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Saturday, May 21, 2005
Your Worst Travel Day(s)
I’m in Iraq.
Normally I’d lead off with something like ‘Greetings from Peoria!’ or ‘Hello from Taipei!,’ but no, I’m just in Iraq. Worse still, I’m BACK in Iraq after a wonderful and amazing two weeks leave with Sally and Lillian.While home, a few people asked me what the travel was like getting from Iraq to home. Well, on the trip back here I took some notes (okay, more than ‘some’) so that folks could see the glory of not just traveling half-way around the planet, but doing so via military flights. Let’s just say that all those times that I used to get pissed off at a delayed flight or when I used to think that a four-hour flight was SO long, now seem pretty silly.
To give a better sense of all the time involved in this endeavor, all dates/times are Boise time, unless in parenthesis, which is local time. I hoped this would be less confusing than bouncing between Boise, Dallas, Hungary, Kuwait, and Kirkuk times and would show people the length of each leg.
Saturday, May 14
0500 Woke up after four hours sleep as I was up late packing (was in total denial for as long as possible). Depressed, I eat a butter-slathered Costco bagel and a huge bear claw donut for breakfast. If we had had a second donut in the house, I would have eaten that too.
0715 Sally and my goodbye was less weepy than I expected as we’re both looking forward to starting to get this last part of my deployment over with. We keep telling each other it’s our ‘last goodbye’. I don’t really choke up, until I squat down to give a sleeping Lilli one last smooch on the forehead.
0725 Four of us, including my Platoon Sergeant, are on a commercial flight to Denver from Boise. One of the guys in our group flying over, a soldier from Alpha Company, isn’t on the flight, having been arrested the night before. We don’t know why but he had a warrant out for his arrest and was pulled over the night before for a traffic violation. I always try to surround myself with only the BEST people, you know…
I watch longingly as the snow-covered mountains of Colorado pass below me, listening to some good new music on the plane’s sound system.A family is seated several rows in front of me and their very young daughter laughs, which simultaneously reminds me of Lilli’s laugh and causes my throat to constrict, heart to collapse, and stomach to fall away in absolute despair.
1030? At some point, we land in Dallas and I immediately try to take advantage of my good fortune at still being in the U.S. I walk through the concourse, wanting to buy everything, touch everything, and eat everything in sight, absorbing as much of America as I can. I restrain myself though and instead try to milk all that I can out of a 1200 minute phone card (thank you Kathy!!!) and call friends (or try, except for Jeff Murray, I get nothing but voicemails) and check in with Sally.
It already hurts badly to be away from my wife and daughter, but I try to take solace in knowing that I’m still in the same country with them, momentarily. But it’s already tough just talking on the phone to Sally. I hate the idea that for the next six months I will again only have her voice (occasionally). I want all of her in my arms again.
We have to leave the gate area, pick up any checked bags, have a meeting, get into a huge long line of military guys so that we can manifest (a.k.a. ‘check in’), get our bags weighed and declare our weight, and then go back through security to the gate area.
While I went there for lunch, I hit Chili’s again for dinner, just because I can.
? Charter flight on ATA (ugh!) takes off, almost completely full of nothing but soldiers. On the flight, I’m sort of haunted by the sound of Lilli laughing, as I just keep replaying the sound over and over again in my head, even though each time it crushes my heart and knots my guts.
Sunday, May 15
0430 (Maybe 1100 Hungary time?) After ten hours of flying, three movies (including Vin Diesel’s abysmally bad The Pacifier), two meals, a beautiful sunset that never really ended and just sort of evolved into dawn (both because of our flying east and I think because of the nape of the earth), and two full hours of fitful sleep, we arrive in Hungary, just outside Budapest. For some reason here we’re not allowed to deplane and so have to just sit out on the tarmac as the plane is refueled and a new flight crew comes on board. I ‘stretch my legs’ (a little) on the platform of the stairs that lead up to the plane.
Thus far, I’ve had the distinct pleasure of refueling in an array of foreign lands, including Qatar, Germany (first time back since I was born there in ’70 and then left three months later), Ireland, and now Hungary. Woo hoo.
