BIAP, Paris, Chuck Norris and Davy Crockett

I'm off to Paris on 16 days of leave! This evening marks the first time I have not gone to work in 161 straight days, and it was an odd feeling.

Right now, I'm typing away from an Internet Cafe at BIAP, the Baghdad International Airport. It's been a long night of sleeping on dusty concrete slabs in the open air, trudging across the gravel-paved walkways to the port-a-johns and taking showers with wet-wipes.

I have plenty of experience with BIAP by now, having already gone through here three times before this. We're on the old Iraqi military side of the airport, and facilities are downright primitive - though they are dramatically improved from the way they were the last time I was here five months ago. The U.S. military is constantly improving and upgrading our bases and facilities here - part of the vast dough that you, the taxpayer, are coughing up.

I got off work yesterday morning, since it was my half day, and promptly got some sleep to transition to a normal sleep cycle. After spending the day running errands to prepare for my two weeks of freedom, I went to a 1930 debriefing for folks going on leave. Then I went to the armory and turned my weapon in.

The folks in my unit lined up a truck and I was chauffered to the airport and dumped. This place, as I said, is bad, but it's improved a heck of a lot. They actually have a terminal building over here, instead of just a tent. There's a full civilian terminal across the airport, but our facilities are much more limited. The remnants of the old Iraqi air force infrastructure are all around - concrete hardstands for their Mig fighter jets, with big holes in the top where U.S. missiles punctured them like they were made of pudding. Can't describe much of what we have built up for our avation assets for security reasons, but suffice it to say it's bare minimum. It reminds me in a way - though it's not quite this bad - of the island airfields we built in WWII where the most modern planes would land and taxi up and the pilots would get out and go get debriefed in improvised tents.

I reported for my flight at 2200. We stood in ranks and they took our IDs. Then they told us to come back in 30 minutes, which of course turned into an hour and a half. Then they gave us back our IDs and our bording passes. I looked at mine. It said to report at 0630, with the flight leaving at 0900. There was an option to go to Camp Slayer and get a tent for the night, but by the time I rode the bus there, went to the billeting office for a tent, and got in bed, there would only be about 4 hours of sleep time for me. And it was only then that I realized that I didn't have an alarm clock of any kind.

So I forewent dreams of fluffy beds and pillows and threw my backpack onto a concrete slab under a steel awning out in the open. I had my small camouflaged pillow with me, so I pulled that out. I had my sleeping bag too, but the concrete was literally covered in half an inch of sand, so I decided against pulling it out. I'd never get it clean, and as I backpack through France, the one thing I need most is a clean sleeping bag. So I spread out on the ground, my earplugs in to somewhat dampen the sound of prop blast from the tarmac only 100 feet away, and went to sleep.

Occasionally, I'd get up and go use the facilities, which amounts to a bunch of port-a-johns. They're full of graffiti. Much of it is the same stuff I've been seeing since I was a kid, but a huge part of it these days - both here in Iraq and Kuwait - are "Chuck Norris Facts." Stories about Chuck Norris' prowess and abilities. You've heard them. "Chuck Norris isn't afraid of Death, Death is Afraid of Chuck Norris."

So it was odd this morning that as I checked my email here, my friend Mike sent me the following link about this very trend. The article is spot on. There is literally a Chuck Norris cult over here. Read it:

http://in.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idINL0854496320080310

I've thought about this stuff a lot, and it occurred to me a few months ago that Chuck Norris is essentially the Modern Day Davy Crockett. Well before he became a martyr at the Alamo - see my Texas History posts - Davy Crockett was a media sensation. Stories of Davy's amazing hunting exploits - most of which were wildly exaggerated - filled the media. Entrepreneurs - some with Davy's blessing, some not - wrote "Davy Crockett Almanacs" to cronicle his exploits.

Here's a good link that talks about this 1800s media sensation:

http://www.umsl.edu/mercantile/mexhibevents/Past%20Exhibits/crockett_almanacks/Bibliography.html

So that's my thought for today. I leave in 30 minutes on my flight, so I've got to go. I'll try to post some about my leave, which should be fun. Paris, Normandy, perhaps Verdun. Maybe a bit of Germany. But ultimately, I'm out of Iraq for two weeks, and if all I do is sit in a cafe in Paris reading for that time, it will still be an incredibly liberating experience.