Biggest Tourist Site in Region--Closed for a Decade

The Ziggurat of Ur, the biggest tourist attraction in the region is closed until further notice--meaning possibly for a decade. We just missed seeing it. The last tour was on April 23. The next day the site was turned over to the Iraqi Army for renovation. The chaplain's office said it really might be five to ten years before it's open again.

So we won't get to see the inside of it. But many of us see it almost every day. The Ziggurat of Ur is literally just outside the wire near the northeast corner of Tallil Ali Air Base. Our motor pool is just a kilometer from the Ziggurat and the buses that take soldiers to the motor pool pass by that section of fence on their normal route. Personally, I seldom see it because the road near that section of fence is among the worst--pitted, lumpy, bumpy--paved roads on the entire base, so I ride a longer way around to avoid those bumps.

The Ziggurat is a monument to the hometown of Abraham--the Biblical patriarch of Israel, and one of the greatest prophets of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Start Your Day with an Enormous Breakfast

The saying here goes that soldiers return from deployment fit or fat. At the major bases like Tallil Ali Air Base, our new home, the proverb is likely to be true because of the facilities. Within a quarter mile of my CHU is a 24-hour gym. Another gym is less than a mile away. Across the street from the gym is the “Grab and Go” Dining Facility--sandwiches and cereal from 0630 to 0900, sandwiches, fruit and snacks from 1100 to 1400.

Less than a mile from my CHU and just a few hundred yards from the Living Area where most Echo soldiers live is the largest DFAC (dining facility) on base. Inside are seats for hundreds of soldiers and airmen and four lines with grills serving both main meal and snack food. After the main lines, there are two salad bars with dozens of choices. In addition there is a cold sandwich bar, a hot sandwich bar, a healthy line with Caesar salads and fresh cut fruit. There is also a dessert bar and two hot tables serving ethnic food or potatoes with several toppings. The other two dining facilities have most of the same food, just fewer lines and a smaller space. I will go into some detail about what is served for lunch, dinner, snack line and midnight meal in later posts.

So what’s breakfast? At the four lines you can get omelets or eggs to order at each of the four grills at the end of each line. Each line serves bacon, sausage, turkey bacon or turkey sausage, Texas Hash (I have not had it, looks like potatoes, sausage and peppers.) scrambled eggs, scrambled eggs and vegetables, grits, oatmeal, oatmeal with raisins, fried potatoes, biscuits and gravy.

Not enough to eat on the main line? The salad bar has fresh fruit, sometimes peeled kiwi and oranges, apples, bananas and other fruit. Then there are raisins, applesauce, nuts, and canned fruit. In place of the hot sandwich and potato bars are waffle and pancake bars with hot strawberries, blueberries and cherries. You can also get made-to-order waffles, toast, doughnuts and coffee cake.

In the back are refrigerators with milk, five or six kinds of juices in juice boxes, brand name sodas, then there is coffee, more juice and tea.

This morning I went to the South side of the base at a smaller DFAC where they don't have omelets or eggs to order--just scrambled eggs. I survived. I had French toast with strawberries, raisin bran cereal, two fruit juices, and a biscuit. I never eat that much at home. Some days I have all that I just named plus and omelet and bacon.

I have lost five or six pounds since I got here. I don't know how. I'll write about the other four meals later.

Proud Dad: My Youngest Daughter Graduates, Plays Hurt

You've been warned by the title. If you don't want to here me brag about my kids, stop reading now.

Both of my kids play hurt. (Where do they get that?? I try to teach them safety first!!) For Lisa, her latest injury almost meant graduating with an bandage X holding her broken nose in place. Earlier this year, Lauren, Lisa's older sister almost missed a soccer tournament because she got a nasty concussion playing indoor soccer while she was home on Christmas break. Lauren is one of the two starting goalkeepers for Juniata College Women's Soccer Team.



My youngest daughter Lisa graduated from Lancaster Country Day School today. I spoke with her just after graduation and heard about the aftermath of her last soccer game of the senior season. Lisa plays striker and gets many goals on headballs. In the last game of her senior season she went for a headball right in front of the goal and slammed her nose into an opposing players head. Lisa bled all over her uniform and had to go to the sidelines to get cleaned up--the rules say you can't play with blood on the uniform.

She went back in, scored the only goal for her team (with her foot) and finished the game. More than a week later she learned she had a broken nose that needed to be reset. She got her nose set and taped and finished the last two weeks of classes. She for the bandages off the day before graduation, so her grad pictures won't have a bandage X on her face.

While I was getting ready to leave for deployment, Lauren dove for a ball and put her head into the metal post of the smaller-sized indoor soccer goal. She finished the game but had to rest to the point she was barely allowed to walk to class and could not work out at all. She recovered in time for the tournament and her team was the overall tournament winner.

This fall Lauren will be back in the goal for Juniata for her junior year. Lisa will be running D-1 Cross Country for the University of Richmond. She is the first female athlete in LCDS history to play Division One sports and one of just a who have ever gone on to NCAA Division 1 sports.

The deployment will be 1/3 over in a week and I have already missed a lot major events in the lives of my daughters and the rest of my family. If all goes well I will be home in mid-June for my mother-in-law's Memorial service and spend time with my family and friends. In some ways the time is passing quickly, but in others, it's already a long year.


