Late March Kuwait
Mar. 25th, 2003 12:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pecuniumKuwait is vast.
I thought I knew what, "Big Sky Country," was, I was wrong. This seems larger than the ocean. All one can see is manmade things, and sand.
The scene in "Lawrence of Arabia," where David Lean lingers on the dot in the distance which is Anthony Quinn, it’s like that, only bigger. In so few as 100 yards of distance a retreating person seems to be but a speck against the horizon.
Where the sand runs out it fades, in a murky gray haze, up to a blue sky. So pale and vast is the sky that the moon, now almost full, seems to float. It does not seem so separate from the earth as it does back home.
The trip was pleasant enough (as pleasant as anything so sudden can be). We got on a plane, and we took off. From when we boarded, until we arrived, we did not leave the plane. Mostly we slept. I had a window. My seatmate, SPC Watson, woke me to ask if we were descending into New York. It was, and I drifted off again to wake to a very rough landing at JFK. My next real awareness of the world was to look down on Canada; lots of snow, then, later, the Atlantic, Spindrift ice, frozen like glint-ripples on the surface, then the beginnings of the pack-ice, visible currents of white, melding into one sheet. Later still the ice breaking into cubes, giant cubes (I could see them from more than 30,000 feet, they must have been huge) and open water again.
I woke somewhere a bit east of France, and we landed in Italy, at Ostia. I saw Rome, and the eastern coast of Italy. Most of the plane was zonked, so I went to the cockpit and watched the Egyptian shore pass beneath us, and then Saudi, and finally Kuwait. We were allowed to stay in the cockpit for the landing, and that was worth the trip. I would rather have had it on some other trip, but I probably won't get another chance to do it, so seize the moment.
Conditions here are all right for us. We don't have power in my tent, but I do have a cot (the first night was spent on the floor) and the weather is not too bad. I have been in my first sandstorm, just after dark and the world was milky white, there was no sky, and three meters was as far as one could see. People were lost getting back from the latrines, a distance of maybe 150 meters, and a dead straight line.
We are overcrowded, as a camp, so there are lines for everything. I had to sign up in advance for the chance to send this, and my choices were 0400, or 0600. Being the sort of person I am, 0600 was the hour of choice. Never miss a chance to eat or sleep. 0600 is our wake up anyway, so I am not losing too much.
A phone call means a two-hour wait, meals mean a 20 minute wait (we get bacon with breakfast, that seems to be less offensive than beer. Perhaps it is because we have Indians providing the contracting for the mess hall). The PX varies, both in supplies, and in the line.
Traveling is work. I have about 25 lbs. of gear I have to wear anytime I leave the tent (helmet, rifle, chem-suit (in a bag) protective mask, ammo {this is the first time in my ten years I have ever been issued more than 60 rounds of ammo, and the only time it has been issued to me off a range, much less taken with me everywhere) and water. I carry a minimum of two-quarts, and more often five. Our water is bottled. We all drink more than we need. The amount of salt we ingest insures we are not likely to be able to drink more than is safe (a recruit died from an excess of water at Basic about four years ago. When I was in Basic I had some troubles from too much water, but I just started to disobey my Drill Sergeants and it didn't recur).
Everywhere is a sense of waiting. The expectation is that, should it kick off, it will be short. People here want it to kick off, not so much because they are warmongers (Some individuals are, [one is in my section, and we are annoyed by his attitude, he wants to get into a firefight, carries four fighting knives (I swapped my regular Ka-Bar for a mini Ka-Bar, back at Bragg, as I have no need (at least I hope not) for something that large) and seems to not understand that he does more good in the rear than he ever could at the front, even were he Sgt. York, Audie Murphy and Achilleus rolled into one]), but rather that no-one wants to be in the desert a day longer than needed, and the fastest way to end the waiting is to go North.
So we wait. We drink water, and orange drink, and eat ice cream (Peppermint is a favorite [it is called "Aladdin,"] but I am looking for the rose flavored one), and dream of home.
