Back from the Desert

We just returned from three days of convoy training. We learn to identify, avoid and react to IEDs, hostile fire and the other hazards of driving on Iraqi roads. We had a full week of the same training in Oklahoma and some of our guys had more convoy training in Pennsylvania before we left.

So the training itself was not new, but in the U.S. we had to pretend to be in the desert. Here the biggest training aid was miles of sand in every direction that occasionally blew up into a a sideways sandstorm, not to mention the clear, blue sky and the sun that here travels east to west near vertical. At noon here (actually 1pm because of Daylight Savings Time) my shadow is so small the fatter sand beetles can't get shade unless they crawl right next to my boot. With a mid-afternoon high temperature just over 100 and wearing full battle rattle we are hot. We wear a a 35-pound body armor vest, 4-pound helmet, uniform with long sleeves, heavy boots, a 9-pound rifle, and 15 pounds of ammo, knives, and other stuff. Plus a pound or two of scum from not showering. Nothing in the states prepares us for the sun and wind of open desert.

Another plus of training here is we our drivers get realistic practice for the first time. In the states going off road means wrecking some local habitat so we pretend to go off road to set up Medevac sites or avoid hostile fire. Here we drive on sand tracks and when we need to we jump the berms and head off road. We also had real up-armored Humvees to train in instead of the light models we trained on in the states. The armor changes the handling. My driver had us bouncing through ditches and sliding sideways. They told us to keep it real and he was only too happy to oblige.

Another realistic element of training that never happens in the states (at least in my experience) is the all the vehicle crews in each group sleep in the same tent. After waking up before 5am we all sleep on the floor of the tent at around 10 at night. There are no special facilities for the female soldiers out on the road, so we all have to deal with that.

We had one hot meal in three days, the rest was MREs. On the bus on the way back the first 50 jokes were about constipation remedies we would need from three days of eating no fiber and lots of greasy meat and crackers from vinyl bags. But I have said quite enough on this subject already.

Back to the Latrine

A few days ago, I wrote about how happy my Battle Buddy is that he found the luxury latrine 1/4-mile from our tent. Yesterday before we left of three days of training I decided to use the indoor plumbing. I have been slowing reading an old high school edition of Les Trois Mousquetaires in French. So when I went to the facility I was an ethnically Jewish American guy in a latrine maintained by a local Arab contractor reading a French book.

Is Dry Heat More Comfortable?

I got a comment asking if dry heat was any more comfortable than heat with humidity. I suppose it is, but I can't tell the difference. In 1976 I trained for two months in the southwest US desert before deploying to Germany. I had one shower during that two months--July and August--and it was hot. It was a dry heat, but I felt very hot in a 56-ton metal container (an M60A1 tank) and after two months, I smelled like I had been hot for two months.

Yes, it is dry heat here, but two days ago when it was 108 degrees on the range (a temp update from range control) I was HOT. I suppose it makes some difference that we are in dry heat, but it does not seem to matter much with 50 pounds of gear on. It's just hot. With summer coming I am expecting a lot more dry heat in my future. I will be just plain hot.

My computer doesn't like dry heat either. It has been shutting off after an hour or less when I am outside trying to get some bandwidth near the signal towers. It turns out it can't cool itself with dry 100-degree air. So my Mac and I think alike.

Hydration, Hydration, Hydration

Everywhere we go we hear "Hydrate!" "Hydration is Critical!" This follows the government/military penchant to use a multi-syllable Latin-derived word to show that a given task must be done. "Drink!" would not work because it would lead to the smartass retort "Drink What?" then "Drink Beer!" So we hydrate. But not always.

Because when one hydrates, one will sooner rather than later need to un-hydrate. Which is more of a problem than you would think. If we listen to closely to the all the calls to hydrate then get on a bus, no one is going to stop the bus. The hydrated soldier might have a couple of hours of serious discomfort before being allowed the natural consequences of following his orders.

And since we travel in groups, we line up for everything. That means the poor soldier in the back of the bus does the un-hydration dance in a long lane waiting for one of six portajohns with lines of 50 at each one. Like every other health pronouncement, one size never fits all and some people hydrate to the point of pissing away necessary salts. So they end up full of water and with dehydration effects.

I would hydrate more if I knew I could take a leak when I needed to. But it is quite clear the opposite is true. If I hydrate I will be sitting in a bus or Humvee think that nothing could be more beautiful than a brown plastic Kamal Al-Sultan (the local contractor) Portajohn. So I drinking slowly and often, same as when I am racing, and pay attention for signs that I need more water. And since much of our hydration is by individual half-liter plastic bottles, I always make sure I keep at least one empty with me in case we are confined and my personal emergency becomes dire.

