Where we were? Right, cakes. So, my favorite cake is Black Magic chocolate cake, which you make with coffee, and it turns out all moist and yummy, and you put cream cheese frosting on it...wait, you didn't actually care about the cake? Right. Sorry.
The next morning, of course, we had to cross the same culvert again. Only this time, it was slightly smaller, and our driver was afraid of it. We put a Marine on the other side of the culvert to guide her across--a Sergeant with plenty of experience both driving and guiding heavy vehicles. There's a fairly steep, yet short, hill leading up to the culvert. Sitting in the back of the MRAP, I heard her rev the gas, but then as we approached the top of the hill, the gas didn't let up. I heard our VC, one of my Sergeants, yell, "left, left, left!" and then we were in the ditch again, this time on the opposite side of the ditch. A plastic wrapper that bundled up gatorade bottles floated across the vehicle towards my face and I caught it; I was just glad it wasn't something heavier.
Again, none of us were hurt. We climbed out of the vehicle, and fortunately this time we had brought the recovery vehicle with us, so we were back in business fairly quickly. Unfortunately, the road surface over the culvert was now too narrow for the minerollers, so it would require improvement before we continued regular traffic. We replaced the driver of my vehicle and continued on to the patrol base. The day's task was to start setting up the HESCO perimeter, but we sent a team out to repair the culvert. Every single time we passed over that culvert for the rest of the mission, everyone in my truck held their breath, but the repairs held, and there were no more trips into the ditch for the rest of the mission (for anyone).
That day was productive, as was the next. We got the perimeter set up, and a good chunk of it filled, and started running rock from the river down to the patrol base. The order had originally called for us to put down a foot of gravel and compact it so the Afghans could build barracks on it, but we didn't have the proper gravel available, so we hadn't brought the necessary heavy equipment to compact it. Our plan was to put down river rock and smooth it over the patrol base, so at least the Afghan trucks (little Toyota pick-ups) wouldn't get stuck in the moon dust inside the base.
The first day, the SeeBees were running their own heavy equipment up at the river, so we used them to fill the dump trucks transporting the gravel to the PB, and both of our TRAMs were available to work inside the base. We got quite a bit done that day, which prove very useful.
The first thing I heard about the problems the next day was on our way down to the patrol base the next morning when we got a call on the radio that one of our two TRAMs was overheating. The operator had turned the fan off to ford the river--standard procedure--but then when he had tried to turn it back on again it hadn't come back on. It was determined that the TRAM could make it the rest of the way into the patrol base, where we set the mechanics to trying to figure out what the problem was. After about an hour, they had isolated the problem to a leak in one of three hoses, all of which ran from the hydraulic oil reservoir into the transmission. Unfortunately, they couldn't tell which of the three it was without taking the entire armored cab off--something we didn't have the resources to do ourselves.
We sent our second TRAM out to the river to load the dump trucks with rock. Unfortunately, the SeaBees had started pulling rock from a different location that day, so with one TRAM broken, we were somewhat limited in what we could accomplish that day. That afternoon, we drove the broken TRAM back up to the FOB, where we talked to the mechanics stationed with the Battalion. They were quite helpful, and told us they would try to repair it that afternoon so we could use it the next morning. Unfortunately, when I went back in the evening, they told me that the TRAM's transmission was destroyed, and that we would need to take it back to Leatherneck for some heavy-duty maintenance before it would be usable.
Awesome. So, that TRAM was out for the rest of the mission. The maintenance shop did ask us if there was a day that they could lend us a TRAM. There was one day--we had the additional task of bringing some gear back to Camp Leatherneck, and the gear was at a separate patrol base about 35km away. We would need to send the TRAM we had with them so it could load the trucks. Fortunately, we didn't have to take the trucks there ourselves--we had found another CLP to escort the trucks to the base and back--but we would need a TRAM to continue work at the patrol base that day. The maintenance shop said it wouldn't be a problem to lend us a TRAM on Friday.
Wednesday afternoon. Everything was going fine. Most of the HESCO was up; we were just waiting to finish spreading the rock inside the patrol base before we put the last bit of HESCO up across the entrance. Early in the afternoon, one of my Corporals found me. He had been outside the patrol base, providing security for the trucks running gravel, and he showed me a BFT message from my Platoon Sergeant, who was also outside the wire. The message said that two of the dump trucks had been in a collision, and to send a corpsman back with my Corporal and call our company office to let them know what had happened.
The Marines were all okay, but one of the dump trucks was seriously damaged, and the other would need some repairs before we would be able to use it again. The cause of the accident was operator error, which made me selfishly glad that the Marines involved were attachments from another company (i.e. not any Marines I was directly responsible for).
I spent the next day doing paperwork related to the collision, as one of my Sergeants supervised the completion of the patrol base, and another Sergeant supervised the repairs. That's been one of the best things about this deployment--the number of outstanding Sergeants and Corporals I have. My job would have been 100 times harder if they hadn't done such a good job. Unfortunately, that evening when I talked to my company commander, he told me that the battalion commander was considering bringing us back from the mission early.
I begged him (in a dignified manner, of course) to convince the CO to let us stay out and finish the mission. One of the easiest ways to completely destroy a Marine's morale is to tell them they can't finish the mission. After all the work that my Marines had done, after all the difficulties they (and I) had worked so hard to overcome to finish the mission, not letting us finish would make it that much worse. He said to continue as we had planned for the next day, but be prepared to pull up stakes and leave on Saturday, instead of Monday as we'd originally planned.
The next morning we got the call--finish everything up and leave the next day. We threw up the last wall of HESCO and returned to the FOB to prepare the trucks for the 140km drive the next day. As you remember, we made it halfway the first day, spent the next day repairing trucks, and then made it back to Camp Leatherneck very, very late Monday evening. Or early Tuesday morning, if you prefer.
And then--here's the kicker. Most of the Marines had already been cut, but I was the last one to leave because I was finishing up some paperwork from the collision. When I finally was ready to head back to my tent on Tuesday morning just before 4am, I managed to get a Marine to drive me out there in a gator (golf cart), since it was over a mile, and I had a lot of gear with me. We were driving along, driving along, the tent was in sight...and then the gator died. Out of gas. One of the bus drivers saw us and stopped. They didn't have gas, but they offered to help. I sent the Marine back to our battalion lot and settled in for a nice 30-45 minute wait (in the cold!) while he tracked down gas and walked back out to the gator. Surprisingly, he was back in 20 minutes. The bus driver had waited for him and brought him back.
Trucks breaking down, trucks rolling into ditches, trucks colliding, all the other stuff I haven't told you about (because it would just take way too long)--all that is well and good, but the gator running out of gas? That was the icing on the cake.
13 December 2010
09 December 2010
Last Mission
We should have taken our first clue from our first day, rather our first night, of our last mission in Afghanistan. Our first day went pretty well. Our task for the first day was to drive south about 140km to the FOB where we would be working out of for the next week and a half. I'd heard horror stories about the drive before, but our drive went fairly well. We found the hard-packed dirt and made it most of the way down in ten hours. Believe it or not, this is pretty good time for Afghanistan.
And then, about 10 clicks out, we hit some snags. The sun went down. Our lead vehicle had trouble finding the hard-packed dirt. Our trailers hauling heavy equipment started getting stuck. At one point the vehicle commander for the vehicle I was riding in told me we had been averaging 26 minutes per mile for the past five miles. And then we made it to the FOB--we could see the lights just over the hill. What we couldn't do was find the ECP, or entry control point, that would let us inside friendly lines. So we searched for it, and finally the last vehicle in our convoy radioed that he had found it.
Unfortunately, at that point, our three trailers hauling our TRAMs and the small bulldozer we had brought with us were a ways past the ECP, down the hill and by the Helmand River, which we would be crossing every day for the next week. We started turning vehicles around, and our first vehicle made it inside the FOB around 1900. Then the fun started. The road close to the river got pretty narrow, so one of the trailers ended up in a small tributary when it tried to turn around. One of the trailers succumbed to the elements and died entirely. Fortunately, we had brought the heavy-duty recovery truck with us, so we sent it out to drag the vehicles out of the river and back up the hill. By the time our last vehicle rolled in the ECP, it was a minute past midnight.
Annoying, but no big deal. We wouldn't need the trailers until we headed back to Leatherneck, so our mechanic had a while to fix the trucks. We started the next day by taking a look at the BOM (Bill of Materials), or the lumber and HESCO that we would be using for our mission. It wasn't in the greatest of shape. It had been delivered from Khandahar, to the east, by a civilian contractor, and they hadn't used common sense in its delivery.
The materials had been loaded up in Khandahar in dump trucks, so when they arrived at the FOB, they had simply lifted the beds of the trucks and dumped the materials on the deck. The lumber and HESCO had been mangled. The nails ended up in a head on the deck and had to be sorted out. Some of the items had been substitutes for what was requested. For example, my Sergeant liked to use orange spray paint to mark the lines of the patrol bases we built. Orange paint had been delivered in cans instead--completely useless to us. Razor wire was substituted for concertina wire.
Our mission was to build a PB (patrol base) for the Afghan Border Police, to give them their own base to work out of instead of them working out of the adjacent Marine Corps outpost they were currently using. We would build a HESCO perimeter, guard towers, a "hygiene" (head) area, and the original order called for a wire perimeter. We inventoried our materials on hand; they would be enough for what we needed. The razor wire wasn't an adequate substitute for the concertina wire we had requested, but the engineering officer stationed at the FOB said he had some c-wire we could borrow. We headed out to the existing patrol base to take a look at the site.
(We slept at the FOB and commuted to the PB every morning. We ended up fording the Helmand River every morning and evening, and there were a couple of canals we crossed along the way, but it worked out pretty well. There was a real chow hall at the FOB, and showers, and an office to work from. There was supposed to be a tent to sleep in, but because the Battalion was being replaced, there was an extra Battalion currently at the base, and all of the transient billeting was occupied. Still, it was better than staying at the PB.)
So we arrived at the PB after lunch. The site survey had been done by someone else. We had been assured that there was enough dirt on site to fill the HESCO, but we had failed to properly assess the amount of work required to level the site. We got on site only to find out the small bulldozer we had brought would be completely inadequate to complete the job in a reasonable time frame. We were in luck, though. When we got back to the FOB that night, I talked to the SeaBees stationed at the FOB, and they said we could borrow their bulldozer the next day. Score.
So we headed out the next day with an extra bulldozer and managed to get the site leveled. It wasn't perfect, but part of the order called for putting down gravel inside the PB--we would level the deck when we spread the gravel. We started heading back to the FOB. The Sergeant that had been my VC (vehicle commander) was in a different vehicle, so I was in the VC seat (front passenger seat). One of the culverts crossing one of the canals was fairly narrow, and the driver of my vehicle hit it wrong as we went over it. Too far to the right, and then slowed down when the rear right side of the vehicle sank. I told her to crank the wheel and hit the gas, but it did no good. The vehicle started to tip over to the right.
I yelled back at my gunner to get inside the vehicle--the gunner's turret is the most dangerous place to be in a vehicle, especially in a roll-over. Fortunately, he had already crouched down inside the vehicle and braced himself. We rolled slowly. Once it felt like we were more or less stable, I told the radio operator to radio back to the vehicle behind us and make sure we were stable. I didn't want anybody getting hurt as they climbed out. It was too late. My platoon sergeant, the VC for the vehicle behind us, was already on top of the vehicle, now the driver's side, trying to get the door open. It took two of them to open the door, but then he was yelling down into the vehicle to make sure everybody was okay. I assured him we were okay, and other Marines helped the four of us climb out of the vehicle.
We hadn't brought our heavy-duty recovery truck with us that day, so we called back to the FOB and waited until it came. It took the operator a couple of tries to pull our vehicle out of the ditch it had slid into, but finally it was out. We examined the culvert. It had been built by filling HESCO placed on top of concrete. When our vehicle drove too close to the edge, the HESCO had burst, starting the roll-over. The firm ground left was smaller than it had been, but it was still just barely wide enough for our heavy trucks. The truck itself was in fairly good shape. The stairs were bent, a couple panels were bent, and dirt had been packed into the crevices on the right side of the truck, but it still ran, and the armor hadn't been damaged.
We drove back to the FOB. I hopped out near the entrance so I could head to the office the SeaBees worked out of and thank them for the use of their bulldozer. As soon as I did so, I found myself staring into the barrel of my rifle. A buckle on my sling had worked itself loose and fallen off, so my rifle was now connected to my sling at only one point, instead of the typical two. I took the sling off and carried my rifle by hand--a broken sling was just icing on the cake.
What I didn't know at the time was that we hadn't even put the cake in the oven yet. (To be continued...)
And then, about 10 clicks out, we hit some snags. The sun went down. Our lead vehicle had trouble finding the hard-packed dirt. Our trailers hauling heavy equipment started getting stuck. At one point the vehicle commander for the vehicle I was riding in told me we had been averaging 26 minutes per mile for the past five miles. And then we made it to the FOB--we could see the lights just over the hill. What we couldn't do was find the ECP, or entry control point, that would let us inside friendly lines. So we searched for it, and finally the last vehicle in our convoy radioed that he had found it.
Unfortunately, at that point, our three trailers hauling our TRAMs and the small bulldozer we had brought with us were a ways past the ECP, down the hill and by the Helmand River, which we would be crossing every day for the next week. We started turning vehicles around, and our first vehicle made it inside the FOB around 1900. Then the fun started. The road close to the river got pretty narrow, so one of the trailers ended up in a small tributary when it tried to turn around. One of the trailers succumbed to the elements and died entirely. Fortunately, we had brought the heavy-duty recovery truck with us, so we sent it out to drag the vehicles out of the river and back up the hill. By the time our last vehicle rolled in the ECP, it was a minute past midnight.
Annoying, but no big deal. We wouldn't need the trailers until we headed back to Leatherneck, so our mechanic had a while to fix the trucks. We started the next day by taking a look at the BOM (Bill of Materials), or the lumber and HESCO that we would be using for our mission. It wasn't in the greatest of shape. It had been delivered from Khandahar, to the east, by a civilian contractor, and they hadn't used common sense in its delivery.
The materials had been loaded up in Khandahar in dump trucks, so when they arrived at the FOB, they had simply lifted the beds of the trucks and dumped the materials on the deck. The lumber and HESCO had been mangled. The nails ended up in a head on the deck and had to be sorted out. Some of the items had been substitutes for what was requested. For example, my Sergeant liked to use orange spray paint to mark the lines of the patrol bases we built. Orange paint had been delivered in cans instead--completely useless to us. Razor wire was substituted for concertina wire.
Our mission was to build a PB (patrol base) for the Afghan Border Police, to give them their own base to work out of instead of them working out of the adjacent Marine Corps outpost they were currently using. We would build a HESCO perimeter, guard towers, a "hygiene" (head) area, and the original order called for a wire perimeter. We inventoried our materials on hand; they would be enough for what we needed. The razor wire wasn't an adequate substitute for the concertina wire we had requested, but the engineering officer stationed at the FOB said he had some c-wire we could borrow. We headed out to the existing patrol base to take a look at the site.
(We slept at the FOB and commuted to the PB every morning. We ended up fording the Helmand River every morning and evening, and there were a couple of canals we crossed along the way, but it worked out pretty well. There was a real chow hall at the FOB, and showers, and an office to work from. There was supposed to be a tent to sleep in, but because the Battalion was being replaced, there was an extra Battalion currently at the base, and all of the transient billeting was occupied. Still, it was better than staying at the PB.)
So we arrived at the PB after lunch. The site survey had been done by someone else. We had been assured that there was enough dirt on site to fill the HESCO, but we had failed to properly assess the amount of work required to level the site. We got on site only to find out the small bulldozer we had brought would be completely inadequate to complete the job in a reasonable time frame. We were in luck, though. When we got back to the FOB that night, I talked to the SeaBees stationed at the FOB, and they said we could borrow their bulldozer the next day. Score.
So we headed out the next day with an extra bulldozer and managed to get the site leveled. It wasn't perfect, but part of the order called for putting down gravel inside the PB--we would level the deck when we spread the gravel. We started heading back to the FOB. The Sergeant that had been my VC (vehicle commander) was in a different vehicle, so I was in the VC seat (front passenger seat). One of the culverts crossing one of the canals was fairly narrow, and the driver of my vehicle hit it wrong as we went over it. Too far to the right, and then slowed down when the rear right side of the vehicle sank. I told her to crank the wheel and hit the gas, but it did no good. The vehicle started to tip over to the right.
I yelled back at my gunner to get inside the vehicle--the gunner's turret is the most dangerous place to be in a vehicle, especially in a roll-over. Fortunately, he had already crouched down inside the vehicle and braced himself. We rolled slowly. Once it felt like we were more or less stable, I told the radio operator to radio back to the vehicle behind us and make sure we were stable. I didn't want anybody getting hurt as they climbed out. It was too late. My platoon sergeant, the VC for the vehicle behind us, was already on top of the vehicle, now the driver's side, trying to get the door open. It took two of them to open the door, but then he was yelling down into the vehicle to make sure everybody was okay. I assured him we were okay, and other Marines helped the four of us climb out of the vehicle.
We hadn't brought our heavy-duty recovery truck with us that day, so we called back to the FOB and waited until it came. It took the operator a couple of tries to pull our vehicle out of the ditch it had slid into, but finally it was out. We examined the culvert. It had been built by filling HESCO placed on top of concrete. When our vehicle drove too close to the edge, the HESCO had burst, starting the roll-over. The firm ground left was smaller than it had been, but it was still just barely wide enough for our heavy trucks. The truck itself was in fairly good shape. The stairs were bent, a couple panels were bent, and dirt had been packed into the crevices on the right side of the truck, but it still ran, and the armor hadn't been damaged.
