The Last Stand in Iraq and the Trip to Afghanistan

I apologize to everyone following this for the infrequency of posts, but now that I’m done with my Masters courses for the semester and completely spun up in Afghanistan, I can finally sit down and catch my breath… well maybe not quite yet. Ops here run at a dramatically faster pace than the cookie cutter crap we were accomplishing in Iraq, but we’ll get there soon. First I want to explain to everyone what shutting down Iraq ended up being like (if you just want to read about how we got to Afghanistan – feel free to skip down to the end with the understanding that it was similar to Burning Man without hippies or drugs.).

Last post ended with me “procuring” a piano for our last roll call, but between there and here, a lot of weird stuff happened in Iraq. For example, we landed one evening and the loud speakers were going off, blaring some frantic message about a “lost angel,” IE missing soldier. Obviously this is a big deal IF the soldier is missing because of an abduction or is injured somewhere. However, it IS NOT a big deal if the soldier missing happens to be a past-middle-age female who happens to enjoy the company of younger male soldiers a little too much.  They found this aging sergeant holed up in some guy’s room, basking in their post-coital glow (or caught them in the act…ew), completely oblivious to the fact that the whole base had been searching for her for the last 8 hours.  The army didn’t want this type of activity to continue, so they responded as they know best: by crushing morale. They shut down the Rec center and the gym from 2200-0900 every day. This wouldn’t have been that big of an issue if I wasn’t on the night train, and my day normally ended with a trip to the gym at 0200 followed by a Rec center visit at 0400. Half of our squadron was on this exact schedule, and found this to be completely excessive on the Army’s part (which is kind of a self defeating argument. When has the Army ever done something that wasn’t completely excessive?) and a real drag for guys like me who were attempting to work on masters courses. But we made due –not like we had any choice in the manner. The Base Command Group also mandated that if you going to be out at night, you had to have a “battle buddy” or as we called it, an “accountabilibuddy” with you – just in case you… sighted Bigfoot and needed a corroborating witness or something. Understand that I realize the danger of a deployed environment, but Al Asad hadn’t been attacked in over 5 years. Granted the biggest fear was from insider threats, so it partially made sense, but still. We all rolled around disgruntled and armed; you’d have to have a death wish to mess with anyone from my squadron. You would think that being caught without an accountabilibuddy would merit a talking to, or maybe a stern talking to from an army sergeant with too much time on his hands, but they took it to a whole new level. If you were caught at night without your accountabilibuddy, they would throw you in the brig! Seriously? Serving time was now the solution for not being accountabilibuddiable, and this caused a few messes at our squadron. There were other problems that as the shut down date approached weighed heavy on our minds, and our guts.

For the last month that we were in Al Asad, things were rapidly shutting down, including a lot of the traditional support that we had grown accustomed to. Places like the Base Exchange (BX), the Post Office and eventually the Dining Facilities all shut down, leaving us feeling like hobos squatting on an abandoned base. At first no incoming mail was just a drag, but once they shut down the BX and people realized they were woefully underprepared for the isolation that was setting in, everyone’s tempers started wearing thin.  This directly correlated to people’s ability to procure/use tobacco products in many cases. Everyone’s patience was wearing exceptionally thin and hearing people verbally tearing each other a new one was a fairly common occurrence. The closing of the dining facility actually wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, although I know I’m not the only one that lost an excessive/unnecessary amount of weight due to what we were forced to ingest: Meals Ready to Eat or MREs. If you’ve never eaten an MRE, congratulations! They are pretty awful. They are perfect for the deployed member who spends a lot of time outside the wire, as they are compact, and have a TON of calories. Seriously, we’re talking about 3-4000 calories per MRE. Great if you’re walking 4 miles a day with an 80 pound pack, but if you’re sitting in an aircraft for 6 hours a day, they aren’t the best solution. 

All in all, we were getting pretty haggard as we approached the departure date. I remember one evening standing in our destroyed Cadillac (bathroom) after eating my MRE dinner and trying to brush my teeth with my broken toothbrush that I had duct taped back together and thinking to myself, “We have GOT to get out of here before we all start murdering each other.” 

In typical fashion, the squadron responded to calamity and stress like I expected: more shenanigans. Every vehicle we owned became a race car, every driver a Mario Andretti or Danica Patrick, and every trip to and from the squadron a functional check ride. We pushed these vehicles to the limit, sometimes never to recover them.  One day as we were driving to the squadron I told Juice to time me, as I peeled out of the parking area in front of the CHUs:

Me: Time me!
Juice: What? Why? What’s the rush?
Me: I want to see how fast I can get to the squadron!
Juice: You’re kinda speeding….A lot.
Me: Yeah I know. Don’t worry they won’t pull us over. Even if they do, I can talk my way out of it.
Juice: Yeah? What would you say?
Me: I’d tell ‘em, “We’re in Iraq. STILL. Why aren’t YOU speeding?”
Juice: Good point.

