From the Soldier side: It was 5 years ago this month that my team and I left Baghdad and rolled into the lovely city of Fallujah. My how time flys. So, doing the math, I've been home about 4 years now. Most people I know have stopped asking me silly questions about Iraq. Now, I just blog the memories.
It seems that most of the troops who have deployed to Iraq were at the big camps or FOBs. For most of my time there, so was I.
The fact is, the big camps were not that bad compared to what our soldiers in past wars had to live in and what they had to eat. The big camps in Iraq were actually much better than the training center we have to use in California-- Camp Roberts. Heck, the Iraqi Army has better training camps than our state does.
While in Iraq, My team and I did spend a short time at a very, very remote camp. I've talked about Camp Gannon before, but it's one of those places you can look back on later in life and say: "Man that place sucked."
The little rat bastard insurgents bombed that camp so much that most of the generators, ACs and other luxurey items had been destroyed or wouldn't work due to the lace of electricity. We didn't even have running water.
They did have extra ammo, so that kind of made up for having to take one shower a week with bottled water, then washing your clothes in an old ice chest with bottled water. The main thing I remember is I was sweating 24 hours a day...unless I was in the TOC (Tactacial Operating Center) where they had working AC.
When we left that shithole and got back to Baghdad. I remember going to the nice KBR mess hall with my friends. When it came time to get desert after dinner, I would just stare at the ice cream. I was so afraid that they were going to send me back out to some shithole, that I had ice cream every night after dinner. And all the cold soda I could drink. Then I'd go to my office or room and crank the AC up full blast. There were times when I could actually get the room temp down to 75 degrees F! That was cold considering it was usually over 115 F outside.
The first day I went back to my civilain cop job, we had a bank robbery. I remember thinking that "this was easy, nobody is really trying to kill me."
Coming soon, CI Roller Dude gives advice on woman and love. Don't miss this.
4 comments:
>Coming soon, CI Roller Dude gives advice on woman and love<
Can't wait ;D
It was kinda like that with me. At sea and overseas all we had to drink at meals were coffee, milk or water from a scuttlebutt. The milk was the powered type and tasted horrible.
The first thing I did when I was able to leave the ship when we returned to Long Beach was go to the PX and drink three quarts of milk and several helping of banana pudding. I walked out side and threw it all up. But Goddamn it tasted good going down.
CI Roller,
I've never left commt's b4, but love your kind of strange humor.
pls keep ur' blog going.
sure ur' tough dude, but can tell you are really a softy.
PSC
For me it's cold watermelon. We would buy them from the roadside or truck drivers that passed through the base.
Then between the icing down, waiting for them to get really, really, REALLY cold, protecting them from thievery at gunpoint, swiping salt from the mess hall AND finding the really perfect time to eat them without interruption and too many moochers-there was nothing like them once we finally dug into them on a 120 degree day.
I cannot even look at one now that I don't think of those days.
I think they came from Egypt.
The End
Post a Comment