Victory Over America

I know the first thought that many of you may have had when you read the title was something along the lines of running to turn on CNN to see what happened and who we lost to. Sorry to sound the alarms but the title of my post comes from one of Saddam Hussein’s palaces that I visited last weekend. After finding out that my mission was complete here and that I was about to redeploy(that’s another way of saying get the hell out of here in Army speak), a couple of us decided to take a tour of some of Saddam’s governmental buildings that are open to the military in Baghdad.


The base that I worked on while I was there, Camp Cropper, was actually part of a rather large complex of bases that comprise the Victory Base Complex. The smaller bases are all interconnected and walled off from the rest of the city. To give you an example of how large VBC is, it took us 45 minutes to drive across it and get to the tour. It was a little bizarre and exciting to get in a vehicle for the first time in months, albeit a rundown bus.

The first stop on the tour was the Victory Over America Palace which was actually under construction when the war started. Saddam, like every good dictator, excelled in propaganda. It seems his definition of victory was not necessarily defeating the US, but in preventing us from removing him from power in the First Gulf War. Oh and remember the Food for Oil Program? Well instead of getting food to hungry Iraqi’s, the money went to finance the construction of this palace. Saddam was nothing if not resourceful.

The first thing that struck me was the sheer size of the building. I’m not sure I’ve seen anything built to its scale. It’s absurdly large. During the first days of the war in 2003 it was destroyed by the USS Bunker Hill which was sitting in the Persian Gulf. The damage to the front portico was incredible, and it was a bit scary walking into the building underneath all the twisted metal that seemed to be hanging by a string.

Upon entering the palace, we passed by wall after wall of marble which adorned the outside of the building as well. It looked like marble anyway – it was actually polished granite made to look like marble. In fact, throughout the buildings that we saw on this day, the frugality of construction was a recurring theme. The wood in the picture above was basically plywood made to look like cedar. Once finished all the white areas would have been painted.

From the balcony of one of the ballrooms we could see a smaller separate building. If you look closely, you can see that balcony has hearts carved into it along its entire length. This was one of Saddam’s pleasure palaces where he kept his harem. Interestingly enough, the building next door, just out of frame was his mother-in-law’s house.

Saddam, perhaps after a whimsical night in the pleasure palace, also decided that it would be nice to build his grandchildren a replica of Bedrock as seen in the photo above. While Fred and Barnie were nowhere to be found, the place is complete with apartments, kitchens, water slides and elevators.

After touring the second floor it was time to make our way up the marble stair case to the grand ballroom. If the height of the stairs looks a little off to you, that’s because they are. No one is really sure why – shoddy craftsmanship may be to blame. However, after walking up them myself, they were so far off that it must have been intentional. It’s more likely that Saddam employed some medieval castle strategy in making his palace. He would know that height of the stairs if he needed to run up them, but intruders would not and likely trip while chasing after him. The bombed out glass shell on the right was Saddam’s personal elevator. There is an identical one on the left for everyone else to use.

Missile number two was a direct hit in the grand ballroom upstairs. The room itself must have been impressive when completed. The sheer scale of it was unbelievable; it was large enough for a football field to fit in without a problem. Looking out from the balcony of the grand ballroom in the picture below it is possible to see more of the palace complex. The building in the foreground is Uday’s house and in the far distance is the Baath Party Headquarters.

Who knew that there was a lake in Baghdad? Well, there actually wasn’t until this palace complex was built. Saddam had the whole area excavated to a depth of about five feet and filled it with the filtered water of the Baghdad water supply – during the filling of the lake the population was without running water for three days – what a guy! In the distance you can barely make out a cluster of trees. It was there that Uday kept his pets. Apparently the guy was obsessed with jungles and had several lions and tigers. One of his favorite pastimes was to throw his enemies into this little perverted zoo and watch as the lions and tigers (but not bears, oh my) devoured them.

One last interesting thing to note in the picture is the small islands dotted here and there on the lake. These are more pleasure palaces for the Baath Party leaders when they needed to escape a little while from their wives. You see in Islam, Allah cannot see over the water. So I guess this is their version of Vegas – what happens over the water stays over the water.

