First Day In Iraq

We stood around a long time that morning in the desert in Kuwait. Long enough to get bored. We put on all our gear and held up our weapons posing for pictures outside our tent at little Camp Wolverine. YN2 and IT1 hit their head with rocks, testing their helmets. I threw a small pebble in the air and waited for it to bounce off mu helmet. It hurt. I’d taken off my helmet and was wearing my boney hat so the rock bounced off my head. No shame. I was still in the funk of the 20-some odd hour plane ride from Ft Bliss, El paso Texas which had taken us to Baltimore and then to Germany. Now Kuwait, where we’d spent the night, wrapped in blankets, cold from the over charged air conditioning that chilled the tent like a freezer with slabs of meat. But the days were already hot.
Finally the little bus with the big windows showed up to take us to the airport. Like the plane ride over we sat cramped into the bus. The trip to the airfield wasn’t far. We got there and laid out our bags once again for the dogs to sniff, mostly Belgian shepards, mailnois I think they call them. Then we stood around in the shade of a dilapidated hanger and waited. We stood around until we got tired then one by one we all laid down, occasionally drifting off to sleep. After three or four hours they came and got us for the big jump, the hour long hop to Baghdad International.
We loaded into the C130 and I was lucky to find a spot with a electric wench in front of me so nobody could sit there. I propped my feet up on the winch and let the sound of the motors and the heat make me drowsy, but I didn’t sleep. Locked and loaded, we were all expecting the time had come to rock and roll.
We maintained altitude all the way into BIAP then did the steep, circular decent, battlefield landing. On the ground YN2 bolted off the plane with stomach cramps. We all pulled our three duffle bags off the large cargo pallets and laid them in a pile.
Baghdad hung heavy around us, this being the first visit for most of us. A big plume of black smoke rose up in the distance. “Sir, check it out,” said YN2 pointing to the black smoke. “Do you think that’s for us?”
“Hard to say,” I responded. We walked into the little PX they had set up in a trailer. I bought a Sprite and a bag of beef jerky. The CDR with us bought a can of SPAM and ate it with a plastic spoon. The red faced guy sitting next to me slugged back two St Pauli Girl non-alcoholics while we sat there. “I’m retried Navy, “ he said. I could tell. Just a handful of sailors sticking together in an Army world, doing the hurry up and wait which is the Army modus oparendi.
After two hours the buses and luggage truck showed up for our ride to the palace. All the military on our bus put rounds in the chamber of our M9’s and M16’s and we took off. The driver said the week before an RPG had flown over the bus. All I saw was scrubby foliage, shepherds and goats near the road and pale, deserted looking buildings in the distance.
We got to Steel Dragon parking lot staging area and waited a little while, filling out forms while more dogs sniffed our luggage. Then we walked the now familiar walk up to the north end of the palace and found our tents. We got our blankets and pillows from billeting. A pretty airman carried two of my seabags for me, while I carried one. “Sir, we all get sick here.” She was right. In a few days I had the crud.
That first night I found the office I would be working in – AIRTRANS. I walked in not having any idea what to expect so I was pleasantly surprised when I walked in and saw my friend Shane from OCS and Supply Corps school sitting there. A familiar face goes a long way to make you feel better in unfamiliar circumastances. Of course the Colonel who ran the office had no idea why I was there or what I would do. That took about three weeks of sitting around to figure out.
That evening around nine o’clock Shane took me over to his trailer and we sat out with some other people from the office and had a Carlsberg. Then I said good night, wanting to be fresh for my first full day. I got lost in the trailer camp but finally found my way back to the tent. I slept right under an air conditioner and froze. The next day I moved to a different bed.