29 August

Hillah, Iraq.

We had a trip to Baghdad this afternoon, so we went to lunch early. The chowhall opens at 1130, and the line was already substantial at 1120. As we waited, we noticed KBR employees bypassing the line as they headed to the rear of the chow hall. After a moment, we saw these same KBR employees appear inside the chow hall, which was still technically closed. I walked around to the back to see the staff letting other KBR employees into the chow hall early.I reported this back to the Green Berets and Marines, who got annoyed.Especially as it was now after 1130 and the chow hall was still closed.One of the Green Berets went attempted to walk into the rear entrance, but was stopped.

“You can’t come in here.”
“Why not?”, the Green Beret asked.
“You don’t have a hat on.”
“What?”
“I can’t let you in without a hat.”

Never mind that most of the KBR types weren’t wearing hats either. The Green Beret came back to the line to borrow a hat. The gate keeper reluctantly let him pass this time, but with the warning that this entrance was really only for KBR employees. When they learned of this, the Green Berets got irritated. When the chow hall finally opened (late, but with all KBR employees now fed),they confronted the chow hall manager. The manager claimed that the KBR types need to be fed first in case something happened during lunch.

The Special Forces guys asked, “Are you saying that the support people are more important than the war fighters?”
“Well, no, but KBR needs to be ready in case of emergency.”
“Such as?”
“Well, the generator could break down.”
“How many generator repair people do you have?”
“Two.”
“Are they both eating now?”, asked the Marine Warrant Officer.
“Um…yes.”
“So how does both of them eating early help if the generator breaks?”

They really didn’t have a good answer for that, but the finally agreed that it was not fair to let the KBR employees in early. I am not hopeful that the practice will stop.

After chow, half the team went to Baghdad, leaving the rest of us with a lot of time and not much to do. I found some rope and surgical tubing my brother sent me a while ago, and realized that today was the perfect day to build a giant water balloon slingshot. I regret that we were having so much fun flinging water balloons at humvees that we didn’t take many pictures, but I offer the following movies.

 

We are sending our interpreters out form more water balloons.

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