Wanting for so long to travel around Europe, I long to have the opportunity to spend a few days here and check out the country but of course that’s impossible. So my travel article for Conde Nast would read something like this; "Hungary is a lush, vibrant country on the go that offers wonderful travel values. [That’s the lead in to try to hook the reader.] Many of the rooftops near Budapest are orange, possibly of some sort of tile. They also have asphalt for their runways but actually utilize a little more white stone in their mix than the standard American blacktop. Hungary boasts much green grass, much of it mowed, in between their runways and airport personnel often drive Volkswagen model cars that are not available in the U.S. The local peoples that removed our trash are typically Eastern European; sturdy, resolute, perhaps a bit worn down, but certainly proud." And that would be it, all my reflections from my time in Hungary.
0630 Depart Hungary. I try to watch Ocean’s Twelve and get another hour and a half sleep on the plane, maybe.
1030 Arrive Kuwait (7:30 PM local time). It’s 90+ degrees out and friggin’ humid (did I mention that I hate heat? I hate it when it’s only 90 degrees and dry in Boise and I’m wearing friggin’ shorts). I help unload plane to move around a little and get the blood flowing, then we get on buses, wait around, the buses drive to the edge of the airport, we wait around for our security escorts (US Army military police in Humvees), and the buses drive to a small camp on the Kuwaiti coast nicknamed ‘Camp Cancer’, since it’s located next to a chemical facility and, I believe, two smelting factories.
1243 (10:43 PM local time) We have our first briefing and our entire plane full of soldiers is divvied up into groups based on their final destination. We swipe our ID cards (they have magnetic strips on them just like credit cards now), get a brief from a chaplain’s assistant who urges us to ‘tell our stories’ (a more macho way of saying, ‘Hey, it sucks to come back, talk it out with your buddies’), other briefs about the process here, and when our formation times are.
Our Kirkuk-bound group is told that our formation time is at 1345 (a.k.a. 1:45 PM) and we breath a sigh of relief, knowing that we’ll be able to get some sleep. ‘Oops! Sorry guys, I read the wrong time. Your formation time is 0530.’ (a.k.a. 5:30 AM) We groan. We get into a huge line to pick up body armor. It’s almost midnight and I’m sweating.
1500 (12:30 AM, Monday May 16) After picking up our body armor, we go to midnight chow and stuff our faces. Again, I’m tempted to eat everything, both out of depression and because their chow hall is so good (they being a rear echelon unit of course). I call Sally for fifteen minutes. We agree that (for the 776,523rd time), "This sucks."
1700 (2:30 AM) I’m shaved, teeth are brushed, and I’m happy to be in the prone position on a bunk. Sure the bunk is covered in industrial-grade plastic that sticks to my greasy skin, and sure we’re in a warehouse surrounded by chain link fences and barbed wire (this in INSIDE the warehouse to keep other groups from getting mixed up with each other), and sure the industrial grade fluorescent lights hum incessantly as they are never, ever turned off (this is ‘for our safety’). Still though, I’m exhausted and actually on a mattress. I lay down, rest my head on my travel pillow, wrap my blouse over me like a blanket, pull my boonie hat down over my eyes, and wait for sleep to hit me (for at least three hours.)
But, my body clock is so screwed up, I end up not sleeping a wink. Not one. Not even a bit. Not a doze, nothing. I finish a wonderful book (The Life of Pi) in between fitful attempts at sleep where I flip and flop like a fish and glance continuously at my watch as my precious three hours slip away. Other guys face the same loosing battle and I see them up reading paperbacks, or spread out against the walls, hovering around electrical outlets watching movies or playing games on their laptops.
As much as I try to ignore it, I start to dream of when I’ll be back in Kuwait again as the next time will be when we’re rotating out of here to back home. I notice a divot in the middle of a fingernail and imagine that when that divot finally grows out to the end of the nail and I can finally clip it all away, I might very well be back here again, back in Kuwait and heading home for good. (Okay, so that’s one stupid way to gauge time but give me a break, I was TIRED! Gosh.)
