Al-Faw

One of the wonders of military life in Iraq is the positioning of Headquarters, U.S. Forces Iraq, in a huge Saddam Hussein palace near the Baghdad Airport and the Abu Ghurayb area of Baghdad . The place is referred to here as Al-Faw, known also, according to Wikopedia, as the Water Palace. We bombed the place during the invasion but patched up the roof and proceeded to fill the 62 rooms with cubicles and desks and conference set-ups and all the other minutiae and accoutrements that make it homey for a 4-star general. There are 29 bathrooms, giving it pretty good party potential prior to the military crashing the scene.

The palace sits amidst a complex of what apparently were various recreational and residential buildings sprinkled around a good-sized body of water. The area was used as a hunting and fishing getaway for the Hussein clan and guests. There are scads of golden retriever-sized carp swimming around but I’m not certain anyone is actively trying to land one.

There are still some decent recreational opportunities available even with the No-Fun Allowed undercurrent of life here. I attended a unit off-site, in which we all get as far away from phones and computers as possible for as long as possible and pretend to work via some sort of conference. We slept through some Powerpoint presentations, had a little cookout on the waterside patio, smoked cigars and drove golf balls out into the water and generally wished we had more of these types of days.

Al-Faw, as part of Victory Base Complex, is only about five kilometers from the International Zone where I work but it is typically a bit of an ordeal to move back and forth. While each location is fairly secure, the stretch of road linking them is not, requiring some sort of armed convoy to make the transit. There are two options – the easy to arrange one and the good one. Easy to arrange is the Rhino convoy, but it can be tedious. For us Embassy Complex bubbas, we have to buddy-up to cross the street to Forward Operating Base Union III. Three times a day a convoy of Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles forms up and hauls folks back and forth between there and Victory. Cluster around for 10-15 minutes, have a roll call, get a vehicle and convoy briefing, and move out.

These MRAPs are quite the beasts – the ultimate Tonka toys. I’ll get a picture one of these days because they really are pretty cool. But the offshoot of the Rhino run is that the 5K run consumes more than an hour of your time to execute. The alternative, and preferable, means is to link up with one of the general officer personal security detachment runs. For this I have to just walk down the street to the embassy, jump in an armored Chevy Suburban, and off we go. Armed and armored trucks fall in front a rear after leaving the Embassy Compound and, once clear of the IZ and into the Red Zone they just hit the gas and boogie 80-90 MPH over to Victory.

Regardless of which transport used, all passengers must wear Kevlar helmet and individual body armor and military must be armed. So I’m always looking for some place to ditch this stuff at Al-Faw so I can comfortably revel in the opulent surroundings. Massive chandeliers, grand staircases, untold tons of marble, and, of course, cubicles for the worker-bees. The massive Frank Frazetta Phantom Warrior sculpture is located in the three-story domed entrance, and Frankly it looks kinda puny in contrast to the structure.

That’s it for today.

Colorless Work

As previously threatened, I am going to continue to abuse the work topic.

The office environment is Modern Cubicle with little to recommend it as a place to labor for 2/3 of the day. Mine is on the third floor of the building. There is an elevator that works just fine, but I typically eschew that in favor of the stairs. The reason is this: this entire complex is relatively tiny and you don’t have to wander far to get to anything on it, so I opt for the meager added exercise of climbing stairs just to get a bit more mileage.

From my lofty perch I can gaze out the window and marvel at the monochrome world visible to me. If you look very closely at the picture included here you may still not see it, but I can see the tops of one of the crossed swords arches between the apartment buildings that separate this complex from that park.

It’s not much and it is hardly awe-inspiring. I'm beginning to pick up more on things I miss and high on the list is color. Everything here, from buildings to sidewalks to open areas, vehicles, and sometimes even the sky is what Crayola might term Earthy Dust.
Not only is it relentlessly drab, but the dust itself covers every surface and worms its way into any opening, even accumulating over time indoors if due diligence is not given to cleaning.

I keep the electronic picture thingy going all the time when I'm not in bed and this color contrast just jumped out at me yesterday. Every outdoor picture from back in the Real World is a relative riot of colors -- grass, sky, buildings -- that is almost incomprehensible here. And I'm horrifically color blind!

An assault on the senses! Just another war story to tell someday, I guess. There I was, surrounded by neutral but flat earth tones...feeling blue but seeing red and not about to turn yellow in the face of the True Grit horde.

I digress, but I also very tired. Enough for now.