Home on the Range. . .or Not

Today Echo Company range a small arms range for several hundred soldiers. It was not the exhaustive marksmanship test we went through in Oklahoma, just a few rounds to make sure the weapons are working. Even so it takes a long time for that many soldiers to fire, so we were on the range for hours. I was one of ten range safety soldiers. We kept the people who were on the firing line in line and made sure everyone was keeping their weapons pointed down range.

In Oklahoma or Pennsylvania, this job would simply be boring. In Kuwait the high temp was 102 degrees (40 Celcius) under clear skies. We are at 29 degrees north latitude, about the same as Daytona Beach, so the is much closer to straight up in the sky than we ever see in the northern states.

It was hot and we were standing on hot sand. After two hours I was starting to melt. By the end of the day when the safeties fired, I was worn out. I know I will acclimate eventually, but while it is always good to be in shape, in a place like this it is better to be young and in shape.

Flush with Happiness

Here in Kuwait we all have Battle Buddies. Everywhere we go--except stumbling out to the PortaJohns in the middle of the night--we go with our Battle Buddy. The main thing is that we go nowhere alone. So we can travel with just about any other soldier, but most of us have one soldier we travel with more than others.

My Battle Buddy is another old guy (48) who, is a conservative Presbyterian and likes quiet. We are hoping to room together if we end up in a place with 2-man rooms. We room together now, of course, along with 76 others.

For all of us happiness comes in different small luxuries. My Battle Buddy is fond of saying "It's the small things that matter." For him, the discovery that brightened his life (literally) was the latrines 1/4 mile from our barracks that have indoor plumbing and LIGHT. It seems my BB does not like sitting in a dark latrine. Now he knows he can have BOTH flush toilets and lights, he is a happy man.

Speaking of happiness, I could not stop laughing the second day we were here over a joke one of the soldiers made at my expense. In the morning we walk 50 meters west to the PortaJohns and if you want to make a more efficient trip, you can walk 50 meters south to the outdoor running water sinks and brush your teeth. At 530 am I was walking (more like stumbling) toward the PortaJohn holding my toothbrush to make the two-destination trip. A young soldier passed me on his way back from the PortaJohns and said quietly, "Sgt Gussman. The've got some really good blue mouthwash in those PortaJohns."

I thought it was funny at the time. It is typical of the jokes here.

Food

[NO PHOTOS ALLOWED IN THE DFAC. . .IT LOOKS LIKE A CAFETERIA]

The food in the Kuwait DFACs (Dining Facilities) really is better than Oklahoma. A lot better. The two DFACs serve the same food, but the one close to us has plastic throwaway plates and silverware. The one farther away has washable plates and real silverware. It even has a fountain between the chow lines.

But before I get to the food, the luxury DFAC also has the Sweat Nazi (SW). The SW is a really old school sergeant who believes this DFAC is her DFAC and acts like it. She is tall, never smiles that I ave seen and is constantly checking food on the serving lines and eying the soldiers in line. If you come in her dining facility with sweat on obvious on your clothes, you are ejected. Now this might seem to be a reasonable rule, but it gets very hot here.

Back to the food. In both DFACs you wash your hands upon entry. There are a half-dozen sinks inside the door along with reminders about cleanliness, about not putting headgear on the table and that weapons must lie flat on the floor. We sign in by scanning our ID cards, then choose the short order or main lines. At breakfast, the short order means scrambled eggs along with bacon, sausage, creamed beef, potatoes, and either pancakes or French toast. Main line adds omlettes and eggs to order to all of the above.

That's the hot food choices.

The next line is two-sided and is about 150 feet of fresh and dried fruit, coffee, juices, cereal, milk and other things like yogurt and cottage cheese.

For lunch and dinner, short order is burgers, chicken, grilled cheese and cheesesteak from a grill, plus fried chicken, pizza, fries and onion rings. Main line could be pork, turkey or beef roast, fish, pasta, ravioli, cooked vegetables, potatoes of various kinds and other hot choices. The second line is a 50 item salad bar, a cold meat sandwich line, plus all the drinks above. Tables seat 20 and are wooden.

The whole place is nearly cold with air conditioning. None of us will starve. And with all that, KFC, Subway, Nathan's, the pizza place and all the other fast food places seem to do a brisk business.

No one will starve here.