We drove back to the FOB. I hopped out near the entrance so I could head to the office the SeaBees worked out of and thank them for the use of their bulldozer. As soon as I did so, I found myself staring into the barrel of my rifle. A buckle on my sling had worked itself loose and fallen off, so my rifle was now connected to my sling at only one point, instead of the typical two. I took the sling off and carried my rifle by hand--a broken sling was just icing on the cake.
What I didn't know at the time was that we hadn't even put the cake in the oven yet. (To be continued...)
02 December 2010
Camp Leatherneck special
Most of you probably already saw this on facebook, but for those who didn't, the National Geographic channel will be running a special on Camp Leatherneck on Sunday evening.
Information on Camp Leatherneck Special
I saw about ten minutes of the special a couple days ago, and from what I saw, it's pretty accurate and definitely worth watching if you want a glimpse of what my life has been like for the past seven months. I didn't do much foot patrolling--most of our patrols were mounted--but as far as the environment goes, it's spot on.
I'm in Kyrgyztan right now; we leave for the states tomorrow evening, landing in California on Saturday. We land in Eugene on Wednesday afternoon, and then get a four-day weekend directly afterwards (back in Eugene on Monday morning). I'll be hitting up both Grants Pass and Portland but haven't decided on which city to go to first. Any suggestions?
Information on Camp Leatherneck Special
I saw about ten minutes of the special a couple days ago, and from what I saw, it's pretty accurate and definitely worth watching if you want a glimpse of what my life has been like for the past seven months. I didn't do much foot patrolling--most of our patrols were mounted--but as far as the environment goes, it's spot on.
I'm in Kyrgyztan right now; we leave for the states tomorrow evening, landing in California on Saturday. We land in Eugene on Wednesday afternoon, and then get a four-day weekend directly afterwards (back in Eugene on Monday morning). I'll be hitting up both Grants Pass and Portland but haven't decided on which city to go to first. Any suggestions?
26 November 2010
We Now Return to Our Regularly Scheduled E-Mail Address
As I have said previously, I very much appreciate all of the support I've received throughout this deployment, especially via e-mail. There were many times when I would be having a tough day, and an e-mail from someone would put a smile on my face and make my day.
Some of you have been sending e-mail to my .mil address, and I also appreciate that, as I don't have access to gmail during the day over here. However, once we leave, my @afg.usmc.mil address will no longer be valid, so please go back to sending all e-mail correspondence to my gmail address. That way, I'll be sure to get it.
The official Transfer of Authority (TOA) was yesterday, and we are officially no longer the general support engineering battalion in this AO. Today was quite relaxing--I taught a martial arts class to my Marines, cleaned my gear (man, that stuff is dirty), and watched some TV and a movie. It's been the most relaxing day I've had in probably two months. Tomorrow will be much of the same, except I might also do some shopping at the bazaar on base.
Love you all! See you soon.
Some of you have been sending e-mail to my .mil address, and I also appreciate that, as I don't have access to gmail during the day over here. However, once we leave, my @afg.usmc.mil address will no longer be valid, so please go back to sending all e-mail correspondence to my gmail address. That way, I'll be sure to get it.
The official Transfer of Authority (TOA) was yesterday, and we are officially no longer the general support engineering battalion in this AO. Today was quite relaxing--I taught a martial arts class to my Marines, cleaned my gear (man, that stuff is dirty), and watched some TV and a movie. It's been the most relaxing day I've had in probably two months. Tomorrow will be much of the same, except I might also do some shopping at the bazaar on base.
Love you all! See you soon.
24 November 2010
Five Kernels of Corn
So the story goes: in their leanest winters, the pilgrims came to a time where each person was allocated only five kernels of corn for their subsistence each day. So for as long as I can remember, before my family eats Thanksgiving dinner, we put five kernels of corn on each person’s plate and go around the table and list five things we’re thankful for. Two years ago I was at OCS and unable to discuss over the dinner table, so I caught my platoon while we were waiting for PT (Ha! You’re in formation and not allowed to talk! No choice but to listen to me!) and told them my five things I was thankful for. This year I am again lacking a dinner table, so you all have to endure my list. Of course, the standard "I’m thankful for my friends and family" applies. But that goes without saying, right?
1. I am thankful that neither myself nor anyone from my platoon has sustained serious injuries while we’ve been here. Sure, we’ve had the odd set of stitches, smashed thumbs, and some bumps and bruises from IEDs, but nothing that required anyone be sent home.
2. I am thankful for my nephew (Photo credit to Juanita. Thanks for the picture! Hope you don't mind me using it without your permission...). I haven’t met him yet, but I’m sure he’s the coolest 4-month-old alive.
3. I am thankful for all the friends I’ve made on this deployment: Wanda, Carmella, Tim, Sherry, Tanya, Joshua, Kim, Jay, Miguel, and Bill.
4. I am thankful for all the support I’ve received from my friends and family back home. Your cards, packages, and e-mails made a huge difference to my morale.
But, most of all:
5. I AM THANKFUL THAT I AM COMING HOME SOON. Yes, I know that all caps means I am shouting. I don’t care.
Happy Thanksgiving!
1. I am thankful that neither myself nor anyone from my platoon has sustained serious injuries while we’ve been here. Sure, we’ve had the odd set of stitches, smashed thumbs, and some bumps and bruises from IEDs, but nothing that required anyone be sent home.2. I am thankful for my nephew (Photo credit to Juanita. Thanks for the picture! Hope you don't mind me using it without your permission...). I haven’t met him yet, but I’m sure he’s the coolest 4-month-old alive.
3. I am thankful for all the friends I’ve made on this deployment: Wanda, Carmella, Tim, Sherry, Tanya, Joshua, Kim, Jay, Miguel, and Bill.
4. I am thankful for all the support I’ve received from my friends and family back home. Your cards, packages, and e-mails made a huge difference to my morale.
But, most of all:
5. I AM THANKFUL THAT I AM COMING HOME SOON. Yes, I know that all caps means I am shouting. I don’t care.
Happy Thanksgiving!
21 November 2010
3
Mph. Yes, three miles per hour. That was our average rate of march last night, for 75km, as we returned home from our last mission. Making for a grand total of 15 hours on the road. And here's the real kicker: we left at one in the afternoon. (Side note: Yes, this was our last mission. For real this time. As in, by the time we get the pre-requisite rest time between missions, the transfer of authority will have already happened, and someone else will be in charge of our missions.)
Our first vehicle to break was one of the trailers carrying a TRAM (Tractor, Rubber-tired, Articulated-steering, Multipurpose). Now, TRAMs are a handy thing to have when you're trying to build a new patrol base, as they're quite good at scooping up dirt and dumping it into HESCO. Which is what we spent most of our time doing on this mission. So there were no regrets that we'd had the equipment, resulting in a broken trailer that cost us two hours while the drivers unloaded the TRAM and removed the broken axle. Excuse me, axles. I'm still not quite clear on the details of how you can break 1.5 axles, but that's what happened. Did I mention we were still within sight of the base we'd just left? Yeah, not good.
The next vehicle broke about 5 clicks out; I think the one after that was 15. Considering that there were 140 clicks total between the base we left and the one we were trying to get to that night...well, I already gave it away. We ended up stopping at a different base, halfway home.
We brought six towbars with us on the patrol when we left. Around midnight was when our sixth vehicle broke, and we had no more towbars left to tow vehicles with. But even as we were still hooking up that sixth vehicle the call came over the radio--another vic was having problems with its brakes. We called the mechanic instead, and after another hour wait, we were Oscar Mike again. (This is the military, we can't just say "on the move". No, we have to abbreviate it to OM. Then, because it might get garbled on the radio, we have to say it phonetically. So we say we're "Oscar Mike". When you think we're talking in some strange and useful shorthand, really we're just thinking of ways to make simple things more complicated.)
The seventh vehicle to break wasn't going to be so easy a fix. It wouldn't start--the alternator was suspect--but it wasn't something we were going to be able to fix on the fly. So we hooked for tow with chains. The mineroller on the dead MRAP went to a third MRAP. Turns out it had been on the third MRAP originally, but the original MRAP was having problems with the all-wheel drive, and the extra weight of the mineroller might have caused it to get stuck. So we had moved it. Now we were moving it back. The dead MRAP was hooked to mine; the lead driver has never towed with chains before. It took them a while to get the hydraulics for the towed vehicle hooked up so the brakes would work. I thought the stairs hanging off the back of my MRAP were toast.
But did I mention that my Marines are awesome? Sure, there were a few jerks and false starts. Sure, we got bogged down in the sand--for a second. But we made it through, and the stairs were in tact.
We pulled in the lot at 0400. We'd had someone on alert to come get us in case too much more should break, and we weren't able to make it in ourselves. We were--just barely. The Marines set up cots and passed out. It was that time of the night where for the past week I've been waking up and unable to go back to sleep because of the cold. I volunteered to watch the BFT, our only communications link to our Battalion, and to half-hourly communications checks. Turns out we ran the heater, so I was warm and able to get in half-hour cat-naps between checks until I was relieved.
Last mission. Last set of HESCO. Last bucket of fill. We're working on the last manifest right now. (Manifest: document detailing all personnel and vehicles on a trip. The form we have to fill out has redundancy on top of redundancy. No, I am not kidding. I wish I were.) Soon I'll be saying "last day in-country", and then, "first day back in the states".
Tomorrow we cover those last 65 clicks back to base. We're starting out with vehicles already in tow; we'll see how many we're towing when we finally roll through the ECP. (Entry Control Point, or gate. See what I said about the code is really just a complicated way to name a simple concept?)
There's one thing I do know, though. Whatever needs to be done, my Marines will do it. And we'll roll through under our own power.
Our first vehicle to break was one of the trailers carrying a TRAM (Tractor, Rubber-tired, Articulated-steering, Multipurpose). Now, TRAMs are a handy thing to have when you're trying to build a new patrol base, as they're quite good at scooping up dirt and dumping it into HESCO. Which is what we spent most of our time doing on this mission. So there were no regrets that we'd had the equipment, resulting in a broken trailer that cost us two hours while the drivers unloaded the TRAM and removed the broken axle. Excuse me, axles. I'm still not quite clear on the details of how you can break 1.5 axles, but that's what happened. Did I mention we were still within sight of the base we'd just left? Yeah, not good.
The next vehicle broke about 5 clicks out; I think the one after that was 15. Considering that there were 140 clicks total between the base we left and the one we were trying to get to that night...well, I already gave it away. We ended up stopping at a different base, halfway home.
We brought six towbars with us on the patrol when we left. Around midnight was when our sixth vehicle broke, and we had no more towbars left to tow vehicles with. But even as we were still hooking up that sixth vehicle the call came over the radio--another vic was having problems with its brakes. We called the mechanic instead, and after another hour wait, we were Oscar Mike again. (This is the military, we can't just say "on the move". No, we have to abbreviate it to OM. Then, because it might get garbled on the radio, we have to say it phonetically. So we say we're "Oscar Mike". When you think we're talking in some strange and useful shorthand, really we're just thinking of ways to make simple things more complicated.)
The seventh vehicle to break wasn't going to be so easy a fix. It wouldn't start--the alternator was suspect--but it wasn't something we were going to be able to fix on the fly. So we hooked for tow with chains. The mineroller on the dead MRAP went to a third MRAP. Turns out it had been on the third MRAP originally, but the original MRAP was having problems with the all-wheel drive, and the extra weight of the mineroller might have caused it to get stuck. So we had moved it. Now we were moving it back. The dead MRAP was hooked to mine; the lead driver has never towed with chains before. It took them a while to get the hydraulics for the towed vehicle hooked up so the brakes would work. I thought the stairs hanging off the back of my MRAP were toast.
But did I mention that my Marines are awesome? Sure, there were a few jerks and false starts. Sure, we got bogged down in the sand--for a second. But we made it through, and the stairs were in tact.
We pulled in the lot at 0400. We'd had someone on alert to come get us in case too much more should break, and we weren't able to make it in ourselves. We were--just barely. The Marines set up cots and passed out. It was that time of the night where for the past week I've been waking up and unable to go back to sleep because of the cold. I volunteered to watch the BFT, our only communications link to our Battalion, and to half-hourly communications checks. Turns out we ran the heater, so I was warm and able to get in half-hour cat-naps between checks until I was relieved.
Last mission. Last set of HESCO. Last bucket of fill. We're working on the last manifest right now. (Manifest: document detailing all personnel and vehicles on a trip. The form we have to fill out has redundancy on top of redundancy. No, I am not kidding. I wish I were.) Soon I'll be saying "last day in-country", and then, "first day back in the states".
Tomorrow we cover those last 65 clicks back to base. We're starting out with vehicles already in tow; we'll see how many we're towing when we finally roll through the ECP. (Entry Control Point, or gate. See what I said about the code is really just a complicated way to name a simple concept?)
There's one thing I do know, though. Whatever needs to be done, my Marines will do it. And we'll roll through under our own power.
09 November 2010
Happy Birthday!
November 10, 1775 is a day that is impressed in every Marine's brain housing group from the moment they enter Boot Camp or Officer Candidate School, as it is the day that the Marine Corps came to be. Of course, back then it was the Continental Marines, and as the story goes, it was founded in a bar (Tun Tavern), an aspect of the story that many Marines take full advantage of during their celebration.
Marines celebrate our birthday regardless of where we are--great lengths are taken to ensure that every Marine, regardless of how remote they are stationed, gets a piece of birthday cake. Back in the States, the Marine Corps Ball is the one occasion Marines can count on to wear their dress blues. Out here we're still having a ball ceremony, we'll just all be in cammies for it. Alcohol is forbidden in country, but some commands will fly in two beers per Marine for the birthday (and only the birthday, other holidays aren't as important). I don't think we'll be getting that this year, and I don't really care, but it shows you how big a deal the birthday is.
My first Marine Corps Birthday, I was still at OCS so I hadn't even earned the title of Marine yet. But our battalion held a formation outside the chow hall, we had a cake-cutting ceremony, the tables inside the chow hall were set nicely, and we got extra time for lunch that day. There was even birthday cake. Last year we got a half-day at school. This year? Well, there's work to do. But there will be cake.
Happy Birthday Marines! Here's to another 235.
Marines celebrate our birthday regardless of where we are--great lengths are taken to ensure that every Marine, regardless of how remote they are stationed, gets a piece of birthday cake. Back in the States, the Marine Corps Ball is the one occasion Marines can count on to wear their dress blues. Out here we're still having a ball ceremony, we'll just all be in cammies for it. Alcohol is forbidden in country, but some commands will fly in two beers per Marine for the birthday (and only the birthday, other holidays aren't as important). I don't think we'll be getting that this year, and I don't really care, but it shows you how big a deal the birthday is.
My first Marine Corps Birthday, I was still at OCS so I hadn't even earned the title of Marine yet. But our battalion held a formation outside the chow hall, we had a cake-cutting ceremony, the tables inside the chow hall were set nicely, and we got extra time for lunch that day. There was even birthday cake. Last year we got a half-day at school. This year? Well, there's work to do. But there will be cake.
Happy Birthday Marines! Here's to another 235.
04 November 2010
Rain!!!
This morning, when I was returning from the head, it was raining! Okay, just sprinkling, but in Oregon that counts as rain. And since I'm from Oregon, it'll count as rain here as well.
Unfortunately, by the time I had put my uniform on and dug up my jacket so I could walk to the chow hall, the rain had stopped.
Let us all pause for a moment of silence in memory of the rain.
It's getting pretty cool here, finally. This weekend the highs are supposed to be in the low to mid-60s. And there might be more rain!!!
Ahem. You may now return to your regularly scheduled programming.
Unfortunately, by the time I had put my uniform on and dug up my jacket so I could walk to the chow hall, the rain had stopped.
Let us all pause for a moment of silence in memory of the rain.
It's getting pretty cool here, finally. This weekend the highs are supposed to be in the low to mid-60s. And there might be more rain!!!
Ahem. You may now return to your regularly scheduled programming.
03 November 2010
One Up, Two Down
It started probably a month ago, when one of my Sergeants told another unit on base that they could have our pull-up bar when we left. Unfortunately, they didn't hear the "when we left" part, or they thought we were leaving right away, because they took it right away. So that meant that the closest pull-up bar was with the supply section, about twenty feet away. No big deal, except you have to duck under a barbed wire fence to get to the bar. Really, no big deal.
Sometime thereafter, our Supply Chief, a Master Sergeant (MSgt), saw me ducking under the fence to do pull-ups. He asked me about it that night, and I told him that I've been trying to improve my pull-ups. So he invited me to come out with the Marines in Supply to work on their pull-ups--"One up, two down".
Basically, for every pull-up, you do two push-ups. We do pyramids--first set is one, second set is two, all the way up to six, repeat six, then back down to one. Since there are usually at least ten Marines out there doing it, you get plenty of rest time between sets. In the beginning the line is usually for the pull-up bar, after you get to the middle of the work-out, it shifts to the push-up handles (keeps our hands clean and easier to grip the bar).
I've been doing this for three days now, and just about everywhere on my back and arms is sore right now. MSgt helps me out with the pull-ups; I can usually do the first two or three sets without assistance, and were I to take a few days off, I could probably do the first four sets without assistance, but I still need a boost up. We do it twice a day, once in the morning and again before evening chow. I'm eager to train for a couple of weeks and see how much better I get.
