unit. It*s not
unusual to see open doors in an air conditioned building.
Freon units are common here, and R-12 and R-22 are
easily available in 100-lb. containers. So much for the ozone layer. Freon is
not manufactured anymore, but it will take a long time for it to be phased out
of use. The newer A/C units use the halogen-free coolants.
Most of us swear that we will never complain about
heat in the US again. Of course, we know better; we will always complain. But
when you complain, we*ll tell you: "YOU DON*T KNOW HOT UNTIL
YOU*VE SPENT A SUMMER IN IRAQ!"
_________________________
_______________________________________________
Question and Answer Section:
Q. What do you eat?
A. Funny you should ask. Eating takes up a
large part of a person*s day, and it*s not much different for a soldier than
for a civilian.
The answer depends on where and when.
When we were at Ft. Carson, back before most of us
can now remember, we had meals in a DFAC (Dining Facility) for breakfast and
dinner, and had MREs for lunch. For those who need an introduction, MREs are
Meals, Ready to Eat, and consist of a plastic pouch, about 6" x 10",
which contains an entree, a side dish, and several packages of such things as
dessert, cookies and/or crackers, and a pouch containing matches, toilet paper,
Tobasco sauce, a wet-wipe, and a large brown plastic spoon. There are 24 varieties
of MRE in the standard boxes, and there are, allegedly, other types such as
Kosher and special diet. The standard box has vegetarian MREs in it. Each MRE
has about 2000 calories total, and is intended to fuel soldiers in the
battlefield; this is entirely too much food for sedentary folk. MREs are,
generally, tasty and not at all hard to eat. They have the reputation of being
constipating, but that*s true only if you don*t drink enough water. One of my
favorites is the Beef Patty; it comes with two slices of bread, cheese spread,
and a hamburger patty, which combine to make a decent hamburger sandwich. MREs
are heated by putting the foil pouch containing the entree, into a plastic bag
which contains a sheet of chemical which, when water is added, gets very hot,
and can actually boil water. This heats up the MRE well, and works in cold
weather as well as hot. Some MRE menus taste as good unheated, especially in
hot weather, as they do heated, but others need to be heated to be acceptable
taste-wise. We are capable of existing indefinitely on MREs; fortunately, we
are usually able to supplement our diet with other foods.
T-rations are meals pre-packed for groups. The most
common meal is chicken, with mashed potatoes, gravy and stuffing. I never want
to see T-rat chicken again, although it was good the first hundred times. At
Baghdad, we ate MREs at first, then were able to get T-rations for a while.
Later on, our secret agents were able to get us actual food packs, and we had
fresh fruit (from Chile, Egypt, Australia) and, at times, steak. At Baghdad,
there was a dining hall at the Presidential Palace, and we were able to get the
special ID cards admitting us to that facility. This dining hall was is a truly
palatial setting, and the food was commercially prepared by a civilian
contractor (Kellog, Brown and Root, who have most of the contracts in Iraq.)
There was talk of having a large facility built, but nothing, so far, has come
of this idea. In Baghdad, we are still able to eat at the palace, but also have
food prepared at the house.
Other places have other facilities. In Balot, there
were a series of portable DFACs, quite elementary in setup and operation,
usually serving T-rats. Now they have a large KBR DFAC, with several serving
lines, good food, Diet Coke, and Ice Cream. Balot (Camp Anaconda) is intended
to be a enduring base, so some capital is being put into developing it. Other
places: Buzz (near the Jordanian border, from which I returned a few days ago)
has a small DFAC serving breakfast and dinner, with MREs for lunch. Al Fallujah
(2nd Regiment, 3ACR), where we have a team, and where I was for five
days, two weeks ago, has a nice building, serving extended T-rations for
breakfast and dinner. When I was there, we had steak and eggs for breakfast one
day, quite a treat. There is a lunch-counter serving lunch, operated by locals,
in the same building, or one can eat at one of the other locally-operated
cantinas on base. They are expecting to have KBR change the dining facility
into a full-fledged DFAC within the next few weeks. Currently, the building
doesn*t have glass in the windows, and, of course, no A/C, but that is supposed
to be changed soon. Here in Al Asad, we have a 3-meal/day DFAC, with A/C. In
addition to the military food, we eat a lot of snacks, at first, only what was
sent from home, but now we have, in many areas, some AAFES Pxs where we can buy
snacks and junk food.
Many of us have lost a lot of weight. Some have
gained a little. We call the weight loss the "Iraqi Weight Reduction
Clinic." Most of the weight loss took place during the times we had no A/C
and the weather was HOT. In those conditions, one loses appetite easily, and it
is sometimes necessary to remind oneself that one must eat. The best reminder
is when you get weak and remember you haven*t eaten for two days. Drinking huge
amounts of water also depresses the appetite; there*s no-where to put the food.
I*ve dropped to 170 lb., and intend to stay at this level. My uniforms are waay
too big, and I bought a new set (medium) so as not to appear to have been
outfitted by Omar the Tentmaker. My waist size is 34 now, and I have a pair of
Levis to prove it.
That*s all the Q&A for this letter. Send me
your "Q"s, I*ll provide the "A"s.
Bob