Hillah, Iraq.
The mission for tonight was an amazing one. I cannot go into the details, but it involved remote controlled planes, an AC-130 gunship, boats with the contingency for a river chase, sniper teams extracted by helicopters, and very, very bad guys most likely guarded by their own personal security teams. It sounds like something made up to gratuitously please an audience….
[looking at the camera]
Anyway, the Marine on duty (the guy on duty is called the hooch bitch, but I don’t know how that name came about if for any other reason that staying up all night to answer the phone is a bitch) woke me up to tell me I had an urgent message. I had only slept a couple of hours, but I needed to send out a bunch of information to the players anyway, so I got up to start the day. The message for me was that some of the squadrons involved in the mission had sent me email that they needed answered quickly. The secure email was still down (I still didn’t know the crypto had changed at the first of the month), so I decided to get some sleep and try the mail again at 0900.
Around 0830, the power went out. The base facilities folks had decided that Wednesday at the start of business was the best time to do generator maintenance. Having no power is not just a matter of convenience. The hooches do become extremely uncomfortable as the temperatures have been over 100 degrees lately. Even the concrete buildings get hot, but not as fast. You become adept at finding cold when there is no air conditioning.
But with no power, we have no computers available for communications or for preparing briefing materials. [As an aside, the Marines call someone skilled in using that particular Microsoft product a Powerpoint Warrior, and the Special Forces call that someone a Powerpoint Ranger.] We decided to get limited computer and communications on line with our generator. I opted to go get a shower while they were setting the generator up. When I got to the shower trailer, I was sadly reminded that with no power there is no running water for showers or toilet flushing because the water is driven by electric pumps.
The shower trailer is not properly leveled, and water collects in the downslope corner. I was not happy. No coffee, no shower, and the shower trailer had a standing half inch of nasty shower water from people before me who DID get a shower. The water issue has bothered me for a while. I hate wading through shower water from dozens of bodies. I mostly worry about the Army guys, as it is common knowledge that they only wash once a week, cheat at cards, smoke cigarettes, and drink untaxed whiskey. Who knows what they track in. I decided to do something about it.
I borrowed a battery operated drill from a KBR contractor working on our C-hut, and drilled a quarter inch hole in the floor of the trailer at the low end. No more shower swamp. Still uncleaned and uncaffeinated, I went back to the Command Post (CP), where activity had shifted into high gear. The generator had some computers up, and the crypto guys had fixed the mail, so we were in business.The insurgents have given themselves a ranking structure depending on how many people they have killed. A sheik has killed some number of people, and a prince has killed even more. By the way, innocent bystanders count, apparently. We were going after a prince, and we had lots of moving parts to make it happen. While I was sending out last minute communication plans and locations for helicopters to land, the SF guys were working up the briefings and liaising with the El Sals and Iraqi SWAT. We have tried to nab this guy a number of times before, but this time we had a lot more assets to try to get him. This mission has been in the works for weeks, and excitement and anticipation were running high.
Then the intel guy came in, and announced that the informant had learned that the bad guy was not going to be at the target location tonight. The captain thought about it a minute, and made the obvious decision.”Okay, the mission is canceled. Let’s work on rescheduling it.”And just like that, we had nothing to do. I had to generate some message traffic to cancel all the air we had scheduled, and there were other administrative details to take care of, but mostly we just sat there being hot, trying not to feel let down.
With no power and a wretched excess of heat, there really isn’t much to do. We all hung out in the coolest part of the CP. The SF guys are big into Team Trivia, where they try to answer trivia questions about other team members (Which school did Mike play football for? What kind of credit card did Joe travel across the country with?), which was amusing. Finally, we all dozed off as the energy of the morning finally faded away.
Intramural sports are big on camp. The Marines have put together a team, and I go to the games as the Marines are good, and the games are fun to watch. Most of our Marine players are from good street basketball towns, primarily Miami and New York. The other coalition forces on base play pretty technical basketball: lots of classic plays, but quick to call fouls. Our guys play a looser game, which sacrifices technique for style. Truth be told, our guys play a much more spirited game that is a lot more fun to watch.
Towards evening, the Marines headed over to the court to play their scheduled match with the Mongols. The court is a bunch of plywood sheets nailed to a frame on the ground, with two lowered hoops at each end. The hoops are 18 inches below the regulation height because most soldiers from other parts of the world are much, much shorter than Americans. Americans’ height is too much of an advantage to not lower the hoops to make it easier for everybody else.The best part of the intramural basketball games is the civilian facilitator. This is a KBR employee who coordinates all the games on base: soccer, basketball (five on five, as well as three on three), and volleyball. The facilitator really isn’t a referee, but he does come to all the games to keep scores and track league standings. He is an aspiring DJ/rapper, and he uses his own equipment as a PA for the games. He is a really good announcer, if somewhat urban, and offers up some hilarious commentary on the games.
Generally he plays some hip hop rap records while he is announcing, which is nice because it provides a bit of background music to the basketball action. When there is not much going on, he starts rapping along with the music. The best is when he starts rapping his commentary to the music. MC Madden or DJ Dierdorf, if you will.
The Marines took an early lead, but they still aren’t acclimatized yet, and they started slowing down halfway through. The Mongols played a consistent game, and eventually caught up to beat the Marines 15 to 13.The power came back on during the game, which meant that there would be chow. I was sad to see that two large television have been installed in the chow hall. It is now hard to have a conversation because everybody gets distracted watching the televisions.
Our team was still down from the letdown of the mission cancellation. The supply truck had stopped by, and we are now well stocked with apple juice drink boxes and four flavors of ice cream. We even had the pleasant surprise appearance of chili on the menu. But even with all that, no body was really up after the letdown of the mission cancellation.
The chili was pretty tasty. Not as good as my wife’s, but still pretty good. I hope it is around for a while.
I finally got my shower, and started watching a bootleg copy of Napoleon Dynamite which locked up my laptop twelve minutes into the movie. I give up. I am going to bed.