Day 89; My Eagle Has Landed

Friday, February 11th


Finally, word from my soldier during the wee hours of the morning.  Thank the Lord above...

Just got to Taji.  More to follow, but i'm really tired and I'm gonna rack out.

And later that night:

I arrived in Taji about 24 hours ago.  It's just north of Baghdad.  Finally got a flight from Kuwait.  It was on a C-17...a big cargo plane.  We loaded all of our duffle bags onto giant car-sized pallets, stacked them about 8 feet high, and cinched them down with cargo nets.  They were loaded onto the plane and we sat in airline-style seats.  Imagine how bad Southwest Airlines's seating is, and then imagine something 10 times worse.  The seats are more narrow, there is less leg room, and on top of that everyone was wearing about 50 pounds worth of gear, to include our body armor, weapon, and helmet.  Oh wait...I forgot to mention that we were sitting 5 abreast.  Gotta pee and you aren't in the aisle?  Too bad soldier, hold it.  

Anyway, the flight was only an hour so it wasn't too bad.  The acceleration during takeoff is about twice as forceful as on a normal commercial jet.  This is because this giant plane needs to get up to speed quickly, considering it can carry two 60-ton tanks inside it.  The seats we were sitting on were bolted to metal pallets, which were sort of locked into the floor, but they shifted a few inches forward and backward everytime the plane accelerated or decelerated.

Now, to describe Taji...

Imagine living in the beat-down slums of industrial L.A., but more ghetto.  The roads aren't paved -- they are gravel and thick mud that, even while mostly dry, sticks to your boots.  It's rainy season right now so there are certain areas which are flooded with green foul-looking liquid.  I drove by the "bone yard," which is a massive field full of Saddam's tanks, trucks, and other vehicles which have definitely seen better days.  Some of them are twisted wrecks from being blown up, some of them are decayed with rust from sitting forever, and ALL of them have been tagged with spraypaint by soldiers.  For example: "I love you Sally" or "Fuck Iraq" or "3rd Platoon Rules!" The ironic and somewhat depressing thing about this place is that this general region in Iraq is widely considered the cradle of civilization...the fertile crescent...bibically significant...and at this point it's a complete dump.

There are big 12-foot-tall T barriers everywhere to protect against mortars.  Imagine something like the median on the freeway, just much taller.  Apparently, this base gets attacked by rockets and mortars about once a month.  It doesn't worry me that much because they usually land on the Iraqi Army side of the base and we have an early detection system which can tell when a projectile is on its way, where it is probably going to land, and will sound the alarms in that area of the base, giving people 2-3 seconds to get on the ground.  The unit that my battalion is replacing has not had any deaths in the year they've been here.  This includes the transportation company which goes on convoys outside the wire all the time.

There are a few gyms here...I haven't had a chance to check them out yet but I heard they are pretty good.  The DFAC (Dining facility) has pretty good food and dessert.  And lots of it.  My dinner tonight was jambalaya with rice, mixed veggies, pasta salad, vegetable soup, fresh-cut melon (literally, cut at the station you get it from), and a baskin robbins oreo ice cream milkshake.  Drinks range from many types of soda to many types of juice, gatorade, water, soymilk, and regular milk.  And the omelets are bomb.  The only shortcoming is that the milk is in little boxes, made of powdered milk and water.  I'll get used to it but I'm already missing being able to drink 3 mini bottles of fresh milk in Kuwait after my workout.  But considering I'm in the armpit of the world right now, I can't complain about the food.  I may be a lot of things, but hungry isn't one of them!

My CHU (containerized housing unit) is basically a mobile home cut into thirds.  My room is normally supposed to house two people but since I'm a lieutenant I get my own.  My captain has a "wet CHU," which is a mobile home cut in half with a bathroom he shares with the First Sergeant.  There is a bathroom mobile home building with shower and toilet stalls located a 30 second walk away from me.  Pretty nice inside, actually.  I got lucky because my room had a fridge in it, which is just because the person who lived in it before me didn't end up selling it to someone else and she abandoned it in here.  How did I know it was a she?  Because the place blasted me with that typical flowery girl smell when I walked in! But a little febreeze took care of that problem.  The pictures I attached show the result of several hours of rearranging furniture, sweeping, mopping, tearing down the second bed, and laying down three carpets I just bought.  Pretty nice situation considering the misery outside.

I really should stop complaining about the condition of this base because right now the weather is as good as it's going to get.  50-60 degrees during the day.  I've been told that during the summer it gets up to 120 and the heat index can feel up to 150 degrees! Whoa!  Apparently, when you step outside, the heat blasts you so hard that you feel like your face is literally melting off.  I was told that the comparable feeling is sticking your head into a clothes dryer right after you open the door and it's been running for a while.  So for now I'm trying not to take this slightly cold temperature for granted.

There is a PX here (the typical military general store) that sells stuff from deodorant to protein powder to backpacks to cheez-its to shoes to PS3s to flatscreen TVs.  There is also a little store run by some shady middle eastern people that sells pirated DVDs for $2 each...I've been told that they usually have new movies within a week or two of their release.  Some of them are the crappy bootleged kind where you can see people walking in front of the camera in the theater, and some of them are better versions ripped from DVDs...but they have a DVD player and TV in there so you can skip through them really quick to decide if you want to buy them.  There is also a barber shop, alterations shop, post office, fedex, and DHL.  I've been told USPS takes anywhere from 2 weeks to 45 days to arrive.  The platoon leader I'm replacing, said that the fastest he's seen something arrive is 1 week.  

My office is a 5 minute walk from my CHU and the DFAC is about 7 minutes away.  My office is actually a large closet in one of the rooms at the end of the hall where my company has a few offices.  Can't complain too much -- up until this point I haven't even had an office.  I've been borrowing desks in common areas.  Once the unit here leaves I'll be able to move in there...I'll have an unclassified computer and phone as well as a secret computer and phone in my office, which only happens in theater. In the states, computers and phones at the secret classification level are kept behind double doors and electronic devices like cameras and phones aren't allowed in.  Here, they're pretty much lying around all over the place.  No wonder that soldier was able to siphon all of that information out of the secret systems and put it on wikileaks...

It's 10:14pm here right now and I'm going to be up for several hours because half of my company still hasn't arrived yet and their plane lands at about 1:30.  I'm going to meet them and help them bring their bags to their CHUs because they'll be just like the lost sheep I was last night.

More pictures to come once my footlocker arrives with my camera charger.  My footlocker was sent from Texas a few months ago and didn't arrive in Kuwait until a few days ago!  Took the slow boat across the Atlantic.  Can't wait to get my little TV, PS3, memory foam pillow, and books out of it.  Ahh, the simple things we take for granted every day...

Hope this didn't bore you.  Please stay in touch.

Love, Richy