Orange Crush

I wake up. There’s a strange almost florescent glow coming from the window. I look out. Orange. Everything is orange. I can make out the images of the things nearby. I can’t see anything else. It’s all orange. I lie back down and try to go back to sleep.

Before I doze off again, the oddity of the scene suddenly strikes me, and I wonder if I had dreamt it. I get back up and look out the window. Still orange. I don’t think to take a picture. The confirmation that I’m not hallucinating is good enough. I go back to sleep.

I wake up. It’s dark. Dark yet gray. I go outside. The wind is blowing hard. And then I feel it. The density of the air. Walking to my destination, eyes nearly shut, I start breathing harder. Trying not to. Every breath is like consuming a teaspoon of dust. I finally get there. I can still feel it in my lungs. I didn’t even walk that far.

I check in with Wikipedia, to learn more of this monster that confronts me. Guess what location has the feature picture? That’s right. It’s us. 

Welcome to Tatooine

Al Asad reminds me most of those summer months on Tatooine. Not far outside Mos Eisley, there were structures just like these.

I tried to get a closer look once, but we were chased off by sand people before we ever got a chance to explore them, so I couldn't tell you what's in them. Needless to say, I keep my distance from these ones as well.

C-130 Rollin' Down the Strip

Camp LeJeune’s air station is actually an hour north in a town called Cherry Point, so after people had said all their goodbyes to weepy wives and families, we boarded a bus that brought us all up there. We arrived six hours early, just to be on the safe side. In the waiting area at the hanger in Cherry Point, there were about three bookcases worth of books that had been donated by area libraries. Every single one of them was a paperback romance. I never really decided whether anything of interest had already been sifted through or if some library ladies somewhere were enjoying a cruel joke.

We eventually boarded the plane – a commercial flight that was all military – and were told to secure our rifles under our seats.  We were carrying rifles and pistols every one of us but, I kid you not, we were told at the last minute that knifes over six inches had to be checked. Oddly, no one had anything to declare. We flew six hours to some obscure Irish town where we had an hour layover. So we all got out and stormed the few shops that were open in the middle of the night. I spent four dollars on a bottle of liquid that was labeled “Diet Cherry Coke” but was otherwise unrecognizable to me.

As we left Ireland the day dawn was breaking and six hours later we arrived in Kuwait as the sun was setting. Right by plane on the tarmac there were busses waiting for us that whisked us away to Camp Virginia, a US base in northern Kuwait.  Camp Virginia’s a bizarre place; feels kind of like a large-scale movie set. There are no trees anywhere, just tan tents and buildings up against a blue sky in every direction. We spent the night there and in the morning took another bus ride to another airline waiting station where we were again six hours early.

Flying into Iraq was, to say the least, anti-climactic. In training at The Basic School, we flew on helicopters multiple times, each simulating an extraction or insertion into a hot landing zone. We would board running and it would take off before we could even get our seat belts on. As soon as the roller coaster-like flight had landed, we were dashing off and diving into the tree line to set up a defensive perimeter.

So when we boarded the C-130 plane in Kuwait, whose interior is actually quite similar to the helicopters I was familiar with, my first instinct was to belt in as fast as possible. Then a 20 minute flight delay. After a smooth two hour flight we landed quietly and waited some more. Then we got off, slowly, and boarded busses that took us to our tents.

The most startling thing about Al Asad was how big and developed it was. Camp Virginia actually felt like a forward operating base in the Arabian Desert. Al Asad feels like a whole town from the nether parts of Arizona or Nevada had been lifted up out of the ground and retransplanted.  The below picture isn’t much to see, but it’s as a good an overhead shot as I’ve been able to get. What you see there is just a section of town – the industrial neighborhood, if you will.

I'll provide my entries for Things to See and Places to Eat for Fodor's throughout the year. 

Hangin Out in the Hood

A week or so ago I was waiting for a bus at a bus stop downtown at night. There’s still some construction going on and all the fences, the hastily built structures, the cracks in the pavement, and the worn down bus stop made it all feel like a typical urban environment. Especially at night when there is little light. At the bus stop there were two guys in hoodies and jeans and a couple of guys in American thrift shop-type clothes. I shivered. The wind was blowing hard. Probably in the low 40’s. All of a sudden it occurred to me: I’m in freaking inner-city Chicago.

The only difference is, I’ve got a pistol attached to my leg. And they don’t.

Never Winter and Always Christmas

This place is a like a reverse Narnia. February is upon us and it's still Christmas. Witness the mass of goodies that have come from Christmas care packages.



It's all on a table in the hallway for anyone to take. Candy, books, toothbrushes and toothpaste, stationary, all kinds of odds and ends. Everyday someone opens a couple of the boxes and puts the stuff out onto the table and, as of this writing, there are still stacks of boxes yet to be opened. And this is all just stuff that was given to the unit we're replacing. It's amazing that this stuff gets rumaged through by hundreds of people on a daily bases, and there's still all this crap.

Most of these care packages are filled with big baggies full of stuff, evidently intended to each go to an individual Marine. Generally, the bags get opened and sorted: the hand sanitizer in the box full of hand sanitizers, the playing cards with the stacks of playing cards, the toothbrush in the box full of toothbrushes, etc. We used to have a big box full of razors – those cheap plastic single blade razors – collected from weeks of care packages. I think someone finally just threw the whole box away.

The other day I was looking through one box of goodie bags that I was thinking was particularly obnoxious. In each bag a copy of Reader's Digest, some crappy candy, some handy-wipes, other worthless trinkets. Then I caught a glimpse of the handcrafted card placed in each bag. "Young Women's Camp, Summer 2008. Portland Oregon Stake. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints." I thought about writing back to the stake, "Thank you so much for your thoughtful care package. We threw most of it away."