2000 (6:00 AM) I finish my book, get up, and eat a bagel with peanut butter that I took from the chow hall. Soon fourteen of us are in formation, then sitting on a bus. There we’re told there are only thirteen slots so one guy will have to stay behind. No one volunteers. They ask again and again, using different people each time, as if this will jar one of us into volunteering. No one does.
The bus driver has a Kuwaiti English-language channel on the radio. Their DJ’s are just as annoying as our DJ’s. They’re playing Phil Collins. I hate Phil Collins.
Finally one guy volunteers to stay in Kuwait for who knows how long. We’ve had soldiers stuck there on their return trips for up to nine days. That’s nine days of trying to sleep under industrial lights on plastic-covered mattresses, usually without a change of clothes, no bedding, lots of formations called ‘just in case’, no idea when you’ll actually get a flight out, etc.
2147 (7:47 AM) Arrive by bus at a Kuwaiti air base, the same one that I got to call Sally from during Lillian’s birth. We even pass nearby the phone center that I called her from. Boy, what a great memory. I mean, being on the other side of the planet while your first child is born and you can barely hear anything for the shouts of excitement coming from the other end… (not that I’m bitter, never that).
Monday, May 16
0030 (9:30 AM) We meet up with a group of civilian contractors (most of which will make a salary here between $60,000 to $200,000/year) and a few low-level diplomats, then have a few hours of paperwork, get our gear sniffed by drug dogs, more paperwork, find out that (whoops!) we DO have fourteen slots on the plane and that the guy who volunteered to stay in Kuwait can now come (if he can get his butt to the Air Base in time), and quite some sitting around (I tried to stay on the bus as much as possible in the AC, now reading Dante’s Inferno… appropriately enough), and finally go eat at the Air Force chow hall.
The Air Force chow hall has Cinnebon cinnamon rolls. They have a dial-up, on-demand cappuccino/espresso machine. They have wide screen tv’s and an ice cream bar. Their base has brick-lined sidewalks and nostalgic, 1800’s-style street lights, giving part of it the look of a brand-new subdivision.
We curse the Air Force.
We wonder what it takes to transfer to the Air Force.
? The fourteenth soldier makes it to the Air Base just about an hour before we load the plane. The bus takes us right up to the rear ramp of the C-130 cargo plane.
A C-130 is essentially a big aluminum tube with nylon webbing sling seats. Aluminum is metal. Metal gets hot in the desert sun. The fuselage starts to heat up, slowly getting hotter inside than the temperature outside. We begin the longest taxi in the history of mankind. The flight crew has towels positioned strategically around the plane to wipe the beads of sweat off their faces. Most of our guys just start dropping their blouses, but still the sweat beads up.
We’re not wearing our body armor. It’s under our seats. In case anyone does shoot at the plane from the ground, that’s the best place for it.
0145 Our flight, a.k.a. ‘Chrome 53’, takes off. At some point during the flight, I manage another hour sleep.
0345 (1:45 PM Kirkuk time) We land at the KRAB (Kirkuk Regional Air Base) for more paperwork, more swiping of ID cards. Luckily it’s not nearly has hot or humid as Kuwait was, being only in the low 90’s or so. We wait around for our ride back to our patrol base. Our base used to be called Barbarian Base but I’ve dubbed it ‘Camp Barbie’ to give it a more ‘fun’ feel.
0540 We give urine samples for a pee test. Our convoy of Humvees shows up and I’m told to get into one. Oops, it’s already full! The only place I can ride is in the back of an unarmored truck with one of our interpreters and two big AC units (one for my squad area, thank god). Just as we’re about to roll out of the gate, I realize that I’m sitting in the back of an unarmored truck without even a weapon (we turned our personal weapons in back at our base before leaving). I motion to the Humvee behind me, sticking my finger and thumb out to make it look like a gun then putting my arms our to my sides, palms up, and shrug my shoulders in the international ‘I dunno/Where is it?’ signal. Their driver runs up and hands me his M4 carbine, just as my truck lurches away. I really don’t need the M4, but it’s comforting, just in case.
