Farewell to Baghdad

Exactly six months since I arrived at Baghdad International Airport, I depart today from the same location for a flight to Kuwait. With the treasured "Theater Release Authorization" letter in hand as well as my demobilization orders from Headquarters, Navy Personnel Command, I start the odyssey that returns me and thousands of reservists each year, to civilian life.

I turned in 60 rounds, or four magazines worth, of 9mm amunition to the armory, which is good, since I started the tour with the same 60 rounds. Remember those two full seabags of gear that I never thought I would use? Well, I didn't use it and the bags, shoved under my bed and accumulating dust, are good to go too. All of it will be turned in during the five-day Navy "Warrior Transistion Program," or WTP for short, in Kuwait. Herein the Navy takes a sailor who is relieved to exit Iraq and transitions them into a sailor who is frustrated they have to spend another week waiting to get home. The primary bonus is that we can turn in all our gear, meaning I'll revert to the same two pieces of luggage I left home with on September 16, 2007: A backpack and one seabag.

I'll be sure to write more about the experience in Kuwait, but right now, I want to highlight my officemates who made my experience in Iraq, and 14 hour days, tolerable, enjoyable, funny, educational, enlightening and immensely satisfying. Some remain here and others redeployed months ago. In no specific order, we roll the credits:



At Al Asad Airbase in Anbar Province with my first boss, CAPT Virginia Brantley. She recruited me for the job and I owe her for the incredible experience that followed.

Jim Penzenstadler, SFC Robert Tate and Manny Arceo. These guys kept me laughing through thick and thin.

LT Frank Solorzano. My fellow LT, fellow Seabee and theater travel mentor, Frank taught me how to manuver through the maze of air support options as well as initiated my trial-by-fire learning process here.

The Commanding Officer of the unit, COL Gary Andrews, and on my left, my second boss, CDR Mike Harr. They tolerated and even occassionaly encouraged my intermitent (or frequent) brash observations/comments and permitted me a great deal of leeway in my area of responsibility.

The consumate racontuer and chief of office morale, MAJ Dave Troutman, here displaying some of the Girl Scout cookies our office received.

COL Andrews again, with SK2 Banning. Banning was the undisputed champion of the one-liners, made all the more joyus by the fact that he was usually just thinking out loud.

Two of my favorite people, Mary Legeret and Josh Strakos.

CDR Michael Funnye was the unofficial commodore of the office's three vehicle fleet. It yielded a lifetime of humor.

So it is with fond memories of these great servicemembers and many others like them, that I sign-off from Baghdad station.

The First of the Lasts

I am on countdown mode as I start a week of "lasts." My last Monday conference call, my last Tuesday jog around Lost Lake, etc. My time here is quickly reaching terminal status. Today I turned over my desk, computer, phone etc. to my relief, LCDR Fitzpatrick. Our building is overflowing with people and now I have no place to sit and no extra computer to use. With the constant turnover, I am the most senior person in the office (by time in theater, not rank). Since I have no place to sit, I told the Colonel that I would agree to a consulting contract at double my hourly rate for the remainder of my tour and would work from "home." He told me to go sit in the corner, be quiet and try not to irritate any senior officers before I left. He might be on to me . . .

Camp Slayer: The Tour


Camp Slayer is one of the seven main coalition camps within Victory Base Complex and emcompasses what use to be the official Republican Guard "playground." The playground inlcuded a huge six-level brothel, the Baath Party House and Saddams never quite completed "Victory over America Palace." (You really can't make this stuff up). Well, if you know any good handyman types, there are a few repairs to be made here now, with thanks to the munitions and skill of the Air Force. My roomate Erick and I took the official tour of these Camp Slayer landmarks.


The imposing but never finished Victory Over America Palace was intended to be Saddam's primary residence.

In the Baath Party House. No, not for parties, Saddam's political party was the Baath party. Don't make me make you watch AFN commercials (see below). This was the room where Saddam gave the pre-war interview to Dan Rather. The roof leaks but they are still working on finding the hole . . . you just never know where that water is coming from.

Inside the Victory Over America Palace. The builder was a French contractor. Hey France, we have some raw building materials for you to retrieve . . .

Erick and I stand in the Baath Party House overlooking the center - the whole building was on stilts above the lake.