From the Victory Over America Palace, we traveled to the Baath Party Headquarters, the de facto headquarters of Saddam’s regime. This building was also destroyed during the first days of the war in 2003 – mainly by tomahawk missiles and JDAM’s dropped by bombers. It was actually a beautiful building and one of the only places in the city that had a nice breeze. The photo above looks out onto what was the central area of the building.

The length of every hallway in the building was adorned with the intricate painting like in the photo above. The chandeliers, while impressive looking, are actually quite cheap – nothing but aluminum painted with gold.

When Dan Rather interviewed Saddam just prior to the US invasion in 2003 he did so here. The twisted metal hanging from the ceiling was actually a long rectangular chandelier – which Saddam boasted several times as the longest chandelier in the world. Again, it’s nothing but painted aluminum.

The tour came to an end in this room, which was obviously reduced to rubble by a tomahawk missile. It was a large meeting room and on the night of the attack, some 250 Baath Party members were watching a movie when they were killed. The room was never cleaned up after the attack and US Forces still use it for training their cadaver dogs. Oh, and the movie that they were watching that fateful night? Well when US Special Forces got on the scene a couple of days later it was still in the projector – the Baathists were watching the infidel Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman.

I’ll finish up the post with a picture of myself in front of one of only three remaining murals left of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. This particular one is located at the headquarters of the Iraqi National Guard. Every time I look at it I can’t believe that I was actually in Baghdad. You never know where you’re going to end up in life – but this certainly wasn’t one of the locations that I had thought about. Being over here makes you wonder about a lot of things – should we be here, what will are legacy be, and is it really this hot? Whatever your politics may be, I thank all of you for taking the time to read about my experiences.

However much you may hate this war or the man who started it, I just ask that you try to think about the men and women over here serving. Not necessarily people like myself who admittedly have it pretty good, but people like the privates who have spent years of their life here since the war began, making close to minimum wage and rarely asking why. They come here because their country asked them to and for them it’s reason enough. They are the ones who really make things happen on a daily basis, and it’s been a tremendous honor and learning opportunity for me to be here with them and patch them up every once in a while. I like to think I’ve become a better person throughout this experience and in large part it’s because of the people who have surrounded me during my time here.

This has certainly been hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my life, and while being around such wonderful people here made it bearable, it is the outpouring of support from everyone back at home that has truly sustained me. Be it an email, a care package, or a comment to my blog posts – I can never thank you all enough for your love and support. I’m a pretty lucky guy. Except for right now I guess – the A/C just broke and it’s 120 outside.

Boot on the Ground

To the untrained eye it’s pretty difficult to see the differences in the Army ACU uniforms. Except for a few patches here and there they are in fact exactly the same from General down to Private. The most important patch on the uniform is probably the one located in the middle of your chest. It’s the place that you display your rank. I’d say it’s the most important because that’s how I know who to salute as I walk past them, and who to expect a salute from. It is still bizarre to me to walk around the base and constantly be on the lookout for the rank on another soldiers uniform. The nice part is that since I’m a Captain I outrank most of the soldiers on the base so if I’m daydreaming or walking with my head down I’m unlikely to miss saluting someone of a higher rank. That’s not to say that it hasn’t happened though so it’s a nice little daily training exercise to walk with you head up and stay focused.

But it’s not the patch that shows my rank that I was interested in. It was the blank spot on my uniform that I was beginning to feel self-conscious about. You don’t get a patch on your right arm until you are deployed, and even then you have to have your “boots on the ground” for at least 30 days. It’s a status symbol, something that says that not only am I in the Army, but I deployed and here is my patch to prove it. Well, I’m happy to say that my right arm is no longer bare. It not holds the insignia of the unit that I’m attached to over here - the 44th Medical Brigade.

The 44th Medical Brigade was formed on December 30th, 1965 at Fort Sam Houston in Texas. It’s mission is to organize, train, deploy, command and control their subordinate medical units to provide corps-level combat medical, and community health support, across all levels of conflict and in peacetime garrison environment. So basically the 44th oversees a bunch of smaller medical assets such as the 14th CSH(Combat Support Hospital) where I work in Baghdad and the 28th CSH which is another hospital set up across town.