The Battalion replacing us started arriving yesterday. The advance party to replace my company should get here today, and then the main body gets here next week. Our official change-over (Transfer of Authority) is either Thanksgiving or the day before. Can't wait!
Sometime thereafter, our Supply Chief, a Master Sergeant (MSgt), saw me ducking under the fence to do pull-ups. He asked me about it that night, and I told him that I've been trying to improve my pull-ups. So he invited me to come out with the Marines in Supply to work on their pull-ups--"One up, two down".
Basically, for every pull-up, you do two push-ups. We do pyramids--first set is one, second set is two, all the way up to six, repeat six, then back down to one. Since there are usually at least ten Marines out there doing it, you get plenty of rest time between sets. In the beginning the line is usually for the pull-up bar, after you get to the middle of the work-out, it shifts to the push-up handles (keeps our hands clean and easier to grip the bar).
I've been doing this for three days now, and just about everywhere on my back and arms is sore right now. MSgt helps me out with the pull-ups; I can usually do the first two or three sets without assistance, and were I to take a few days off, I could probably do the first four sets without assistance, but I still need a boost up. We do it twice a day, once in the morning and again before evening chow. I'm eager to train for a couple of weeks and see how much better I get.
The Battalion replacing us started arriving yesterday. The advance party to replace my company should get here today, and then the main body gets here next week. Our official change-over (Transfer of Authority) is either Thanksgiving or the day before. Can't wait!
31 October 2010
CLP
CLP, pronounced "clip", or Combat Logistics Patrol. The generic term for "we can’t fly there so we’re going to drive", because most of the CLPs we do don’t directly provide logistics for combat units. We do have some direct support patrols, where we escort trucks with food, water, and other necessities to units deployed throughout the AO, but most of the patrols my company does are to provide transportation or security for engineering missions. This past mission was my first experience as a patrol leader, responsible for transporting Marines and heavy equipment over 250km to their work site and back.
This mission had two distinct phases. Our first mission was to replace a bridge. The Medium Girder Bridge is a standard piece of equipment used to bridge small gaps (think: canals and streams, not the entire Helmand River). They are designed to be replaced after a certain time span so that microfractures do not grow and cause the bridge to fail while something heavy is driving over it. They fit together like a lego set, so that a team of twenty or so Marines can go out, pull a small bridge, and replace it with a new one in a day, or a night. The only heavy equipment required is a forklift to move the pallets on and off the trucks, and a 7-ton truck used to pull the bridge from the gap or push the new one into the gap. All the disassembly and re-assembly is done with pure muscle, and it’s a treat to watch a trained bridge crew at work.
The heavy lifting (literally) was done by another platoon; my platoon provided security. It was a pretty quiet night; the only problems came up the next day when the locals wanted to use the bridge before we had cleaned the site. One gentleman on a motorbike produced a laminated identification card and explained that he had to be at work at a certain time. Our plan was not to let any local nationals into the bridge site, but we rolled with the circumstances and escorted several local nationals on their bikes across the bridge and through the work site. Other than that, the mission went off without a hitch. We returned to the nearest FOB, about a click away, and crashed for the day before we ate dinner and then crashed again for the night.
For the next leg of the mission we dropped half the Marines and the heavy equipment off at a small patrol base and took the security trucks on a reconnaissance, looking at three more locations in the southern part of the AO where we could potentially put in additional bridges. Again, the other platoon commander was doing the heavy lifting; my job was just to get him where he needed to go. For the first two sites, this was pretty easy. I took us down to a COP (Combat Outpost), and then the grunts* responsible for the AO took the other Lt out to the sites they wanted him to look at.
The third site? Of course it wouldn’t be that easy. The grunts gave us a secure route we could use to reach the site, but we were responsible for getting there. The first part of the plan went well. We reached an outpost where we left two vehicles we wouldn’t need for the recon and continued on. The grunts advised that they didn’t normally take minerollers through the city. Minerollers are contraptions with wheels that we push in front of the vehicles to trigger IEDs before they hit the vehicles. They work. We don’t like rolling without them. We elected to take them against the grunts’ advice.
My first clue should have been the part where I saw a vehicle’s wheel start to dip into a canal as it tried to make a tight turn with the mineroller on it. I did my best not to have a heart attack, and all our vehicles made it past the turn safely. All the vehicles made it through four tight turns without rolling over or falling into a ditch, and then we reached a turn over a bridge where the bridge was too narrow for the mineroller. Yeah.
So we ditched the minerollers and flew down to the site with just the vehicles. It felt like riding a bike without gloves on--I feel naked when I do it; an essential piece of equipment that I rely in to keep me safe is missing. But we got down there, and back, without incident. After that, we got to go through those four tight corners again, and then it was open desert back to a really bumpy road to a slightly less bumpy road, where we could spend the night and then head back the next morning. Except...
We were headed back in open desert when I received a call over the radio from the Marines that owned the AO asking if we had a wrecker, which is used to recover vehicles that have gotten bogged down in deep sand or fallen into canals. We had a wrecker with us, so they asked if we wouldn’t mind heading about 600m out of our way to recover two of their vehicles that had gotten stuck earlier in the day. I thought about it for a minute—there was the possibility that we could get stuck in the same sand, and we were already behind schedule from the tight turns that afternoon. But few units have the recovery assets that we have, so we went out there to help them out.
I was glad we did, too. I found out later that the Marines had been out there since morning, and it was around 1800 by the time we caught up to them. We got one of our vehicles stuck getting out to them, but by the time we had recovered their two vehicles, we had also recovered ours, so our mission was accomplished fairly quickly. We didn’t make it as far as we’d planned that night, but we did make it to a FOB around 2300, so we decided to rest and move out again the next day.
There’s more to come. Thanks for all the e-mails and messages while I was gone. I have received a couple questions about whether I’m planning on doing National Novel Writing Month again this year. Unfortunately, I have decided that I will not be able to. I love writing, but I don’t forsee myself having the energy and free time this year to write at the level that I expect of myself. So I’m sorry...I’ll try again next year, but I’ll definitely be thinking of you all as you do!
*Grunts: Infantry Marines
This mission had two distinct phases. Our first mission was to replace a bridge. The Medium Girder Bridge is a standard piece of equipment used to bridge small gaps (think: canals and streams, not the entire Helmand River). They are designed to be replaced after a certain time span so that microfractures do not grow and cause the bridge to fail while something heavy is driving over it. They fit together like a lego set, so that a team of twenty or so Marines can go out, pull a small bridge, and replace it with a new one in a day, or a night. The only heavy equipment required is a forklift to move the pallets on and off the trucks, and a 7-ton truck used to pull the bridge from the gap or push the new one into the gap. All the disassembly and re-assembly is done with pure muscle, and it’s a treat to watch a trained bridge crew at work.
The heavy lifting (literally) was done by another platoon; my platoon provided security. It was a pretty quiet night; the only problems came up the next day when the locals wanted to use the bridge before we had cleaned the site. One gentleman on a motorbike produced a laminated identification card and explained that he had to be at work at a certain time. Our plan was not to let any local nationals into the bridge site, but we rolled with the circumstances and escorted several local nationals on their bikes across the bridge and through the work site. Other than that, the mission went off without a hitch. We returned to the nearest FOB, about a click away, and crashed for the day before we ate dinner and then crashed again for the night.
For the next leg of the mission we dropped half the Marines and the heavy equipment off at a small patrol base and took the security trucks on a reconnaissance, looking at three more locations in the southern part of the AO where we could potentially put in additional bridges. Again, the other platoon commander was doing the heavy lifting; my job was just to get him where he needed to go. For the first two sites, this was pretty easy. I took us down to a COP (Combat Outpost), and then the grunts* responsible for the AO took the other Lt out to the sites they wanted him to look at.
The third site? Of course it wouldn’t be that easy. The grunts gave us a secure route we could use to reach the site, but we were responsible for getting there. The first part of the plan went well. We reached an outpost where we left two vehicles we wouldn’t need for the recon and continued on. The grunts advised that they didn’t normally take minerollers through the city. Minerollers are contraptions with wheels that we push in front of the vehicles to trigger IEDs before they hit the vehicles. They work. We don’t like rolling without them. We elected to take them against the grunts’ advice.
My first clue should have been the part where I saw a vehicle’s wheel start to dip into a canal as it tried to make a tight turn with the mineroller on it. I did my best not to have a heart attack, and all our vehicles made it past the turn safely. All the vehicles made it through four tight turns without rolling over or falling into a ditch, and then we reached a turn over a bridge where the bridge was too narrow for the mineroller. Yeah.
So we ditched the minerollers and flew down to the site with just the vehicles. It felt like riding a bike without gloves on--I feel naked when I do it; an essential piece of equipment that I rely in to keep me safe is missing. But we got down there, and back, without incident. After that, we got to go through those four tight corners again, and then it was open desert back to a really bumpy road to a slightly less bumpy road, where we could spend the night and then head back the next morning. Except...
We were headed back in open desert when I received a call over the radio from the Marines that owned the AO asking if we had a wrecker, which is used to recover vehicles that have gotten bogged down in deep sand or fallen into canals. We had a wrecker with us, so they asked if we wouldn’t mind heading about 600m out of our way to recover two of their vehicles that had gotten stuck earlier in the day. I thought about it for a minute—there was the possibility that we could get stuck in the same sand, and we were already behind schedule from the tight turns that afternoon. But few units have the recovery assets that we have, so we went out there to help them out.
I was glad we did, too. I found out later that the Marines had been out there since morning, and it was around 1800 by the time we caught up to them. We got one of our vehicles stuck getting out to them, but by the time we had recovered their two vehicles, we had also recovered ours, so our mission was accomplished fairly quickly. We didn’t make it as far as we’d planned that night, but we did make it to a FOB around 2300, so we decided to rest and move out again the next day.
There’s more to come. Thanks for all the e-mails and messages while I was gone. I have received a couple questions about whether I’m planning on doing National Novel Writing Month again this year. Unfortunately, I have decided that I will not be able to. I love writing, but I don’t forsee myself having the energy and free time this year to write at the level that I expect of myself. So I’m sorry...I’ll try again next year, but I’ll definitely be thinking of you all as you do!
*Grunts: Infantry Marines
16 October 2010
A Long and Healthy Hate
Lest you think I joined the Marine Corps because I wanted to live out one of my favorite TV shows when I was a teen-ager (I didn’t), allow me to recall another episode of M*A*S*H for you. In this episode, Hawkeye discovers that one of the patients he had just operated on is 16. The kid begs him not to tell; Hawkeye agrees. Hawkeye changes his mind later in the episode when another patient dies in the OR. The show ends with Hawkeye bringing one of the MPs into the recovery room, telling him that the patient is 16, and ordering him to take him to the nearest authorities. The kid rails against him, eventually telling Hawkeye he’ll never forgive him for sending him home. Hawkeye couldn’t care less, telling him, “Let’s hope it’s a long and healthy hate.”
We received a version of that speech from our Battalion Commander this evening. He’s been telling Marines to use their door locks for the past couple months, but it appears that some Marines are continuing not to use them—whether out of forgetfulness, fear of drowning, or for some reason or another. We use the locks because they keep the door from blowing open during an IED blast. If the doors are open, Marines are vulnerable; if they stay closed, it’s safer for everyone. The fear of drowning comes into play because many of the roads we drive on are between canals. However, given how low the water is right now, it’s not a serious concern.
Back to the speech--the CO told us that if it took sending Marines home with adverse paperwork, or with one less stripe, he could care less. If Marines weren’t going to use their door locks, that’s what would happen. And if that Marine hated him for the rest of their life, he didn’t care; at least they would be alive.
I have no interesting observations to offer tonight, I was just amused to see real life mimic TV. We’re gearing up for our last mission; we’ll probably head out late next week. Until then, I have plenty of awards to write. :-)
We received a version of that speech from our Battalion Commander this evening. He’s been telling Marines to use their door locks for the past couple months, but it appears that some Marines are continuing not to use them—whether out of forgetfulness, fear of drowning, or for some reason or another. We use the locks because they keep the door from blowing open during an IED blast. If the doors are open, Marines are vulnerable; if they stay closed, it’s safer for everyone. The fear of drowning comes into play because many of the roads we drive on are between canals. However, given how low the water is right now, it’s not a serious concern.
Back to the speech--the CO told us that if it took sending Marines home with adverse paperwork, or with one less stripe, he could care less. If Marines weren’t going to use their door locks, that’s what would happen. And if that Marine hated him for the rest of their life, he didn’t care; at least they would be alive.
I have no interesting observations to offer tonight, I was just amused to see real life mimic TV. We’re gearing up for our last mission; we’ll probably head out late next week. Until then, I have plenty of awards to write. :-)
11 October 2010
Thanks, KVAL!
The CBS affiliate in Eugene sent out a reporter that embedded with some of my Marines as they made some improvements to a Forward Operating Base (FOB) up north. This is the story that she wrote:
And you can see their pictures here:
I wanted to make it up there but was unable to due to a separate mission running simultaneously (the one where I had dinner with Mr. Assef). I especially wanted to make it up there because the day they flew up there, we received word that Corporal Griffith, at the time Lance Corporal Griffith, had just been selected to receive a meritorious promotion to Corporal. Because it was a meritorious promotion through our home battalion, 6th Engineer Support Battalion, we had to wait for the Commanding General to sign the promotion warrant back in the states, and then for the warrant to be sent out to Afghanistan. My Platoon Sergeant and I wanted to fly up there to promote him, but instead we had an officer stationed up at the base do it.
Corporal Griffith distinguished himself from our first mission here on deck in Afghanistan. He does construction back at home, and from the start he's been applying his skills--showing the other Marines what needs to be done and leading small teams in various aspects of the construction. When our command asked who we wanted to put up for a meritorious promotion to Corporal, he was an easy choice.
I have an awesome platoon, and right now I am in the process of writing awards for about half of them. All the re-writes are painful, but I think I'm getting the hang of it, and they certainly deserve it.
In other news, Happy 17th Birthday, Rebecca! I'm so proud of you, and can't wait to see you soon.
And you can see their pictures here:
I wanted to make it up there but was unable to due to a separate mission running simultaneously (the one where I had dinner with Mr. Assef). I especially wanted to make it up there because the day they flew up there, we received word that Corporal Griffith, at the time Lance Corporal Griffith, had just been selected to receive a meritorious promotion to Corporal. Because it was a meritorious promotion through our home battalion, 6th Engineer Support Battalion, we had to wait for the Commanding General to sign the promotion warrant back in the states, and then for the warrant to be sent out to Afghanistan. My Platoon Sergeant and I wanted to fly up there to promote him, but instead we had an officer stationed up at the base do it.
Corporal Griffith distinguished himself from our first mission here on deck in Afghanistan. He does construction back at home, and from the start he's been applying his skills--showing the other Marines what needs to be done and leading small teams in various aspects of the construction. When our command asked who we wanted to put up for a meritorious promotion to Corporal, he was an easy choice.
I have an awesome platoon, and right now I am in the process of writing awards for about half of them. All the re-writes are painful, but I think I'm getting the hang of it, and they certainly deserve it.
In other news, Happy 17th Birthday, Rebecca! I'm so proud of you, and can't wait to see you soon.
06 October 2010
Silly String
Without further ado.
I come back from taking a Marine to the hospital (not mine, and he’s fine; not injured, just some medical difficulties) to find my desk, chair, and computers covered with silly string. One of my co-workers just received a care package from home, and I knew it had silly string in it, so I knew exactly who the culprit was. One of my Sergeants showed me a picture taken a few minutes earlier of my platoon sergeant, also covered in silly string. Very amusing. I began cleaning up, gathering all the silly string in a pile on my desk.
I knew exactly what I was going to do with the silly string, except that once I got to my co-workers office with my pile of silly string detritus, I realized that his keyboards were spread out over his desk, and that they would make a better deposit location than just a single pile on his desk. So I returned the silly string. My platoon sergeant and one of our other co-workers were in his office and started laughing as soon as they saw what I was doing. I completed my task, walked back to my desk, and sat down. My platoon sergeant came back and sat down on the couch.
Sure enough, my co-worker appeared in my office door moments later with two cans of silly string. “I have more of these,” he promised, aimed, and pushed the nozzles.
“Got it.” I ducked my head and waited for it to be over. Spray, spray spray spray, wait, spray, wait, wait, spray...finally it was over. “I have more of these,” he reminded me again. “Roger,” I said as I started pulling silly string off my head. “Love you,” he called out in the sing-song-y voice that all the guys around here use when they’re playing around. “Love you, too,” I answered through recently un-gritted teeth.
One of my squad leaders, who had been sitting at the desk right in front of me, crawled out from underneath the desk, and we all started laughing again.
“Dumping all that silly string on his desk was totally worth it,” I told him a couple minutes later as I had cleared the area right next to my body and was starting to reach out to the gear behind me.
He laughed. “You keep telling yourself that, ma’am.”
Ten minutes later, I walked into my co-worker’s office again. Again, I was holding a handful of silly string, except this time it was all nicely piled up, formed in pretty oval shape, with no tiny bits of dusty string. “I have a nice new chia pet that I wanted to share with you,” I said, and deposited it on his desk.
Your tax dollars, hard at work.
We have one mission left before our replacements arrive and we start spinning them up on how things work out here. Roughly two months from now we will be back in Camp Pendleton, turning in our gear and wishing we were instead in Oregon/Michigan/Indiana/Illinois/Pennsylvania/Washington. Wherever home is.
