The Gods of War

I just finished Book I of Aeneid (or chapter one if you count it as one book of 12 chapters). Anyway, it has been seven years since I last read it and I was very much a civilian at the time. I was working at a dot-com, we had just adopted Nigel two years before, I had been out for a long time, I was too old to go back in the Army and really didn't think about it much then. The Army was a source of stories and jokes and memories. (When the Bush administration raised the enlistment age by seven years in 2005 the Army became a present possibility.)

Which is certainly why I missed how the jealous, indulgent, nasty, competing gods with their own needs and wants that fill the Roman heavens seem just like the invisible generals, admirals and other high officials that move us with no purpose we can discern. The gods told Aeneas to found Rome after the fall of Troy. So Aeneas takes the survivors of the Trojan defeat and sets sail from the northeast corner of the Greek peninsula toward the west side of Italy. On the way his ships are wrecked and men scattered by the queen of Heaven who charms the god of the wind. But before the carnage is complete, Neptune, god of the sea, drives off the winds saying "this is my territory" and they have to go. Aeneas knows nothing except he is shipwrecked in Africa and many of his men are lost.

But he has to continue the mission. It's not like we face the danger Aeneas and his men face, but we do deal with crazy changes by people we will never know or meet--and to them we are numbers, not men and women.

In the last week our company and battalion commanders both talked to us in the motor pool about the latest changes in our mission--mostly to say nothing has happened yet. They both told us they would get word to us when something actually changes and the change is in writing. But nothing is for sure yet. Of course there are lots of rumors.

In the meantime, the gods who move us around are busy with what they do and we continue to turn wrenches, fill out paperwork, walk on rocks, and wait to go home.

Who Fights This War? Workaholics

Deployment is a great refuge for workaholics. I have watched the work habits of leaders here and they do fall into two very groups. One group tries to maintain a balance between work and relaxation time, whatever that relaxation is. The other group works themselves into the ground and, frankly, loves it.

When a soldier is deployed, especially a leader, that soldier can leave all of the striving for balance and complexity of modern life behind. No spouse, no kids, no social obligations, no choice really on working out--it's part of the job. So for the person who really prefers the monomaniac lifestyle, here it is with no guilt.

We show up at the motor pool at 0550 to get our work assignments. Most of us are eating breakfast outside out of plastic clamshell containers and joking around as the day begins. The mechanics work till 2pm or longer if the work dictates. The men who run the motor pool stay till 5pm, sometimes into the night. At home they would have to feel guilty about their families, friends, community, but not here. They can just keep working. Across Iraq the workaholics have the great relief of public praise for their out of balance lives. And when they get home they might even like to have some balance for a while.

Book Groups

My book groups have been together long enough to show some consistency. They also are very different groups with different people attending.

The Monday night CS Lewis group is in its 5th week reading "The Weight of Glory." The CS Lewis group is an older crowd than the Tuesday Night Dead Poets Society. In fact this week's CSL group was five people: three Army, two Air Force. Four men, one woman. And by rank, two captains and three lieutenant colonels.

Tuesday night was the intro to Aeneid by Virgil. That meeting was a dozen soldiers and airmen with three officers and nine enlisted. Most of the enlisted are in their 20s. There are a two sergeants in their 30s. So the 800-year-old and 2100-year-old books attract the young people and the older people read CSL.

Five of the soldiers go to both groups, but the only person never to miss a meeting is one of the chaplains in our brigade. He also asks the best questions and makes some very good comments. For instance, when we read CSL's "Why I am not a Pacifist" he brought up the people in dictatorships who have no option but passive resistance. It was outside the scope of CSL's essay, but an important way to look at non-violent resistance.

It's two hours of very good conversation every week.

Cold Wave--Poop Ovens

Today the temp at 0500 was 77 degrees!! Winter is almost here. It was 118 by lunch, way down from highs over 130, and the wind was howling out of the northwest at 25mph which was bad riding west on the bike, but good in the motor pool because the wind blows the sweat away.

Last week we moved into a different motor pool. It is a much better place to fix trucks than the last place with maintenance tents on concrete pads instead of working on rocks. We still walk on rocks between the tents and the offices, but work in something resembling a canvas garage open on both ends.