My favorite vehicle to drive (read: attempt to destroy) was the Tahoe. Huge engine and low center of gravity: perfect for doing doughnuts in the desert. After we were done a particularly vicious drifting session, the power steering didn’t respond like it used to. Turns out “we” burned the pump out for the hydraulic steering fluid. Whoops. 

On the last official day of the squadron, we had an official decommissioning ceremony, and that evening had the last roll call during which we burned the piano I had previously obtained. I was nervous that the piano wouldn’t catch fire so I asked maintenance to assist by giving us some “accelerant,” as they had plenty left over from their burnings. Some of the maintainers (who were awesome, by the way), told me to come by on my day off to pick up the fuel. Here’s the exchange that NEVER happened:

Nameless maintainer: OK, here’s two gallons. This should definitely do the trick.
Me: Will two gallons be enough?
Nameless maintainer: Ummm, yeah it should be more than enough.
Me: OK… What is this stuff anyways? Am I gonna have eyebrows after this?
Nameless maintainer: Well, you will still probably have eyebrows, but I wouldn’t get too close to it. And let’s not ask questions you don’t really want the answer to.
Me: OK, now I’m terrified. This should be awesome.

Needless to say, if you’ve seen the pictures online, there wasn’t much of an issue trying to get the piano to catch fire. I lit one side of the fire, and walked around to the other side and someone calls out, “You might want to move, Dowd!” I look up and the whole thing is already a blazing inferno. It took a grand total of about 15 seconds for the whole thing to catch flame. I got out of the way and proceeded to run the last roll call for the 362^nd, which consisted of us telling all the ridiculous stories we’d accrued over the last 4 months or so. Afterward, we had a great video lambasting our squadron commander that J-Flo, Jammer, Seaplane, Rojo, Kami and I put together, the basic gist of it being that we recreated a debrief in which the boss was played by my hands and voice clips of Tom Cruise’s character from Tropic Thunder, Lex Grossman. It was a big hit thanks to J-Flo’s clutch editing, and my stellar hand acting.

The next couple of days can best be described as a version of Lord of the Flies, except everyone was heavily armed and we didn’t kill the fat kid (although we came close). Someone had the great idea to get rid of all of the dumpsters near our housing, so trash started piling up. It was starting to look like a desert slum village. Some Navy guy came by and screamed at some people in the squadron, demanding that we do something about the trash that was piling up. Alright, we got something for that. We began building these massive bonfires to get rid of all of the trash and refuse that had piled up. And I mean we burned EVERYTHING. If it wasn’t personal property or bolted down effectively, into the burn pit it went.  It was fairly common to feel an explosion (from canisters of shaving cream, compressed air or even Febreze) shake the CHUs, hear a smattering of raucous cackles, and walk outside and see a group of people walking hesitantly back towards the roaring inferno, fearing for a secondary explosion. Maintenance topped that with a bonfire that would’ve put Aggies to shame the world over. It started as a pile of wood and debris about 20 feet tall that they soaked in their “accelerant” cocktail, which was a mixture of JP-8 (jet fuel with a really high flash point), diesel, and ALCOHOL.  Then, they started throwing cans of air and paint into the mix, which would erupt in a geyser of flames. Seriously, you could probably see this thing from space. The MPs weren’t much of a fan of this, but at this point no one particularly cared.

Two days (the day before Thanksgiving, to be precise), three MREs and eight bonfires later, half of the squadron loaded up on a C-17 to head to Afghanistan. I had been up late the night before and early that day to do one final scan of the squadron to make sure it was good to turn over to the Iraqis who would fill the building with dust, sand and cobwebs (I didn’t know that was my last chance for sleep for the next week or I would’ve taken it more seriously). The other half of the squadron would leave a day after us, so goodbyes were said as we prepared to head out. Everyone was excited to get to Al Udeid because that meant a hot meal, internet access, tobacco products and BEER! At the Deid, each person is authorized three drinks per day…and they get combat pay. Seriously, that place is a joke. All I really wanted was some real food and a toothbrush that wasn’t duct taped together. Plus, we were really hoping to take part in some kind of Thanksgiving meal, talk to family, and enjoy a couple of days off. See, at this time we weren’t fragged to leave for three days from the Deid, and everyone was looking forward to that time. Little did we know…

We arrive at the Deid around 0330, inprocess and drag our bags to our tent, immediately drop them and press over to the Fox Sports bar. We hang out there for a little bit before the BX opens, run a few errands and pass out. Jammer was in charge of the whole crew, and he planned on reattacking later that afternoon and seeing what there was in terms of travel for us. When we all stagger out of our bunks about 4 hours later, Jammer informs us that there is a C-17 leaving that evening to our destination, and we have seats on it. Cue the mutinous rumblings. Apparently he talked to our gaining squadron, and they wanted us in place ASAP, which to me meant I was about to go a number of days without sleep. I was not incorrect. Also, it meant that there was no time off for us, and we’d be traveling on Thanksgiving evening, which sucked, but it was just part of the deployment. At least we were able to get a warm meal before we jumped on a jet out.