I've been hear long enough that the gentleman that runs the morning grill knows exactly what I want for breakfast--omelet with everything, no jalapenos, please. This morning he didn't even bother to confirm with me, just nodded, said good morning, and started cooking. Is it nice to have a fresh omelet every morning? Yes. Would I rather have my own kitchen, where I could sleep however long I wanted and still eat a nice breakfast, and didn't have to pull my hair back into a bun just to walk to the kitchen? Most definitely. I don't mean to complain--there are perks. But I'm ready to be home again.
Love you all! See you soon.
I come back from taking a Marine to the hospital (not mine, and he’s fine; not injured, just some medical difficulties) to find my desk, chair, and computers covered with silly string. One of my co-workers just received a care package from home, and I knew it had silly string in it, so I knew exactly who the culprit was. One of my Sergeants showed me a picture taken a few minutes earlier of my platoon sergeant, also covered in silly string. Very amusing. I began cleaning up, gathering all the silly string in a pile on my desk.
I knew exactly what I was going to do with the silly string, except that once I got to my co-workers office with my pile of silly string detritus, I realized that his keyboards were spread out over his desk, and that they would make a better deposit location than just a single pile on his desk. So I returned the silly string. My platoon sergeant and one of our other co-workers were in his office and started laughing as soon as they saw what I was doing. I completed my task, walked back to my desk, and sat down. My platoon sergeant came back and sat down on the couch.Sure enough, my co-worker appeared in my office door moments later with two cans of silly string. “I have more of these,” he promised, aimed, and pushed the nozzles.
“Got it.” I ducked my head and waited for it to be over. Spray, spray spray spray, wait, spray, wait, wait, spray...finally it was over. “I have more of these,” he reminded me again. “Roger,” I said as I started pulling silly string off my head. “Love you,” he called out in the sing-song-y voice that all the guys around here use when they’re playing around. “Love you, too,” I answered through recently un-gritted teeth.
One of my squad leaders, who had been sitting at the desk right in front of me, crawled out from underneath the desk, and we all started laughing again.
“Dumping all that silly string on his desk was totally worth it,” I told him a couple minutes later as I had cleared the area right next to my body and was starting to reach out to the gear behind me.
He laughed. “You keep telling yourself that, ma’am.”
Ten minutes later, I walked into my co-worker’s office again. Again, I was holding a handful of silly string, except this time it was all nicely piled up, formed in pretty oval shape, with no tiny bits of dusty string. “I have a nice new chia pet that I wanted to share with you,” I said, and deposited it on his desk.
Your tax dollars, hard at work.
We have one mission left before our replacements arrive and we start spinning them up on how things work out here. Roughly two months from now we will be back in Camp Pendleton, turning in our gear and wishing we were instead in Oregon/Michigan/Indiana/Illinois/Pennsylvania/Washington. Wherever home is.
I've been hear long enough that the gentleman that runs the morning grill knows exactly what I want for breakfast--omelet with everything, no jalapenos, please. This morning he didn't even bother to confirm with me, just nodded, said good morning, and started cooking. Is it nice to have a fresh omelet every morning? Yes. Would I rather have my own kitchen, where I could sleep however long I wanted and still eat a nice breakfast, and didn't have to pull my hair back into a bun just to walk to the kitchen? Most definitely. I don't mean to complain--there are perks. But I'm ready to be home again.
Love you all! See you soon.
03 October 2010
Muhammed Assef
Well, I've been back for a few days now, but I've been waiting to get a picture from one of my Marines before I told this story. I promise the silly string story is still coming, but this will have to do for now.
The third day of our mission, I was invited to attend dinner with the FET team stationed at the COP (combat outpost) we were staying at. FET stands for Female Engagement Team--a team of two female Marines that go out on patrols into the city with male Marines, whose sole purpose on those patrols is to speak to the women of the city. These teams are scattered over the city, a couple Marines on each base, and having them on the COP is convenient for us because it means the Marines at the COP already have billeting and head facilities for females established.
Our patrol consisted of about twenty people total, including civilians from Civil Affairs, translators, and local Afghans. I couldn’t tell if the Afghans were police, army, or something different, but they carried weapons (local nationals are not allowed to carry crew-served weapons), and the Marines were okay with it. It took maybe fifteen minutes to get where we were going; 800m total. We crossed many fields, each with deep ruts between each row of crops. We also crossed several canals. They’re typically just too wide such that you might be able to jump it, but weighed down with your gear you’re not sure if you want to try. And then there was the canal where the far side was probably six feet, with a 70 degree slope. One of the Afghans gave me a hand up, which I needed.
We arrived at Mr. Assef’s home and were invited into a room with a large rug in the center, and cushions lining the outside. Mr. Assef is a tribal leader close to the outpost, so the civil affairs group (CAG) talked to him for a while about some of the issues his people have had recently. One of the issues he raised was people stealing water in the north part of Marjeh, which the CAG promised to discuss with their bosses. Once business had been discussed, dinner was served. They began with another large rug that covered the center of the room, more like a tablecloth than a carpet, although don’t imagine a red and white checkered plastic tablecloth that you can clip over the picnic table at the rest stop on the interstate. This was dark blue/purple vinyl on one side, and the other side was dark brown and had a flower pattern embossed on it.
Men began placing dishes on the tablecloth--marinated lamb, a huge platter of basmati rice, another huge platter of chicken covered in red spices, small plates of sliced tomatoes, chili peppers, and small red onions, and a heaping platter of naan. Mr. Assef took the platter of naan, stacked several pieces, and ripped them in half, each half still larger than a dinner plate. The halves were then passed around the room. The Afghans shared silver platters of rice with a chicken wing each; Americans were served on cardboard trays that we get in the chow hall. We were also given utensils, again the same ones we get from the chow hall. I decided to imitate the Afghans and ignored my silverware, doing my best to avoid using my left hand as much as possible.
The last item served was milk, served in large bowls. The Afghans scooped the milk using white ladles, returning the ladle to the bowl after each time they drank. One of the Afghans close to me offered me the milk in a cup, and I accepted it; the Americans sitting next to me admired my bravery. The milk tasted sour, similar to plain yogurt but more sour. It tasted something like a yogurt drink I’d had at a middle eastern restaurant once, although without the spices. I drank the milk, along with the Pepsi they’d given me, throughout the meal. Once we were done with the main course, they put out fresh pomegranate halves and quartered apples. I had one of each, and on a whim tried placing pomegranate seeds and rice inside a chunk of bread and eating them together. It was quite good.
After the tablecloth had been removed, Mr. Assef asked the FET team if we would like to meet his family. We were lead across a field, into a courtyard, and then into a room in his house. His family filtered into the room; his wife, sons and daughters, sons’ wives, and a lot of children. A couple of them spoke a little bit of English, but other than that we mostly sat and looked at each other. One of the men asked me if I liked tea, and I said yes. He told someone to bring tea, and I immediately hoped it had been boiled (as I write this a day and a half later, I still haven’t gotten sick, so it must have been). A young boy, maybe 7 or 8, served myself and the Sergeant that was with me, pouring probably a quarter of a cup of sugar into the cup before pouring tea in each. It was chai—delicious, even without the amount of sugar in it. They also brought out a bowl of more food—there were almonds in their hulls, pistachios, some kind of yellow kernels that didn’t taste like corn, and a few chewy candies. I had an almond and a couple pistachios, but was mostly full.
More family members kept coming into the room; eventually the open space in the room disappeared as they filled it. One of the men motioned if he could put henna on the Sergeant’s hand, and then one of the women went to get it. I’ve seen the orange henna stains on the hands of other Local Nationals, mostly when I was up doing some of the reconnaissance missions I was tasked with over the summer. It turns an orange color and is supposed to last about a month before it fades off. They enjoy putting elaborate designs on their hands, and then also around each finger tip (it’s unclear to me why the finger tips...). This is the design they put on my hand.
I took out the laminated picture I carry around of my family. One side has all seven of us kids standing by our stockings last Christmas, and the other side is Mom and Dad. It was a big hit, and I told one of the men that spoke a little bit of English who all of my siblings were.
Too quickly it was time to go. We walked back to the COP, back through the fields and the ditches, the full moon making the trip easy. I called back to my company staff to find out there had been some confusion while I was gone. A Marine from our COP had been killed while on patrol earlier that day (a different direction from where we went), and somewhere up the chain someone had thought I was on that patrol. I assured them that I was fine, but it was back to reality.
The third day of our mission, I was invited to attend dinner with the FET team stationed at the COP (combat outpost) we were staying at. FET stands for Female Engagement Team--a team of two female Marines that go out on patrols into the city with male Marines, whose sole purpose on those patrols is to speak to the women of the city. These teams are scattered over the city, a couple Marines on each base, and having them on the COP is convenient for us because it means the Marines at the COP already have billeting and head facilities for females established.
Our patrol consisted of about twenty people total, including civilians from Civil Affairs, translators, and local Afghans. I couldn’t tell if the Afghans were police, army, or something different, but they carried weapons (local nationals are not allowed to carry crew-served weapons), and the Marines were okay with it. It took maybe fifteen minutes to get where we were going; 800m total. We crossed many fields, each with deep ruts between each row of crops. We also crossed several canals. They’re typically just too wide such that you might be able to jump it, but weighed down with your gear you’re not sure if you want to try. And then there was the canal where the far side was probably six feet, with a 70 degree slope. One of the Afghans gave me a hand up, which I needed.
We arrived at Mr. Assef’s home and were invited into a room with a large rug in the center, and cushions lining the outside. Mr. Assef is a tribal leader close to the outpost, so the civil affairs group (CAG) talked to him for a while about some of the issues his people have had recently. One of the issues he raised was people stealing water in the north part of Marjeh, which the CAG promised to discuss with their bosses. Once business had been discussed, dinner was served. They began with another large rug that covered the center of the room, more like a tablecloth than a carpet, although don’t imagine a red and white checkered plastic tablecloth that you can clip over the picnic table at the rest stop on the interstate. This was dark blue/purple vinyl on one side, and the other side was dark brown and had a flower pattern embossed on it.
Men began placing dishes on the tablecloth--marinated lamb, a huge platter of basmati rice, another huge platter of chicken covered in red spices, small plates of sliced tomatoes, chili peppers, and small red onions, and a heaping platter of naan. Mr. Assef took the platter of naan, stacked several pieces, and ripped them in half, each half still larger than a dinner plate. The halves were then passed around the room. The Afghans shared silver platters of rice with a chicken wing each; Americans were served on cardboard trays that we get in the chow hall. We were also given utensils, again the same ones we get from the chow hall. I decided to imitate the Afghans and ignored my silverware, doing my best to avoid using my left hand as much as possible.
The last item served was milk, served in large bowls. The Afghans scooped the milk using white ladles, returning the ladle to the bowl after each time they drank. One of the Afghans close to me offered me the milk in a cup, and I accepted it; the Americans sitting next to me admired my bravery. The milk tasted sour, similar to plain yogurt but more sour. It tasted something like a yogurt drink I’d had at a middle eastern restaurant once, although without the spices. I drank the milk, along with the Pepsi they’d given me, throughout the meal. Once we were done with the main course, they put out fresh pomegranate halves and quartered apples. I had one of each, and on a whim tried placing pomegranate seeds and rice inside a chunk of bread and eating them together. It was quite good.
After the tablecloth had been removed, Mr. Assef asked the FET team if we would like to meet his family. We were lead across a field, into a courtyard, and then into a room in his house. His family filtered into the room; his wife, sons and daughters, sons’ wives, and a lot of children. A couple of them spoke a little bit of English, but other than that we mostly sat and looked at each other. One of the men asked me if I liked tea, and I said yes. He told someone to bring tea, and I immediately hoped it had been boiled (as I write this a day and a half later, I still haven’t gotten sick, so it must have been). A young boy, maybe 7 or 8, served myself and the Sergeant that was with me, pouring probably a quarter of a cup of sugar into the cup before pouring tea in each. It was chai—delicious, even without the amount of sugar in it. They also brought out a bowl of more food—there were almonds in their hulls, pistachios, some kind of yellow kernels that didn’t taste like corn, and a few chewy candies. I had an almond and a couple pistachios, but was mostly full.
More family members kept coming into the room; eventually the open space in the room disappeared as they filled it. One of the men motioned if he could put henna on the Sergeant’s hand, and then one of the women went to get it. I’ve seen the orange henna stains on the hands of other Local Nationals, mostly when I was up doing some of the reconnaissance missions I was tasked with over the summer. It turns an orange color and is supposed to last about a month before it fades off. They enjoy putting elaborate designs on their hands, and then also around each finger tip (it’s unclear to me why the finger tips...). This is the design they put on my hand.
I took out the laminated picture I carry around of my family. One side has all seven of us kids standing by our stockings last Christmas, and the other side is Mom and Dad. It was a big hit, and I told one of the men that spoke a little bit of English who all of my siblings were.
Too quickly it was time to go. We walked back to the COP, back through the fields and the ditches, the full moon making the trip easy. I called back to my company staff to find out there had been some confusion while I was gone. A Marine from our COP had been killed while on patrol earlier that day (a different direction from where we went), and somewhere up the chain someone had thought I was on that patrol. I assured them that I was fine, but it was back to reality.
19 September 2010
Again
Well, I'd hoped to have a funny story about silly string for you, but I'm still waiting for the picture, so I'll postpone for now.
Things have been pretty crazy around here for the past twenty-four hours. We were sitting in a 1700 brief for a mission that was supposed to kick today when one of the Staff NCOs in the Battalion walked in and announced that the mission was rolled 24 hours, and that the security team was instead taking our Battalion CO in the opposite direction. Then there was a lot of additional Class IV material to get loaded yesterday night and this morning, and the security team taking us tomorrow rolled in early evening...
Anyway, I'll be out for the next week and a half or so, and I don't know what kind of access to the internet I'll have (hopefully none). I'm looking forward to getting off Leatherneck for a little while, and I should have the silly string story when I get back.
Love you all, and happy birthday to David. :-)
Things have been pretty crazy around here for the past twenty-four hours. We were sitting in a 1700 brief for a mission that was supposed to kick today when one of the Staff NCOs in the Battalion walked in and announced that the mission was rolled 24 hours, and that the security team was instead taking our Battalion CO in the opposite direction. Then there was a lot of additional Class IV material to get loaded yesterday night and this morning, and the security team taking us tomorrow rolled in early evening...
Anyway, I'll be out for the next week and a half or so, and I don't know what kind of access to the internet I'll have (hopefully none). I'm looking forward to getting off Leatherneck for a little while, and I should have the silly string story when I get back.
Love you all, and happy birthday to David. :-)
11 September 2010
Half-Mast
The flag in front of our company office flew at half-mast today. I would have loved to get a picture and post it for you, but the camera I brought with me succumbed to the heat about a month after we got here, so you will have to be content with the mental image of our flag flying at half mast in front of a raw wood building where Marines carry out the work that was triggered by the events that are so prevalent on everyone's minds today.
I don't really have any deep insights to offer for you today, no philosophical musings about life, the military, the Taliban, politics, what have you. What I do have for you is this: the things we do here make a difference. Yes, it's true that some Afghans support the Taliban, but it's also true that many of them support the Taliban only because they are coerced to do so, and that others risk their lives to help Marines. Marines, Afghan Soldiers, and other Coalition Forces are still engaged in a fierce fight and losing their lives, but we are fighting in the Helmand River valley--the birthplace of the Taliban; their home turf. You can't get much better for taking the fight to the enemy! And we'll keep fighting for as long as our Commander-in-Chief tells us to.
I've been thinking lately about how I've joined the group of millions of young (and not-so-young) men and women throughout our nation's history that have been called away from their homes and families to defend someone's freedom, and how proud I am to be in this group. Yes, I miss my family--I got up at 5 this morning so I could call home and sing Happy Birthday to my brother (love you, bro!) before they all had cake and ice cream and retired for the night. (Okay, so I walked back to the barracks and went back to sleep for another hour and a half once we were done.) Yes, I get tired of the dust that gets everywhere, and the chow hall having the exact same thing week in and week out, and working seven days week in and week out, and I'm counting down the days until we go back to the states. But if someone had given me a time machine before I'd gone to OCS, and I had known exactly what it was like out here before I even joined the Marine Corps...I would still do exactly what I did.
Semper Fidelis.
I don't really have any deep insights to offer for you today, no philosophical musings about life, the military, the Taliban, politics, what have you. What I do have for you is this: the things we do here make a difference. Yes, it's true that some Afghans support the Taliban, but it's also true that many of them support the Taliban only because they are coerced to do so, and that others risk their lives to help Marines. Marines, Afghan Soldiers, and other Coalition Forces are still engaged in a fierce fight and losing their lives, but we are fighting in the Helmand River valley--the birthplace of the Taliban; their home turf. You can't get much better for taking the fight to the enemy! And we'll keep fighting for as long as our Commander-in-Chief tells us to.
I've been thinking lately about how I've joined the group of millions of young (and not-so-young) men and women throughout our nation's history that have been called away from their homes and families to defend someone's freedom, and how proud I am to be in this group. Yes, I miss my family--I got up at 5 this morning so I could call home and sing Happy Birthday to my brother (love you, bro!) before they all had cake and ice cream and retired for the night. (Okay, so I walked back to the barracks and went back to sleep for another hour and a half once we were done.) Yes, I get tired of the dust that gets everywhere, and the chow hall having the exact same thing week in and week out, and working seven days week in and week out, and I'm counting down the days until we go back to the states. But if someone had given me a time machine before I'd gone to OCS, and I had known exactly what it was like out here before I even joined the Marine Corps...I would still do exactly what I did.