The 44th Medical Brigade saw it’s first wartime action during Vietnam where it provided medical support for the whole country. Since then the various factions under the 44th Medical Brigade banner have served in places like Grenada, Panama, Haiti, Saudi Arabia(Operation Desert Storm), and now the War on Terror. It has also provided medical care after several hurricanes including Andrew and Katrina. The 86th CSH(another unit under the 44th) was featured in the HBO documentary “Baghdad ER” which was filmed about one mile from where I’m writing right now.

As a history buff it’s interesting for me to trace the lineage of the unit that I’m now a part of. Their history becomes my history now that I get to finally wear a patch on my right arm.

Just another day

The day was pretty much like any other since I have settled into my routine here. I had just finished a twelve hour shift, and even though I had only seen about twenty patients during that time period, I was exhausted. The chief complaints of back pain, knee pain and rashes which had all been present for the past sic months have a way of wearing on me after a while. I was tempted to, but did not ask, what exactly made it necessary to visit me today with these chronic complaints. Trying to keep my spirits up I told myself to try and focus on just treating the soldiers - understanding that somehow over here, away from family and friends, your notice the pain in your body a little more.




After dinner, I worked out at the gym, which I’m proud to say I’ve been doing religiously for six days a week since getting to Camp Cropper. The only problem with working out after a shift is that it makes it difficult to get to sleep, especially when I start to think about doing it all again at 7 the next morning. As I finally began to get my mind somewhere between being awake and being asleep I heard a loud alarm go off. At first, I thought my roommate had bought a new alarm clock and had set it wrong. After a few moments I realized that it was the siren sounding all over our base. It was perfect timing for a drill, especially since I was having trouble falling asleep and had to work the next morning.



When the siren sounds, the procedure is to but on your “battle rattle” and head to the rally point, which in my case is the hospital. The “battle rattle” is basically the Kevlar helmet and body armor. As we jumped into our gear and headed out of our room, the smell of fire wafted through the air. So maybe this isn’t a drill. It was then that I remembered what had transpired a day before. We had been taking care, almost daily, of a detainee with a horrible oral cancer that had grown so large in the back of his mouth that he could barely swallow or breath. He had had two surgeries to debulk the tumor, but there was no more to be done, as the cancer had now enveloped several large blood vessels in the back of his throat.



The detainees viewed our lack of additional care as negligent, and there had been rumors that when he died, they would riot. The view from outside our building confirmed their threats, as smoke billowed above the prison. All of a sudden our pace quickened and a bit of fear crept into our minds, this was no drill. All around soldiers were scurrying about, trying to get to their rally points as Humvees raced to block all the roads. Luckily, it is about a 4 minute walk to the hospital, and with the adrenaline running through our veins I think we made it there in 2, regardless of the thirty pounds of additional weight that the body armor provided.



Once in the ED, we prepared for a mass casualty event, not knowing what to expect. Everyone thought, and it turned out properly so, that the guards would try to subdue the detainees with tear gas and rubber bullets. There was no telling how many of the soldiers or detainees would be injured. We each took a bed in the ER, and we each had a couple of medics and a nurse with us. For the first half hour there was nothing. Then word came to expect anywhere from ten to two-hundred casualties, and I sarcastically thanked the informer for narrowing it down for us.



All told, the detainee uprising was quelled with very few people getting hurt, which is a tremendous feat when you think about it. Approximately five-thousand prisoners, the worst that Iraq has to offer, and our soldiers subdued them without a truly major injury occurring. So often we hear about the young men and women in uniform when they screw something up, so this is a nice forum to give them credit for performing with efficiency and respect on this particular occasion. All told, in the ER we repaired a couple of lacerations and one eye injury from flying rubber bullets, but the catastrophe that could have happened never transpired.



