Around Iraq

Hi everyone! In the following pictures, when I say “various gifts” I mean they are Turkish gifts made in Turkey. Ali has them sent here. He used to be a translator and worked with the Army, when they first got here, and decided to sell stuff inside the camp instead. We take care of him. We (marines) gave him body armor and kevlar, he has a place to stay here and he eats for free. He is considered one of the workers. But the other workers don’t have body armor at least that I have seen. Everyone likes Ali—hell, he has Colonels come in that have orders with him. He is that type of guy that you ask, “Can you get me….” and he says no problem.

Palace Grounds

Hi Guys!

I had to clear this up for Jen as well; I know all of the stories that have been on the news about Ramadi. Before I got out here I was a little worried as well, but in fact I am at Camp Blue Diamond, which used to be a wild game preserve for Saddam and his sons.

Ramadi is across the Euphrates from us and there is a huge wall (about 30 feet high) which blocks out everyone’s view of us. I think Saddam didn’t want to see the Iraqi people or have them see him. On the other side of us is a huge wall as well, which used to have huge portcullis gates at each end of camp. [See below for an example of a portcullis gate! -Jen] However, now the gates have been removed and it’s just the arches! We have these well guarded with barriers and lots of firepower, artillery, and snipers, so nobody gets more than a hundred yards of us.

I won’t be leaving the camp, unless I have to go on a convoy, which are at night, for safety, or on Helo. There is a chance that I will be going to Camp Fallujah for a month or so, but that camp is a lot like ours, away from the city and heavily fortified.

As for living conditions (as I mentioned before) I am in a large guest quarters with 12 other officers, and it is just like a frat house. I have a night shift and have the place to myself most of the time. I am the Division G6 (Communications) watch officer. I maintain all communications systems (secret internet/e-mail, regular internet/e-mail, telephones, satellite, tactical radio and HF radio) for the Division units, which are spread over a 100 square mile area around Baghdad. If something goes down, I have to identify it and then start the repair process. Once that starts, I then have to start the report process to the colonels and have to keep updating them until the issues have been resolved.

I am also working part time as the Information Management Officer with a Warrant Officer. We have to do a lot of IT work like creating data bases, Active Server Pages, maintaining websites and development work. We were working 8 hour shifts, but now I have 12 hour shifts and might go up to 16 hour shifts pretty soon.

I only get about 4 hours of sleep a day. I have trouble sleeping, because people come in and out all the time, slamming doors and such, oh well. I wake up around 2ish and then go to the gym for an hour and a half, then go back to the room and relax. I then get ready for the night meeting around 7 and work from 8pm till 8am and start the whole thing all over again. We work 7 days a week, no days off. I don’t mind it much; I am actually having a good time. I get to do what I wanted to do when I joined the MC.

Love,
Tom

Palace grounds—This is near the river where I work.

This is the other side of Usay’s Palace.

This large gate is the entrance.

This is the outer hallway of the palace in which I work.

Tom’s Daily Grind

My day usually starts around 9:30pm. I jump off the top bunk and get on my shower shoes, get my shower kit and towel, and head out to the community showers. The showers aren’t anything like MASH and they aren’t buildings either–they are mobile shower trailers with 16 stalls per trailer. They are nicer than some of the camp sites we have stayed at (pics will come later). The trailers also have six sinks in the middle of the trailer that separate the eight pairs of shower stalls. After I get cleaned it is back to the house, Building 223, where I talk to my roommates and get dressed. After some always enjoyable conversation I head out to the Palace/COC (Operations HQ). I check in with the outgoing watch and then head to late dinner and then hurry up to start my watch.

Work consists of watching the many communications links from our adjacent units and our command unit 1MEF. We have software that lets us know when something goes out and how long it has been down. I then have to contact our Systems office and find out the problem and estimated time of recovery. When that is complete, I log in the entries into our log as well as 1MEF’s logs. I also wait until the problems have been fixed and update the logs accordingly. I also am incharge of the Help Desk in the COC. I have four marines who fix the various computer issues that arise in a state of the art war-fighting center.

Around 5:30am, I head back to the chow hall for my last meal of the day, breakfast. One thing about the food out here? It is outstanding! For breakfast I usually have the egg chef make me a western omelette, and I get sausage and hash browns. Yummy! Then it is back to the office, where I wait for around 7am (0700) and the usual round of enemy mortars to land in the Euphrates river behind me. They aren’t very good shots, really. They have to run into their positions and fire as quickly as they can and run away before we lower the hand of pain on them. We can quickly triangulate their positions and fire on them with 155mm high explosive artillery, usually around 6-8 shot vollies. A 155mm shell is roughly the size of a 2½ foot long coffee can. I would not want to be anywhere near that display! Needless to say those little buggers don’t have time to aim, so we stand back and watch the show.