For armies I suppose it has been ever thus.
Gap of three days.
We have power. I would not go so far as to say all knowledge is contained in Military Intelligence, but we are almost as vast as SF Fandom when it comes to such things. In the absence of support, it was inevitable that one of us should find a power supply we could tap into. I can also do what I did at Ft. Bragg and use my computer to log onto the Net, and so circumvent time limits. Mission depending, I should now be able to stay in touch with some regularity.
I live in a village. Ninety people (more or less), with a common interest and nowhere else to go. We know who snores, who gets up in the night to hit the latrine, which MREs everyone cares for, who can't get up in the morning, etc.. Give us the amount of time we are expected to be here and I will know as much as anyone cares to reveal about themselves and more besides. We do have somewhat more than the 14" the Royal Navy gave each man to swing his cot, and we have something like ten hours a night to sleep, which most of us take. I think I am caught up all the way back to Ft. Lewis. I just wish I could bank it against the future, but right now it is merely armor against the Kuwaiti Krud, which we are warned we will all experience to some degree.
I have found the rose flavored ice-cream ("Princess," with a picture of some Sleeping Beauty-like blonde on the wrapper). It is a flavored ice, around a vanilla center. I had one last night, and this morning I had two more. One was for a friend, but he disappeared before I got out of the mess hall, my gain.
Last night (16 Mar) we battened down against a sandstorm (which never came). Here, in the birthplace of armies, I filled sandbags, the stereotypical act of soldiers. The result of making the rigging tight was to move my cot, since the poles of the tent centerline (where I am bunking) had slouched to an angle, and when pulled to their rightful place, left not the room for a cot to rest between.
Another day.
Good army training. People wonder how I can be so patient, how I can face a line with equanimity. Today was part of the reason. We had to get the next in our series of anthrax shots. At 0730 we get in line. At 0830 the line is reversed so it runs the other way. By 0930 the line stretches almost 200 meters and is generally four people wide. At 1030 the medics arrive and at somewhere around 1130 I (who was reasonably close to the head of the line) got my shot.
But I got to talk with people, got to know some of the 519th troops a little better. Best of all, I saw a desert eagle. Smallish, about the size of a red-tail hawk, with a black body, a white head and pale wings with gray-black stripes along the elbows.
Side-note, we have already, by virtue of our, not-quite, tropical latitude, enjoyed the equinox.
20 Mar O3
They started the war.
So far, for us, it has been mostly false alarms, many ecstasies of fumbling as someone (usually in foolish panic) yells, "GAS! GAS! GAS!" Given that Chemical attack is the bugbear of modern warfare (and the most insidiously frightening aspect of it), no one takes such cries; even the ones we know are false, for granted. We just stand around afterwards wondering who will/can give the all clear. The most dramatic was the idiot who stuck his head into the mess hall and caused several hundred people to toss knives, forks, spoons and cups aside in favor of ripping into mask carriers, while the Bangladeshi help looked on in amused (and perhaps bemused) wonder. We have had rumors of the siren being on the fritz (that from a pair of reporters,) to an imminent attack by SCUD, in 30-60 minutes. I blew that one off, because flight time for a scud is 12-18 minutes.
But we've heard impacts. No idea if they were missiles the Patriot batteries knocked down, or if they were misses they let fall to earth, but much sweat and many pounding hearts have been caused by each one.
And we hear choppers. Marine Cobras, whopping overhead. A deep, heavy whop. The feel of the displaced air is heavy, from the sound of it one can tell they are heavily loaded.
The sandstorm never came. Instead we got a small pelting of rain. We have, however, enjoyed a dust cloud. For the past two days there has been no horizon, just a white haze from the ground to the sky. It swallows the sun, which shows forth white and translucent; globular and pale. At night, before moonrise, there are fewer stars to be seen than there are in Los Angeles. Eaten by the dust. They eyes itch, hairs seems dusted in talcum and no matter how recent the shower (which is not very at the moment, the water valves being in some way screwed up) a film of grime seems to cling to the flesh.