0700 (5:00 PM) After a mere 50 hours of travel (it was 69 or so hours on the way out), I arrive back at Camp Barbie. My squad is on guard duty so I have the bay to myself, blissfully. I unpack, am delighted to find three care packages on my bunk (thank you Jay, Kari & Edin, and Mona and Brandon!!!), and am chagrined at the state of our bay. It’s a mess (probably no surprise to anyone who knows me, but I’m the guy who makes sure people clean up, put their stuff away, etc…. yeah, I know). I don’t even have the energy to care though.
I go into the latrine, where there’s a carnage of cockroach bodies lying scattered around the floor, and try to take a shower. It’s cold. Welcome back! (Two days later I’ll realize that the shower was cold because I forgot that in Iraq, for some reason, the hot water valve is on the right, often sporting a blue dot while the cold sports a red one.)
I also don’t have the energy to realize that I didn’t eat since breakfast (thank god I had that Cinnebon roll, and that ice cream, and the extra mayo on my sandwich, and that apple, etc.) and I just go to bed. I only sleep for seven hours but they’re blissful ones and that effectively doubled the amount of sleep that I got during the past three days.
0400 Kirkuk time – I wake up, eat some cereal (thank god people send me soy milk!) – which is my first food in eighteen hours, rearrange my DVDs (yeah, I know…), go workout (hey, why not?), and start to resolve myself to the fact that I am back here again.
Three days later, I’m still not at all resolved to the fact of my sordid situation and I still long to be back with my family (‘my family,’ that’s SO cool to say still), in my home, in my bed. I had seen guys come back from leave and they all have this sullen look on their face and, when they talk, they generally speak in monosyllabic monotones for a few days. (We’ve developed an empathetic greeting for when I guy comes back from leave now; ‘Welcome back. I’m sorry you’re here.’) I call the return-from-leave-look ‘The ten yard stare.’ I still have that look, still speak in monotones, and, as I look around my plywood-encased bunk at my photos of Sally and Lillian, I don’t think they’re going to go away anytime soon.
Normally I’d lead off with something like ‘Greetings from Peoria!’ or ‘Hello from Taipei!,’ but no, I’m just in Iraq. Worse still, I’m BACK in Iraq after a wonderful and amazing two weeks leave with Sally and Lillian.While home, a few people asked me what the travel was like getting from Iraq to home. Well, on the trip back here I took some notes (okay, more than ‘some’) so that folks could see the glory of not just traveling half-way around the planet, but doing so via military flights. Let’s just say that all those times that I used to get pissed off at a delayed flight or when I used to think that a four-hour flight was SO long, now seem pretty silly.
To give a better sense of all the time involved in this endeavor, all dates/times are Boise time, unless in parenthesis, which is local time. I hoped this would be less confusing than bouncing between Boise, Dallas, Hungary, Kuwait, and Kirkuk times and would show people the length of each leg.
Saturday, May 14
0500 Woke up after four hours sleep as I was up late packing (was in total denial for as long as possible). Depressed, I eat a butter-slathered Costco bagel and a huge bear claw donut for breakfast. If we had had a second donut in the house, I would have eaten that too.
0715 Sally and my goodbye was less weepy than I expected as we’re both looking forward to starting to get this last part of my deployment over with. We keep telling each other it’s our ‘last goodbye’. I don’t really choke up, until I squat down to give a sleeping Lilli one last smooch on the forehead.
0725 Four of us, including my Platoon Sergeant, are on a commercial flight to Denver from Boise. One of the guys in our group flying over, a soldier from Alpha Company, isn’t on the flight, having been arrested the night before. We don’t know why but he had a warrant out for his arrest and was pulled over the night before for a traffic violation. I always try to surround myself with only the BEST people, you know…
I watch longingly as the snow-covered mountains of Colorado pass below me, listening to some good new music on the plane’s sound system.A family is seated several rows in front of me and their very young daughter laughs, which simultaneously reminds me of Lilli’s laugh and causes my throat to constrict, heart to collapse, and stomach to fall away in absolute despair.