The Perfume Palace from across the lake. Not considered a "military" target, the palace emerged unharmed and now serves as office space for coalition operations.

Signs of the Times

Betcha ya don't see this where you live (and if you do, it was time to move a long time ago).

One Last AFN Commercial Highlight

As you may recall from a previous post, Armed Forces Network (AFN) does not play regular commercials but instead, plays campy military-ish public service commercials about stuff like looking both ways before you cross the street or how to tape a package for mailing. I now have a new favorite. A kindly looking elderly woman named Kay Blakely does commercials for the military commissary system. The commissary is the on-base grocery store (not here in Iraq, but on bases in the U.S., Europe, etc). The commericals promote healthy eating choices and here is, verbatim, the newest one:

Kay Blakely: "Eating whole grain bread is a healthier choice. How can you tell if the bread you are buying is whole grain? [holding up a loaf of bread from the shelf] Look for the word 'whole' [points to word] in front of the word 'grain' [points to word] on the bag."

OH CRAP!! Seriously??? Is that what I keep doing wrong?! This is the kind of label-reading information we don't want Iran to have, so lets just keep this tip to ourselves, okay?

March's "Meet a Member of the Coalition"

Wacky uniforms or not, this month we meet with the Black Wolf Battalion of the 151st Infantry of Romania. 397 troops strong, these witty fellows refer to their living and working quarters on COB Adder as "Camp Dracula." So hats off to the Black Wolves as we salute this month's edition of Meet a Member of the Coalition!

On the Down Hill Slide to Home

My relief, LCDR Robert Fitzpatrick, and I toast (near beer, near beer, no one get too excited) at a BBQ at COB Speicher near Tikrit.

My "farewell Iraq" tour started at Balad Air Base as I introduced my relief (person taking my position so I can go home) to our sailors based there. It was one more chance to fly the friendly skies of Iraq in a helicopter, a form of transport I have come to love. With the weather warming up, many of the Blackhawk crews no longer even slide the doors closed so all you have between you and the ground as the helo swoops around is your four point harness. Better than any amused park ride, and with two machine guns.

Two last "above Iraq" photos from the trip to Balad Air Base.

We also visited COB Speicher. My friend MAJ Denis McDonnell who is in charge of our operation there likes to say "don't blink or you might miss Spring." How true that was as the mid-March temperature quickly passed 100 degrees. Smokers get black lung but I think those of us serving in Iraq will end up with "brown lung" from the ubiquitous and aptly named "moondust" covering this country.


Speaking of weather warming up . . .


LCDR Fitzpatrick and I were scheduled to go on to the Al Taqqadum (frequently referred to as "TQ") Marine base in Al Anbar province but bad weather canceled our flight, and pretty much all the rest of the flights for the next three days. A virulent dust storm had long ago grounded rotary wing flights* and now even the stout-hearted C-130 Hercules prop planes were unable to land at COB Speicher. Speicher, named after the only American to remain in MIA status after the first Gulf War, is headquarters of Multi-National Division North and the 1st Armored Division. The two-star general based here controls the battlespace for all of Northern Iraq.

The original flight we were booked on, now long since cancelled, actually routed via Kuwait, or approx 800 miles out of the way. The ratty passenger waiting tent at Speicher is a canvas shell covering metal arches overhead. A dozen or so residential, window-mounted A/C units were installed through holes in the canvas and struggled to cool the space and its 50+ occupants, a mix of military, government civilians and contractors resigned to our fate of an indefinite wait for an unknown ride out of camp. LCDR Fitzpatrick and I were the only Navy personnel there.

Young soldiers, far more accustomed to the Army's unofficial slogan of "hurry up and wait" ensconced themselves in corners, using their body armo for a mat on the dusty plywood flooring and falling asleep. They appeared uninterrupted by the persistent ebb and flow of foot traffic and the resulting gyrations of the loosely supported flooring with each step. A refrigerator for water sits in one corner. Although originally white, it is now, like eveything else here, a medium shade of tan. A power failure in the tent garners nothing more than a few assorted sighs. The trailer-sized 15-ton generator providing power has been taken off-line for periodic maintenance - a KBR technician comes into the tent and assures us it will not last more than 45 minutes.

