Just an ordinary day

It's been a while since I just gave folks an idea of what an ordinary day in my life is like. For those new to the blog, I mentioned earlier that my job is not the kind of thing I can talk about in a lot of detail. I'll simply say that I'm an intelligence officer working for the Multi-National Corps - Iraq. The corps, for those not knowledgeable about army organization, is the big-picture guys. So I can say I've got a pretty good idea of what's going on here.

Most of my days are essentially groundhog day, over and over again. I'll give you a glimpse into them by just describing one of them that occurred this week.

I got up around 11:30 in the evening. Still don't have a roomate (sshh--don't tell KBR), so I turned the lights on and got ready for work. I wear one of six nearly identical uniforms to work every day. In fact, other than my PT clothes, I have not worn any other clothes since September. It seems like a land far away and a distant memory when I wore suits to work. Or for that matter, jeans.

After throwing my uniform on, I grab for my holster. In it is my 9mm pistol. Attached to the side of a holster is a small pouch holding one magazine of ammunition. I used to carry two, but they were too bulky. Yes, there are scenarios when I might need it here on base, but even those are highly unlikely. Even when I go to another base, it's rarely necessary. Most of the threats you face on base are indirect fire, and a pistol isn't going to do much against that. Still, if one of the local nationals on base turns out to be Al Qaeda and decides to attack with some kind of smuggled weapon (a highly remote possibility due to security), he'll find himself outnumbered 15,000 to 1 by Soliders, Sailors, Airmen and Marines...and the occasional Blackwater guard...who are all trained and ready at a moment's notice. Despite the lack of a real threat, I wear it everywhere I go (as is required), with the sole exception of the shower. And the guys cleaning the shower are always guarded by a soldier with an M-16.

As for my M-16, I don't need it on a day-to-day basis, so it's locked up at the armory. When I get the word that it's time to go outside the wire to another base, I can pick it up within an hour.

I step out of the trailer at around 11:40. It's still wet and muddy outside, and once I pass my improvised deck (made of pallets), I'm out in the mud and goo, picking my way along with the aid of a flashlight. For the most part, I can avoid the thick mud and the puddles by staying on the gravel paths (see four posts back), but the mud is inevitable. Nearing the chow hall, there's a field you have to cross that is just a vast pit of mud. There's one spot near the edge that's a little more compact, but it's right up against a canal, and you don't want to try walking there at night, and especially not in slippery mud. The drop into the canal is 12-15 feet, the canal is deep, cold and probably full of every type of chemical and amoebic dyssentery crap you can think of. And if you go in, you will not get out. Not until someone comes to help you, at least.

So I just go straight through the mud, and it quickly cakes onto my boots, rendering them heavy and encumbering. As the surface area spreads like a fat snowshoe, they pick up even more mud. Eventually, I'm flinging mud off with each step, but nonetheless, I always pick up more and more. Finally, I reach an open area of gravel, and I swish my shoes through this, trying to clean off as much mud as I can before I get to the chow hall. Once there, I clean my boots as good as I can on the mats and go inside.

It's midnight chow, so it's a late dinner for most of the guests, but it's breakfast for me. Still, I usually get something like a hamburger, because my lunch in six hours is everybody else's breakfast, and all I'll be able to find then is eggs, bacon and french toast. I eat my food in a hurry and am out of the DFAC (Dining FACility) by 12:10. I then re-enter the sea of mud, heading for the palace.

I arrive at the gate.

"Malu le ley," I say to the Tongan guards, as they check my credentials.
"Malu le ley," they respond.
"Fe fe aku?"
"Saibe," they say.

I've just told them good morning and asked how they are, and they always respond "fine" regardless of how long they've been standing in the cold rain. The Tongans are very professional, very disciplined and very big. The average Tongan is around 5' 11" and weighs about 230. They're also about the happiest and friendliest people you'll ever meet. They laugh, joke, and they all love to sing. Frequently, they pass the time by doing a kind of South Pacific version of a barbershop quartet. Of course, they're good at what they do, and I have no doubt that they'd be ready at a moment's notice to drop the song, lift their weapons and engage someone who needed a little hostile welcome from the natives of the only island in the Pacific Ocean that has never once been conquered by an outside force.

I next go over to the foot-washing area. They've got these large, very high pressure hoses out to one side of the grounds, where you must wash the mud off your shoes before entering the building. It's cold and dark, so you can barely see without a flashlight. And you can't exactly hold your flashlight while simultaneously holding the hose in one hand and balancing on one leg to clean your opposite boot. In the dim light, however, you can usually see the big chunks of mud coming off the boots. If you're lucky and there's someone in line behind you, he'll shine his flashlight for you.