We do our laundry by hand, because we can't be sure of being here to retrieve it from the quartermaster (who takes no less than four-days, and will not guarantee less than a week). I am teaching people to button their uniforms to the line, just in case the wind should kick up. A few sets of underwear and socks I can replace, my trousers and blouse are too valuable to risk.
So we have strings of clothes on the backstays of the tents, and a slight air of a gypsy camp is seen inside. While a certain modesty still applies to some, there are boxers, panties and bras to be seen hanging at the heads of bunks.
21 Mar 03.
A night in which exhausted collapsed early, to rise in the middle of the night, the calm slept and all were instantly awake when "Gas" was called at midnight. Wearing the mask I think I could sleep, if I knew it was merely practice, but waiting for the decision to put on more gear, when what used to be fear has turned rather to resigned worry, then the effort of sucking air through the filter, of hearing the valves flap in a vaderish wheeze, at those times all I can do is relax. Either into the earth of the bunker, or against a pole, or, as last night, against my pillow. Sleep threatens, but the body resists.
Today, however, we got more than just empty fear. The siren rang, a long and single tone.
Incoming.
Organised chaos, not panic. We were half ready, we had heard the Patriot battery coughing, felt the whooump of the rockets' leaving and half expected it. But only half.
I blew it. The drill is grab your gear, run to the bunker and don your mask. I masked. Then I donned my blouse, and gear, and ran, pell-mell, for the slit trench, which is our bunker. I was not the last one there.
Calling for people, making sure we were all-up, and then the waiting. All the while the shrill tone of the siren.
I didn't really feel afraid. The siren is supposed to go off if an impact is expected in a radius of 10 kilometers, given that, and the inaccuracy of SCUDs, the odds of hearing an impact are slim, much less getting hit.
Then the whee-whoo, whee-whoo of the all-clear. I deflated. Sank into the dirt, and drew a full breath, probably for the first time since the alarm.
Since then things have been quiet.
I thought I knew what, "Big Sky Country," was, I was wrong. This seems larger than the ocean. All one can see is manmade things, and sand.
The scene in "Lawrence of Arabia," where David Lean lingers on the dot in the distance which is Anthony Quinn, it’s like that, only bigger. In so few as 100 yards of distance a retreating person seems to be but a speck against the horizon.
Where the sand runs out it fades, in a murky gray haze, up to a blue sky. So pale and vast is the sky that the moon, now almost full, seems to float. It does not seem so separate from the earth as it does back home.
The trip was pleasant enough (as pleasant as anything so sudden can be). We got on a plane, and we took off. From when we boarded, until we arrived, we did not leave the plane. Mostly we slept. I had a window. My seatmate, SPC Watson, woke me to ask if we were descending into New York. It was, and I drifted off again to wake to a very rough landing at JFK. My next real awareness of the world was to look down on Canada; lots of snow, then, later, the Atlantic, Spindrift ice, frozen like glint-ripples on the surface, then the beginnings of the pack-ice, visible currents of white, melding into one sheet. Later still the ice breaking into cubes, giant cubes (I could see them from more than 30,000 feet, they must have been huge) and open water again.
I woke somewhere a bit east of France, and we landed in Italy, at Ostia. I saw Rome, and the eastern coast of Italy. Most of the plane was zonked, so I went to the cockpit and watched the Egyptian shore pass beneath us, and then Saudi, and finally Kuwait. We were allowed to stay in the cockpit for the landing, and that was worth the trip. I would rather have had it on some other trip, but I probably won't get another chance to do it, so seize the moment.
Conditions here are all right for us. We don't have power in my tent, but I do have a cot (the first night was spent on the floor) and the weather is not too bad. I have been in my first sandstorm, just after dark and the world was milky white, there was no sky, and three meters was as far as one could see. People were lost getting back from the latrines, a distance of maybe 150 meters, and a dead straight line.