A handfull of troops have found wall plugs, although now unpowered, in which to connect their laptop computers while still more have the telltale white earbud speakers - a dead give away for an iPod. The level of electronic sophistication and access among even the most junior troops was unthinkable even 10 years ago.

Now keep in mind that once YOUR plane does not show, there is no function to automatically be "booked" (or what the military calls "space blocked") on another flight. You are forced to go "Space A" (space available) wherein you must repeatedly go back and forth to the air terminal each time a new flight may come in and hope there is space on that plane to let you go where you need to go. This process lasted FOUR days. We were finally able to get out to a base inside a base, called Phoenix Academy in Taji, about 30 miles north of Baghdad. Our ride was to be my first and only lift on a giant CH-47 Chinook helicopter. A visceral experience, the sound of a 47 is almost the same as the sound of a 50-cal machine gun - a constant, deep, powerful "thump-thump-thump-thump." The ramp at the aft of the helo stays open during flight, offerring up a 4th-of-July view as the pilot popped a set of four searing white phosphorous flares to potentially divert any heatseeking missiles at a critical point in the journey. (We were not fired on - don't worry mom!)
A CH47 Chinook, capable of landing 55 combat ready troops. (photo credit: Boeing)

Our flight arrived at Taji, which is also the logistics headquartes for the Iraqi Army. And the primary storage area for damaged and obsolete Iraqi Army equipment




Click on the video to see the field of obsolete Russian-made tanks from pre-invasion times.

Almost five days behind schedule, we made it back to Camp Victory on March 22nd.

*Award yourself 10 blog bonus points if you are not in the military AND remembered that "rotary wing" means helicopters

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.

Warfare Redesigned

As staff officers manning desks and watch stations instead of gun turrets and humvees, it is rare that we ever engage in actual counter-insurgency operations. We feel the reverberation of incoming fire and hear the noise, but generally continue about our business uninterrupted. Recently, however, there have been several notable instances of our perimeter being infiltrated by insurgent forces. This startling and bothersome revelation has resulted in the mobilization of military and civilians alike in a combined effort to secure our area. As you know, civilians are un-armed and even with all the gear the Navy issued me, I was not equipped properly for this mission. The insurgents are a nimble and fast moving. We have had to adjust our tactics and use new methods of teamwork to effectively fight. This picture represents our current defensive posture in the office . . .

My officemate, MAJ Dave Troutman, and I prepare for the onslaught of airbourne bloodsuckers.

WHOA! What happened to your HAIR??

Umm, why, does it look different? Okay, I shaved my head. Or rather, Samato, the barber from Sri Lanka shaved my head (he checked with me three times just to make sure that he understood, and even then approached the task with great caution). As of the date on this post (March 16, 2008), I am exactly FOUR weeks away from starting the trek back to the joy of wine with dinner (or without - but I can choose), a private bathroom, Hawaiian shirts and flip flops. To mark this auspicious occasion, I thought I needed to make a statement. I also wanted to get a preview on how I would look in the future when there would be no need for me to go to a barber at all.

Signs of the Times

Yes, that sign does say "Non Potable Water Do Not Drink." Only the Army . . .

COB Adder - A 4-Star Destination

COB (Contingency Operating Base) Adder, near the ancient city of Tallil, lies about 100 miles north of the Kuwait border and is my new favorite vacation destination in Iraq. Surely a future four star venue on the yet to be published LT Bob's Tourist Guide to Iraq, only missing that fifth star due to pesky rockets that landed my second day there. More on that later, though, let's hit the highlights first.

Getting There
Although Quantas does not offer service from Baghdad to Adder, fortunately for me, my new mates in the Australian Royal Air Force do! Our travel, the most civilized yet in country, was on a ARAF C-130. They take your bags and palletize them. They provide bus service directly to the terminal. They have a dedicated waiting tent with a TV that works. You even get a neat little bag tag (this one for my return trip).


Sadly, the national flag on the tag was not indicative of my final destination . . . .

In stark contrast to our own Air Force, the Aussies can actually tell you WHERE their plane is so if it is running late, you don't have to sit at the passenger terminal waiting for a plane that is still 1,000 miles away. The USAF requires you to be at the terminal three to four hours ahead of time, regardless of the location of your plane. As always, lets compare and contrast.

