Settling in
Dear Readers, this blog did not exist before the second week of September, 2006. Before that, I was sending mass emails to my friends and family. What follows is one of those emails, sent on the same day this post shows.
Well, I’m finally up and operating here at [edited out], Iraq. We’ve been doing the Relief in Place (RIP) with the unit we are taking over for. Basically, we hang out together for 10 days, until they are satisfied we have a clue about what we are doing and we are tired of asking questions. But, it’s good because otherwise they would just dump everything on us and we wouldn’t have a clue as to how to accomplish our jobs.
The base here is some limited attractions. There’s an Morale, Welfare and Recreation (MWR) complex that has a basketball court, telephone bank, internet cafe, a couple of big screen TVs with movie nights, TVs to hook your Xbox up to, pool tables, ping pong, and some other assorted games. Plus, it has a small library. For entertainment, that’s about it.
Other than the army dining facility, there are no American-style places to eat here. The only restaurant is Turkish. I ate there once, and it was pretty good, but that would get old pretty quick. There’s some faint hope for AAFES to bring in a coffee shop or a McDonald’s, but who knows when that will happen.
I’ve been tasked as the Base Defense Officer, which is a pretty big job given the scope of the problem. My list of projects to complete in the force protection arena filled two pages - and that’s after the unit we are replacing showed me the list of projects they had completed over the last year. Actually, it looks like they’ve done a good job and completed a lot, just a lot more to do.
Mail only comes three times a week. Don’t know how often it goes out - probably the same. I’m told it takes about two weeks for a package to get here, longer for regular letters. There are two international delivery companies here - DHL and FedEx. As for as I know, UPS doesn’t deliver.
The base is surrounded by a bunch of tiny villages that appear fairly friendly to us. We employ many of their people on base and one of the village big wigs comes to visit here regularly.
Before I got here, I had no idea how many construction projects I would be involved in. Turns out, base defense has more construction projects than even the folks who actually run the base infrastructure. I’m being forced to get a crash course in carpentry, electrical, welding and concrete.
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