It was, however, a forceful reminder that the world that I am a part of over here is so much different from anything I’ve ever experienced in my life. It’s easy to get lulled into a sense of complacency here as you get into a routine, forgetting that there is very real danger around every corner. It’s a balancing act between paranoia and blissful ignorance, and so far I’ve been able to ground myself somewhere in the middle. But with the report yesterday that last night two men tried to kidnap a soldier on my base, we’ll see how long that will last.

All Quiet

When you work in an ER for a living you know that one thing almost always holds true. It’s quiet until it’s not. When it’s not, there is usually a co-worker to blame. Someone who casually, without thinking, utters the simple and seemingly innocent phrase, “It’s really slow in here right now.” The obligatory, “Why would you say that,” is then directed at the person, and usually within minutes the calm is replaced by a maelstrom of chest pain, vomiting, and shortness of breath as patients begin to file into the ER.


This happened to me recently during a shift that I was working. It was a Monday, known throughout the ER world as consistently the busiest day to work. For whatever reason, the ER is always busy on a Monday. It is interesting to me that the trend continues during a deployment because there is nothing to set a Monday apart from any other day of the week. There are no long weekends here and everyone pretty much works seven days a week. I suppose our bodies are hard-wired to hate Mondays based on principle, and so patients feel their worst and decide to pay the ER a visit.

So I sat in my office listening to the Beatles, waiting for the jinx to provide me with patients up to my head. For five minutes nothing happened. Another five minutes and still nothing. “I guess the jinx doesn’t work in Iraq,” I thought to myself. Then, an innocent enough appearing man, a contractor, poked his head though the door and asked if someone would take a look at his boss who was having chest pain. Here we go, although I remember being strangely comforted by the fact that the jinx still worked so far from home.

A word first about contractors. For those that don’t know, and I certainly didn’t, this whole deployment thing couldn’t happen without them. The military just doesn’t have enough bodies to keep the bases up and running on their own without sending every service member over. Think about it, who sets up the internet, runs the cafeteria, works in the PX, translates, or works as the plumber, electrician or handy man – it’s the contractor. Initially, the military could perform all these functions, but as the forces over here number in the tens of thousands, and the bases become little cities unto themselves, it’s impossible for the military to do it on its own.

The contractors, just like their job titles, come in all shapes and sizes, but in general those sizes are a variation on large. Before we left for Iraq we lived among the contractors that would be coming over here with us. We would joke amongst ourselves as the overweight and out of shape man would walk by, that we will be seeing them in our ER in Iraq. They come here for the opportunity to make six figures doing a job that wouldn’t make them half of that at home in the US, but I don’t think there’s a price you could quote me to come here on my own free will. They are hard workers to boot, and I guess the biggest compliment I could pay them is to say that you hardly even notice them. Which is to say that everything here runs pretty smoothly.



After we told the man that yes, we could take a look at his boss, I peered into the hallway and looked at his boss sitting on the bench. He may have been one of the guys we said we would see when we got over here, and if there is a picture in the dictionary of a heart attack about to happen it was him. The medics helped the man into the bed and got him hooked up to the monitors. As the nurse placed an IV he complained of severe chest pain and trouble breathing. Sweat poured from every pore, it looked as though he had been hosed down prior to arrival. Then he vomited. Classic presentation for a MI, I thought to myself.

However, EKG number one was normal, and so was number two. His pain was getting better with aspirin and nitroglycerin, and it looked as though my clinical acumen had come up a little short. A moment later, the pain was back and I got one more EKG just to be sure I wasn’t missing anything and there it was – the stereotypical overweight contractor with the stereotypical presentation for a heart attack, now had the stereotypical I’m going to die unless something is done soon EKG.

All of a sudden I was transported back to Newark, to my residency, and the rush that I get when taking care of someone really sick. It’s what I had been trained to do except for one thing, I was in Iraq, and there was no cardiac catheterization lab waiting for the patient to open up his blocked artery with a balloon. In all my years of training I’ve never had to deal with this set of circumstances, and I didn’t have too much time to play with, this guy looked like hell and was getting worse. So, for the first time in my career I pushed lytics (medications that break down clots) for an MI, hoping to avoid some of the dreaded (and deadly) side effects such as bleeding in the brain or gastrointestinal tract.