Semper Fidelis.
28 August 2010
All Kinds of Craziness
"All kinds of craziness"--something one of my Sergeant Instructors liked to say when I was at Officer Candidate School, and something that certainly applied today. For the past three months, my platoon has been the only platoon in the company based out of Camp Leatherneck; the rest of the company has been based out of a FOB farther south of here. Recently, that changed.
Now, instead of just my platoon plus two additional Marines for company staff, we have most of the company staff, plus another platoon and a half up here, recently arrived by both plane and convoy. So we've essentially tripled the number of people working out of the same 32'x64' office--craziness!
It should be interesting. The company staff and one of the platoons is here to stay; the second platoon is here for a couple missions, and then will probably return to their base. But then they'll be back up for good at some point. Until now my platoon has had the whole building, now the Sergeant's couch they like to relax on is in my office, and the traffic in and out of my office is going to increase exponentially.
I received a question recently asking what sizes platoons and squads were, to better understand what I mean when I say that I only get to send a squad instead of the whole platoon on a mission. The best way to explain it is that the Marine Corps operates (for the most part) on the rule of threes: the optimal number of subordinate units to lead is three. Therefore, a fire team, the smallest maneuver unit, is three Marines plus a fire team leader, for a total of four Marines. Each squad has three fire teams in it, plus a squad leader, for a total of thirteen Marines.
A doctrinal platoon has three squads in it, for a total of thirty-nine Marines. Of course, then you start adding on your platoon staff--doctrinally, a platoon commander, platoon sergeant, and a platoon guide. Your platoon sergeant is your senior enlisted Marine, and handles the day-to-day details of what the platoon does. (Field day tonight, we need two Marines at so-and-so's office for a working party, first squad I need you guys doing X tomorrow, etc.)
Your platoon guide (I have two) is used differently based on what your platoon does. My guides are my construction foreman, responsible for the detailed planning of the missions--these are the construction materials we'll need, the tools we'll need, we're short X and I think we might be able to get it from these people... My last addition to my platoon is our corpsman, aka "doc". So my platoon has a total of 42 enlisted Marines, one sailor, and myself.
Now, in reality, even if I could take the "whole platoon" out on the mission I was talking about in my last post, it would not be the entire platoon. We have out here what we call "camp tax", which basically means that as soon as we got here, I gave up three (recently reduced to two) of my Marines to stand guard on base. I also gave up four Marines to support the company on the southern FOB, and then I have eight Marines that are on an additional security team. When they're not out, technically they belong to me, but I can't do much with them because I have to be ready to give them up at a moment's notice. (For a total of...fourteen Marines that I don't really control.)
So when I say "take the whole platoon out" I really mean only about two squads of Marines. It's a little frustrating to have my platoon reduced so sharply, but I know the guys I've given up for the security team enjoy getting off base, as do the Marines on the FOB down south.
In other notes: (1) I am again reminded of how important communication is. I just spent two days pretty upset over what turned out to be something I heard incorrectly. I'm very glad I finally went and talked to the person. And then: (2) I get to go out again on another recon, or "recce" (pronounced "wreckie"), as the British call it. But, I'll let you in on a little secret. Someone else is the mission commander, so all I have to do is show up and keep my eyes peeled. I don't even have to write the report afterwards. I'll help as much as I can, but...this one will be fun. End of little secret.
Thanks for the e-mails! I hope you are all doing well and look forward to seeing you when I get back.
Now, instead of just my platoon plus two additional Marines for company staff, we have most of the company staff, plus another platoon and a half up here, recently arrived by both plane and convoy. So we've essentially tripled the number of people working out of the same 32'x64' office--craziness!
It should be interesting. The company staff and one of the platoons is here to stay; the second platoon is here for a couple missions, and then will probably return to their base. But then they'll be back up for good at some point. Until now my platoon has had the whole building, now the Sergeant's couch they like to relax on is in my office, and the traffic in and out of my office is going to increase exponentially.
I received a question recently asking what sizes platoons and squads were, to better understand what I mean when I say that I only get to send a squad instead of the whole platoon on a mission. The best way to explain it is that the Marine Corps operates (for the most part) on the rule of threes: the optimal number of subordinate units to lead is three. Therefore, a fire team, the smallest maneuver unit, is three Marines plus a fire team leader, for a total of four Marines. Each squad has three fire teams in it, plus a squad leader, for a total of thirteen Marines.
A doctrinal platoon has three squads in it, for a total of thirty-nine Marines. Of course, then you start adding on your platoon staff--doctrinally, a platoon commander, platoon sergeant, and a platoon guide. Your platoon sergeant is your senior enlisted Marine, and handles the day-to-day details of what the platoon does. (Field day tonight, we need two Marines at so-and-so's office for a working party, first squad I need you guys doing X tomorrow, etc.)
Your platoon guide (I have two) is used differently based on what your platoon does. My guides are my construction foreman, responsible for the detailed planning of the missions--these are the construction materials we'll need, the tools we'll need, we're short X and I think we might be able to get it from these people... My last addition to my platoon is our corpsman, aka "doc". So my platoon has a total of 42 enlisted Marines, one sailor, and myself.
Now, in reality, even if I could take the "whole platoon" out on the mission I was talking about in my last post, it would not be the entire platoon. We have out here what we call "camp tax", which basically means that as soon as we got here, I gave up three (recently reduced to two) of my Marines to stand guard on base. I also gave up four Marines to support the company on the southern FOB, and then I have eight Marines that are on an additional security team. When they're not out, technically they belong to me, but I can't do much with them because I have to be ready to give them up at a moment's notice. (For a total of...fourteen Marines that I don't really control.)
So when I say "take the whole platoon out" I really mean only about two squads of Marines. It's a little frustrating to have my platoon reduced so sharply, but I know the guys I've given up for the security team enjoy getting off base, as do the Marines on the FOB down south.
In other notes: (1) I am again reminded of how important communication is. I just spent two days pretty upset over what turned out to be something I heard incorrectly. I'm very glad I finally went and talked to the person. And then: (2) I get to go out again on another recon, or "recce" (pronounced "wreckie"), as the British call it. But, I'll let you in on a little secret. Someone else is the mission commander, so all I have to do is show up and keep my eyes peeled. I don't even have to write the report afterwards. I'll help as much as I can, but...this one will be fun. End of little secret.
Thanks for the e-mails! I hope you are all doing well and look forward to seeing you when I get back.
23 August 2010
Yes, it's that time again
The time where I load up blogger.com and cringe as I look at the dashboard--has it really been 20 days since I last posted? Yikes! I meant for this blog to be fun to read--frequently updated, interesting topics. Turns out building SWA Huts (SouthWest Asia, basically what we call the ubiquitous 16'x32' [or some multiple of those dimension] wood huts out here) is not all that interesting to write about. Actually, my platoon is almost finished building a 32'x96' SWA Hut, and they've knocked it out of the park.
Other than that, I did another reconnaissance. This one turned out to be more a circus than a reconnaissance--both the Navy's SeaBees and a Sergeant from the Army's Multi-Role Bridge Company came out on the recon, in addition to my Battalion Commander, Battalion Sergeant Major, and Company Commander. Let me just say--when they tell you you're the mission commander, and you're the lowest-ranking officer on the trip (we had an O-5, O-4, O-3, two O-2s, and myself, an O-1 for a few more months)...yeah, it gets a little frustrating.
We did get to hang out with the grunts for a couple of days. We had a squad attached to us that had been patrolling the area for the prior five weeks, and they knew the area quite well. They did an outstanding job holding security for us while we did our reconnaissance, as well as escorting us back and forth to our vehicles. At the third site, I was sitting on top of the ridge, when the Squad Leader excused himself to go bathe. I thought he was joking until I looked over the side of the ridge a few minutes later and saw his squad jumping into the river from the closest rock while a Major and a Navy Lieutenant (an O-3, the equivalent of a Captain in the Marine Corps) held security.
Coming up, I get to send another squad out to do another COP (Combat Outpost) build. These ones are fun--the Marines get off base for a little while, and they get to make life a lot nicer for some Marines that are living in run-down buildings. I wish I could take the whole platoon on this one, but we only get to send a squad.
We're halfway done! It's difficult to believe we're already at this point. Time flies, of course, except when it grinds to a halt. I look back at what I was doing a week and a half ago and am boggled that it's already been a week and a half. And then there are days that don't seem to end regardless of what you do. I'm finally starting to feel like a not-boot Lieutenant, with a tiny little bit of experience under my belt. Not a whole lot, but enough that I don't feel fresh out of school any more. As frustrating as the last recon was, I did learn quite a bit.
I apologize that I don't have a terribly interesting topic tonight. Those SWA Huts, I tell you...fascinating.
Other than that, I did another reconnaissance. This one turned out to be more a circus than a reconnaissance--both the Navy's SeaBees and a Sergeant from the Army's Multi-Role Bridge Company came out on the recon, in addition to my Battalion Commander, Battalion Sergeant Major, and Company Commander. Let me just say--when they tell you you're the mission commander, and you're the lowest-ranking officer on the trip (we had an O-5, O-4, O-3, two O-2s, and myself, an O-1 for a few more months)...yeah, it gets a little frustrating.We did get to hang out with the grunts for a couple of days. We had a squad attached to us that had been patrolling the area for the prior five weeks, and they knew the area quite well. They did an outstanding job holding security for us while we did our reconnaissance, as well as escorting us back and forth to our vehicles. At the third site, I was sitting on top of the ridge, when the Squad Leader excused himself to go bathe. I thought he was joking until I looked over the side of the ridge a few minutes later and saw his squad jumping into the river from the closest rock while a Major and a Navy Lieutenant (an O-3, the equivalent of a Captain in the Marine Corps) held security.
Coming up, I get to send another squad out to do another COP (Combat Outpost) build. These ones are fun--the Marines get off base for a little while, and they get to make life a lot nicer for some Marines that are living in run-down buildings. I wish I could take the whole platoon on this one, but we only get to send a squad.
We're halfway done! It's difficult to believe we're already at this point. Time flies, of course, except when it grinds to a halt. I look back at what I was doing a week and a half ago and am boggled that it's already been a week and a half. And then there are days that don't seem to end regardless of what you do. I'm finally starting to feel like a not-boot Lieutenant, with a tiny little bit of experience under my belt. Not a whole lot, but enough that I don't feel fresh out of school any more. As frustrating as the last recon was, I did learn quite a bit.I apologize that I don't have a terribly interesting topic tonight. Those SWA Huts, I tell you...fascinating.
03 August 2010
Mantathalon
What is a mantathalon? you might ask. Well, in the words of our Communications Officer, it is Mantastic! I'm sure that helps increase your understanding, doesn't it? Our Battalion Commander requests to know if women are allowed to participate in the manthalon and is assured that they are.
Basically it boils down to a running (created?) feud between our communications and supply sections. The powerpoint explains that comm dominated in ultimate football, supply eked out a victory in basketball (slides designed by the comm-o...surprised much?), and that the Oki Panda Mantathalon was inconclusive. Thus, another manthalon must be held in order to determine which section is the true champion.
The mantathalon consisted of seven events over a week, including strength, speed, agility, endurance, intelligence, and skill capped off with a team challenge last Sunday night. The team challenge was a thirty-minute seven-on-seven grappling match, with the winner determined by shop that forced the most taps. Each Marine had a safety observer to ensure they would not be injured and small joint (wrists, ankles, fingers, etc.) manipulations were not permitted. A good number of the officers and staff NCOs in the Battalion turned out to watch the match in addition to the rest of the comm and supply shops.
The Marines started off with a lot of energy but tired quickly. They would grapple, going 2 on 1, 3 on 1, even 4 on 1 when they eliminated their opponents, until one entire side was out. They would gather on their side of the mat and lean heavily on their hands, trying to catch their breath before the next match. The director of the match would point at each side and ask if they were ready, then signal for them to start again.
Thirty minutes is a long time to grapple, but they stuck with it. Spectators would occasionally offer suggestions, but mostly just watched and enjoyed the entertainment. When time was finally called, the Marines collapsed on the mat. Supply had won the grappling match, but comm had the overall lead in the contest, and the XO presented the trophy, a ridiculous-looking belt, to the comm shop.
The match was like a picnic with friends...a short time on a Sunday evening to relax before plowing head-long into the week.
Basically it boils down to a running (created?) feud between our communications and supply sections. The powerpoint explains that comm dominated in ultimate football, supply eked out a victory in basketball (slides designed by the comm-o...surprised much?), and that the Oki Panda Mantathalon was inconclusive. Thus, another manthalon must be held in order to determine which section is the true champion.
The mantathalon consisted of seven events over a week, including strength, speed, agility, endurance, intelligence, and skill capped off with a team challenge last Sunday night. The team challenge was a thirty-minute seven-on-seven grappling match, with the winner determined by shop that forced the most taps. Each Marine had a safety observer to ensure they would not be injured and small joint (wrists, ankles, fingers, etc.) manipulations were not permitted. A good number of the officers and staff NCOs in the Battalion turned out to watch the match in addition to the rest of the comm and supply shops.
The Marines started off with a lot of energy but tired quickly. They would grapple, going 2 on 1, 3 on 1, even 4 on 1 when they eliminated their opponents, until one entire side was out. They would gather on their side of the mat and lean heavily on their hands, trying to catch their breath before the next match. The director of the match would point at each side and ask if they were ready, then signal for them to start again.
Thirty minutes is a long time to grapple, but they stuck with it. Spectators would occasionally offer suggestions, but mostly just watched and enjoyed the entertainment. When time was finally called, the Marines collapsed on the mat. Supply had won the grappling match, but comm had the overall lead in the contest, and the XO presented the trophy, a ridiculous-looking belt, to the comm shop.
The match was like a picnic with friends...a short time on a Sunday evening to relax before plowing head-long into the week.
18 July 2010
A Day on the River
Reveille was at 0400. I slept in the turret the night before, alternately folding my feet under my legs and draping them out the front; metal screws poked into my back if I shifted wrong. No pillow, no pajamas, just take your boots off and go to sleep. Not the best sleep I’ve ever had, so when reveille sounded, I didn’t mind too much. When I woke up it was difficult to see; fifteen minutes later I could easily see the vehicles on the outside of the perimeter.
We did a brief for the personnel heading down to the river and left around 0500. By the time we got to the first site, the sun was up over the horizon, and the local population was up and moving around. We drove into town with our MRAPs (Mine Resistant Ambush Protected) and 7-ton vehicles; the security team pushed out to provide overwatch while the mineroller swept the approach to the river. A few minutes later, the overall mission commander informed me that the site was ready, and that we could dismount and perform our reconnaissance at the first site.
The river was a lot cleaner than we were expecting. When we briefed the mission, our CO and the Colonel above him that we briefed were very concerned about the Marines going in the water, worried about what diseases they would contract by going in the water. We got there, and it was just like looking at a river back in Oregon—cleaner, even. The rocks were growing algae and there was no trash on the river bank. The Marines waded in.
Immediately to the right of the approach were some cliffs overlooking the river. As the Marines waded around in the water, the local nationals gathered on the cliffs to watch. It was mostly men and children; I don’t remember seeing any women in the village. They were all dressed in traditional Afghan garb—long robes with trousers underneath and thick turbans swathed on their heads. The men all had bushy beards; some of the children had smaller caps on. They had no chairs but squatted comfortably as they watched us, sitting back on their heels. I don’t know how they do it—I know my legs would go numb if I tried for longer than a few seconds.
We completed our reconnaissance at the first site and made our way up to the second site. It looked much like the first with cliffs on either side of the approach to the water, except the closest compounds were a few hundred meters to the south. I did actually see a couple of women at this site, albeit from a distance. They are easy to recognize because they have veils instead of turbans and their clothes are more brightly colored. The veils I saw did not appear to resemble the heavy burqas I’ve seen in pictures that Saudi women are forced to wear; they were the same color as the women’s clothes. We also saw a flock of goats grazing near the base of the cliffs on the river.
The third site was the same—cool, clean water with few local nationals around. By mid-morning, the air was getting hot, so the cool air coming off the river felt nice. I did see one gentleman a few hundred meters north of the site. The overall mission commander had a translator speak with him, and learned that he was waiting for a ferry to take him to the other side of the river so he could go to the market.
It’s been pretty hot here lately. The past couple of days have been in the mid-110s during the day time, and no lower than low-80s at night. We’re all looking forward to September, when it should start cooling off around here.
Thanks for all the comments and e-mails! I always love hearing from everyone back at home. I’ve adjusted to life here, and don’t miss the states quite as much, but it’s still very stressful out here, and hearing from you makes my day that much brighter.
We did a brief for the personnel heading down to the river and left around 0500. By the time we got to the first site, the sun was up over the horizon, and the local population was up and moving around. We drove into town with our MRAPs (Mine Resistant Ambush Protected) and 7-ton vehicles; the security team pushed out to provide overwatch while the mineroller swept the approach to the river. A few minutes later, the overall mission commander informed me that the site was ready, and that we could dismount and perform our reconnaissance at the first site.
The river was a lot cleaner than we were expecting. When we briefed the mission, our CO and the Colonel above him that we briefed were very concerned about the Marines going in the water, worried about what diseases they would contract by going in the water. We got there, and it was just like looking at a river back in Oregon—cleaner, even. The rocks were growing algae and there was no trash on the river bank. The Marines waded in.
