O-3 Dinner Club

My time in Iraq, now rapidly approaching a conclusion, has been made more tolerable and far more amusing by a weekly event I took to calling "The O-3 Dinner Club." O-3 signifies the pay grade of a Navy LT (the equivalent to an Army or Air Force Captain). The "O" stands for officer. In any case, each Sunday night, at 1815 exactly, the core band of O-3s meets outside the DFAC. Although membership ebbs and flows with each new personnel rotation, we always seem to have a solid group.

O-3 Dinner Club founding members, LT Jeremy Casella (He is single AND a pilot, ladies!), me, and LT Mike Johnson. We all trained together and arrived in Iraq together.

Sitting down in the DFAC, the conversation is, as you can imagine, very serious and immediately relevant to the status of the war. Usual topics include Jeremy's wacky ex-girlfriend, which gives way to making fun of Mike and the photo studio worth of pictures he has on his desk of his girlfriend which gives way to jokes about how Mike's girlfriend is secretly dating both Jeremy and me, which gives way to an overview of any new female sightings on base. I'm sure some where in there they make fun of me too. As you can see, it is truly at the junior officer level, with discussions like this, that the war will be won. My roomate Erick, also a member, and father of five, will harp on all of us for not coming to the work-out program he leads every morning at the gym. I'll tell him that you can't maintain a physique like mine by working out too much.

The other auspicious part of the dinner is that it marks the one night a week that Jeremy and I have ice cream. These days you can tell it is getting hot on the convoy route because the marshmellows in the sundae bar are clumping together. I usually let Jeremy go first since he is on a first name basis with the ice cream scooper. Mike will sometimes indulge and get jello (and yes, we make fun of him for that also). The sundae bar almost has too many choices and we are confronted with the kind of big decisions that the Army allows troops to make without having to fill out a form or get the signature of a superior: Apple or bluberry topping? Chocolate or caramel sauce, or maybe even both? Shortbread cake with that or do I go with a cookie instead? Yes indeed, heady stuff.

In all seriousness though, Sunday night dinners have been a huge part of my mental well being here. Everyone talks about their frustrations and triumphs. Frustrations are at once comiserated with and triumphs are immediately made light of. I probably won't miss much about Iraq, but I'll sure miss Sunday night.


LT Erick Johnson (far right) my roomate and fellow O-3 DInner Club member, joins Mike and me for a photo in the Al Faw Palace.