June - July Continuing Update w/ Pictures :)

OK. I’ve been gone a little longer than I intended. Today is Monday, July 6th. It’s a little over a week after my 40th birthday. I’ve been here in Kuwait with US ARCENT for 37 days. I’ve now been on active duty for 120 days! Only 280 days to go!

I’ll start my catch up here with the 1st week in country. We went right to work on that first day. MAJ Phil Speth is the guy Jim Schultz and I are replacing and our trainer. Still struggling from jet lag, Jim and I staggered into our first day on the Command Operations and Intelligence Center (COIC) floor. We definitely could have used a day or so to at least try to get our bodies somewhat on track. Oh well.

Now, I have to be very careful here as I speak about my job and where I work. To gain entry to the floor, you have to at least have a secret clearance. About everything that happens where I work is secret / need to know. However, I can give some overviews. (To put it in perspective, there are no cell phones, Blackerrys, iPhones, cameras, recording devices, etc. allowed on the floor.) You have to go through two levels of security to even get in. We working a desk area at the front of the command center close to the projection screens. When we go there, we had 3 computer screens with programs we monitor.


That first week Phil Speth turned the fire hose on us again. He jumped right in and went at us with all the things space soldiers due for current operations here on the floor. We rolled on Friday, Saturday, Sunday afternoon, and Monday from 7am to 6-7pm each day. This is also when we found out that we’re going to work 24 hours a day 7 days a week, 12 hours shifts. Jim volunteered for the night shift, so I’m working 6am-6pm. Not thrilled about working 12 hours a day for the next 10 straight months. I fear that burn-out will happen much quicker working this kind of schedule. However, we were given Sunday morning off to sleep in a little and go to church. I needed just to try and catch up to the time change a little.

The following week we continued training on Monday and then started our shifts on Tuesday. My entire concentration right now is on learning the job and trying to get into a battle rhythm. Survival deployed is dependent upon developing a schedule, a system, a rhythm to each day. It’s the only way you can get over the “suck” and get the days clicking by. Here’s a look at a typical day I’m trying to organize for myself.


0500 Wake-up
0500-0530 Personal Hygiene
0530-0600 Breakfast
0600 Report for Shift
1130-1230 Physical Training
1230-1300 Personal Hygiene
1300-1330 Lunch
1800 Off Duty
1800-1900 Dinner
1900-2000 Return Emails, Write Letters, Blog
2000-2200 Personal Time (Wash clothes, watch movie, phone calls, etc.)2200-0550 Sleep

The rub is that any deviation to the schedule like a long day at work because of a significant event, or I miss my lunch time work-out because of a meeting and I’m off. I’ve got to make it up. I’m told that we’re not going to get Sunday mornings off, but that’s BS. I’ve got to work on that. I need at least one sleep in day to recharge for the next week.

I actually took this scheduling issue to my network of Army friends that I’ve made over the last few months. Every person that replied said that no soldier could maintain 12 hours a day 7 days a week and mentally survive the deployment. From the infantry soldier that walks patrols every day to the commander to the support folks, all take a break. You have to have rest, even a short one, to maintain any focus.

I took the issue to my boss. He didn’t agree with me on a better way to sustain ourselves during this tour, but he agreed to sit down with me after the 1st quarter (3 months) to re-evaluate. That’s something at least.

The first week in addition to trying in our job, we in-processed. We had to go by the STB to get a checklist. (The military loves checklists.) Here’s where we go to the armorer to get assigned a weapon. Because we in Kuwait and not Iraq or Afghanistan, and because we don’t carry a weapon here, I got assigned a 9mm pistol. Yay! We go to the transportation office and get our driver’s license. You have to sit through a class about how bad a place Kuwait is to drive in. I’d already seen that first hand. We have to hit the admin folks, the supply folks, and the security folks. One of the things that has always drive me crazy about the military is you have to give the same paperwork to different people (and many times the same people after they loose it) each time. Everybody wants a copy of the same orders. You’d think we’d be able to give one copy and they could share it, but not in the military. Anyway, it’s a lot of trudging around in the heat.

