Hillah, Iraq.

Tonight’s mission was postponed until tomorrow night. We have some good intel on a dozen or so bad guys in two neighboring towns that The Justice League is going to take down. Our informants were late showing up, so our intel guys opted to delay a day to further develop the intel. Which I am happy about in that I would much rather have a better picture and thus a better chance of nabbing more booger eaters.

It is not surprising that the informants were late. The Arab concept of timeliness makes inhabitants of the Carribean look positively German.Since I have no tales of adventure to tell tonight, let us turn our attention to more domestic matters. Namely chow.

Chow time is important in the military. Any one who has served or read Patrick O’Brian knows this. Meals are more than just food. They divide the day in to very discrete parts, and can be the social highlight of the day.

Our chow hall is pretty nice (I will take my camera tomorrow). The food tends to be good, if not consistent and somewhat institutional. Hamburgers and buffalo wings are always available, as you can always find french fries, corn (called tracer rounds by the Marines), rice or potatoes, and some sort of pasta. Most of the drinks come in drink boxes. It is quite amusing to see a burly Polish soldier drinking grape juice from a drink box.

The chow hall has led to a couple of discussions that are worth relating. The primary force in camp is a Polish division. Americans, Danish, Armenians, Mongolians, Latvians, El Salvadoran, and Romanians are supporting the Poles. The Mongolians seem to lend support primarily by firing lots and lots of tracer rounds after dark at anything moving outside the fence, although they are not so particular and will fire at shadows inside the fence on occasion. I don’t go to the bathroom after dark.

Originally, the plan was for the Poles and their supporting units to be out seven hours a day: patrolling, training, and generally keeping the peace. However, the Poles have discovered the magic of unlimited ice cream and drink boxes. A Dane was complaining to us that the Poles average about an hour a WEEK outside the camp. The Dane told us that he would rather work for the Americans as we go out a lot, and at least his time here would be well spent. He is tired of watching movies and eating.

Which brings up the second discussion: the camp. The camp is, generally speaking, nice, with decent facilities and berthing, as well as a reasonable amount of entertainment. However, I heard a compelling argument from an MP officer detailing how the camp was, in essence, a minimum security prison. One can do whatever one wants inside the fence, but you can’t really leave. I am fortunate in that my unit and the units we support are actively building a nation. We go out a LOT, generally every other day, or two missions in three days, with plans for four day stretches of missions, which irritates the Poles. We are building schools, arresting insurgents, and training police and Iraqi national guard. Our time here is being well spent, and keeping active makes the time pass much, much faster. I am not sure I would want to spend six months watching DVDs and wondering what was going on outside the wall.A final word on chow: I have been known, on occasion, to drink a cup of coffee or two. Good coffee is hard to come by here. There is plenty of bad coffee. I am pretty sure there is plenty in the motor pool, where I am convinced they use it to degrease engine blocks. However, a *good* cup of coffee is rare. I tried making my own, but the coffee pots are hard to clean with no potable running water. I have tried the chow hall coffee, but it sits all day distilling, then gets sent to the motor pool for degreasing duty. Today I tried mixing a drink box of chocolate milk into the coffee in the hope that it would not only make the coffee palatable, but also open up a bold new frontier of chow hall mochas.

Um….it didn’t work. It is my sincere hope that a vigorous bleaching routine will restore my enamel, but in the meantime, don’t expect too many close up photos.

I finally added the last piece of gear to my war vest:

It is the big honkin’ buck knife (BHBK) my brother gave me. I know it is not really useful to have the BHBK strapped to my gear, but I figure it will strike fear in the hearts of the enemy. I worry about poking myself with it getting in the humvee, so it is certainly capable of striking fear.

I also figured out how to take photos through my Night Optical Devices (NODs). It is a highly technical process I call “holding the camera up to the NODs”.

Here is a sample photo:

Hopefully, I will be able to get some shots of the Marines, me, and the rest of the Justice League arresting bad guys tomorrow night!