Roughing it, Part 3...

After reading Parts 1 & 2 of this little series, I'm sure there are some (assuming I have more than a few readers) who probably think that unless you were way out in the sand somewhere at a remote base, you lived pretty well on your tours to Iraq.  Well, unless you were living in the Green Zone, not really.  Let me show you some of the other side of living there, the early days.

I arrived there shortly after the take-over of Baghdad and the main shooting ended in 2004.  In fact, our defense posture was pretty high.  We were living in what the Pentagon called "Expeditionary Force Levels."  So as I show you a picture of my digs, you will get the idea.  If you thought rank had it's own level of living, one higher than the troops, you would be wrong.  Below is a picture of my tent, one which I shared with 17 other officers.  They had wooden floors and were air conditioned, but that was the standard design for all the tents in all the bases.  There was generally a communal shower tent located in the neighborhood -- I think the standard was 1 shower tent for every 20 sleeping tents.  They would get pretty crowded at times, but since there were lots of shift workers, the load was eventually spread out over a day. 

The ground all over this place was like solid concrete, covered with rocks and little stones.  This made it pretty much impossible to walk anywhere around there unless you had your boots on.  So if you had to go to the "can" during the night, you had to get dressed in order to walk there or to the shower. 

One night, during the nightly mortar attack, one round hit a vehicle about three tents down from ours.  If you hadn't been there to hear it, you wouldn't have believed it -- there was no mark on the ground.  Other than the vehicle being damaged, and shrapnel holes in the tent (above the sand bags), you wouldn't have even known something happened.  I do remember that one of the captains had his PT clothes hanging up inside the tent, and the shrapnel tore them up.  He tried to turn them in to supply for a reissue, and the guy there wanted to charge him for it, saying that he thought the officer just tore them up. 

The tents were all put in a kind of "tent park" and at times it actually didn't look all that bad.

 

Early on, the mess tents looked like a big circus tent.  Later, they hooked up mobile homes, maybe three on each side of three down the middle where the food was prepared.  The ones coming out from the cooking area were where the troops ate.  They wanted them spread out a bit to lessen the chance of too many casualties in the event of a hit from a mortar.  You may recall that one was actually hit and there were a number of deaths and injuries.

This was our first mess tent.  Notice the AC units.  They kinda kept the place cooler, but didn't do much to keep the sand out.

Things were pretty much this way for the first year.  After that, they started to do more to make the living conditions better.  The Army started to move in mobile homes and made 2-4 man trailers the standard.  Each unit had its own shower facility which was shared by the men in the trailer.  Eventually they were put into trailer parks and the tents were taken down. In fact, when I went back in 2005 on TDY, all the tents were gone.  The mess facilities grew and became more comfortable.  Internet cafes were built and PXs sprang up all over the place.  They even got a Burger King and a couple of coffee shops.  None of the Americans were allowed to drink alcohol in Theater, and the Aussies really gave us the business for having "non-alcoholic beer" in the coolers in the mess hall.  I guess they didn't notice that none of that stuff ever left the fridge.  Eventually they stopped putting it in there.

I could also tell things were changing from a Combat Theater to something else -- the CORPS issued an order that all the CSMs and SGMs would rotate standing guard at the sign-in at the chow halls.  If a soldier was too dirty looking or, even worse, had been caught not washing his hands before coming in the mess hall, he was sent out without eating.  This all changed when the bad guys resurfaced and we started taking more rounds, and mortars and started to learn about IEDs.  Most of the chicken stuff stopped and people got back to soldiering. 

They say a reasonable amount 'o fleas is good fer a dog - keeps him from broodin' over bein' a dog, mebbe. (Edward Westcott)

Hooah