Lisa uninjured


Lauren uninjured

Presbyterian Promoted

My best friend here in Iraq is a fellow Presbyterian who rejoined the Army at an advanced age as a Specialist. Yesterday, at just 49 years old, he was promoted to sergeant. Assuming he is not shipped off to another base, we may get a chance to be roommates.

We can't be roomies right away because my roommate is off on a temporary assignment. It would be impolite to change rooms on him while he was gone, and more importantly, while he is a good roommate normally, he is a great roommate now! I have the room to myself for 23 more days.

When we do end up roommates, I am sure some will hang a sign on saying "Library--BE QUIET!!" Two old guys who actually read books and don't play loud music should be quarantined so they don't disturb the other inmates.

This Little Piggie. . .

In the Army, as in a bar, any casual conversation can turn suddenly to who is right, who is wrong and what does this or that rule really mean. Recently I was eating with several other sergeants at dinner. For a while the conversation was about promotions and the arcane rules that govern how National Guard soldiers get promoted. 

With that topic exhausted, one of the sergeants said she was going to get some food for a soldier who was in bed because he just had an ingrown toenail removed. The soldier in question is a genial guy in his early 40s who shops at the XXL rack. So a dispute began about what to get him to eat. "Get a salad and that kind of stuff," said one. Another said, "He needs more than that." 

After more speculation about his dietary needs, someone said the operation was on the soldier's Ring Toe. "You know, like the ring finger, fourth one, you count from the thumb." Another sergeant said there were no rules with toes. Someone called him an idiot. Then they started figuring out which "Piggie" had the hangnail removed. Which led the same group of sergeants to begin arguing about which Piggie was which. I was laughing so hard I thought I would lose my dinner. 

Then one of the female sergeants noted that the third piggie, corresponding to the middle finger and toe got the roast beef and could say F-you to all the rest of the piggies. Then she smacked the table and said, "Who comes up with this shit anyway. Who makes up a rhyme about Piggies." I don't remember what we talked about after that, nor do I remember what the soldier with the sore Piggie got for dinner. But they weren't serving roast beef that night.

Riding with the Oven Door Open

I try to ride at dawn when it is below 90 degrees or near dusk when the temperature drops below 100, but the last two days, I had to ride a few miles in the middle of the day. Today at 1pm it was 115, yesterday it was 117 degrees.

On a hot day in Pennsylvania (at least what I thought was hot last year--between 95 and 100 degrees) I could ride 17 to 20 mph on a flat road and cool down a little. Uphill I was going to drip sweat and downhill would be very cool. Here there are no hills at all, so the high speed breeze is the best I can hope for. It works in the morning or in the evening when the sun is low in the sky, but the last two days, riding at midday, the air felt like I was riding past an open oven.

A light headwind kicked up, no more than 10 mph, but that felt like I was riding behind a heater blower. The good thing was this evening's ride, when the temp dropped to 100, I was sweating on my 10-mile loop of the base, but the air felt like air, not oven blast.

There is no humidity to speak of here and I suppose the temp would feel worse if it was humid, but 115 degrees is hot--dry heat or not.

Marriage and Romance in the Army

For most soldiers "Absence makes the heart grow fonder" is the best we can do for romance in the Army. A large group of us are in some kind of committed relationship, another large group has no relationship and is not likely to discover true love among the other soldiers and civilians assigned to our base. And since we are not allowed off base, the potential candidates for Love seekers are all here on Tallil Ali Air Base. If my deployment to Germany in the 70s is any indication, the romances that flare to life among the soldiers here will burn out just as quickly.

So who does have romance on a deployment to Iraq? As it turns out the small minority of married couples (6 that I know of) among the 600 soldiers in our unit have relationships that at least allow for the possibility of real romance. They get to live together in one of the CHUs I described a few days ago. In fact, three of the couples live in the same CHU in three adjoining rooms. This is a great mercy to everyone involved. As I mentioned in several other ways, in this Socialist empire we inhabit, envy is the fastest way to corrode relationships. These couples are the dozen people among 600 of us who can have sex on a regular basis. For the rest of us, sex and alcohol can only be enjoyed during the 15 days we are on Rest and Recreation leave during this year.

The married couples here include a pair of pilots and a pair of aircraft maintenance sergeants (she outranks him in both cases) a pilot married to a crew chief and two clerks (he outranks her in these couples), plus two sergeants who I believe are mechanics and are the same rank. I asked three of the five couples (both members of the couple were present when I asked) how they felt about the other soldiers looking at them and wishing they had the same arrangement. The three women--an officer, a sergeant first class and a specialist--all answered as if from a script. They made sacrifices to be in the Army. It's not easy to be married to another soldier. If someone else wants the privilege, let them make the sacrifice. No wavering from the women.

The men were more varied. The warrant officer shrugged and smirked. He could deal with it. The young sergeant could see the problem, but was willing to take the hassle. The staff sergeant who had deployed before said he wished they ended up in tents (meaning no living together). He saw envy as a big problem--one he could deal with, but he could also give up the privilege without a big fight.

At Fort Sill and in Kuwait, the married couples were not allowed to live together. So except for the 4-day pass, the married couples were just like the rest of us for the first three months. Except that they could talk face to face. So they still got the kind of time together that most married couples say they never get enough of--time to just talk.

This whole situation is new to me. In the 1970s Army, there were no arrangements for couples to live together in combat barracks and very few soldiers married to each other. Couples in camouflage still look somewhat strange to me.