Hellow from Kuwait

We landed. The first taste of Kuwait isn’t too bad; it’s about 88 degrees as we got off the plane around 8PM. We saw lots of lights of Kuwait City as we flew in by commercial airline, and I thought it was a fairly commercial city. It took about 25 hours counting stops in Newfoundland and Frankfurt to get here.

There was a nice wind blowing when we get off and it’s not bad at all. The ground is different though; it’s finely crushed sand, like the bottom of a gravel pit that’s been driven over by trucks for years, somewhat rough but with plumes of sand that billow up with each step you take. We board buses and they tell us to keep the curtains of the windows closed. They haven’t had a hostile shot fired in Kuwait for 10 months but they don’t like to advertise any more than the convoy of buses already do. We board the buses and travel about 2 hours to the U.S. staging area north of Kuwait City.

Once we arrive, we swipe our ID cards. That’s the most important first item because it logs us “in-country”. No swipe, not here. So, we all make sure we get a good read the first time.

We file into a tent for the in-briefing and in true Army fashion, we will get the in-briefing no matter how late it is. Welcome to the theater of Iraq; get your game face on because you’re now in a war zone. We’ve spent a lot of time preparing for this moment, but it’s still a little surreal to be here.

After the welcome, it’s time for the bag drag. All of our bags have been stacked on the ground and you have to go find yours and drag it to your new cot. It would be nice if we could be unique and have our own style, but Army green bags all look alike and if you haven’t marked it somehow, you work with the other 300 people looking for their green bags and snatch them as you can. I have two duffel bags, a rucksack, a computer case and a travel case to bag. I end up making a couple of trips. We’re still putting things away around 4am, the lights in the tent never went out…..it’s already been a long day.

We’re in large Quonset huts with electricity, wood floors and cots….about 60 per group. Our huts are air conditioned which is a welcome respite from the heat. Oh, yeah, forgot to mention that the 88 degree welcome we got the other morning was a fluke. It took me 3 tries this morning to go outside of the tent to shave, even at that early hour. The door would open and this blast of sunshine literally drove me back inside, it was so bright. The next time, even with sun glasses and boonie hat on, it’s so very hot. I forced myself out and stood in the sunshine for a minute to acclimate, but I’ve never been in a sun so hot before. We use to kid the people of our group because some of their mission will be here in Kuwait, which we’ve equated to easy duty…but Kuwait is actually further south than Iraq and hotter. I have yet to see any green vegetation here, it’s all sand. Its sand as far as the eye can see. This place is a hell hole and I pity anyone working in this. The Army built this place in a remote area and there is nothing else here. I think it’s pretty typical of Kuwait in general, but I’m not sure about that. (Girls, write me a report, pls?)

I do see the millions of dollars being spent on the GWOT here, the mess halls feed thousands of troops in just a couple of hours, and there are 3 mess halls on this post alone. There’s a nice gym and an air conditioned tent for movies. You can get Burger King if you want but you have to stand outside to get it and it’s just too damn hot and uncomfortable most of the time, so we don’t.

I’m on the 1st chalk. Once our training here is finished, we’re going north ahead of the rest of the group, so I’ll be one of the first people in-country from this group. That doesn’t mean anything except I’ll be out of Kuwait sooner than most. Thank goodness Kuwait has oil; I don’t see any other redeeming factors at all…

I did find out that I’ll be getting a chance to travel while I’m in-country. One of my first tasks is to see how much of that I can arrange by air.

P.S., the wheelchairs are here with us and safe. The next step is to get them on a flight north to the 3rd ACR and Paul as soon as we can. We got a lot of strange looks when we loaded them, but they made it. There are three of them, anyone want to post who they’re from?

Love to all!