Aussie conversation:
Crikey mates! The bird is still in Kabul and will be a few hours late. Don't bother going to the pasenger terminal until 1430 hours. We'll get that bugger over here as soon as we can.

USAF conversation (imagine this conversation happening over and over again across hours, and in some cases, days as we wait for a plane:
Me: Hi, I'm LT Kurkjian, checking in for the Train 72 Mission to nowhere.
Air Force person (AFP): Okay, please wait in Tent 5.
Me: Is the plane on time?
AFP: Yes sir, it could be here any moment.
Me: So where is it right now?
AFP: It's almost here, it could be here anytime.
Me: Right, I know but do you know where the plane is now?
AFP: Yes sir, it is on its way here.
Me: "On its way here" as in it is down hard for maintenance in Qatar or "on its way here" as in currently in the sky above Iraq stopping here next? [Because the USAF definition of "on its way here" does, infact, encompass that range of possibilities]
AFP: It could be here any minute.
Me: You have no idea where your own plane is, do you?
AFP: We'll come over to Tent 5 to let you know.

If you think I am kidding, come on over to Iraq and find out yourself.

Accomodations
As a guest of the Base Garrison, the fine men and women of the 871st National Guard Troop Command of Arkansas, I was given VIP quarters and my first private bathroom in over six months. A brand new containerized housing unit (CHU), complete with linens, snacks and bottled water. Although the bathroom (or "head" as we call it in the Navy) was very small, it seemed large to me, especially when you consider that I was the only one in it.


Room 8005B at the Ritz Adder

Fierce fans of their home state team, the 871st exemplified Southern hospitality as well as the fact that every other person in Arkansas has "Bobby" as a first, middle or last name. These guys were a blast and some of them were right out of central casting. The base Terrain Manager was the primary contact and his assistant, a staff sergeant, who everyone just called "Bobby" sat in the same office. At one point I asked the staff sergeant if I could use his computer to check in with the office. In a long Southern drawl, he replied "sure thing sir" and with an added smile, continued, "just don't go looking at none of that porn or nothing." His boss quickly noted, "Aint nothing to worry about LT, Bobby aint never figured out how to work that computer to begin with."


Almost as if I was back in Fayetteville for USC's 2006 season opener . . . except not

Fine Dining
After months of DFAC food, which now tastes the same to me, regardless of the food item, I would like to sing my praises for the Italian Army! While I cannot attest to their warrior prowess or tactical aptitude, they do know how to eat. Prior to their withdrawal from Iraq, the Italians were one of the primary occupants of this base (along with the Australians and now the Romanians). Longing for some home cooking, they installed not one but THREE Italian restaurants here. The menu is limited and there is no table service, but it was not the DFAC. I didn't even care that this calzone with tomato sauce cost me $12.

Although it might appear as though this delicious pepperoni calzone has been mortally wounded, it is only an extra large portion of tomato sauce . . .

Australian Charm
The large Australian contingent on base was always noticeable and fun to talk to.


An Australian Striker armored vehicle rolls back into base after a patrol.

Sights and Tourist Attractions

Within the perimeter of COB Adder is the largely reconstructed Ziggurat at Ur, reportedly a very similar design the the biblical Tower of Babel. The base Religious Affairs Center sponsors weekly guided tours of the ziggurat and surrounding archeological sights, including the home of the prophet Abraham who is said to have lived here for 72 of his 170+ years.

Our tour guide was an Iraqi named Dyif who was able to boast an impressive pedigree - he is a third generation archeologist at this site. His grandfather was part of the original excavation, led by the British in the 1920s. He works for the Iraqi Ministry of Culture and Antiquities.

Ancient writing could be seen on a spattering of the bricks used to build a nearby town center.

Rebuilt based on the excavated foundation on the order of Saddam, this is said to be the home of Abraham. He lived large in a home with over 20 rooms.

Shop Ziggurat seemed to have an inventory from a time past, as though left out in the desert for years only tobe retrieved and put on sale. But from small beginnings there is great possibility. Iraq has a wealth of historical sites and if the current conflict ever ends, the country could easily become a top tourism destination, particularly for religious groups.

A walk down the steps that ancient denizens of this area believed would allow them to get closer to God.