My watch ends at 8am and then I have a meeting at 9am. I then get my lifting partner, a Warrant Officer, who is a programmer and has the watch before me, and head out to the gym. We have started going to the gym about six days a week, this breaks up the daily grind! After the gym, I try to fall asleep and turn over a new page in my Iraqi notebook.

First emails from Iraq

I received a phone call from Tom last night (well, this morning!) at 2am letting me know he had arrived safely and had met everyone he needed to. (I have a feeling I’ll be getting quite a few of these off-timed calls…but it’s well worth it to hear his voice!) What follows is a compilation the first few emails he sent me.

I am now the late night watch officer, from 12-8am, it isn’t bad. I have been sleeping on such a shitty schedule that I don’t mind having to work it. I didn’t get any sleep yesterday, so I slept like a baby from 10am to 730pm. There is so much tactical gear that I am in the stupid seat now, and am spinning myself up on everything. After a few weeks I will be doing other stuff as I am more familiar with everything.

The Camp is small but not bad. A little about the place I live. It is a marble house, in a row of about 4, all looking the same. There are 4 rooms and a small entry room. Kyle [a friend from Camp Lejeune] is in the first room with 2 Majors, a Lt Colonel, and a Captain. I am in the next room with a Captain, 2 Warrant Officers and 2 Majors. We all are in bunk beds and everyone has gear stuffed everywhere! I am glad I brought my pillow, because there are none here! Another thing you could send me are a couple of fitted sheets and a blanket, I have to use my poncho liner to cover the mattress. There is a gazebo out back full of camping chairs and a large Sony TV that they watch DVDs all the time. They loved the movies I brought! All in all, the place feels like a fraternity house with a bunch of old frat boys. Not too bad at all.

I wish you could send Diet Coke, they have no diet POP here! Ugh, I hate the taste of that nasty syrup. The chow hall is AWESOME here. For breakfast they have an egg chef that will cook your eggs to order, tomorrow I will get the western omelet. They have anything you could want. I slept through lunch and dinner, but they have a midnight meal, which was yummy. I had a polish sausage, veal parmesan, and onion rings, yummy!

Heading to Iraq

I finally got to talk to Tom last night! (I haven’t talked to him since he arrived in Iraq a few days ago.) The bad news? He told me that he can’t get any IM (instant messaging) clients to work through their firewall…so that means no chatting like we were really planning on and looking forward to (to save expensive phone card minutes). But, the good news? Through a convoluted dialing system (dialing Camp Pendleton and then being rerouted to our number via operator), he can use his phone card minutes on a 1:1 ratio (as if he was calling from the US) instead of a 1:12 ratio (as if he was actually calling from Iraq)! The only minor glitch is that there’s about a 1- or 2-second delay where I can hear my voice echoing back to me–although he sounds clear as a bell. And the better news? He can make phone calls right from his desk at work so he can pretty much call me every day!

The pictures below are of his first class cabin on the way over, as well as some more shots of his lovely abode!

And then not: March AFB, California—Waiting to leave.

The C130 out of Kuwait.

Tom is in Kuwait

As of 6pm Sunday, Tom is in Kuwait at Camp Victory (an army base).

The original plan was to leave California this past Saturday morning about 2am and fly to Baltimore. He called sometime later from the air force base to let me know that plans had changed, were delayed a bit because his flight was canceled, and instead of flying to Baltimore and then to Kuwait, he was now flying to New Jersey, then Ireland, then Italy, then Kuwait! Of course, I told him to take pictures (am I my mother’s daughter or what?). He said he’d try, and he hoped he’d get a chance to visit an Irish pub!

I expected to NOT hear from him for at least two or three days—until he reached his final destination. But, I got a call at 2am Saturday night—from Germany! Turns out the plans had changed again! He also made sure to let me know that he was traveling FIRST CLASS the entire way! Complete with in-seat movie screens and seats that folded out into beds! He didn’t get any pictures in Germany, though, because they only had enough time to get off the plane while it was refueling.

Again, I thought I wouldn’t hear from him for a day or so… but when I got home from work today, he popped up on IM so we got to chat for 10 minutes. He was at a cyber cafe next to a Baskin Robbins! He said you wouldn’t believe the money in Kuwait…he said when the people get into car accidents, they just pull the car over and leave it and get another! He’s seen many new cars and trucks just abandoned! He was going to be leaving for Iraq in about 12 hours so I’ll probably get a call sometime after that, or as soon as he can get to a phone! He said he’ll be sending pics as soon as he can, too. He says hello to everyone!

Pre-Iraq California

Needless to say, Tom hates being away, but LOVES California…the weather is amazing (no humidity!) and the skies and water are a gorgeous blue! It doesn’t hurt that his hotel is right on the beach, too! He would love to live there if it wasn’t for the exorbitant housing costs (drop our house out there and it would go for probably $300,000 to $400,000). But, we’ve decided I’m going to go visit for a week when he comes home!