1030? At some point, we land in Dallas and I immediately try to take advantage of my good fortune at still being in the U.S. I walk through the concourse, wanting to buy everything, touch everything, and eat everything in sight, absorbing as much of America as I can. I restrain myself though and instead try to milk all that I can out of a 1200 minute phone card (thank you Kathy!!!) and call friends (or try, except for Jeff Murray, I get nothing but voicemails) and check in with Sally.
It already hurts badly to be away from my wife and daughter, but I try to take solace in knowing that I’m still in the same country with them, momentarily. But it’s already tough just talking on the phone to Sally. I hate the idea that for the next six months I will again only have her voice (occasionally). I want all of her in my arms again.
We have to leave the gate area, pick up any checked bags, have a meeting, get into a huge long line of military guys so that we can manifest (a.k.a. ‘check in’), get our bags weighed and declare our weight, and then go back through security to the gate area.
While I went there for lunch, I hit Chili’s again for dinner, just because I can.
? Charter flight on ATA (ugh!) takes off, almost completely full of nothing but soldiers. On the flight, I’m sort of haunted by the sound of Lilli laughing, as I just keep replaying the sound over and over again in my head, even though each time it crushes my heart and knots my guts.
Sunday, May 15
0430 (Maybe 1100 Hungary time?) After ten hours of flying, three movies (including Vin Diesel’s abysmally bad The Pacifier), two meals, a beautiful sunset that never really ended and just sort of evolved into dawn (both because of our flying east and I think because of the nape of the earth), and two full hours of fitful sleep, we arrive in Hungary, just outside Budapest. For some reason here we’re not allowed to deplane and so have to just sit out on the tarmac as the plane is refueled and a new flight crew comes on board. I ‘stretch my legs’ (a little) on the platform of the stairs that lead up to the plane.
Thus far, I’ve had the distinct pleasure of refueling in an array of foreign lands, including Qatar, Germany (first time back since I was born there in ’70 and then left three months later), Ireland, and now Hungary. Woo hoo.
Wanting for so long to travel around Europe, I long to have the opportunity to spend a few days here and check out the country but of course that’s impossible. So my travel article for Conde Nast would read something like this; "Hungary is a lush, vibrant country on the go that offers wonderful travel values. [That’s the lead in to try to hook the reader.] Many of the rooftops near Budapest are orange, possibly of some sort of tile. They also have asphalt for their runways but actually utilize a little more white stone in their mix than the standard American blacktop. Hungary boasts much green grass, much of it mowed, in between their runways and airport personnel often drive Volkswagen model cars that are not available in the U.S. The local peoples that removed our trash are typically Eastern European; sturdy, resolute, perhaps a bit worn down, but certainly proud." And that would be it, all my reflections from my time in Hungary.
0630 Depart Hungary. I try to watch Ocean’s Twelve and get another hour and a half sleep on the plane, maybe.
1030 Arrive Kuwait (7:30 PM local time). It’s 90+ degrees out and friggin’ humid (did I mention that I hate heat? I hate it when it’s only 90 degrees and dry in Boise and I’m wearing friggin’ shorts). I help unload plane to move around a little and get the blood flowing, then we get on buses, wait around, the buses drive to the edge of the airport, we wait around for our security escorts (US Army military police in Humvees), and the buses drive to a small camp on the Kuwaiti coast nicknamed ‘Camp Cancer’, since it’s located next to a chemical facility and, I believe, two smelting factories.
1243 (10:43 PM local time) We have our first briefing and our entire plane full of soldiers is divvied up into groups based on their final destination. We swipe our ID cards (they have magnetic strips on them just like credit cards now), get a brief from a chaplain’s assistant who urges us to ‘tell our stories’ (a more macho way of saying, ‘Hey, it sucks to come back, talk it out with your buddies’), other briefs about the process here, and when our formation times are.
Our Kirkuk-bound group is told that our formation time is at 1345 (a.k.a. 1:45 PM) and we breath a sigh of relief, knowing that we’ll be able to get some sleep. ‘Oops! Sorry guys, I read the wrong time. Your formation time is 0530.’ (a.k.a. 5:30 AM) We groan. We get into a huge line to pick up body armor. It’s almost midnight and I’m sweating.