But the other place was next to an office building so it had an air-conditioned latrine CHU right next to our rock-strewn maintenance area. The new place only has Porta Potties. Until yesterday, the Porta Potties were located in another area in the large field of motor pools we are in. We had to walk more than 400 meters to get to the tan-colored-plastic latrines. No it is a 150-meter walk to the Porta Potties.

The plastic latrines have air vents at the top, but they are hot inside. On a 130-degree day they could get to 140 degrees on more. No more air-conditioned break from the heat. Get in--get out is the best plan for the poop ovens. We work in t-shirts. When I know I am going to be in the "oven" for more than a 30 seconds, I take off my t-shirts. I get so hot inside the oven that walking out without a shirt actually feels cool.

I am learning so many things I hope I will never use again once we leave here.

More Brits

Tomorrow I ride with the British contractors assuming they don't have a mission. A few nights ago sat with a couple of contractors near my age. They were from the United Kingdom. One from England, the other from Northern Ireland. The Irish guy was from out in the country, but near Belfast. He has been a contractor since 2004 and doing consulting work he could not talk about.

What he could talk about was the work arrangements. He has been flying back and forth from home every six to eight weeks withe six weeks off in between work stints. He said they "work our asses right into the ground every day we are here, then give us time to recover at home. So we have a real family life." The English guy echoed his comments saying the American contractor system means a lot of guys fatten up their wallets and ruin their marriages. American contractors tend to work six months or more then take a few weeks off and come back again. If it is just a year, it's OK. But these guys had been here since 2004 and felt very connected with their families.

They said their companies don't allow the perpetual working that Americans do because they don't want their workers distracted by deteriorating families and everything that goes with it. Made sense to me.

My 500th Post--Meet Arab Singles??

On August 22 last year I logged onto a site called geekadelphia that has a very favorable article about a new museum at the place where I work. It also has big ads next to the actual content of the site. The first time I logged onto geekadelphia.com the ad headline said, "Meet Arab Singles." Which lead to a site called Arab Lounge.
The woman in the ad was definitely not wearing a burqa--actually not much of anything but a leopard bikini top and a smile. But my first reaction was "I really don't want to meet Arab singles!!" Who decides what ads go on these sites?
So I was going back through the 506 posts and my sites and cleaning out the ones I started and never finished.

Except this one. I have wondered once in a while how Google decides what ads to put on a site. I logged onto Geekadelphia just now and got an ad for geek t-shirts. So why do I get an ad for American t-shirts in southern Iraq and "Meet Arab Singles!" in Philadelphia? I would expect the reverse. I am not responding to either ad. My wife is very frugal and would be horrified at paying retail for t-shirts when yard sales are full of them. And I am sure she does not want me meeting Arab singles.

So with other posts cleaned out, this musing on web ads is officially number 500. In related numerical updates, my blog has had more than 31,000 visits since last June. And since today is August 30, I should be a civilian in 153 days (January 30) or less if things go well with the demobilization process. That means I should have 650 blog posts before the site takes a sabbatical--I post every day I am on duty so hopefully my post rate will drop to twice a month plus 15 days in the summer.

Actually, I do plan to keep blogging about my return to being a real civilian. It's really going to happen. I can smell the bakery bread and the lattes already.

Bike Dudes

This morning my bike buddy and I went out for the morning loop around the perimeter and saw two civilians riding past on the main east-west road on the north side. I chased and towed my riding buddy up to what turned out to be two Brits. They are part of a team that flies outside the wire and no one knows what they do--at least none of us mechanics. Anyway, one of the guys is really strong. They were both riding 24-speed mountain bikes with front suspensions and disc brakes.

As we catch up to them we are just passing the last motor pool on the north side and turning south toward the mostly nothing area. It is the smoothest, fastest pavement of the whole perimeter. The big guy and I took turns at the front. At the end of the 1.5 mile straight saection we looked back and our buddies were riding together 150 meters behind. We slowed up for the dirt stretch and rode 18 the rest of the way around post. It turns out they ride 30 to 40 km every morning at 6am when they don't have a mission. Thy run in gym if the dust is too bad, but said they usually get out five days a week.

They said they most likely have a mission tomorrow, but I am going to ride at 6am anyway, just in case they are on the road. I can only ride at 0600 three days at the most. Otherwise I have to be in the motor pool at 0600. It's great to have more people to ride with.