We are overcrowded, as a camp, so there are lines for everything. I had to sign up in advance for the chance to send this, and my choices were 0400, or 0600. Being the sort of person I am, 0600 was the hour of choice. Never miss a chance to eat or sleep. 0600 is our wake up anyway, so I am not losing too much.
A phone call means a two-hour wait, meals mean a 20 minute wait (we get bacon with breakfast, that seems to be less offensive than beer. Perhaps it is because we have Indians providing the contracting for the mess hall). The PX varies, both in supplies, and in the line.
Traveling is work. I have about 25 lbs. of gear I have to wear anytime I leave the tent (helmet, rifle, chem-suit (in a bag) protective mask, ammo {this is the first time in my ten years I have ever been issued more than 60 rounds of ammo, and the only time it has been issued to me off a range, much less taken with me everywhere) and water. I carry a minimum of two-quarts, and more often five. Our water is bottled. We all drink more than we need. The amount of salt we ingest insures we are not likely to be able to drink more than is safe (a recruit died from an excess of water at Basic about four years ago. When I was in Basic I had some troubles from too much water, but I just started to disobey my Drill Sergeants and it didn't recur).
Everywhere is a sense of waiting. The expectation is that, should it kick off, it will be short. People here want it to kick off, not so much because they are warmongers (Some individuals are, [one is in my section, and we are annoyed by his attitude, he wants to get into a firefight, carries four fighting knives (I swapped my regular Ka-Bar for a mini Ka-Bar, back at Bragg, as I have no need (at least I hope not) for something that large) and seems to not understand that he does more good in the rear than he ever could at the front, even were he Sgt. York, Audie Murphy and Achilleus rolled into one]), but rather that no-one wants to be in the desert a day longer than needed, and the fastest way to end the waiting is to go North.
So we wait. We drink water, and orange drink, and eat ice cream (Peppermint is a favorite [it is called "Aladdin,"] but I am looking for the rose flavored one), and dream of home.
For armies I suppose it has been ever thus.
Gap of three days.
We have power. I would not go so far as to say all knowledge is contained in Military Intelligence, but we are almost as vast as SF Fandom when it comes to such things. In the absence of support, it was inevitable that one of us should find a power supply we could tap into. I can also do what I did at Ft. Bragg and use my computer to log onto the Net, and so circumvent time limits. Mission depending, I should now be able to stay in touch with some regularity.
I live in a village. Ninety people (more or less), with a common interest and nowhere else to go. We know who snores, who gets up in the night to hit the latrine, which MREs everyone cares for, who can't get up in the morning, etc.. Give us the amount of time we are expected to be here and I will know as much as anyone cares to reveal about themselves and more besides. We do have somewhat more than the 14" the Royal Navy gave each man to swing his cot, and we have something like ten hours a night to sleep, which most of us take. I think I am caught up all the way back to Ft. Lewis. I just wish I could bank it against the future, but right now it is merely armor against the Kuwaiti Krud, which we are warned we will all experience to some degree.
I have found the rose flavored ice-cream ("Princess," with a picture of some Sleeping Beauty-like blonde on the wrapper). It is a flavored ice, around a vanilla center. I had one last night, and this morning I had two more. One was for a friend, but he disappeared before I got out of the mess hall, my gain.
Last night (16 Mar) we battened down against a sandstorm (which never came). Here, in the birthplace of armies, I filled sandbags, the stereotypical act of soldiers. The result of making the rigging tight was to move my cot, since the poles of the tent centerline (where I am bunking) had slouched to an angle, and when pulled to their rightful place, left not the room for a cot to rest between.
Another day.
Good army training. People wonder how I can be so patient, how I can face a line with equanimity. Today was part of the reason. We had to get the next in our series of anthrax shots. At 0730 we get in line. At 0830 the line is reversed so it runs the other way. By 0930 the line stretches almost 200 meters and is generally four people wide. At 1030 the medics arrive and at somewhere around 1130 I (who was reasonably close to the head of the line) got my shot.