I then go inside, and go to work. I start at 12:30 a.m. and work until about 12:45 p.m. The job varies for different people, but for me, a lot of the work is front-loaded in the early hours.

I take as many breaks as I can to strech my legs and get my mind off the work, which can be stimmulating, boring or disturbing, depending on the day. At one point during the day, I come out and see a young black female soldier sitting on a bench, eating her breakfast. She's wearing a plastic Hawaian lei and a small flower in her hair. Of course, she's also wearing her camouflauge uniform and has her M-16 sitting next to her, so it's a really odd picture. And then I see the reason for it. On a table a few feet away, people put all the stuff they receive but can't use. It's kind of like a big swap table (see my Christmas post). Sometimes we get the wierdest stuff, and apparently today, someone has sent an entire box of little plastic Hawaian leis. I pick up a couple and look through them. They're pink, purple, blue, red and orange (the kind the girl is wearing).

Now I'm sure everybody wants to help out the troops, and I can't disparage anyone's efforts, but who, in God's name, sits around thinking, "How can I help win the war on terrorism? I know, I'll send a box of plastic Hawaian leis to Baghdad! That'll do the trick!"

At some point in the morning, I get time off and run to breakfast. I get a little time to chat with some friends, but then I have to hurry back because my boss, an Army Lt. Colonel, needs his breakfast and can't get away. So I box it up and take it back.

I usually am serenaded on my morning walks by the sounds of the Mosque loudspeakers across Baghdad calling the faithful to pray. On this day, I'm walking with an Army Captain who works in my unit and has become a good friend, despite the fact that I'm a redneck white Catholic Texan and she's a black, Muslim Brooklyn native. As we go along, she explains what we're hearing. "That's the call to prayer...and now this is a reading...one of the Surras..." I take her word for it since my Arabic is an odd mixture of stuff I learned from some travel tapes and stuff I learned in the short Army language class I took. So I know how to order lamb in a fine restaurant in Damascus, or to tell someone to put their hands on their heads and not move or I will gun them down...but very little in between.

Back at work, I plow back into my tasks. Only another 6 hours to go, and then I get three hours of freedom! When it's busy, I can be going non-stop. When it calms down (which it's done a lot now since most of the insurgents are safely dead), then it seems boring as hell. Some of the guys who work in my area and don't have as taxing of a job play "Risk" on the computer. I hear them calling out to each other:

"Sgt. Hall, you'd better watch your ass, because I'm coming for you in Kamchatka."
"You'll never penetrate my Asian defenses, Gunny."

or

"Major Jones, your puny forces in North Africa are no match for my legions in Southern Europe."
"Bring it on. Oh, and when you're threatening me soldier, don't forget to call me 'Sir.'"
"Yes sir!"

I usually either do work for the next day to get ahead, or when things are really quiet, try to knock out a chapter in a book. I'm re-reading "Clash of Civilizations" now, and since it's professional reading, I don't feel too guilty. Anyway, slow days are good days because there's a direct correlation between how boring my job is and how few Americans are being shot at.

Things ebb and flow throughout the day, but finally, 12:45 comes around and I'm liberated. Stepping out into the sun for the first time, I'm initially blinded. As I head across the bridge from our man-made island, I swap salutes with the folks passing by. A blackhawk helicopter takes off from a nearby pad and swings my way. With his nose drooping down menacingly, he sweeps over me at 50 feet. I try not to look up, stare in awe, and oogle like a kid, but it can be hard sometimes. Another blackhawk comes directly over, just like the last one, as I'm midway across the bridge. I can almost hear "Ride of the Valkyries" as I walk, and the roar of the engines, the sun on my face, and the brilliant reflections on the water rejuvenate me again, after a long and exhausting day.

I head back to the chow hall for lunch. This time I've got a novel with me: the Da Vinci Code. Never read it when it was big, and frankly the only Dan Brown book I read before was unimpressive. But it's good, and worth all the hype. I read as much as I can, weighing down the pages with a banana as I cut my food and eat.

There's a big concert today at a nearby base. Brooks and Dunn are in town. But the timing's all bad, and I know if I would try to make the show I wouldn't get all of my 6 hours of sleep. When you have no days off, getting your sleep becomes vital. So I skip the concert, interesting as it may be, and head back to my trailer.

The sun has dried some of the mud, but it's still there in long, chocolaty patches. Maintenance trucks and sewage trucks with Arabic writing on them squish through it, throwing up huge fountains of sludge behind them as they go. The workers, mostly TCNs (Third Country Nationals) trudge along in their galoshes, but no Americans have them, with the exception of the contractors (one girl had blue ones with flowers). We've just got our combat boots, which we wear day in and day out. Of course, I'm tempted to break out my rubber chemical boots, as a chemical attack on this or any base is unlikely. But I don't, and in the end, I just take off my boots outside the trailer and wrap them in plastic before bringing them in.