It had been a total of perhaps five minutes between the “I’m going to die” EKG and the administration of the lytics and now we waited and watched for improvement. If this didn’t work we were out of options and this guy was out of luck. Almost instantly his pain subsided and a repeat EKG showed no sign of abnormality at all. Like nothing had ever happened.

Arrangements were made, and a few hours later he was on an Air Force C-130 on his way to Landstuhl, Germany, which was the closest catheterization lab to us in Baghdad. He stayed there a couple of days, and the cardiologist told me that he had been a very lucky patient – there was no evidence, not in subsequent EKG’s or lab tests, that would indicate that this guy had ever had a heart attack thanks to the treatment he received in Baghdad. He made it back to the US a few days later. Right place, right time.

It’s interesting that the first real “save” over here is from a contractor having a heart attack and not a soldier getting shot up. I guess it says a lot about where we are in this war. I think it’s a good thing, at least for now.

One Month Down

March 27th was my one month mark for my deployment and while the days seem to have gone by quickly, it feels like much longer than one month ago that I boarded a flight from San Antonio to Fort Benning. Instead of moving at an exhaustive pace on a day to day basis, I've now been able to settle into a routine of working at the ER at Camp Cropper. I'm here with two other ER doctors staffing the emergency room 24/7. It makes for a tiring schedule - the number of hours isn't overly oppressive but switching between days and nights can take its toll.


For right now our schedule goes like this: work 7a-7p, work 7a-1p, work 7p-7a, work 7p-7a, work1p-7a, then rinse and repeat. I've become accustomed sleeping whenever I can these days but my internal clock is completely screwed up. On the last night shift that I worked I found myself staring at the ceiling for three hours in the call room (at night we only treat true emergencies). Frustrated, and thinking about how much I didn't want to go to the gym after my shift was over I walked over to the gym to work out. There's nothing like doing some curls at 4am to help you realize how tired you actually are.

For all the miles in-between me and the real world, things are remarkably the same. Patients come in, get seen, some get some life saving intervention and they are either admitted or discharged. Medications are given and charts are written. It's easy to forget when you're in the bubble of the hospital that there is this whole incredible operation going on around you. Then I walk out the front door to go back to my room and a random stimulus helps to refocus me. It could be hearing the firing range, or watching the Blackhawks fly over my head, or the large T-walls that seem to go on to infinity that snap me back into the reality that I'm in Baghdad.

"I'm in Baghdad." I must say that to myself a couple of times a day. To me it still seems so weird to think about. Every time I do, I think back to a particular memory in my life during the first Gulf War. I must've been around 10 at the time and I can remember watching the news with my parents about the impending war with Iraq. To a ten year old distance is a somewhat obtuse subject. Yea I knew that Iraq was far away - I mean definitely further than Philly. Just how far, as a 10 year old, I had no concept. So when the thunderstorm hit later that night and I came running into my parent's bedroom, I was glad to be consoled by the fact that the war was nowhere near Oradell. It was in fact thousands of miles away, in a place that might as well have been the dark side of the moon for a ten year old American. I remember thinking, after my initial fears had been laid to rest, that I was very thankful that all this was going on so far away, and hoped that it would never hit close to home. Then 9/11, and a deployment 20 years later literally in the heart of that once far away city, Baghdad. It's funny how life goes sometimes.

One encouraging thing about being here is that communication is pretty reliable. The internet is slow (sometimes I feel like I'm back using the old dial-up AOL), but it's good enough for writing emails. Phone calls are easy enough as well, and though they require a calling card it isn't that expensive. Being able to talk to Rachel almost daily has kept me grounded and upbeat. The actual process of calling, on the other hand, can always be a little annoying.

AT&T has set up little huts here with about 10 to 15 pay phones in them, and they are almost always pretty near full. And there appears to be some regulation that at all times, and without fail, there must be someone on the phone who is a loud talker. I haven't found the exact regulation yet, but I assume it's on the back of the phone card I bought, probably in the fine print. We aren't talking about bad connections here either; the person on the other end of the phone might as well be in the other room during most conversations. The net effect of one loud talker is that the person next to him has to then become a loud talker, and shortly, after all the dominos fall, the room sounds like a bar on New Year’s Eve.