Work

I am already on the books as having stated that this blog is not about what I do in Iraq, but I do have to talk about how the typical work week lays out. All shown times are in 24-hour format.

Every day here is like Monday. Except Sunday, which is more like Monday afternoon. Most days begin with a VTC during which the USF-I commanding general, GEN Odierno, receives staff updates. Three days a week this begins at 0800 and marks the start point of the work day. Two days a week it begins at 0900, so we get to sleep in a bit. There is no VTC Wednesday, so we sleep in a bit then as well. There is no VTC Sunday, either, so we use that reprieve to create our "weekend," which begins at close of business Saturday (2100-2200 range) and stretches all the way to 1200 Sunday.

For me, there are a number of meetings and VTCs spread across the week that generally take at least an hour, can last two hours, and frequently seem to take forever. These routine meetings are always scheduled before 1700. In the white space between meetings we schedule time to: do actual work, gorge at the most excellent dining facility, exercise, and take care of any pressing personal needs. Because the work day stretches until 2200, everyone works out their own pace and routine to get them sanely through the day.

The mantra is "it's a marathon, not a sprint." For a FNG (politely: freakin' new guy) like me, you don't see your time here as 12 months, or even 52 weeks. You see 365 consecutive 14-hour workdays and, frankly, it is intimidating. So the trick is to keep moving to avoid any possibility of clock-watching. If you're not hunkered down over a project, go visit someone whose work intersects yours and chat awhile. Try to get to the gym or pool every day. I prefer late afternoons for this, but again everyone has their personal preferences. Make time for sit-down lunches and dinners in the dining facility. I see a lot of folks doing carry-out and I hope they are not headed to their desk with it. Walk over to the PX and marvel over the lack of things you need or want but they never carry. Go to the Green Bean for coffee.

Stay sane. Get into your Skype and/or phone calling routines. Hopefully get some mail periodically. Mail is a funny thing here, though. Everybody loves to get it - the 2-3 times a week it gets brought to the office can be like Christmas - but nobody knows what to do with more stuff. A ton of food shows up in the mail and every office has a large cabinet given totally over to storing what never gets eaten. Even stuff people like to eat goes directly to a common area because everybody, and I mean everybody, is diet conscious because of the incredible spread available at every meal here ("if I have to eat prime rib and lobster tail one more time I'll puke!"). And, of course, non-food stuff has to find a home in your CHU somewhere. With most folks here having to share a CHU, there is little room for accumulation.

This blog is getting entirely too long based on such a lame subject, so I'll cut it off here and abuse the topic again at a later date.

Some History

First of all, the current blog photo of me and the old Death Dealer. All of you Molly Hatchet fans will recognize this Frank Frazetta piece from the self-titled Molly Hatchet album. Frank called him the Death Dealer, but the Army’s III Corps from Ft. Hood have a different take. III Corps is also known as the Phantom Corps, so they cut a deal will ‘ol Frank to use the likeness and he is known now as the Phantom Warrior. Why they dragged this largish lump of metal all the way to Baghdad to take up residence in Al Faw Palace is beyond my ken. But it is pretty cool.

For some local history on this side of the ocean, I accompanied a group of fellow officers on a tour of Zawra Park, located nearby here in the International Zone. This is the home of the famous crossed swords arches seen so often early in the war. In fact, the park and its surrounds were a primary objective of the famed Thunder Run of the 3rd Infantry Division in 2003.

The arches are known as the Swords of Qadisiyyah, also referred to in Iraq as the Hands of Victory. The artist used castings of Saddam Hussein’s forearms and hands as the model. Between the two arches is a large parade field, surrounded by what once was a lush park. Central to the parade field is a large viewing stand which housed kitchens to serve guests and private rooms for Saddam. The facility was built to celebrate Iraq’s self-declared victory over Iran in their long and bloody conflict.

The place was gutted by looters after the US invasion and is now a desolate and crumbling shadow of its former glory. It is adjacent to Iraq’s Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and former Presidential Palace, thus a special place for the people of Iraq that can hopefully be restored someday.

Rec on the NEC

So, you might ask, what do people do for fun around this place?

First of all, fun is relative concept. We are 6,500 miles from home, it is hot as Hades, the air quality usually sucks and the work day is 14 hours. Skipping out of the office to the exchange for a candy bar might be the highlight of any given day.