Back at the trailer, I finally have some downtime. I take my clothes to the laundry and then play a little on my guitar before reading another chapter in the novel. I head to the shower around 4:30 p.m. and am back in bed at 5. I reach for my alarm clock and set it for 11:15. Then I clothes my eyes. 150 days in a row I have done this. Another 30 days and I finally get two weeks of leave. Two whole weeks of no mud, no 12-hour days, and time to relax. And then I come back for another 130 or more days of boring, dull, ugly Iraq. At that time, I'll be able to look back and feel pride at what I've done, I guess. Right now, all I feel is the need to get sleep and be ready for the next day. And the day after that...

New Song - Bastrop

My brother added another song of mine to the sound page. It's called "Bastrop." For want of a better name. I also wrote this one a while back. I'd been meaning to buy a mandolin for a few years, and finally scraped up some money for a cheap one.

On Day 1 of having my mandolin, I worked out most of the chords. Mandolin strings, like violin strings, are essentially the top 4 strings on a guitar flipped upside down: G D A E (and doubled for a total of 8 strings). So if you are good at guitar, you can figure your way around a mandolin.

On Day 2 of the mandolin, I learned Led Zeppelin's "Battle of Evermore" which was a hell of a lot easier than I imagined it would be. But it still sounds awesome.

On Day 5, I decided to write a song. The first step was to get a guitar rythmn. I already had written this particular rythmn for my 12-string accoustic several months before, and it was kind of like a little orphan. I thought it would be a good fit for a tune featuring my new mandolin, so I recorded it on my four track and then switched to the mandolin to figure out a lead. I started out by writing out the pentatonic scale in G (again, figured out manually, since I have no mandolin books). Then I just kind of screwed around for a couple of hours until I came up with this.

I had a few early working names for it, but then was listening to it in my car one day after hiking at Bastrop State Park in Texas. I was driving 60 mph in my favorite stretch of road in Texas, a six-mile stretch along Highway 21 where the road literally vanishes beneath a canopy of pine trees, which stretch out on either side and meet up over your head. The cool, etherial beauty of the trees, the speed, and the primitive, raw setting seemed appropriate for this song.

A mandolin is psychologically a mystical, primative instrument. Guitar may have been that way, but it's become infused with other concepts and meanings over the years. When you think of guitar, you think of a host of forms of music, from Carlos Montoya to ZZ Top to Robin Trower. Even accoustic guitars have been washed clean of any historic associations through the hippy faux folk music of the late 60s. Somehow a mandolin has remained much more pure. No one's ever done an electric, distorted mandolin. Even the rock songs where it appears fall in limited categories, specifically, the mystical, almost medieval songs and the neo-country/folk sound. A good example of the former would be Evermore, and a good version of the latter would be "Maggie May" by Rod Stewart. A somewhat more difficult to classify song would be the Beatle's "Here Comes the Sun" which I also learned and which is my favorite mandolin song.

It's much more common in country music, and also common, at least historically, in Italian folk music and Mexican - particularly Norteno - music. But what all these genres have in common is a traditional authenticity. A purity which rock music has all but washed out of the guitar.

That's why I like the Mandolin. Of course, I'm still basically a beginner, but with 20 years experience on guitar, even a beginner can do some pretty cool stuff. That's what I was experimenting with in "Bastrop." So here you go. Have a listen:


http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=795352&content=music
(To play the song, click the arrow next to the title)





P.S. Around the time I was typing in the paragraph that starts with "Day 5" the sirens went off and the recorded voice blared, "incoming...incoming..." There were four people in the room here at the MWR, three Tongans and me. We all looked around at each other and shrugged. I went back to typing. They went back to their web surfing. I guess if we had heard booms, we could have gotten under the table, but most of the times the alarm goes off these days, it's a false alarm.

Sure enough, before I was through with the next paragraph, another sound rang out, followed by the words, "This is the command post...all clear...all clear...personnel should return to their units and conduct personal acountability. I repeat, "all clear...all clear..."

Some funny pictures

This one kind of speaks for itself.

Most of the contract workers on the base who clean,

run the chow hall, and some of the facilities, are foreign.

Their English is not always good.

Hearing the laundry ladies sing "Dancing Queen"

in half English, half Tagalog is funny enough.

Then they write instructions like "Stay Closed the Door."

Of course, "Mop Water - You don't drink" does get the message across.