Immediately to the right of the approach were some cliffs overlooking the river. As the Marines waded around in the water, the local nationals gathered on the cliffs to watch. It was mostly men and children; I don’t remember seeing any women in the village. They were all dressed in traditional Afghan garb—long robes with trousers underneath and thick turbans swathed on their heads. The men all had bushy beards; some of the children had smaller caps on. They had no chairs but squatted comfortably as they watched us, sitting back on their heels. I don’t know how they do it—I know my legs would go numb if I tried for longer than a few seconds.
We completed our reconnaissance at the first site and made our way up to the second site. It looked much like the first with cliffs on either side of the approach to the water, except the closest compounds were a few hundred meters to the south. I did actually see a couple of women at this site, albeit from a distance. They are easy to recognize because they have veils instead of turbans and their clothes are more brightly colored. The veils I saw did not appear to resemble the heavy burqas I’ve seen in pictures that Saudi women are forced to wear; they were the same color as the women’s clothes. We also saw a flock of goats grazing near the base of the cliffs on the river.
The third site was the same—cool, clean water with few local nationals around. By mid-morning, the air was getting hot, so the cool air coming off the river felt nice. I did see one gentleman a few hundred meters north of the site. The overall mission commander had a translator speak with him, and learned that he was waiting for a ferry to take him to the other side of the river so he could go to the market.
It’s been pretty hot here lately. The past couple of days have been in the mid-110s during the day time, and no lower than low-80s at night. We’re all looking forward to September, when it should start cooling off around here.
Thanks for all the comments and e-mails! I always love hearing from everyone back at home. I’ve adjusted to life here, and don’t miss the states quite as much, but it’s still very stressful out here, and hearing from you makes my day that much brighter.
15 July 2010
Welcome, Judah!
So, the big news of this week (as I’m sure you all know by now) is that Amy had her baby, and I am now a proud Aunt! I now have a picture of Judah posted by my desk here in my office, and my screensaver scrolls through what pictures I have of him. I wish I could be in Oregon right now, but I am getting by with pictures.
Probably the largest sacrifice that Marines (or anyone in the armed forces) makes is their time with their families. (The second-largest one is sleep…but sleep can be caught up on. At least in my job.) I know several Marines that are on their fifth deployment, each spanning at least 7 months. These Marines have spent more time away from their families than with their families in the past few years. One of my Marines’ wives will give birth to their first child while we are here, and I know there are more in our Battalion in that situation. Some Marines receive “Dear John” letters from their girlfriends (I hated that movie), others will come home to find their spouses have left them for someone else. (Very sad, but I personally know Marines this has happened to.) The old joke that if the Marine Corps wanted you to have a wife it would issue one is just that—a joke—but there is that nugget of truth hidden in it. The Marine Corps is very hard on families and relationships.
Depressed enough yet? Makes my whining about not being there for the first days of my nephew seem paltry. Overall I’m doing well, though. I’ve gotten plenty of pictures e-mailed, just got a letter in the mail, and am anticipating a couple of packages in the next few days.
Our pace has slowed down slightly since the first month and a half that we were here, but we still have missions here and there. Last weekend the news of the weekend was the river reconnaissance we did. I took a couple of Marines that are familiar with military bridging (from a different platoon in my company), and we went to a few locations on the Helmand River to determine suitability for bridging. The river was actually fairly nice, if fairly and fast-flowing. Before we went out there we were worried about how clean it would be, but it looked as clean (possibly cleaner) than any river in the US. And certainly cleaner than some of the beaches in LA.
Once I got back, I got to sit down and fill out all of the river and ford reconnaissance forms, and put together a brief for the unit that requested the recon. It was actually kind of fun, once I got started, figuring out the way to best brief it. Most of the briefs I do follow a pretty standard format and are designed to brief what will happen, not what has happened. This was just different enough to be fun, and by the time I delivered the brief I had gotten comfortable enough with the people I was briefing so as not to be nervous.
A logistics officer recently mentioned to me his observation that engineer school seemed to prepare its students well for briefing. I would have to agree; we did at least four formal briefs, and a couple of other informal briefs. When I got here, I actually went back to some of those briefs I did at school to figure out how best to brief my actual missions.
I hope that’s a random enough collection of thoughts for tonight. I do actually think about posting more often, but nothing I do seems interesting enough to talk about. And I can never say much about the things that are interesting.
Until next time.
Probably the largest sacrifice that Marines (or anyone in the armed forces) makes is their time with their families. (The second-largest one is sleep…but sleep can be caught up on. At least in my job.) I know several Marines that are on their fifth deployment, each spanning at least 7 months. These Marines have spent more time away from their families than with their families in the past few years. One of my Marines’ wives will give birth to their first child while we are here, and I know there are more in our Battalion in that situation. Some Marines receive “Dear John” letters from their girlfriends (I hated that movie), others will come home to find their spouses have left them for someone else. (Very sad, but I personally know Marines this has happened to.) The old joke that if the Marine Corps wanted you to have a wife it would issue one is just that—a joke—but there is that nugget of truth hidden in it. The Marine Corps is very hard on families and relationships.
Depressed enough yet? Makes my whining about not being there for the first days of my nephew seem paltry. Overall I’m doing well, though. I’ve gotten plenty of pictures e-mailed, just got a letter in the mail, and am anticipating a couple of packages in the next few days.
Our pace has slowed down slightly since the first month and a half that we were here, but we still have missions here and there. Last weekend the news of the weekend was the river reconnaissance we did. I took a couple of Marines that are familiar with military bridging (from a different platoon in my company), and we went to a few locations on the Helmand River to determine suitability for bridging. The river was actually fairly nice, if fairly and fast-flowing. Before we went out there we were worried about how clean it would be, but it looked as clean (possibly cleaner) than any river in the US. And certainly cleaner than some of the beaches in LA.
Once I got back, I got to sit down and fill out all of the river and ford reconnaissance forms, and put together a brief for the unit that requested the recon. It was actually kind of fun, once I got started, figuring out the way to best brief it. Most of the briefs I do follow a pretty standard format and are designed to brief what will happen, not what has happened. This was just different enough to be fun, and by the time I delivered the brief I had gotten comfortable enough with the people I was briefing so as not to be nervous.
A logistics officer recently mentioned to me his observation that engineer school seemed to prepare its students well for briefing. I would have to agree; we did at least four formal briefs, and a couple of other informal briefs. When I got here, I actually went back to some of those briefs I did at school to figure out how best to brief my actual missions.
I hope that’s a random enough collection of thoughts for tonight. I do actually think about posting more often, but nothing I do seems interesting enough to talk about. And I can never say much about the things that are interesting.
Until next time.
25 June 2010
Never Been Average
The Chaplain shows movies on Friday night. Last week it was Clash of the Titans, which I saw while I was at Pendleton. I wasn’t too impressed, so I didn’t go. Today’s showing was Prince of Persia, which I went to. As I walked back from chow to the tent where the movie was being shown, I suddenly recalled scenes from M*A*S*H, where the characters sat on wooden benches, and threw popcorn at Klinger when the movies stopped rolling. I wondered if I would be sitting on a wooden bench--the chapel that Sunday services are in has wooden benches much like them. I was almost disappointed when I got there and found out I would be sitting on a metal chair. But not too disappointed, because it meant I got to sit on something with back support.
Prelude. I remember at one point, not all that long ago, sitting in a briefing evaluating the performance of a unit where a commanding officer was being told that his Marines were average. When the brief was over, he was angry. “Never in my life have I been average,” he snapped.
I promise this post will make sense at some point.
I had a project earlier today where some work my Marines completed was being inspected for completion. The inspector pointed out details that had been overlooked--nails that had gone through the plywood but not the stud behind it. Nails that had been done with a nail gun and not gone into the wood entirely, and then not been finished off with a regular hammer. I realized that I was good at holding myself to a standard of excellence, but actually fairly bad about holding my subordinates to a standard of excellence.
I’m too worried about being the bad guy, about whether they’ll work for me willingly or grudgingly if I come down on them to hard. About whether I have the stamina and endurance to stick around long after I want to because I am holding Marines to a high standard and they have not completed their task yet. But if I don’t do this, I am setting myself up for a career of having my Marines be just average.
I know some of my Sergeants are holding my Marines to a standard of excellence. A civilian inspector recently came to look at a different project some of my Marines had done, and told our Battalion Sergeant Major that the work was better quality than some Seebee projects he had seen. This was quite high praise. But obviously, I have problems in other areas.
Military commanders aren’t judged on what they accomplish. Their actions might be examined for strengths and flaws, as Gen McChrystal is learning right now, but their successes and failures lie in what their subordinates do or fail to do.
Earlier in the month I took some Marines out to a project site to drop them off. We had enough logistics vehicles that we went in two separate convoys, with me in charge of the second one. As I drove up to the entry control point (ECP) for the patrol base, I heard over the radio that a corpsman was needed at the ECP. I hopped out to find a Marine standing with his weight on his right leg; some heavy equipment had dropped onto his foot. (He broke some toes and suffered some pain, but will be fine. He didn’t get sent home.)
A couple hours later I fielded a stern call from our Battalion Commanding Officer, informing me that I was not their friend, and that I had better hold the Marines to a standard. That was something that my Staff Platoon Commander at The Basic School pounded into my head--if I didn’t hold to the standard that was established already, I was setting a new standard.
So, I think one of the biggest things I need to focus on now is holding my Marines to a high standard, and not worrying about whether they’ll like me or not. Not gonna be easy to do.
See? I told you it would all make sense in the end. Except for Prince of Persia. That was random. :-)
Prelude. I remember at one point, not all that long ago, sitting in a briefing evaluating the performance of a unit where a commanding officer was being told that his Marines were average. When the brief was over, he was angry. “Never in my life have I been average,” he snapped.
I promise this post will make sense at some point.
I had a project earlier today where some work my Marines completed was being inspected for completion. The inspector pointed out details that had been overlooked--nails that had gone through the plywood but not the stud behind it. Nails that had been done with a nail gun and not gone into the wood entirely, and then not been finished off with a regular hammer. I realized that I was good at holding myself to a standard of excellence, but actually fairly bad about holding my subordinates to a standard of excellence.
I’m too worried about being the bad guy, about whether they’ll work for me willingly or grudgingly if I come down on them to hard. About whether I have the stamina and endurance to stick around long after I want to because I am holding Marines to a high standard and they have not completed their task yet. But if I don’t do this, I am setting myself up for a career of having my Marines be just average.
I know some of my Sergeants are holding my Marines to a standard of excellence. A civilian inspector recently came to look at a different project some of my Marines had done, and told our Battalion Sergeant Major that the work was better quality than some Seebee projects he had seen. This was quite high praise. But obviously, I have problems in other areas.
Military commanders aren’t judged on what they accomplish. Their actions might be examined for strengths and flaws, as Gen McChrystal is learning right now, but their successes and failures lie in what their subordinates do or fail to do.
Earlier in the month I took some Marines out to a project site to drop them off. We had enough logistics vehicles that we went in two separate convoys, with me in charge of the second one. As I drove up to the entry control point (ECP) for the patrol base, I heard over the radio that a corpsman was needed at the ECP. I hopped out to find a Marine standing with his weight on his right leg; some heavy equipment had dropped onto his foot. (He broke some toes and suffered some pain, but will be fine. He didn’t get sent home.)
A couple hours later I fielded a stern call from our Battalion Commanding Officer, informing me that I was not their friend, and that I had better hold the Marines to a standard. That was something that my Staff Platoon Commander at The Basic School pounded into my head--if I didn’t hold to the standard that was established already, I was setting a new standard.
So, I think one of the biggest things I need to focus on now is holding my Marines to a high standard, and not worrying about whether they’ll like me or not. Not gonna be easy to do.
See? I told you it would all make sense in the end. Except for Prince of Persia. That was random. :-)
17 June 2010
Groundhog Day
Yes, I have reached that point in the deployment, where every day feels like groundhog day. Get up, go to work, stuff happens. Problems are solved, go to chow. Do it again in the afternoon. Go back to the barracks, watch some Stargate, take a navy shower (whereby you turn the water off every time you apply soap), go to bed. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Actually, today has been going pretty well, which means that I’m waiting for the ball to drop. A few of days ago I dropped about half of my platoon, a bunch of lumber and materials, and a couple pieces of HE off at a small patrol base to work for a couple of weeks. Getting them out the door left me exhausted, and of course I didn’t drink enough water the day of (insert obligatory Gen Petraeus joke here), so I spent Wednesday trying to re-hydrate and feeling like crap while doing so.
I did get some good news the next day afternoon. My platoon has been so busy that I was running out of Marines to cover all of the projects we have going right now. For example, yesterday after evening chow (which I ate around 1945) I stopped by a work site to see how they were doing. They only had four Marines working on the project (they were waiting for two more to show up) and didn't have any power tools, so I stayed and helped them out for a while. So the good news is that we’re getting reinforcements from the rest of the company. Now I’ll actually have Marines around to take care of all the little tasks that come up during the day.
Another bright spot to the past few days has been the world cup games going on. They start 1830 our time, which means for a couple nights this week I’ve sat down to chow right around the 60-70 minute mark, with the game running on the flat screens in the chow hall. There have been a lot of TCNs watching the games lately as well; last night I sat next to two gentlemen waiting for the Uruguay game to show at 2330. So it’s a fun atmosphere in the chow hall in the evening. Wednesday’s game was Spain vs. Switzerland and a well-played, exciting game to watch.
I want to thank everyone that has been sending me letters and e-mails. Letters especially put a huge smile on my face, and I try to answer them when I can. I will also try to post more, but when days start at 0600 and go to 2130, it's difficult to find the time.
Actually, today has been going pretty well, which means that I’m waiting for the ball to drop. A few of days ago I dropped about half of my platoon, a bunch of lumber and materials, and a couple pieces of HE off at a small patrol base to work for a couple of weeks. Getting them out the door left me exhausted, and of course I didn’t drink enough water the day of (insert obligatory Gen Petraeus joke here), so I spent Wednesday trying to re-hydrate and feeling like crap while doing so.
I did get some good news the next day afternoon. My platoon has been so busy that I was running out of Marines to cover all of the projects we have going right now. For example, yesterday after evening chow (which I ate around 1945) I stopped by a work site to see how they were doing. They only had four Marines working on the project (they were waiting for two more to show up) and didn't have any power tools, so I stayed and helped them out for a while. So the good news is that we’re getting reinforcements from the rest of the company. Now I’ll actually have Marines around to take care of all the little tasks that come up during the day.
Another bright spot to the past few days has been the world cup games going on. They start 1830 our time, which means for a couple nights this week I’ve sat down to chow right around the 60-70 minute mark, with the game running on the flat screens in the chow hall. There have been a lot of TCNs watching the games lately as well; last night I sat next to two gentlemen waiting for the Uruguay game to show at 2330. So it’s a fun atmosphere in the chow hall in the evening. Wednesday’s game was Spain vs. Switzerland and a well-played, exciting game to watch.
I want to thank everyone that has been sending me letters and e-mails. Letters especially put a huge smile on my face, and I try to answer them when I can. I will also try to post more, but when days start at 0600 and go to 2130, it's difficult to find the time.
06 June 2010
Preparing to Get Very Sandy
Monday was my first day that I actually ran a project “outside the wire”. A quick refresher: we all live inside a rather large base surrounded by large berms of earth and many guard towers. Any time you are inside such a camp, or even a small base, as long as it has protection from direct fire (gunfire), you are considered “inside the wire”. This means you don’t have to wear your PPE (personal protective equipment-- flak jacket and Kevlar helmet among other things) when you’re walking around, you don’t have to take special precautions when driving, etc. When you go “outside the wire”, you wear special uniforms that are designed not to melt, you wear your PPE, and you have to have security vehicles when you drive around.
Our project was pretty simple: a HESCO pit 14’ tall and 30’x30’ inside. EOD wanted a protected location to do some work with all of the unexploded ordnance, or UXO, that they find, so we loaded up, went outside the wire, and built some HESCO for them. The purpose of HESCO is to replace piles of sandbags. It’s essentially a chain-link fence that folds out in squares with a special textile on the inside to hold in the sand. You open it up, get it in place, and then use a tractor to dump sand inside it. Once you’ve dumped the sand inside, you get some Marines on the top with shovels or rakes to level it off. You can stack HESCO once it has been filled, and it comes in many sizes—from 2’x2’x2’ to 7’6”(H)x7’x7’. It’s much quicker and easier than having Marines with shovels stacking individual sand bags.
So that was our project. It was about 100m outside of camp, right between two guard towers. We had to drive a little farther than that to get from the gate to the place where we built it, but we never went farther than a kilometer away from the camp. So it was a nice little milk run—a practice run for me for all of the different tasks and procedures needed to successfully run a trip outside the wire.
It took two days. The first day went really well. The second day…had a few more hiccups. Our TRAMs (tractor, rubber tire, articulated something-or-other; what we were using to shovel dirt into the HESCO) will only fill HESCO up to 11’ high. Our first layer was 7’. Our second layer, yes, was 14’. So instead of our two TRAMs filling HESCO, we had one excavator filling HESCO. Turns out our excavator operator was not that experienced, so it took a little while longer to fill the top layer than it did to fill the bottom layer, even though there was twice as much dirt in the bottom layer.
It is by far not the operator’s fault. We are attached to 9th Engineer Support Battalion, which is based in Okinawa. Due to restrictions in Japan, the heavy equipment operators are not given many chances to practice moving earth around. So he was a little new to his trade, and it took a little longer. That’s okay. We lived.