But I got to talk with people, got to know some of the 519th troops a little better. Best of all, I saw a desert eagle. Smallish, about the size of a red-tail hawk, with a black body, a white head and pale wings with gray-black stripes along the elbows.
Side-note, we have already, by virtue of our, not-quite, tropical latitude, enjoyed the equinox.
20 Mar O3
They started the war.
So far, for us, it has been mostly false alarms, many ecstasies of fumbling as someone (usually in foolish panic) yells, "GAS! GAS! GAS!" Given that Chemical attack is the bugbear of modern warfare (and the most insidiously frightening aspect of it), no one takes such cries; even the ones we know are false, for granted. We just stand around afterwards wondering who will/can give the all clear. The most dramatic was the idiot who stuck his head into the mess hall and caused several hundred people to toss knives, forks, spoons and cups aside in favor of ripping into mask carriers, while the Bangladeshi help looked on in amused (and perhaps bemused) wonder. We have had rumors of the siren being on the fritz (that from a pair of reporters,) to an imminent attack by SCUD, in 30-60 minutes. I blew that one off, because flight time for a scud is 12-18 minutes.
But we've heard impacts. No idea if they were missiles the Patriot batteries knocked down, or if they were misses they let fall to earth, but much sweat and many pounding hearts have been caused by each one.
And we hear choppers. Marine Cobras, whopping overhead. A deep, heavy whop. The feel of the displaced air is heavy, from the sound of it one can tell they are heavily loaded.
The sandstorm never came. Instead we got a small pelting of rain. We have, however, enjoyed a dust cloud. For the past two days there has been no horizon, just a white haze from the ground to the sky. It swallows the sun, which shows forth white and translucent; globular and pale. At night, before moonrise, there are fewer stars to be seen than there are in Los Angeles. Eaten by the dust. They eyes itch, hairs seems dusted in talcum and no matter how recent the shower (which is not very at the moment, the water valves being in some way screwed up) a film of grime seems to cling to the flesh.
We do our laundry by hand, because we can't be sure of being here to retrieve it from the quartermaster (who takes no less than four-days, and will not guarantee less than a week). I am teaching people to button their uniforms to the line, just in case the wind should kick up. A few sets of underwear and socks I can replace, my trousers and blouse are too valuable to risk.
So we have strings of clothes on the backstays of the tents, and a slight air of a gypsy camp is seen inside. While a certain modesty still applies to some, there are boxers, panties and bras to be seen hanging at the heads of bunks.
21 Mar 03.
A night in which exhausted collapsed early, to rise in the middle of the night, the calm slept and all were instantly awake when "Gas" was called at midnight. Wearing the mask I think I could sleep, if I knew it was merely practice, but waiting for the decision to put on more gear, when what used to be fear has turned rather to resigned worry, then the effort of sucking air through the filter, of hearing the valves flap in a vaderish wheeze, at those times all I can do is relax. Either into the earth of the bunker, or against a pole, or, as last night, against my pillow. Sleep threatens, but the body resists.
Today, however, we got more than just empty fear. The siren rang, a long and single tone.
Incoming.
Organised chaos, not panic. We were half ready, we had heard the Patriot battery coughing, felt the whooump of the rockets' leaving and half expected it. But only half.
I blew it. The drill is grab your gear, run to the bunker and don your mask. I masked. Then I donned my blouse, and gear, and ran, pell-mell, for the slit trench, which is our bunker. I was not the last one there.
Calling for people, making sure we were all-up, and then the waiting. All the while the shrill tone of the siren.
I didn't really feel afraid. The siren is supposed to go off if an impact is expected in a radius of 10 kilometers, given that, and the inaccuracy of SCUDs, the odds of hearing an impact are slim, much less getting hit.
Then the whee-whoo, whee-whoo of the all-clear. I deflated. Sank into the dirt, and drew a full breath, probably for the first time since the alarm.
Since then things have been quiet.