1500 (12:30 AM, Monday May 16) After picking up our body armor, we go to midnight chow and stuff our faces. Again, I’m tempted to eat everything, both out of depression and because their chow hall is so good (they being a rear echelon unit of course). I call Sally for fifteen minutes. We agree that (for the 776,523rd time), "This sucks."
1700 (2:30 AM) I’m shaved, teeth are brushed, and I’m happy to be in the prone position on a bunk. Sure the bunk is covered in industrial-grade plastic that sticks to my greasy skin, and sure we’re in a warehouse surrounded by chain link fences and barbed wire (this in INSIDE the warehouse to keep other groups from getting mixed up with each other), and sure the industrial grade fluorescent lights hum incessantly as they are never, ever turned off (this is ‘for our safety’). Still though, I’m exhausted and actually on a mattress. I lay down, rest my head on my travel pillow, wrap my blouse over me like a blanket, pull my boonie hat down over my eyes, and wait for sleep to hit me (for at least three hours.)
But, my body clock is so screwed up, I end up not sleeping a wink. Not one. Not even a bit. Not a doze, nothing. I finish a wonderful book (The Life of Pi) in between fitful attempts at sleep where I flip and flop like a fish and glance continuously at my watch as my precious three hours slip away. Other guys face the same loosing battle and I see them up reading paperbacks, or spread out against the walls, hovering around electrical outlets watching movies or playing games on their laptops.
As much as I try to ignore it, I start to dream of when I’ll be back in Kuwait again as the next time will be when we’re rotating out of here to back home. I notice a divot in the middle of a fingernail and imagine that when that divot finally grows out to the end of the nail and I can finally clip it all away, I might very well be back here again, back in Kuwait and heading home for good. (Okay, so that’s one stupid way to gauge time but give me a break, I was TIRED! Gosh.)
2000 (6:00 AM) I finish my book, get up, and eat a bagel with peanut butter that I took from the chow hall. Soon fourteen of us are in formation, then sitting on a bus. There we’re told there are only thirteen slots so one guy will have to stay behind. No one volunteers. They ask again and again, using different people each time, as if this will jar one of us into volunteering. No one does.
The bus driver has a Kuwaiti English-language channel on the radio. Their DJ’s are just as annoying as our DJ’s. They’re playing Phil Collins. I hate Phil Collins.
Finally one guy volunteers to stay in Kuwait for who knows how long. We’ve had soldiers stuck there on their return trips for up to nine days. That’s nine days of trying to sleep under industrial lights on plastic-covered mattresses, usually without a change of clothes, no bedding, lots of formations called ‘just in case’, no idea when you’ll actually get a flight out, etc.
2147 (7:47 AM) Arrive by bus at a Kuwaiti air base, the same one that I got to call Sally from during Lillian’s birth. We even pass nearby the phone center that I called her from. Boy, what a great memory. I mean, being on the other side of the planet while your first child is born and you can barely hear anything for the shouts of excitement coming from the other end… (not that I’m bitter, never that).
Monday, May 16
0030 (9:30 AM) We meet up with a group of civilian contractors (most of which will make a salary here between $60,000 to $200,000/year) and a few low-level diplomats, then have a few hours of paperwork, get our gear sniffed by drug dogs, more paperwork, find out that (whoops!) we DO have fourteen slots on the plane and that the guy who volunteered to stay in Kuwait can now come (if he can get his butt to the Air Base in time), and quite some sitting around (I tried to stay on the bus as much as possible in the AC, now reading Dante’s Inferno… appropriately enough), and finally go eat at the Air Force chow hall.
The Air Force chow hall has Cinnebon cinnamon rolls. They have a dial-up, on-demand cappuccino/espresso machine. They have wide screen tv’s and an ice cream bar. Their base has brick-lined sidewalks and nostalgic, 1800’s-style street lights, giving part of it the look of a brand-new subdivision.
We curse the Air Force.
