Everything’s just a little bit different
Well, we are running 12-hour days and today is my first day off in 2 weeks. Not complaining, just a nice relief to get some time off. The unit we replaced is now all gone and that’s a good thing - toward the end, they were just basically strap-hanging. They did some good work here over the last year, but it’s time for us to put our stamp on the situation.
As I’ve probably stated before, I’m the Base Defense Officer for [edited out]. It’s a pretty big post, but luckily, it’s situated in an area that the insurgency hasn’t really bothered with, so we don’t get attacked often. I was told we were only rocketed three times over the last year. That’s in comparison to the next closest base in Mosul which gets hit at least weekly. Plus, some of the force protection measures they’ve taken here are pretty extensive, so the place is fairly free of attacks. In fact, when one of the guys from 2-180FA came on a mission here recently, he commented about how nice and calm it was here.
This base is full of Hajji shops. Actually, they are mostly Turkish. I don’t know what it is about the Turks, but they are everywhere here. Two of the big construction companies here are Turkish and nearly all the little shops are run by Turks. The next biggest group are the Iraqi Kurds, several little shops run by those guys. I think the Turks are so money driven, they’ll work anywhere. Unfortunately, we’ve also had problems in the past with many of their employees bringing in contraband. Corruption is also big with those guys, so I’m always wary when I’m offered something from them. Generally, the rule is - avoid taking anything in the way of gifts, because they’ll expect something in return later on.
My list of base defense projects is huge. I’m easily looking at a year’s worth of jobs to accomplish. Like I said, our predecessors did a lot of good things here, but in some cases I’ll be finishing up the major projects they started and starting many of my own.
There are many things over here that are like the United States, but everything is just a little bit different. For example, the baked potatoes in the dining hall are a yellow variety that I’ve never seen before. They certainly don’t taste like your typical Idaho spud. The cans of soda tend to be all a little smaller than those in the U.S. - the same height, but thinner. Not sure of how many ounces because everything is metric and in Arabic. They do taste the same, although Diet Coke over here is Coca Cola Light. Also, they don’t have all the fancy Coke flavors like lime or lemon.
They sell pirated DVDs in the hajji shops that look great from the outside with professional looking covers, but look terrible when you watch them. Basically, someone goes to a movie theater with their video camera, records the movie as they watch it, copies it onto a DVD, and sells them for a huge profit. The colors in the picture are washed out looking and sometimes you can see people walking in front of the screen with their popcorn. Sometimes, the picture is off to one side, like they set their video camera up incorrectly. Unfortunately, they won’t play on the portable DVD player I brought with me - must be the wrong regional coding.
There are some interesting reminders of the former regime here. There’s a couple of broke down Mig-21 fighter planes sitting out here, and occasionally I run across a mural painted on a wall talking about how great Saddam Hussein is. Of course, Saddam’s face is now scratched up, but still interesting nevertheless. Many of the unihabited buildings have graffiti written in Arabic throughout them, and it would be interesting to know what they say - although they might not be all that flattering to Americans. Now, the only things living in those buildings are pigeons leaving their messes all over the floors. Of course, I’m also told that male and female soldiers are often caught in those buildings drinking and fooling around. After looking at the bird crap all over the floors, I’m not sure I’d be doing anything in those places.
On the not so pleasant side, we had a soldier here die last week and his buddy severely burned from an IED attack somewhere outside the base. The IED flipped over their HEMMT truck and it caught fire. The IED itself didn’t kill him, but the fire did. We don’t have a lot of guys from this base hurt, but it does happen. Actually, we’ve had far more accidental injuries here than deaths or injuries from enemy attacks.
We had an attempted rocket attack on the base a couple of days ago. Luckily, one of the local villagers reported it before the attack could occur. Seems the bad guys had set up a fairly large rocket on a dirt launch pad with a timer, aimed at the base. Unfortunately for them, it didn’t function correctly and it failed to launch.
That’s pretty typical for this area. According to the unit that does all the outside patrolling in this area, most of the insurgents here are “amateurs”. Their IEDs are usually small or poorly rigged. And, it seems like the bad guys are more interested in blowing up Iraqis than Americans now - but not always.
Alright, enough for now. They are kicking me off this computer in the Morale/Welfare/Recreation building.
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