The other big issue that we faced was the fact that we had changed our travel plans, but couldn’t do anything about our luggage, which was palletized and sitting on the ramp at the Deid somewhere cooling its heels. Jammer tells us he has this all figured out, and relays to me the conversation he had with outbound:

Jammer: OK, we are leaving today but we need our luggage to continue as fragged.
Outbound: Well, sir… We can’t get it on the flight tonight, it’s too short of notice, and the jet already has a full cargo load.
Jammer: I understand that, just make sure it goes when it’s supposed to. Do not mark us as no shows. Do you understand?
Outbound: Well, you’ll have to be here so we don’t mark you as no shows.
Jammer: WE. ARE. LEAVING. TONIGHT. Make sure our luggage still leaves when it’s supposed to.  DO NOT MARK US AS NO SHOWS. We will already be in Afghanistan waiting on our luggage.  Can you handle this?
Outbound: So you want me to mark you as no shows now?

Only the best and the brightest, folks. The reason why this is so important is that if our group ends up marked as no shows, our luggage gets sent back to wherever it came from, which for us meant that it would head straight back to Iraq, a country we’re leaving and a squadron that doesn’t exist anymore. This was an unsettling thought to say the least. Once Jammer thought he got the message through to the guy, we headed to Afghanistan late Thanksgiving evening. The luggage issue was obviously going to be a problem, but we all carried “72 hour packs,” which should keep us supplied until the bags arrive. We travel all night, and arrive in theater around 0830 in the morning and are greeted by the First Shirt, the Sergeant in charge of personnel for the squadron. He informs us that we will begin inprocessing that afternoon at 1630, meaning after we grab chow and get settled into lodging, we’ll have about 3 hours to sleep. The warning bells are already going off in my head. Then the shirt drops this bomb:

Shirt: Ok, where is Dowd, Scuba and Diddy (names redacted)
Me (thinking “oh great, here we go” to myself) : Here
Shirt: Unfortunately, you three will be living in the tents.
Everyone else kinda sniggers, I issue a withering glare making it abundantly clear that I don’t find it amusing.
Me: OK, any reason why?
Shirt: Yeah, we’re out of rooms.
Me (barely controlling my seething anger) through grit teeth: sounds AWESOME.

The tents are, in fact, NOT awesome. They are the furthest thing from it. I have been issued less space than a death row inmate right next to the flight line and the mosque on base (although I do have a gun, which I feel completes the juxtaposition). I drag all of my crap in, mash it into the corner as best as I can, and pass out for about 3 hours before it’s time to start the inprocessing. There is no better feeling than being deployed for 4 months, doing the EXACT same mission in a different location then showing up and being treated like the new guy. Fortunately, we were all so exhausted we couldn’t muster the enthusiasm to care. I can hardly remember the details of those couple days, just that we were constantly busy, never sleeping, and normally smelling some degree of terrible. I remember having this conversation with a friend over Skype on Saturday:

Me: When do you have to head to work?
Friend: Umm, it’s Saturday morning here on Thanksgiving weekend. No one is working.
Me: Wait, what? Thanksgiving was DAYS ago.
Friend: OK, you really need to get some sleep…

All in all, over the five days from Wednesday to Sunday, I totaled up about 20 hours of sleep, but the inprocessing did get completed. Unfortunately, exactly what Jammer had tried to mitigate occurred. The outbound personnel marked us as no shows, and our luggage just sat on the ramp getting rained on while we frantically tried to stop it from getting shipped back to Iraq. Eventually it did make it, thanks to the other Iraqi refugees that were still at the Deid, and some fast talking from Jammer (although thanks to the rain, all of my uniforms were mildewing. Hooray dirty laundry). I’ve seen Jammer get mad before but never like this. He literally threatened to put contracts out on everyone at Outbound. When it was all said and done, we had survived out of our backpacks for about 10 days, which meant that our meager 72 hour packs had become 240 hour packs.

We're full up here now, and integrated well into our new unit, but that’s all I have for now. The war continues and the flying never stops. I hope everyone is enjoying the holiday season back home.

-Wellen