We also had a nice little sand storm the second day. I was splitting my time between monitoring the BFT, which I told you about last time, and going out and checking on the Marines. When the sand storm hit, I had been sitting in the truck, reading The Face of Battle (very slow to start, but picked up once I got past the first chapter), and glancing up at the BFT every once in a while. This particular time, I looked around to my gunner and asked him how he was doing.
“Preparing to get very sandy, ma’am,” he told me. I looked out the front window to see that the sand storm was about a minute out. This was wasn’t nearly as bad as the one the night of the fire, and it lasted less than five minutes. But, yes, it was very sandy. We were a few hundred meters away from the work site at that point, so I couldn’t see the Marines at the work site while it lasted. Once it was over, I attempted to regain communications with the COC (Combat Operations Center) and couldn’t. I waited a few more minutes, occasionally glancing back to the work site, which I could see in my rear view mirror. When I didn’t see the excavator running after a few minutes, I went out to check on them.
They were fine, if a bit sandy. We got the excavator up and running again, and I mentioned to my PltSgt that I was having trouble getting comm with the COC. He wasn’t surprised; the atmosphere wasn’t very conducive to electromagnetic waves in the atmosphere. We kept working, completed the project, and returned to base.
Turns out we were out of touch with the COC longer than I had thought, and much longer than we were supposed to be. The BFT messages I had been sending throughout the day hadn’t been making it to the COC, which was a problem. I had been sending BFT messages back to our company offices (one at our camp, and one at another camp a ways south of here), and those had been making it through, and I had been getting messages back from them. But not the COC. So I learned a big lesson for next time.
This is the part I hate most about being a 2ndLt. I already put in time as a junior worker bee, and now I’m back to square one, making mistakes that I should know not to make. It’s frustrating, and every day is a learning experience. I like to think I’m getting better at it, and then I go and do something stupid that makes me wonder if I matured at all in those five years after college. Sigh.
Happy 29th Anniversary to Mom and Dad! You are amazing examples as both parents and spouses, and I could not be more proud of them. I love you!
Our project was pretty simple: a HESCO pit 14’ tall and 30’x30’ inside. EOD wanted a protected location to do some work with all of the unexploded ordnance, or UXO, that they find, so we loaded up, went outside the wire, and built some HESCO for them. The purpose of HESCO is to replace piles of sandbags. It’s essentially a chain-link fence that folds out in squares with a special textile on the inside to hold in the sand. You open it up, get it in place, and then use a tractor to dump sand inside it. Once you’ve dumped the sand inside, you get some Marines on the top with shovels or rakes to level it off. You can stack HESCO once it has been filled, and it comes in many sizes—from 2’x2’x2’ to 7’6”(H)x7’x7’. It’s much quicker and easier than having Marines with shovels stacking individual sand bags.
So that was our project. It was about 100m outside of camp, right between two guard towers. We had to drive a little farther than that to get from the gate to the place where we built it, but we never went farther than a kilometer away from the camp. So it was a nice little milk run—a practice run for me for all of the different tasks and procedures needed to successfully run a trip outside the wire.
It took two days. The first day went really well. The second day…had a few more hiccups. Our TRAMs (tractor, rubber tire, articulated something-or-other; what we were using to shovel dirt into the HESCO) will only fill HESCO up to 11’ high. Our first layer was 7’. Our second layer, yes, was 14’. So instead of our two TRAMs filling HESCO, we had one excavator filling HESCO. Turns out our excavator operator was not that experienced, so it took a little while longer to fill the top layer than it did to fill the bottom layer, even though there was twice as much dirt in the bottom layer.
It is by far not the operator’s fault. We are attached to 9th Engineer Support Battalion, which is based in Okinawa. Due to restrictions in Japan, the heavy equipment operators are not given many chances to practice moving earth around. So he was a little new to his trade, and it took a little longer. That’s okay. We lived.
We also had a nice little sand storm the second day. I was splitting my time between monitoring the BFT, which I told you about last time, and going out and checking on the Marines. When the sand storm hit, I had been sitting in the truck, reading The Face of Battle (very slow to start, but picked up once I got past the first chapter), and glancing up at the BFT every once in a while. This particular time, I looked around to my gunner and asked him how he was doing.
“Preparing to get very sandy, ma’am,” he told me. I looked out the front window to see that the sand storm was about a minute out. This was wasn’t nearly as bad as the one the night of the fire, and it lasted less than five minutes. But, yes, it was very sandy. We were a few hundred meters away from the work site at that point, so I couldn’t see the Marines at the work site while it lasted. Once it was over, I attempted to regain communications with the COC (Combat Operations Center) and couldn’t. I waited a few more minutes, occasionally glancing back to the work site, which I could see in my rear view mirror. When I didn’t see the excavator running after a few minutes, I went out to check on them.
They were fine, if a bit sandy. We got the excavator up and running again, and I mentioned to my PltSgt that I was having trouble getting comm with the COC. He wasn’t surprised; the atmosphere wasn’t very conducive to electromagnetic waves in the atmosphere. We kept working, completed the project, and returned to base.
Turns out we were out of touch with the COC longer than I had thought, and much longer than we were supposed to be. The BFT messages I had been sending throughout the day hadn’t been making it to the COC, which was a problem. I had been sending BFT messages back to our company offices (one at our camp, and one at another camp a ways south of here), and those had been making it through, and I had been getting messages back from them. But not the COC. So I learned a big lesson for next time.
This is the part I hate most about being a 2ndLt. I already put in time as a junior worker bee, and now I’m back to square one, making mistakes that I should know not to make. It’s frustrating, and every day is a learning experience. I like to think I’m getting better at it, and then I go and do something stupid that makes me wonder if I matured at all in those five years after college. Sigh.
Happy 29th Anniversary to Mom and Dad! You are amazing examples as both parents and spouses, and I could not be more proud of them. I love you!
03 June 2010
Energy Conservation and the Marine Corps
One of the questions that came from my last blog post was why we kept the A/C on so strong in our room, as it wastes electricity and would make it more difficult to adjust to the climate here. It’s a perfectly fair question, although we haven’t had it on quite so strong recently; we’ve been putting it on fan vice A/C for the past few nights. Yesterday morning when I woke up, it was actually cooler outside than it was inside the room. In fact, it’s supposed to be below 100 for four days in a row, starting yesterday. You wouldn’t think it would make that much of a difference, but I have indeed gotten to the point where there’s a day in the high 90s and I think it feels like a nice day. This is how I know that I’ve gotten acclimatized.
Regarding energy conservation. In case you haven’t figured out, fighting a war is not exactly environmentally friendly. This includes energy use. For example, when we go outside the wire, like we did Monday and Tuesday, we didn’t turn our vehicles off, even though they were sitting in the same place all day long. There’s a couple reasons for this. First is that unless you have a purpose for being outside the vehicle, such as working on a project, you stay inside the vehicle and keep the doors closed. This is because the vehicle’s armor does a much better job of protecting you than your PPE, or personal protective equipment. So one of the reasons you leave the vehicle running so that the personnel inside don’t cook.
There are other reasons, too: the vehicle needs to be powered for all the comm and BFT (Blue Force Tracker, the program that shows where all the nearby friendly units are) to work, you need to be able to go somewhere at a moment’s notice, and you don’t have to worry about the vehicle not turning back on if you never turn it off. What all this amounts to is that for 8-10 hours, I was “wasting” a lot of fuel. But what would have happened if we had been attacked? It was highly unlikely—our project was literally right underneath the guard towers on base—but it was a possibility we had to be prepared for. We would have needed to maneuver the vehicles to keep the threat away from the personnel working on the ground; that time it would have taken to start the vehicle could have made a big difference.
That’s a pretty unlikely scenario; the more likely scenario is that one of the work trucks we took out there, such as the dump truck or the trailer to haul the excavator, wouldn’t have wanted to re-start. That would have also left us unable to pick up and move at a moment’s notice if we had wanted to. So fuel consumption is not typically something we worry about.
As far as electricity goes, we don’t worry too much about conservation—water conservation is a bigger consideration. Our electricity comes from generators (ie fuel) and “shore power”, which is a power grid here on camp. I don’t know where the electricity is generated, but conservation is not something that is stressed. We are encouraged to conserve as much water as we can—turn the water off when you’re soaping up in the shower, don’t leave it running while you brush your teeth, etc.
This is not to say that the Marine Corps does not discuss energy conservation. It’s actually a hot topic in the Marine Corps stateside right now, as it’s an important issue to our Commandant. The Marine Corps actually had its first building LEED certified last year. I forget exactly what LEED stands for (you can probably google it), but it’s an organization that certifies that buildings are energy efficient. And HQMC is looking at ways to make bases and operation state-side more energy efficient. But here in theater…we haven’t gotten there yet.
I hope that makes sense. Any questions—just ask! And thanks for the e-mails. They were a huge morale boost in the middle of this week that I needed.
Regarding energy conservation. In case you haven’t figured out, fighting a war is not exactly environmentally friendly. This includes energy use. For example, when we go outside the wire, like we did Monday and Tuesday, we didn’t turn our vehicles off, even though they were sitting in the same place all day long. There’s a couple reasons for this. First is that unless you have a purpose for being outside the vehicle, such as working on a project, you stay inside the vehicle and keep the doors closed. This is because the vehicle’s armor does a much better job of protecting you than your PPE, or personal protective equipment. So one of the reasons you leave the vehicle running so that the personnel inside don’t cook.
There are other reasons, too: the vehicle needs to be powered for all the comm and BFT (Blue Force Tracker, the program that shows where all the nearby friendly units are) to work, you need to be able to go somewhere at a moment’s notice, and you don’t have to worry about the vehicle not turning back on if you never turn it off. What all this amounts to is that for 8-10 hours, I was “wasting” a lot of fuel. But what would have happened if we had been attacked? It was highly unlikely—our project was literally right underneath the guard towers on base—but it was a possibility we had to be prepared for. We would have needed to maneuver the vehicles to keep the threat away from the personnel working on the ground; that time it would have taken to start the vehicle could have made a big difference.
That’s a pretty unlikely scenario; the more likely scenario is that one of the work trucks we took out there, such as the dump truck or the trailer to haul the excavator, wouldn’t have wanted to re-start. That would have also left us unable to pick up and move at a moment’s notice if we had wanted to. So fuel consumption is not typically something we worry about.
As far as electricity goes, we don’t worry too much about conservation—water conservation is a bigger consideration. Our electricity comes from generators (ie fuel) and “shore power”, which is a power grid here on camp. I don’t know where the electricity is generated, but conservation is not something that is stressed. We are encouraged to conserve as much water as we can—turn the water off when you’re soaping up in the shower, don’t leave it running while you brush your teeth, etc.
This is not to say that the Marine Corps does not discuss energy conservation. It’s actually a hot topic in the Marine Corps stateside right now, as it’s an important issue to our Commandant. The Marine Corps actually had its first building LEED certified last year. I forget exactly what LEED stands for (you can probably google it), but it’s an organization that certifies that buildings are energy efficient. And HQMC is looking at ways to make bases and operation state-side more energy efficient. But here in theater…we haven’t gotten there yet.
I hope that makes sense. Any questions—just ask! And thanks for the e-mails. They were a huge morale boost in the middle of this week that I needed.
30 May 2010
Must. Happen. Now.
When I started this blog, it was my intention that I would update it 2-3 times a week with short-ish posts. Obviously, it's not turning out that way--it's more like how I normally write, which is a whole bunch all at once, with long periods of time where I'm too busy/don't have ideas/don't feel like it in between. So this will be not just a long-ish post, but a bona fide long post. Feel free to bookmark and come back to it over the course of the next couple of days, because if your free time has been anything like mine over the last week, you don't have time to read it right now.
Okay. So I figure I'll start with how a normal day goes. I wake up around 0600-0630 in an air-conditioned room. In fact, we keep it so cool in here at night that I've started wearing a thin long-sleeved fleece-type thing at night to keep me warm enough. I typically fall asleep at night listening to music, and then I leave the earphones in overnight to block out the sound of the air conditioners. Showers come at night, because I don't like feeling gross when I'm sleeping, so once I'm awake I use the head and do my hair. We're not required to carry our weapons when we're using the head, so I usually make the walk in shorts and flip-flops. My brain usually turns on at some point while I'm working on my hair, which is good, because otherwise the days would be pretty difficult.
Once I've completed morning hygiene I head to the chow hall. Several days out of the week I'm either dropping laundry off or picking it up. I don't do my own laundry here--there are TCNs (third country nationals) that do it--and we don't pay for it--but it is a bit of a walk to the laundry drop-off/pick-up point. I usually do this in conjunction with breakfast, because the two are somewhat co-located.
Well, it's co-located with one of the chow halls. There's a small chow hall on the way to work that I usually eat at, and then there are a couple other larger chow halls that we prefer for lunch because they are air-conditioned. Eating at the chow hall is a process. First you clear your weapon, then you wash your hands. Above the sinks they have posters exhorting you to take your malaria meds (I do) and pictures of people that have died from malaria--Ghenghis Khan, George Washington--are you next? I'm not. Then I pull out my ID card and scan it, and stand in line to get food. Like I said, the food here is pretty good.
I check my e-mail once I get to work--I have both classified and unclassified e-mail to check--and start work for the day. And here we get to the fun part.
When our unit came in, we performed what is called a relief in place/transfer of authority, or RIP/TOA (rip-toe-uh). We had two weeks in country before this happened to feel our way around the base, and then the official RIP/TOA happened last Monday. Our two weeks to start weren't all that busy, which was good since we were trying to get our feet underneath us. And then on Saturday evening, right around the time I was about to leave work, I got two projects dumped on my lap. I looked at them, talked to a couple of people, determined that they actually didn't have to be done NOW, as initially appeared to be the case, and left for the evening.
Then I came in the next morning. Again, the frantic: something must happen now! Give me a name! So I said, okay...here's your name. Now what's going on? And the answer was: . . --Let me find out. So, it turned out that instead of sending my guy on someone else's mission (additional to the ones I had been told about the night before) I was planning the mission. At that point I said, well if that's the case, it's not happening today. Eventually everything calmed down, and things were settled for the night. But not before the day was pretty much over.
Yeah, so that's the second Sunday I tried to "take off" and failed. About the same thing happened today, although I am taking the afternoon off.
But what that meant was that I got in Monday morning with three brand-new things to plan and execute on them. And they typically say on them that you have five days to plan. But plan I did. We had the hardest time getting a hold of a point of contact for one of the projects, but I eventually did talk to them. Turns out the people that had originally requested the project were no longer there, and the new people didn't know much about it. But they told me to go ahead with it, so I planned it and briefed it to the Colonel yesterday. He had some concerns, but we've addressed them, and we're scheduled to start tomorrow. This will be my first time leading a mission outside the wire. In case you think that sounds scary, it isn't. It's mostly boring. And this particular mission we're doing right underneath one of the guard towers. It will be boring.
One of our projects--the one that we found out about last Sunday morning--will be fun. There's a patrol base not far from here that we're going to go make some improvements to. I took two of my Sergeants down there on Thursday--my first time outside the wire--and we took a look around. We can do a lot for them to make them safer and improve their quality of life, so both I and the Marines are pretty excited about it. It will take a lot of planning and coordination, but we have a little more time to do it. They'll have some Afghan National Army (ANA) soldiers in the base for training up until mid-June, so we'll start after the ANA has left.
Our last project to plan for is a project here on base. My Sergeant in charge of the project wanted to start Wednesday, which was presenting a problem, not only because we need to coordinate concrete trucks for it, but also because of the briefing requirements. We're required to brief the Battalion Commander 48 hours in advance of starting a project. Which means the S-3 (Operations Shop) has to look at it roughly the day before, which means my company staff has to look at it roughly the day before that. So all the planning for a project has to be complete a minimum of four days in advance. So it's Sunday, and my Sergeant wanted to start the project Wednesday...yeah, that's not four days. I spent a chunk of the morning finishing up the brief so it could get approved by the company staff and the S-3 today. However, we couldn't get the concrete coordinated, and I told him we weren't briefing the project before we had the concrete coordinated, so it's going to have to get pushed off a day or two until we get those details ironed out. But that's fine with me, because we'll still easily meet the deadline, and it means I don't have to discuss the brief this afternoon when I'm trying to (1) rest, and (2) prepare for my mission tomorrow.
They do have Episcopalian/Anglican services out here, so I've been making time on Sunday mornings to go. Both last week and this week as I've been reading the words to the liturgy, and thinking about them, it's struck me how different they seem here, even though they are the same words. Before, when I was in the states, I knew that they were the same words that had been used by Christians across the world for who knows how many years, but they were still just the words I read from the Book of Common Prayer every Sunday. Yeah, you substitute Form VI for Form II for the prayers of the people, and sometimes you do Rite I instead of Rite II, but when it comes down to it, it's the same.
I think it's the radically different environment that's prodding this thinking. I think back to St Luke's in Grants Pass, or All Saints in Pasadena. One's a tiny church on Oregon, the other a huge church in Los Angeles. But they were essentially the same environment. Cushioned pews. Stained glass. Men, women, and children in Sunday clothes. A choir in robes. An organ, with someone playing both before and after the service.
