Day 1 - FOB life

I’ve arrived and I’ll be damned if there isn’t a war still going on. I’ve been so sheltered and have absolutely been a rear-echelon-MF (RIMF is a term going back as far as WWI, maybe before). I sure am going to miss the creature comforts I thought were so mediocre where I came from.

I came in late last night on a C-130. We’d been delayed taking off from Balad because of a crash of a drone on the runway. These drones are remote controlled by an operator on the ground so there’s no telling if it was a mechanical failure or the operator just flew it into the ground. We got here about 1AM and I performed the inevitable bag drag to meet my contact. That’s one thing I will never do again (I wish, I have plenty more bag drags before I’m thru here) and that’s to enlist the copious aid of bag porters. When I get out of here, from now on, I’m going to pay bell hops to carry everything including my fanny pack. I’m going to tip generously too.

I met three of the guntruck crews last night as they came to pick me up. There’s two FOB’s here (Forward Operating Base) with the airfield in the middle and of course the FOB I’m on is the other one. So to traverse the space they need to convoy between the two even though it’s just a few short miles. That means gun trucks with a minimum of three crews with .50 cal’s, NVG’s, jamming devices, the whole bit. I’ve been to places like Tadji where everyone throws their body armor in the back seat of an open Toyota truck and we drive away, but not here. It’s full body armor and headset/mike’s to communicate with the team as we drive. It’s late but there’s still friendly chatter going on with the crew. They’re leaving in less than 2 weeks, so their spirits are pretty high. We go thru security check points in and out of both FOB’s and finally reach their compound. I find out their FOB is totally Iraqi. The Coalition FOB has the airfield. We’ve gone thru two Iraqi Army checkpoints and the guys were all appreciative that the IA guards were awake and alert.

My group has their own compound inside the Iraqi area and they have to unlock the gate to get into it. They lock the gate for the night behind them when all the vehicles are inside.

Even though it’s late, I get a quick tour. It’s an Iraqi building, so the bathrooms are Eastern style (squatting, no toilets) but at least there’s showers in the building. He shows me the kitchen where they cook all their food and I ask him about the Mess Hall, if anyone eats there and he says no, they have too much dysentery (!). So, they draw rations from the local U.S. unit and take turns cooking at night for themselves. This is going to be interesting but he says they’re well stocked and even pull steaks as needed. Now to me, that’s good news because I haven’t had a rare steak since I’ve been here, so I’m looking forward to that. The bad news is that everyone here has lost weight because they don’t always take time to eat. With a Mess Hall, you can stop in, eat and leave but they don’t do that here, they’ll work late and grab a muffin.

I got up early this morning to get a head start and take a look around during the morning hours. I asked last night if they run PT up here and they do, so that’s good, at least I’ll be able to keep running. I leaned they always run in pairs.

My room is good, I have my PC plugged into an internet cable in my room, but so far it doesn’t connect to anything. I’ll have to wait until the rest of them get up so I can get a proper orientation. I’ve been rummaging around and been outside and I hope it doesn’t get as hot as it did yesterday. The official temp yesterday was 115 and with the wind blowing it felt like a hair drying blowing in your face. I’m north of Balad so I’m hoping for a 5 degree kickback from the temp.

(afternoon)

I attended my first meeting and was very impressed with the crew, very professional and very dedicated to doing the right things training the Iraqi’s. They’ve been planning a CPX (combat practice exercise) for tomorrow and they briefed the operation to all of us. It looks like an excellent plan and tests the Iraqi’s while they’re inside this compound conduct missions and battle drills. If they’re successful, it will validate the teams to go out on the road and conduct independent missions without coalition soldiers riding shotgun.

That’s the name of the game, to train the Iraqi’s to do it themselves and this crew is ahead of the other training teams in country by a good couple of months. Some on this crew have already been out on 150+ missions with the Iraqi’s and we need to get them off the road and let the Iraqi’s run the missions themselves. That’s end game and tomorrow’s exercise will give them validation and confidence. I’m looking forward to participating. (fyi – battle drills can be: react to enemy fire, react to enemy IED, react to a mechanical breakdown, react to a medical emergency, etc. As they practice these over and over, they become second nature in case something really happens out on the road).

I don’t have a pillow up here; I should have brought mine from Balad, damn. We’re going to make a PX run later on and it’s on my list. Other than that, I have everything I need for the next couple of months. I even have air conditioning in the room, but I just stepped outside into 110 degrees and it feels like an oven. Tomorrow’s going to be a scorcher. But otherwise, so far, so good.

Best wishes from Iraq.