We wonder what it takes to transfer to the Air Force.
? The fourteenth soldier makes it to the Air Base just about an hour before we load the plane. The bus takes us right up to the rear ramp of the C-130 cargo plane.
A C-130 is essentially a big aluminum tube with nylon webbing sling seats. Aluminum is metal. Metal gets hot in the desert sun. The fuselage starts to heat up, slowly getting hotter inside than the temperature outside. We begin the longest taxi in the history of mankind. The flight crew has towels positioned strategically around the plane to wipe the beads of sweat off their faces. Most of our guys just start dropping their blouses, but still the sweat beads up.
We’re not wearing our body armor. It’s under our seats. In case anyone does shoot at the plane from the ground, that’s the best place for it.
0145 Our flight, a.k.a. ‘Chrome 53’, takes off. At some point during the flight, I manage another hour sleep.
0345 (1:45 PM Kirkuk time) We land at the KRAB (Kirkuk Regional Air Base) for more paperwork, more swiping of ID cards. Luckily it’s not nearly has hot or humid as Kuwait was, being only in the low 90’s or so. We wait around for our ride back to our patrol base. Our base used to be called Barbarian Base but I’ve dubbed it ‘Camp Barbie’ to give it a more ‘fun’ feel.
0540 We give urine samples for a pee test. Our convoy of Humvees shows up and I’m told to get into one. Oops, it’s already full! The only place I can ride is in the back of an unarmored truck with one of our interpreters and two big AC units (one for my squad area, thank god). Just as we’re about to roll out of the gate, I realize that I’m sitting in the back of an unarmored truck without even a weapon (we turned our personal weapons in back at our base before leaving). I motion to the Humvee behind me, sticking my finger and thumb out to make it look like a gun then putting my arms our to my sides, palms up, and shrug my shoulders in the international ‘I dunno/Where is it?’ signal. Their driver runs up and hands me his M4 carbine, just as my truck lurches away. I really don’t need the M4, but it’s comforting, just in case.
0700 (5:00 PM) After a mere 50 hours of travel (it was 69 or so hours on the way out), I arrive back at Camp Barbie. My squad is on guard duty so I have the bay to myself, blissfully. I unpack, am delighted to find three care packages on my bunk (thank you Jay, Kari & Edin, and Mona and Brandon!!!), and am chagrined at the state of our bay. It’s a mess (probably no surprise to anyone who knows me, but I’m the guy who makes sure people clean up, put their stuff away, etc…. yeah, I know). I don’t even have the energy to care though.
I go into the latrine, where there’s a carnage of cockroach bodies lying scattered around the floor, and try to take a shower. It’s cold. Welcome back! (Two days later I’ll realize that the shower was cold because I forgot that in Iraq, for some reason, the hot water valve is on the right, often sporting a blue dot while the cold sports a red one.)
I also don’t have the energy to realize that I didn’t eat since breakfast (thank god I had that Cinnebon roll, and that ice cream, and the extra mayo on my sandwich, and that apple, etc.) and I just go to bed. I only sleep for seven hours but they’re blissful ones and that effectively doubled the amount of sleep that I got during the past three days.
0400 Kirkuk time – I wake up, eat some cereal (thank god people send me soy milk!) – which is my first food in eighteen hours, rearrange my DVDs (yeah, I know…), go workout (hey, why not?), and start to resolve myself to the fact that I am back here again.
Three days later, I’m still not at all resolved to the fact of my sordid situation and I still long to be back with my family (‘my family,’ that’s SO cool to say still), in my home, in my bed. I had seen guys come back from leave and they all have this sullen look on their face and, when they talk, they generally speak in monosyllabic monotones for a few days. (We’ve developed an empathetic greeting for when I guy comes back from leave now; ‘Welcome back. I’m sorry you’re here.’) I call the return-from-leave-look ‘The ten yard stare.’ I still have that look, still speak in monotones, and, as I look around my plywood-encased bunk at my photos of Sally and Lillian, I don’t think they’re going to go away anytime soon.
Posted by: Unknown / 8:02 AM 