Today I was the only woman in the service. There were no children. There was one civilian, but everyone else was in uniform and carrying a weapon. There's a British Royal Marine that attends, and the civilian is a TCN. The priest was wearing a uniform under his robes, and the choir was a little box that played the organ for us. (We sang Holy, Holy, Holy today. It was nice.) The building was a tent, but still (fortunately) air-conditioned. The inside has some wood paneling with crosses on it--it's difficult to describe but actually a pretty nice environment for Afghanistan.
Today when I came in the priest asked if I could do one of the readings, and since I really enjoyed doing that back in Grants Pass I agreed. It was the second reading and from Romans 5, about suffering producing endurance, endurance character, and character hope. I'm going to need a lot of endurance to get through this deployment, so it was a nice passage to read. But it gives me some comfort, especially last week, to know that the people I know in Grants Pass and Los Angeles are reading and hearing this same passage, just a few hours behind.
Anyways. Back to the daily routine. Yesterday (Saturday) was not an uncommon day, when at 1900 my SSgt kicked me out of the office. We hit dinner on the way back to the barracks, and then parted ways. I'm working my way through Stargate SG-1, which makes for a nice little escape at night--that or some sudoku. I picked up a book of irregular sudoku puzzles at B&N right before I left and am loving them. Instead of standard 9x9 grids, they have puzzles with multiple grids, puzzles that include diagonals, puzzles that don't give you any numbers to start with but do give you sums of groups of numbers...much more fun than normal sudoku!
A note about facebook. E-mail is actually pretty easy to get to, and I can usually get to this blog in the mornings or at night. But facebook is just about impossible. So if you want to get a hold of me, then shoot me an e-mail or leave a comment. If you leave a comment on my FB page, I'm not going to see it. I think I'm going to try to get on once more to post a note with my address here in Afghanistan, but I make no guarantees, and after that I'm not going to even try.
If you have any questions for me about what it's like here or what I'm doing, feel free to (again) shoot me an e-mail or leave a comment, and I'll do my best to answer within operational security concerns. Don't be surprised if the comments don't post right away, because I have to approve them first.
Okay. So I figure I'll start with how a normal day goes. I wake up around 0600-0630 in an air-conditioned room. In fact, we keep it so cool in here at night that I've started wearing a thin long-sleeved fleece-type thing at night to keep me warm enough. I typically fall asleep at night listening to music, and then I leave the earphones in overnight to block out the sound of the air conditioners. Showers come at night, because I don't like feeling gross when I'm sleeping, so once I'm awake I use the head and do my hair. We're not required to carry our weapons when we're using the head, so I usually make the walk in shorts and flip-flops. My brain usually turns on at some point while I'm working on my hair, which is good, because otherwise the days would be pretty difficult.
Once I've completed morning hygiene I head to the chow hall. Several days out of the week I'm either dropping laundry off or picking it up. I don't do my own laundry here--there are TCNs (third country nationals) that do it--and we don't pay for it--but it is a bit of a walk to the laundry drop-off/pick-up point. I usually do this in conjunction with breakfast, because the two are somewhat co-located.
Well, it's co-located with one of the chow halls. There's a small chow hall on the way to work that I usually eat at, and then there are a couple other larger chow halls that we prefer for lunch because they are air-conditioned. Eating at the chow hall is a process. First you clear your weapon, then you wash your hands. Above the sinks they have posters exhorting you to take your malaria meds (I do) and pictures of people that have died from malaria--Ghenghis Khan, George Washington--are you next? I'm not. Then I pull out my ID card and scan it, and stand in line to get food. Like I said, the food here is pretty good.
I check my e-mail once I get to work--I have both classified and unclassified e-mail to check--and start work for the day. And here we get to the fun part.
When our unit came in, we performed what is called a relief in place/transfer of authority, or RIP/TOA (rip-toe-uh). We had two weeks in country before this happened to feel our way around the base, and then the official RIP/TOA happened last Monday. Our two weeks to start weren't all that busy, which was good since we were trying to get our feet underneath us. And then on Saturday evening, right around the time I was about to leave work, I got two projects dumped on my lap. I looked at them, talked to a couple of people, determined that they actually didn't have to be done NOW, as initially appeared to be the case, and left for the evening.
Then I came in the next morning. Again, the frantic: something must happen now! Give me a name! So I said, okay...here's your name. Now what's going on? And the answer was: . . --Let me find out. So, it turned out that instead of sending my guy on someone else's mission (additional to the ones I had been told about the night before) I was planning the mission. At that point I said, well if that's the case, it's not happening today. Eventually everything calmed down, and things were settled for the night. But not before the day was pretty much over.
Yeah, so that's the second Sunday I tried to "take off" and failed. About the same thing happened today, although I am taking the afternoon off.
But what that meant was that I got in Monday morning with three brand-new things to plan and execute on them. And they typically say on them that you have five days to plan. But plan I did. We had the hardest time getting a hold of a point of contact for one of the projects, but I eventually did talk to them. Turns out the people that had originally requested the project were no longer there, and the new people didn't know much about it. But they told me to go ahead with it, so I planned it and briefed it to the Colonel yesterday. He had some concerns, but we've addressed them, and we're scheduled to start tomorrow. This will be my first time leading a mission outside the wire. In case you think that sounds scary, it isn't. It's mostly boring. And this particular mission we're doing right underneath one of the guard towers. It will be boring.
One of our projects--the one that we found out about last Sunday morning--will be fun. There's a patrol base not far from here that we're going to go make some improvements to. I took two of my Sergeants down there on Thursday--my first time outside the wire--and we took a look around. We can do a lot for them to make them safer and improve their quality of life, so both I and the Marines are pretty excited about it. It will take a lot of planning and coordination, but we have a little more time to do it. They'll have some Afghan National Army (ANA) soldiers in the base for training up until mid-June, so we'll start after the ANA has left.
Our last project to plan for is a project here on base. My Sergeant in charge of the project wanted to start Wednesday, which was presenting a problem, not only because we need to coordinate concrete trucks for it, but also because of the briefing requirements. We're required to brief the Battalion Commander 48 hours in advance of starting a project. Which means the S-3 (Operations Shop) has to look at it roughly the day before, which means my company staff has to look at it roughly the day before that. So all the planning for a project has to be complete a minimum of four days in advance. So it's Sunday, and my Sergeant wanted to start the project Wednesday...yeah, that's not four days. I spent a chunk of the morning finishing up the brief so it could get approved by the company staff and the S-3 today. However, we couldn't get the concrete coordinated, and I told him we weren't briefing the project before we had the concrete coordinated, so it's going to have to get pushed off a day or two until we get those details ironed out. But that's fine with me, because we'll still easily meet the deadline, and it means I don't have to discuss the brief this afternoon when I'm trying to (1) rest, and (2) prepare for my mission tomorrow.
They do have Episcopalian/Anglican services out here, so I've been making time on Sunday mornings to go. Both last week and this week as I've been reading the words to the liturgy, and thinking about them, it's struck me how different they seem here, even though they are the same words. Before, when I was in the states, I knew that they were the same words that had been used by Christians across the world for who knows how many years, but they were still just the words I read from the Book of Common Prayer every Sunday. Yeah, you substitute Form VI for Form II for the prayers of the people, and sometimes you do Rite I instead of Rite II, but when it comes down to it, it's the same.
I think it's the radically different environment that's prodding this thinking. I think back to St Luke's in Grants Pass, or All Saints in Pasadena. One's a tiny church on Oregon, the other a huge church in Los Angeles. But they were essentially the same environment. Cushioned pews. Stained glass. Men, women, and children in Sunday clothes. A choir in robes. An organ, with someone playing both before and after the service.
Today I was the only woman in the service. There were no children. There was one civilian, but everyone else was in uniform and carrying a weapon. There's a British Royal Marine that attends, and the civilian is a TCN. The priest was wearing a uniform under his robes, and the choir was a little box that played the organ for us. (We sang Holy, Holy, Holy today. It was nice.) The building was a tent, but still (fortunately) air-conditioned. The inside has some wood paneling with crosses on it--it's difficult to describe but actually a pretty nice environment for Afghanistan.
Today when I came in the priest asked if I could do one of the readings, and since I really enjoyed doing that back in Grants Pass I agreed. It was the second reading and from Romans 5, about suffering producing endurance, endurance character, and character hope. I'm going to need a lot of endurance to get through this deployment, so it was a nice passage to read. But it gives me some comfort, especially last week, to know that the people I know in Grants Pass and Los Angeles are reading and hearing this same passage, just a few hours behind.
Anyways. Back to the daily routine. Yesterday (Saturday) was not an uncommon day, when at 1900 my SSgt kicked me out of the office. We hit dinner on the way back to the barracks, and then parted ways. I'm working my way through Stargate SG-1, which makes for a nice little escape at night--that or some sudoku. I picked up a book of irregular sudoku puzzles at B&N right before I left and am loving them. Instead of standard 9x9 grids, they have puzzles with multiple grids, puzzles that include diagonals, puzzles that don't give you any numbers to start with but do give you sums of groups of numbers...much more fun than normal sudoku!
A note about facebook. E-mail is actually pretty easy to get to, and I can usually get to this blog in the mornings or at night. But facebook is just about impossible. So if you want to get a hold of me, then shoot me an e-mail or leave a comment. If you leave a comment on my FB page, I'm not going to see it. I think I'm going to try to get on once more to post a note with my address here in Afghanistan, but I make no guarantees, and after that I'm not going to even try.
If you have any questions for me about what it's like here or what I'm doing, feel free to (again) shoot me an e-mail or leave a comment, and I'll do my best to answer within operational security concerns. Don't be surprised if the comments don't post right away, because I have to approve them first.
18 May 2010
That Was Wind
Remember what I said about boring being good? Sunday night was anything but boring.
Before I continue: no Marines were killed, all injuries were minor. At no point was I or any of my Marines in danger. So, yeah, I didn’t take a shower for the one night (I could have, but my better judgment overruled me), and breakfast was an MRE the next morning, but I’ve had worse.
I left work late Sunday afternoon—it wasn’t my intention to be working Sunday afternoon, but things always come up, so I was working Sunday afternoon. As I left work, I saw smoke rising in the air just off to the northwest, probably a tenth of a mile away. It was thick, black smoke, and looked like someone had lit a pile of tires on fire.
By the time I’d walked a little closer to see what was going on, the fire had grown significantly. The fire had started in a supply lot, where a lot of boxes were stacked up close to each other, the wind was blowing hard, and it hadn’t rained since we’d gotten here. Marines were already on site directing traffic, and I could hear sirens as emergency vehicles came in from multiple directions. One civilian vehicle didn’t want to stop for the emergency vehicles, so a Marine shouted at it to stop and walked over angrily. It stopped.
I watched for a few minutes then headed back to the barracks. The wind was blowing the fire away from the main body of the camp, and my Marines were all at the barracks, at the other end of the camp. By the time arrived at the barracks, 10 minutes later, the flames were shooting up 50-100ft in the air and the cloud of smoke was huge.
The dust storm didn’t start for another 45 minutes or so. We had a small dust storm the first day I was here, the previous Sunday. Yeah, it wasn’t much fun—sand gets in your eyes, you want to stay inside. But as my SSgt puts it, that dust storm the week before was just wind. This was miserable. I was in the chow hall, a set of large tents. The sides of the tents started flapping, and the interior of the chow hall became dusty. As I headed out, two Marines came through the exit. I immediately saw why.
I couldn’t see more than five feet in front of me. I don’t know if the sun had set at that point, but it certainly appeared to have. I could see lights—headlights, flashlights of Marines seeking cover, but not much else. I knew where I was going—there was a wall and a fence that would channelize me as I headed back to the barracks. But I was walking into the wind, dust stinging my eyes every time I tried to look where I was going. I got about halfway there and heard a shout from one of the vehicles on the road asking if I wanted a ride. I took it, gladly.
They dropped me off at my barracks, where I picked up my goggles and neck gaiter. I checked with my platoon again; the power had been out in our barracks for a day and a half, so without A/C they were down to skivvy shorts, but happily watching Scrubs. The XO and I walked back down to the Battalion office to report that all the Marines were accounted for. We passed streams of Marines on the way heading away from the fire; there were a lot of billeting areas just across the street from the fire, so they had been evacuated. The Marines down at Battalion were watching the fire; it had started in the lot just across the street, so they had a good view. We were told the fire was approaching the fuel farm, which had the potential to make the situation much worse.
The XO asked around and found out that our reporting superior was up at the barracks. We walked back up there and reported in, then went back to our own rooms. Fortunately by this time the dust storm had settled down, so I took my goggles and neck gaiter off. I hung out with some of the other officers for an hour or so before I decided there was nothing more for me to do. We saw five large explosions and thought it was our fuel, but found out later they were oxygen tanks.
They shut down some of the camp services—there was no water or electricity in the heads the next morning, and the chow halls were handing out MREs for breakfast. We hadn’t lost any of our food or water (or at least not a significant amount), but the trucks that normally carry potable water had been used to fight the fire and had to be disinfected before they could take water to the chow halls again. They opened the fast food line for lunch—the daily special for lunch was flame broiled burgers and hot dogs, complete with a cool drawing on the whiteboard outside the chow hall. They closed down laundry for a day but re-opened it; turn-around time for drop-off laundry is normally 24 hours but they’re up at 48 hours right now.
Life goes on, returning to that uneventful routine. Sunday before all this happened, I headed down to the bazaar on Camp Leatherneck and picked up the entire Stargate SG-1 series to keep me entertained while I’m here. It’s got a second audio track—I can’t recognize the language but I did recognize the word ‘Abu’—but the quality is fairly good. I’ll see how long it lasts; maybe I’ll need to head back down and pick up Stargate Atlantis as well. :-)
Before I continue: no Marines were killed, all injuries were minor. At no point was I or any of my Marines in danger. So, yeah, I didn’t take a shower for the one night (I could have, but my better judgment overruled me), and breakfast was an MRE the next morning, but I’ve had worse.
I left work late Sunday afternoon—it wasn’t my intention to be working Sunday afternoon, but things always come up, so I was working Sunday afternoon. As I left work, I saw smoke rising in the air just off to the northwest, probably a tenth of a mile away. It was thick, black smoke, and looked like someone had lit a pile of tires on fire.
By the time I’d walked a little closer to see what was going on, the fire had grown significantly. The fire had started in a supply lot, where a lot of boxes were stacked up close to each other, the wind was blowing hard, and it hadn’t rained since we’d gotten here. Marines were already on site directing traffic, and I could hear sirens as emergency vehicles came in from multiple directions. One civilian vehicle didn’t want to stop for the emergency vehicles, so a Marine shouted at it to stop and walked over angrily. It stopped.
I watched for a few minutes then headed back to the barracks. The wind was blowing the fire away from the main body of the camp, and my Marines were all at the barracks, at the other end of the camp. By the time arrived at the barracks, 10 minutes later, the flames were shooting up 50-100ft in the air and the cloud of smoke was huge.
The dust storm didn’t start for another 45 minutes or so. We had a small dust storm the first day I was here, the previous Sunday. Yeah, it wasn’t much fun—sand gets in your eyes, you want to stay inside. But as my SSgt puts it, that dust storm the week before was just wind. This was miserable. I was in the chow hall, a set of large tents. The sides of the tents started flapping, and the interior of the chow hall became dusty. As I headed out, two Marines came through the exit. I immediately saw why.
I couldn’t see more than five feet in front of me. I don’t know if the sun had set at that point, but it certainly appeared to have. I could see lights—headlights, flashlights of Marines seeking cover, but not much else. I knew where I was going—there was a wall and a fence that would channelize me as I headed back to the barracks. But I was walking into the wind, dust stinging my eyes every time I tried to look where I was going. I got about halfway there and heard a shout from one of the vehicles on the road asking if I wanted a ride. I took it, gladly.
They dropped me off at my barracks, where I picked up my goggles and neck gaiter. I checked with my platoon again; the power had been out in our barracks for a day and a half, so without A/C they were down to skivvy shorts, but happily watching Scrubs. The XO and I walked back down to the Battalion office to report that all the Marines were accounted for. We passed streams of Marines on the way heading away from the fire; there were a lot of billeting areas just across the street from the fire, so they had been evacuated. The Marines down at Battalion were watching the fire; it had started in the lot just across the street, so they had a good view. We were told the fire was approaching the fuel farm, which had the potential to make the situation much worse.
The XO asked around and found out that our reporting superior was up at the barracks. We walked back up there and reported in, then went back to our own rooms. Fortunately by this time the dust storm had settled down, so I took my goggles and neck gaiter off. I hung out with some of the other officers for an hour or so before I decided there was nothing more for me to do. We saw five large explosions and thought it was our fuel, but found out later they were oxygen tanks.
They shut down some of the camp services—there was no water or electricity in the heads the next morning, and the chow halls were handing out MREs for breakfast. We hadn’t lost any of our food or water (or at least not a significant amount), but the trucks that normally carry potable water had been used to fight the fire and had to be disinfected before they could take water to the chow halls again. They opened the fast food line for lunch—the daily special for lunch was flame broiled burgers and hot dogs, complete with a cool drawing on the whiteboard outside the chow hall. They closed down laundry for a day but re-opened it; turn-around time for drop-off laundry is normally 24 hours but they’re up at 48 hours right now.
Life goes on, returning to that uneventful routine. Sunday before all this happened, I headed down to the bazaar on Camp Leatherneck and picked up the entire Stargate SG-1 series to keep me entertained while I’m here. It’s got a second audio track—I can’t recognize the language but I did recognize the word ‘Abu’—but the quality is fairly good. I’ll see how long it lasts; maybe I’ll need to head back down and pick up Stargate Atlantis as well. :-)
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