Greetings all,

I finally made it back to the States, and am currently in Norfolk doing some last outprocessing. I just got medically cleared, so no TB or other diseases thankfully.

Just a few more days and I'll be a civilian again... hard to believe!

Here are some more impressions of Baghdad:

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More impressions of Baghdad

While looking out at the textured stony earth off the runway at Basra as the plane taxied for takeoff, I remembered my first glance of Basra – red earth, darkening under a setting sun, broken by a few canals – slipping closer as I anxiously peered out the small oval window. Now, in another afternoon sun, I go in the other direction. Even though I say “Basrah”, I never got to know that city – I was too cautious to take a patrol downtown after my patrol in Az Zubayr – and my experiences are pretty much centered on the Air Station and the other British bases around the city. I do regret never taking a bird to the Shaat-al-Arab Hotel, even if only for a few days. They don’t call it “Fort Apache” for nothin’.

As the C-130 lifts off the ground – actually we leap into the air at some ridiculous angle, me sliding down my web seat – I glimpse tiny flames far below, slowly billowing like those large red flags in Central Park. A memory of the south, the ever burning horizons, orange glows in the sky that always outshone the sun as the light died below the earth to the West. Those fires lent a flavor to the air that I will not miss.

My first night in the tents is better than when I first arrived, there are actual wooden framed bunk beds and lockers, unlike the open-bay-with-cots model from last year. A lot less dust, and maybe its’ just that I’m used to the lilt of Anglo voices, but the Aussies bother me less than the kids in U.S. Army uniforms. Some of them are so very young.

The DFAC has a plethora of food, which leaves me overwhelmed. There are entire dessert cases, and cookies and ice cream. It must require a lot of PT to work all that off. A surreal note: my first night there, the music playing over the diners was John Lennon’s “Imagine.” Can you think of an odder place to hear that song? (well, maybe a Pakistani madrassa…)

Staying over in Camp Slayer I very quickly have to figure out the KBR bus system, but it is quite easy – and enjoyable despite the mud and cramped seats. Again, that it is free makes it pretty easy too – payment is a nod or a gesture and a smile to the Indian or Bangladeshi driver, who nod and smile and wave back, the old human body language.

I meet two firemen on the bus, who’ve been here at Camp Slayer for two years – and doubtless making a ridiculous amount of money. They say there’ve been few fires here, mainly because the military enforces a very strict fire safety program in all the buildings – which is something they see only in public schools and the like at home.

I begin to understand why people make the military a career – among other things it is a very responsible environment; i.e. people are held to account for their actions, or lack of action, and rules are enforced. Sounds weird to say, of course, but I’ve been pretty lucky and avoided the crap that lands on people when they are junior enlisted – and the Navy too has been good about that as well, no menial duties for me and not ever now that I’m almost a Chief (fingers crossed!). On that front, I did hear that the Navy is making all First class Petty Officers’ (i.e. including me) who’ve spent this last winter in Iraq or Afghanistan *automatically* Chiefs’ Board eligible. That means I don’t have to take an exam but will automatically be able to put in an application to get board reviewed for promotion this fall. Pretty cool, in my book at least. The Navy is helping us out a little bit.

I saw a story on CNN today about Iraqi Chaldean’s, many of whom are refugees living in Syria or Jordan as the Sunni’s have been attacking their villages (the Chaldeans and Assyrians are Christians, and have been so for a very long time, i.e. around 1700 years, significantly longer than Islam has been around). They also make up most of the security-cleared interpreters in Iraq. I’ve been honored with the friendship of two of them (Albert and Ken) and hope to see them back in the States. Ken just took a trip up north to Kurdistan to see a dying Chaldean Archbishop – his uncle in fact – so he could carry his last words home with him to Chaldeans’ in Michigan. They are a very proud people, and I wish there were a lot more like them in the world, it would be a better place were it so.

Like when I was in Kuwait, it is both a blessing and a curse to be around Sailors again. In general they are a close-knit community, giving the cold eye to the soldiers, airmen and contractors who swirl around their wake. The same applies to new people to show up (.i.e. moi), at least on the first day (which happens everywhere I suppose), but then they’ll open right up so long as you pass the ‘cool’ test. These guys were part of the NavDetIraq, and they helped process my paperwork and got my follow on flight out of offices in the Al Faw Palace – which is the largest building on Camp Victory.

A very beautiful area of the base, with all the villas from Saddam’s regime lining the waters and now peopled by various offices. One of the main differences between then and now (one among thousands I’m sure) is the lack of gardeners and janitors, there are some but not enough to keep all the trees and gardens alive – there are patches where trees have died or parking for all the military vehicles has killed the grass. Ken told me when he was here in 2003 that it was even more beautiful, despite the blowing paper and trash from all the abandoned offices, but, to be frank, there just aren’t enough Hindu contractors here to keep everything as it was – and would Congress really want to pay for that? I bet not. The other downside is the mud that gets tracked everywhere – which was unheard of in Saddams’ day. Well, like dictators in all times and places, there are some odd benefits of having the power of life and death in the palm of one’s hand, look at Hitler and all those national parks he created.

I’m gnashing my teeth over not getting a picture of a Green Bean’s coffee sign for posterity. They are a franchise of coffee shops set up at military bases all over the world, from Europe to Iraq to Afghanistan to Mongolia and Japan and staffed by locals in most places (except in war zones where they are from the Indian subcontinent per usual). I had a full-cream milk latte one morning and practically spit it out the coffee was so rich, instant British-Army issue coffee it was not! If I’d had a Green Bean’s in Basra I’d probably be as big as a house…

And that coffee is symbolic of what I think that Washington Post writer Aiken was trying to say when he called military benefits in Iraq “obscene.” He was an idiot for not being more precise with his language, and he made it worse by throwing some temper tantrums later, but there *are* some benefits that “headquarters staff” in Baghdad or Kuwait receive that we never saw in Basra, nor would the Marines in Fallujah or Anbar see them nor especially the Army brigades fighting every day in the streets of Baghdad. Indeed *most* of us in Iraq did not enjoy things like -- Salsa dance night on Fridays’, a swimming pool, enough maintenance gear that trucks go around sucking up pools of water to prevent mosquitos, working bankers’ hours in a Palace or a spread of food available for breakfast, lunch and dinner that would make most restaurants blush.

I shouldn’t be too hard on everybody though, as there are plenty of units stationed at Camp Victory who still live in tents, who still climb into HMVs every day and who take the war to the enemy outside the wire – cleaning up neighborhoods from gangs and terrorists and death squads. And they deserve every bit of it, which you can see when they walk in the DFAC, dusty and still tense from the road, well worn weapons over their backs. Of the sharp edge people, they are the lucky ones of course, as they get to eat at a nice DFAC when they come in, while the men and women fighting in Anbar or as part of the neighborhood surge into Baghdad live on MREs and water. Like all times and all places, it is a different war everywhere you go.

That’s enough for today.

The picture represents how I felt trying to juggle everything so I could escape Baghdad. Poor guy.

Tim