But while it might be necessary from time to time, it will never be sufficient. We are human, we adapt. No amount of heat nor any level of choking dust gets in the way of a planned barbecue. The exchange carries charcoal and a variety of meats and we go to the dining facility for all the sides we want. As good as the chow in the dining facility is, it's never as good as burning meat on the grill (vegetarian opinions excepted, of course).

Grilling, as well as every other known outdoor activity here, is accompanied by the smoking of cigars. The primary reason for this is the prohibition against drinking alcohol, clearly spelled out in paragraph 3.c. of General Order Number One. So if you really are searching for a buzz, get the strongest cigars you can find and smoke until your head swims.

The leadership of my organization tends to gather every Saturday night, which is our "weekend" because we sleep in on Sunday and only work 10 hours, for an agricultural meeting. The crop is tobacco and about two hours of study is sufficent to declare success and retire for the night.

There are outdoor tennis courts and a basketball court, but not a lot of takers right now. Something about a dark playing surface and 105 degree weather tends to limit interest. There is a small playing field that draws a lot of interest from the soccer crowd, most notably the large contingent of Peruvian security guards. There are two gyms with plenty of iron to toss around and machines of every description to abuse yourself with. There is an indoor pool, some pool and ping-pong tables, and a sort of Internet cafe.

There are a number of other pursuits also prohibited by General Order Number One, but most folks wouldn't admit to those activities even if they were allowed. Thus, fun has its limitations. But we never give up trying.

CHUville

Time to talk a bit about life on the NEC. First thing to understand is how the military live here, at least those of us below the rank brigadier general. Because this is an embassy compound in a reasonably hostile area, all of the Department of State folks live in the very nice apartment buildings here, all of them hardened against the odd rocket or mortar shell that might find its way here.

For us DoD folks, however, a somewhat less appealing route was taken. We have what is called, in typical military vernacular, a Containerized Housing Unit which unsurprisingly, in accordance to military insistence on acronyms, is referred to as a CHU (pronounced chew). Easiest way to visualize these things is to drive around town until you see somone with one of those PODs used for moving or storage. Put a regular door on it instead of a roll-up door, install lights and and AC unit, and you have what passes as home for a year of your life.

As bad as that seems, if you are a LTC or below you have to share this thing with someone else. As you can see from my pic here, real estate is a bit skimpy. These things are lined up in neat rows with decking between the rows, forming a community of CHUs, thus the naming of this community as CHUville. The housing manager is, and I'm not making this up, the mayor.

The typical CHU has no running water, so each row has one or more community bathrooms. Not so bad, really. Each bathroom CHU has three individual locking bathrooms with sink, toilet, and shower. There are also laundry CHUs, each with numerous washers and dryers and an endless supply of laundry detergent.

For the lucky colonels with sufficient seniority, there are the ultimate in CHUville real estate, the wet CHU. This little palace has its own bathroom, sparing the lucky occupants the indignity of mingling with the filthy masses. Now, it's only about 12 feet from my front door to the front door of a bathroom CHU, so not a huge inconvenience. However, rare is the night I don't have to shuffle around to find my Crocs and my CHU key (it can be cave dark in these things) and walk into the blinding "street" light to relieve my aged bladder. And so back to the CHU with no remaining night vision, so cave dark becomes something more like absolute dark, and stumble back to the bed.

My wish is that they concern themselves less with time-in-grade seniority and consider the fact that some of us are just plain old and could use a break. Oh, well. It is something to aspire to, what another colonel here claimed to be a life-changing event while here. Every day I get more senior, every month some these current lucky dogs vacate the premises. My hope will never fade.

Time to Work

After dragging around those three large duffle bags for two days and getting close to zero sleep in the move from Kuwait to the New Embassy Compound (NEC), my home for the next year, it was time to go to work.

My job is chief of Strategic Communications (STRATCOM) Analysis and Assessments. As a long-time Army Operations Research and Systems Analyst, I savvy the Analysis and Assessments piece. But my understanding of STRATCOM is right up there with my understanding of women and it made for an interesting time as I tried to figure out what in the world we were analyzing and why anyone particularly cared.

As I write this, I'm three weeks into the job and just beginning to see what looks to be a picture where before I saw nothing but puzzle pieces. A far cry from expertise, but you have to start somewhere. It's really not my intent to use this forum to talk my work and little good would come from doing so. I'll just have to find other means of entertaining the reader.

I don't have any photos to share yet of what the NEC looks like and won't until I get someone with the appropriate credentials to go with me to take some. They're a bit paranoid about what can be gleaned from seemingly innocent photos and it is in my best interest to agree with them. The one in this posting is taken just outside my office building at night. That is not obscuration from fog, it is dust. It happens frequently enough and you do not linger outside when it is like that.

