Female MiTT's?

It’s Friday morning and the water’s been off since Tuesday. It’s not just the base; it’s upstream at the pumping station that apparently has a 1950’s era transformer that blew. They’re trying to rewire it and the prognosis last night was 48 hours. It affects a wide swath including the local city. I’ll check later to see if the CF can offer any assistance, but we’re told its just getting the parts and rewiring.

Our IA has plenty of bottled water for now, good to go for drinking and cooking. We had to get them to increase the allotment to the soldiers here, they were limited to two bottles of water per day and they had to get it out of the DFAC and only then when the DFAC was open. They sometimes need prodding even with 117 degrees yesterday. The trick is to get them to be proactive without us looking over their shoulder. They did fill up their water tankers (non-potable) and use it to hose down anyone that wanted a shower outside; I should start bringing my camera everywhere I go.

It doesn’t always feel as hot as it says. I take a quiet hour at the end of the day to sit out back as the sun goes down and smoke a cigar (sorry girls, they’re Cuban and too good to pass up) and have a near-beer. It drops into the 90’s and gets nice. I’ve really come to enjoy the mornings and evenings here, I could easily get accustomed to hot weather like this instead of battling snow.

I got in late last night, about 2:30am after taking 3 of our soldiers in for their R&R flight, 3 left and 3 came back. They fly them down to Kuwait to go home. Friday is our “lite” day. The IA take Friday’s as their holy day, our Sunday, so we adjust to them. We have a back-brief this afternoon for our movement this weekend. We’ll man the radios 24 hours from when they leave until they pull back into the gate, and since this is their first major move as a unit, the back brief this afternoon to the Regimental Cdr (and us) will be detailed to say the least, can’t afford to have any missed detail overlooked as they head out into dangerous country.

I got a couple of emails to address, the first one from my favorite big brother Pat who reminded me that even though I grew up on a farm and claim I can drive anything, he really can. And he’s right, he’s driving an 18 wheeler and transfer cases are nothing new to him. I bow to his superior knowledge, as I always have. His son Paul just completed his second tour here with the 3ACR and I think Pat is more proud of him that he is. Much love to him and all the family.

The other email came from incoming replacements for the MiTT’s here in country. That’s good and bad, in that Google hits for MiTT’s are picking up this site and I was trying to stay a bit under the military radar. His question was pretty generic about what we do here and probably a subject that I should be addressing since it wasn’t clear to him from my posts, so instead of answering him directly, I’ll post it here.

His first question was about female MiTT members. Bad idea.

They tried it once; the 1st MTR had a female LTC in charge and there was an alleged assault on her. I have no official knowledge of this, never spoke to her, but she was apparently pushed to the ground by the Regimental CDR who tried to kiss her. That’s all second hand, can neither confirm nor deny, etc, etc., but its an additional issue with groups like us who are out in remote locations away from the larger bases. It’s not just the Iraqi Army; it’s living this close in small teams with females in general.

I know it’s done with Civil Affairs team, Water purification teams and lots of areas where U.S. forces are co-ed. It’s just outright a pain in the ass on top of everything else that goes on here to have to police the young troops with hormones gone wild. I know U.S. military females are professional and can do anything males can do and many times better, but we live and work so very close and it’s just hard on everyone to have the distractions that come with working and living with both sexes. It’s already being done and we should be like the Israeli’s where this isn’t a big deal, but it’s still somebody’s daughter that you have to call if something goes wrong. Maybe I have too many daughters myself, maybe its because I was one of "those” boys and remember those days. God got his revenge on me with four daughters, that’s for sure.

I do walk and drive around the post with just an interpreter and when I go to some of the sites where their English is good I don’t even take an interpreter. I’m treated extremely well. But I’m under no illusion that it’s not dangerous here and that there hasn’t been infiltration of these units by bad guys. Bad guys don’t always mean Al Qaeda, either; it could just mean someone who’d like to shoot ranking officers, Iraqi or U.S. We’re armed and aware of our surroundings, but to mix in females with all the daily dangers and issues already here is just a bit much. I know we’ll do it eventually and they’ll be very successful, but its just one more daily issue to combat and one that I'd rather read about when I’m gone.

We’re planning a shower run into the CF base maybe later on tonight. Best wishes from Iraq