We’ve been spoiled…we talk at least twice a day and IM every so often. It’s comforting knowing I can still pick up the phone and call anytime (well, keeping in mind the time difference, of course!). I know I shouldn’t get used to it (it will make it that much harder when he leaves the country and we can’t talk every day), but I’m enjoying it while it lasts. I’m thankful for email as well…that way we can all get picture updates…

In the following pictures, you will see a portion of his kitchenette, the view out his hotel room, an art fair right outside the hotel, and his trip to the beach. Why the shot of the parking garage? I asked the same thing. Turns out, it’s a hidden parking garage…located completely under the property of the hotel—it’s about a half block and the buildings, pool, jacuzzis, grass, etc. all sit on top of it!

D-Day–Tom Heads Out

Well, it was rough…like I knew it would be. I managed to make it to the very last day without breaking down (although I came close more than once when Tom was saying goodbye to people)…and it seemed once I started, it was hard to stop—any little thing would set me off again. Logically, I knew better. I knew I could handle him being gone, I knew I’d be fine in a day or so, and I felt silly for being so emotional…but in the meantime it was just horribly painful.

I told Tom about four times that this was the LAST time I was doing this…that he was getting out when he was done and he was never leaving me again! I honestly don’t know how some wives can joke about being glad when their husbands leave…or wanting them to leave…or joking that “Can’t my husband go with yours?” I can’t fathom ever looking forward to him leaving. Especially for nine months. NINE MONTHS. Maybe it’s still the newlywed in me??

One of the hardest things about the day was being home alone while he was on base doing last-minute things. In my mind, the hours were flying by, totally wasted, when we could have been together. As it turns out, there were some screw-ups, so he actually did end up wasting a lot more time than he had planned on (he got home about noon, having left at 7am). But the good news is he got all the necessary paperwork done and now he can go up for Captain. (I’ll have to have him explain the process in more detail, but basically, you have to get your packet of information together to present to the selection board…which will happen while he’s in Iraq…so he had to complete it before he left. If they determine he’s qualified, then he makes Captain in a year or so.)

Then it was the rush to get the last-minute packing and last-minute “honey do” things done. And that’s when it started to hit me…he was really leaving (although logically, of course, I’ve known that since August). Before we knew it, it was time to pack the car and head to the airport. And before I knew it, I was home again…in an empty house. (Thank goodness for the cats…at least there was some life there.)

My only thoughts for the first few hours were… He’s gone. He’s actually gone. For nine months. Nine. NINE! Almost a year. I will be alone for 270 days. How do these other wives do it??? So, finally, I went to my crutch…this website! I spent some time updating and felt much better…although I still can’t believe he’s going to be gone for NINE MONTHS!

Details & Maps

The countdown has been on, and it’s down to three days…Tom leaves this Wednesday. Plans have changed slightly, however. Instead of heading straight to Iraq, he will be spending a month in California. He’s not quite sure exactly WHY, but it has something to do with additional training. Conversely, on the route home, he will be spending the last month of his nine-month deployment in California again. So, the government is spending $10,000 for him to stay in California those two months (food and lodging).

How big is Iraq, really? See the comparison in the first map. Once he gets to Iraq, he will be stationed in Ar Ramadi (or Ramadiyah), situated about 70 miles west of Baghdad on the Euphrates River (second map).

Upcoming deployment…

Well, everyone…we have good news and bad news.

The bad news? Tom got the call today—he’s headed to Iraq on September 15! We’re both taking it well (or as well as could be expected). Of course we didn’t want for this to happen, but we both knew it was a possibility so it’s not like it was a total surprise. What we ARE thankful for is that we have until September 15 to prepare…we actually got notice yesterday that he had a 50/50 chance of leaving in 10 days (!) and THAT really threw us for a loop…so we’ll gladly take 45 days instead. (This will give us time to get the legal stuff in order…as well as have our garage sale!) Everyone has mentioned how well I’m taking this…and I say “Well, FOR NOW! Just wait until he starts packing and I have to drop him off…I’ll be a total mess.” 🙂 Oh, and did I mention what might just be the worst part??? He won’t be gone for the normal six months like most everyone else…he’ll be gone for NINE MONTHS! Oy vey.

But, the good news? He won’t be on the front line! He’ll basically be doing some of what he does on base now—technically, he will be an Information Management Officer/Data Programming Officer. In civilian terms, inputting data into databases and making sure applications are running correctly…in an air-conditioned tent. 🙂 He’ll be located away from shelling and direct fire in a Headquarters type area (just about as safe as you can be over there). And it’s also good news that he’ll be pulling in overseas and hazardous duty pay…