Another World
That time in Iraq was almost like being on a foreign planet. We had a burning pile of garbage lying about 500 meters from our tent that smoked all day and glowed all night. Late at night we would have transport helicopters bringing supplies and personnel. The pilots would like to use the glowing garbage heap as a reference to the helipad. An azimuth would be used, say maybe 170 degrees and 500 meters from the glowing heap. More times than not if the winds were blowing south the pilot and crew would begin drift off course five degrees or so and begin to hover 10-20 feet above our shaking tattering tent.
Normally the tent would shake to the point of actually blowing away on occasion waking up myself and everyone to include giant rats in the tent. It was common for me to walk outside waving my fist in the air at the pilot and from time to time thinking of firing warning shots at the misled crew members. Did I mention the rats? Our tent would become infested with rats due to a couple of factors, food in our tent our proximity to the garbage heap and the fact that much of Iraq is used to grow dates. Rats love dates and make their homes high above the ground in the palm trees. I remember one rat in particular that was the size of a medium rabbit. This rat was huge and I did not hesitate to open fire as he lazily strolled across our tent floor. I brandished my M9 pistol missing and then a hit and another hit followed by four more shots until the mammal finally breathed his last breath.
I tossed the rat outside and climbed up the guard tower ladder to check on my men. Well man I only left one man up in the tower at a time due to the lack of manpower. I imagine one of the most difficult things about being deployed would have to be the constant threat of indirect fire. At a moment's notice you could be walking along minding your own business and have explosives raining down near you. The base was fairly small so most of the mortars that came down were not too far away from wherever you were.
Occasionally I would get to leave the wire and see some of Iraq. Our unit manned a checkpoint along Route Tampa that consisted of a couple of vehicles, a couple of 240 machine guns a radio, four men and myself. During the day we would have traffic pull over, ask the driver some questions, like where are you going and where are you coming from. We would sometimes check the cabs of vehicles and the cargo on trucks. This would occupy the day but during the night there was a curfew and we saw little traffic and much of our time was battling sleep. I would sometimes think that it would be fairly easy to overrun five men at semi isolated checkpoint without too much trouble. It seemed often times that our fate was up to a higher power.
There was another Staff Sergeant who had an administrative job in the basement of the TOC (tactical operations center), we will call him gorilla because he was built a lot like a gorilla and you never knew when he would snap on you. . He was from Lompoc California which is only about an hour south of where I grew up. I would generally spend about an hour a day in the basement of the TOC discussing work with the S4 officer I worked for and visiting a friend of mine (Matthew) that was the retention NCO (non commissioned officer) for our unit. I also enjoyed the safety of the basement, considering we were bombarded by indirect fire more often than I cared for. Matthew and my wife were friends and Matthew seemed to have much contact with his wife than I did mine, so I would talk to him and find out indirectly what my wife was up to. I would spend a half an hour to an hour every day waiting outside a tent in the brutal Iraqi desert waiting to speak with my wife. Who I would hope would help me deal with my deployment. I found most of the time she would answer the phone briefly and act indifferent to me and had little to say. If I spoke to her it would be disappointing if I did not speak to her it was disappointing. Although I had no say in the matter of deploying to Iraq, I believe that my wife felt abandoned and irritated with me.
I would spend a good hour a day at dinner visiting Matthew and eating dinner in our chow hall. On Friday after dinner we would get to watch fights. The gorilla apparently had done some amateur boxing in his day and had a boxing ring shipped out to our FOB. He must have known someone in order to have a real boxing ring sent out to Iraq. The gorilla would fight and always pummel his opponent. I remember a Friday afternoon when he beat down this rather large marine. I did not really get along with the gorilla and one afternoon he was shooting off his mouth and I said something, it offended him and he challenged me to a Friday fight. I could not back down or let him think that I was scared of him.