Compared to the various military bases scattered around Iraq, this is a slice of heaven. Everything is new and built to withstand abuse (we get the occassional sirens for incoming, though none have hit here) while still maintaining a campus-like feeling. Most of the people living and working here are Department of State folks working for the embassy and that lends a very differenct atmosphere to the place. I could make a number of observations now, but probably should show a bit of restraint until I can add a bit more perspective.

I can say it is damn hot here. It already hit 108 degrees and it is just now mid-May. I can hardly wait to feel what it is like at 125. By the way, wind chill doesn't count at these temperatures. 108 degrees and 20 KPH wind feels like 108 degrees in motion. Next update I should be able to talk about my "room" and discuss a bit what passes for recreation around here.

Arrival In Theater

Arrival in Kuwait and Ali al Salem airfield starts the mobilization clock ticking. The plane lands at Kuwait International Airport, where you move directly to buses for the 1.5 hour ride to Ali al Salem. Off the bus and into a large sort of tent but not a tent. Hard to describe, but it is referred to as Tent 3. You swipe your military Common Access Card into their computer and you are officially deployed.

From that point things can get quite interesting or, if you're lucky, go fairly smoothly. Ali Al Salem is a huge, sprawling tent city that serves as the entry and departure point for many folks flying in and out of Iraq and Afghanistan. It appears large enough to hold thousands of people at any given time. The transient population seems excessive until you experience the joys of getting manifested for onward travel. You start to wonder how it was ever possible to get and sustain more than 100,000 military in Iraq.

You also start to wonder if maybe there are folks there that never do move onward -- that they found it wasn't that hard to just hole up in one of the tents and dare anyone to figure out what happened to them. The place has a good mess hall, a small PX, numerous fast-food joints, and a ton of recreational tents. There might be people who have been ghosting around the place drawing combat pay for years.

Eventually, most move on. You have to go to Tent 1 and get manifested on the next flight to your destination, wait some number of hours for the roll call for that flight and hope you made the cut. Then it is a couple more hours before they call you for the final roll and load on the buses. Or tell you your flight was cancelled, go back to step one and start again.

My experience this time was oneof the better ones. Swiped in, walked quickly to tent one and was manifested for the next flight out, first roll call two hours later. That is just enough time to go to the area they unload the bags from the overseas flight, sort through the hundreds lined up to find your own, and lug the overstuffed, overweight duffle bags (three of them for me) 100 yards or so for palletizing for the next flight.

I made the roll call, made the final list, and an hour later we boarded the buses and headed to the military airfield. We got lucky and had a C-17 for the flight. Could easily have had a C-130, which can get very cramped when fully loaded. Wheels up and only about a one hour flight to Baghdad, arriving around 0230. My gaining command arranged a helicopter flight to get me from there to the International Zone where I work, only about five miles away but most of it "red zone," not protected by US or Iraqi security.

Interesting encounter at the helo pad. I find the Army an increasingly small place at my age and time of service, frequently encountering people I knew from years ago. While waiting for my bird to arrive, I notice a familiar name on the name tape velcro'd to the back of the hat of a young lady in front of me. When she turns I see she is a 1LT, just about right for...the daughter of a friend from my Armor Advance course 20 years ago! So now I'm not just running into friends, but their kids as well.

To wrap up the travel portion, the flight was uneventful, I was met at the helo pad and driven onto the New Embassy Compound to begin my year-long adventure.

Moving Out

Once your in the CRC, you can't wait to get out. Eventually it happens. For the group I was with, we were only delayed one day due to an unforeseen circumstance, that being the group that finished a week earlier was in the way. Seems the Big Volcano Eruption spewed at a bad time for them, forcing them to hole up in some sub-standard nook of Ft. Benning until the skies cleared.

The skies finally did clear, but on the day I was supposed to leave. So our group boarded buses, headed on down to the airfield, and stayed there for 24 hours until they could bring in another aircraft for us. The facility is a very large terminal building, perfect for preparing soldiers for departure but less than ideal as a barracks. The place seems practically brand new, but for some reason there was no hot water and wouldn't be for another week or so. They handed out cots and sleeping bags and everyone dispersed to find a quiet niche somewhere. Probably resembled a bunch of homeless at Grand Central Station more than anything remotely military.

