the Brits

Yesterday was a typical Sunday in Baghdad – a lazy day that felt like a Tuesday when you don’t do much work but you have to be there anyway. As always it was accentuated by bomb blasts. This time at that Armenian Church. No mortars which is goof. The last a couple of nights ago caused me to sit up in bed but then go right back to sleep. Whatever it hit must have already been in bad shape – no one could identify a location because nobody could find any damage.
A British guy came in yesterday for a fuel card so I asked him the location of the British pub that 1LT H. had told me about. His accent was thick and hard to understand but I pieced the information together. Then we just shot the breeze for awhile. He told he thought US PSD’s and CIA’s wore too much gear. He told me he’d been in the British special forces over 20 years then said, “I’ve done my time at Hereford.”
I gave him a puzzled look so he explained he was part of a crew that crawled in thru a window at the Iranian embassy in London in 1980 and killed a slew of would-be hostage takers.
Later in the evening S. and I walked down to the British Pub. We passed thru a Gherka checkpoint then a Royal Marine and were on British soil in Baghdad.
The guard told us they weren’t supposed to let Americans in anymore but he thought that was mostly Army and since we were Navy it was okay.
We walked to the heart of the compound and saw they most wonderful outpost of British empire building – the thatch roof cabana bar. It was all homemade – the tables were cable spolls sunk into the stand. The barstools were sections of date palm that had been cut to height, as were the four corners of the structure. Little did they know those treess cost $20,000 to replace. I figure that little pub cost them about $160,000 to build if the Iraqi’s make them replace the trees. I hear that’s what they’re having us do.
A British corporal came over and sat with us. He was only 22 and had a degree in Electrical Engineering. He said there were lots of benefits to being enlisted which is why he didn’t go officer. He also said the money for enlisted was better than most of his college mates made. That’s a big difference from the U.S. military. Our junior enlisted personnel don’t make much and could qualify for food stamps.
His best story was about him and one of his buddies riding around in a taxi at their home base in Northern Ireland. They’d been instructed to not let anyone know they were soldiers so they told the taxi driver they were students and wanted to see the sights.
At one point this guy’s friend had to take a leak so he gets out and pees on this wall full of grafitti dedicated to Bobby Sands, the great IRA leader. He gets back in and the driver tells him, “If somebody saw you do that and thought you were a British soldier you’d be dead and there’d be riots.”
You gotta love the Brits and their sense of adventure. They are old hands at this overseas service. We build our camps and set up a PX but the Brits bring a little of the old empire everywhere they go. You could almost imagine Rudyard Kipling sitting at that little thatch roof pub making up one of his bad songs about soldiers.