I’m definitely not getting climatized quickly. It’s hot and I sweat. My undershirt is usually sopping wet a couple of times a day. It’s amazing to, because the humidity is only like 10%

I had one of those random events happen to me. My big brother in my fraternity, Lambda Chi Alpha, at the University of Kentucky’s name is Derek Duncan. He’s the guy that convinced me to join LXA. I later also become very good friends with his brother Jon Duncan, who was my brother John’s roommate in the fraternity house. Many, many years ago I’d met most all of Derek and Jon’s extended family. One of their nieces was Meena. She was quite a bit younger than me, cut I remember that she was a college cheerleader. Anyway….she’d found me through Derek and Jon on Facebook. She’s now living in California and a cheerleader with the Oakland Raiders. We started chatting, because she’d read that I was being deployed in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom and she’d been to Iraq on a moral trip with a group from the Raiders. We agreed to stay in touch and try to link up if we could. There are 130,000+ troops in Iraq and about another 25,000+ in Kuwait. What are the chances? Well I was sitting at my desk doing my usual stuff one day when I get a phone call. She and her group were on Arifjan. She’d used the information I’d posted on Facebook and asked the LTC escorting them if he could find me. He said no problem, and he did. She and the other Oakland Raider cheerleaders were staying in the very same building I was staying in! We agreed to meet for lunch. I got to sit and catch up with her among the rest of the cheerleading squad who’d come on the trip at the mess hall. It’s not every day that 5-6 beautiful women sit down in a military mess hall.  It’s was a nice little break in the day.

We got another nice break in the training and in-processing that same day. The Space team from Atlanta is in for an big exercise the unit’s doing. MAJ Speth, SSG Holscher, and myself drove up to Camp Buehring to check out the exercise and meet everyone. MAJ Jim Schultz wasn’t able to catch a ride with us, so he got to catch the Blackhawk helicopter up. It just do happened that Meena and her group were going to Camp Buehring to perform that night. Small world! However, I didn’t get to watch the performance. My unit’s base camp was set up a good distance from the center of Buehring out in their own tent city.

It’s interesting driving through Kuwait during the day time. I took my camera and got a good handful of pictures. The whole country’s a desert. Even close to the Arabian Sea it’s arid. You know how you drive through certain parts of the US and each has a color signature? You go through Georgia and you see green trees mixed with colors like from the azaleas and the dogwoods. You go through Florida and you get the light green of the palm and pine trees mixed with the blue skies. You drive through the mid-west and you get either the combination of colors from the leaves in the fall or the new buds in the spring. Even in the winter, you’ve got the drab gray, but you’ve still either got white or green. In Kuwait, it’s just brown. It’s sandy, dusty brown and it’s everywhere. Even the few trees and bushes they have are brown, because they’re usually covered with a layer of dust. I’m was just struck by all encompassing the brown layer of dust was.

It was neat to get to see some of the architecture. They build everything out of concrete. Even the water towers are made of concrete. You’ll notice from the picture that they look like martini glasses. That’s because they’re concrete instead of steel like the ones we build. Heck, we’ve got a regular round steel one at Camp Arifjan, but when you leave they’re all these martini glasses.

We drove north towards Iraq for a good part of the trip, but then turned west from the coast. We stopped by Ali Al Saleem AFB so that I could pick up a 9mm holster from RFI. I was carrying my pistol with a clip of ammo in my pocket. RFI is you get new equipment from. I’d gotten everything but a holster issued from the RFI at Camp Shelby.

From there, we headed north again for Camp Buehring. This post is located right on the border of Kuwait and Iraq. This is where all Army personnel that go into Iraq start from. Here they go to the range for more weapons training and prepare to move into Iraq. CPT Rob Disney and CPT Warren Read are just a couple of my friends who’d already been through here. One of our landmarks was a dead camel. I’m serious. Apparently, camels lay down and die in the desert. Folks here just let them lay and let the desert claim them. This one had been dead a couple of weeks according to Phil and you could only see about half of it. It won’t be a land mark much longer! Our “turn left just past the dead camel” will only work for a short time!

We got to Camp Buehring, jumped through hoops to get on the post (which is standard practice), and then headed to the airfield to pick-up Jim. He’s just made it in time to catch the chopper. He wasn’t to happy, because he’d had to wear his body armor and helmet. We then headed over to the tent city. It’s amazing what the Army can do on just a patch of dessert. They’d set-up this huge command center. Absolutely amazing! COL Henderson, LTC Zellmann, and the rest of the Space team were there. We also got to meet the ARSST team. They’re a group of reservists from Colorado. MAJ Brett Garner was the team leader. Really nice guy. So, we got the group together to take a picture. COL Henderson wanted an entire group picture. Realize that’s this is not easy to pull off. You have to get special permission from the Public Affairs Officer (PAO) to take a picture inside a classified area, but we got one. We’re all right outside the command post. Pretty cool group pick, except Jim forgot to take off his reflector belt, which we all have to wear at night, and the flash lit it up like a light bulb. That was about it for our trip to see the exercise. We had dinner with the group, and then the four of us headed back to Camp Arifjan. We got back around 2300.

That's what I've got for now. I'll be back shortly with more on getting settled in, my birthday, getting a private room, and the 4th weekend.