Anyway, everything eventually fell into place and it was time to board the plane. For the very first time since I left Ft. Monroe, Rank Hath Its Priviliages (RHIP) finally kicks in. Because of high demand on the usual contract carriers (World Air, Ryan Air, and other scarily anonymous monikers), we were blessed with a Delta 777 and an awesome patriotic crew. They decorated the cabin with all sorts of stars, stripes, flags, banners and other such accoutrements. Since there were just a handful of colonels, sergeants major, and senior warrant officers, we boarded first and were directed to Executive Business Class.

What a way to fly! You routine globetrotters are probably a bit jaded to this, but it was tall cotton to me. All sorts of entertainment options, seat that motors its way completely flat to a bed, cozy blanket and pillow -- the only way to spend 13 hours in the air. Unless, of course, you are the President, a big business muckety-muck, or obscenely wealthy.

It was a great flight, but all good things must come to an end. The end was Ali al Salem airfield and squatter camp in Kuwait. That is another story for another day.

At the CRC

The CRC

The CRC does not rank high on any soldiers list of Things I’d Love To Do All Over Again. My attempts to prepare myself by harvesting the experiences of others always boiled down to the same advice: forget you are a colonel, remember when you were a private.

Fundamentally true and sound advice. There is a lot going on at any given time and very little patience for the needs of the few. More than 400 soldiers, Department of the Army civilians, and Department of Defense contactors pass through here every week and the difficulties of herding these cats become obvious on day one. The cadre made it abundantly clear that there were more people present than the course could handle, so right away everyone becomes nervous and the jockeying begins to not be the guy or gal at the end of the line. Which ultimately someone has to be.

The civilians and military were formed into separate groups and in fact had distinctive inprocessing tasks. There was relative comfort on the military side that, if you had a reservation, you were going to get into the class. The civilians were clearly not all going to make it but there was no method of culling the herd up front, and so it became a mighty entertaining show when they were being corralled into lines for what folks sensed would be a first come, first served type of deal. Which it was.

So, approximately one half of the contractor civilians were sent packing that day. The remainder had the rest of the day to accomplish two fairly simple tasks, but for nearly one-half of the group this turned out badly. Both events were scheduled to take place at the CRC training site. The first was a diagnostic brain functions test, administered via computer, that forms a baseline in case anyone suffers some sort of trauma that might affect mental acuity. The other task was to simply sit through a 1.5 hour introduction and orientation.

As I alluded to, for many folks this went as programmed. Upon completing inprocessing, groups formed up and were either marched of to do these tasks or given another time to report and be marched off. I was with a group directed to report back at 1415, which we diligently complied with. 45 minutes later we were finally moved out to the training site. Even though the technician was present to begin the brain functions test, nobody was directed to do so. Later groups continued to arrive and still we sat. Ultimately, we waited about four hours doing absolutely nothing, got the introduction but were forced to return at 0530 two days later to finally do the testing.

So, the thing did not get off on the right foot. Much to my delight, things got considerably better after the first day. Eventually, we waded through medical screening, were issued way too much gear to haul around, and were wisked through some reasonably appropriate training and finally bused to the airfield to prepare for departure.

I’ll pick up on that adventure next posting.

Getting Started

My intent with this blog is to document in some reasonable fashion my experiences as well as my thoughts while enduring my first, and likely last, Army deployment to a war zone.

In my case, the war zone is Iraq. I need to caveat this with the fact that the US military role in this conflict is rapidly drawing to a close and, thus, the connotations differ significantly from more desperate operations in this country as recently as a year ago.

My background: 52-year old Army colonel with over 27 years of service, including two years enlisted time. I was a commissioned (at 27 years old) as an Armor officer, but leveraged acceptance to an Advanced Civil Schooling opportunity into a 15-year stint in the Army functional area of Operations Research, Systems Analysis.

It is in that capacity that I was drawn into this war as a replacement for the departing chief of STRATCOMM Analysis and Assessments for US Forces – Iraq. I had the opportunity to spend time in theater with the incumbent a month prior to my actual deployment date, but I’ll begin this saga a month hence with my arrival at the CONUS Replacement Center, known in this acronym-filled world as the CRC, in Ft. Benning, GA.

The bulk of military deployments are whole units that train and deploy from their home station. However, there are thousands of positions that are better managed via individual replacements and the CRC was established precisely to prepare those individuals for deployment. It is a one-week ordeal with two primary foci: assess the individuals ability to deploy and provide some fundamental skills deemed useful in combat situations.

My next entry will delve deeper into my experiences with CRC.