One loud talker in particular seems to be my AT&T nemesis. He is nearly always in the room when I go to make a call - I'm beginning to suspect that someone sent him there as a prank - maybe next time I'll grab the phone from him just to see if there is really anyone on the other side. What makes it worse is that he is one of our translators, and speaks Arabic during his phone calls. Now I'll admit my ignorance, but there is something inherently terrifying about a man shouting Arabic into a phone on a military installation. I mean Arabic is the new German. Throughout my life, whenever I thought about the scariest language, it was German. The bad guys in all the movies had German accents, so in the battle of scary dialects, German took the cake. Of late, Arabic has come close to taking over the throne.

On this particular occasion, I just wasn't in the mood to try and have a conversation over this guy so after imputing half of my pin number to begin to make a call I just hung up the phone. I grabbed my cap, and shaking my head I headed towards the door. The conversation the man was having now got to a fevered pitch as I got closer and I thought to myself, "Well, I guess this is it Greg, just wait for the bang." As I got to the man he spun around in his chair and looked crazily at me, apologized and said, "I'm sorry Sir for being so loud, but I just found out that I'm a Grandfather!" I congratulated the man for his achievement, and then myself for being such an ass.

I’ll Put That On The List Of Things That Would Have Been Useful To Know Yesterday

The first day at Camp Cropper, my new home for the next several months, was somewhat of a blur. After arriving at BIAP, otherwise known as Baghdad International Airport, we waited around for about twenty minutes for someone to pick us up and drive to the base. We piled those heavy bags once more into yet another mode of transportation and drove for about ten minutes to our base.


Our first lodging was actually at Camp Stryker which is located adjacent to Camp Cropper. We unloaded our things into our rooms that looked like small prefabricated trailers. They seemed to go on forever and are surrounded by large cement walls about one foot think and 15 feet high to protect against mortar attacks. As I entered my room for the first time I was surprised to find that my roommate was Shane Summers from the same hospital that I work at in San Antonio.

Shane had definitely drawn the short straw on this whole deployment thing. He graduated from Brooke Army Medical Center one year before I finished at UMDNJ and had just completed a one year fellowship in Emergency Ultrasound. However, even though he had been told that he would be stationed at Fort Sam Houston, the Army also informed him that he would be deployed to Iraq before ever working one shift in the ER there. I had met him only briefly last July when I started working at BAMC and I remembered thinking how much it sucked that he was getting deployed before even working.

I honestly hadn’t thought about him again until I saw his face looking back at me as I opened the door. It was a combined look of surprise and sheer joy – he now knew that his replacement had arrived and that his 6 month sentence in Iraq was about to come to an end. In fact, as I write this now he is probably back in San Antonio.

Even though I was operating on no sleep for greater than 30 hours since leaving Kuwait, the Sergeant didn’t even give us time to unpack. He insisted on driving us up to hospital for a tour and to meet who we would be working with. For those of you that know me well I’m sure you can picture the face that I made!

Two hours into our tour and introductions I began to think that the Army may be trying some new interrogating technique on us – water boarding couldn’t be this bad. We were all so tired I would’ve have given any one who asked the pin for my ATM card, my social security number and whatever other vital information they were interested in. Finally, the DCCS (kind of like a CEO for the hospital) mentioned that maybe we should go back and try and take a nap.

Back at the room the three of us decided to sleep for a couple of hours and then get up to check out the DFAC(cafeteria, and yes there will be an Army abbreviation quiz in a future post!). I unrolled my sleeping bag and fell to sleep instantly. Sleep never felt so good! We did manage to get up for dinner and then head right back to our rooms to go to sleep for the night. Nothing could wake me up tonight…

BOOM…BOOM…tatatatat…BOOM. Ok, I’m up, I’m up. In my sleep deprived stupor I had no idea where I was or how long I had been sleeping but the sound right outside of my door was unmistakable. Something was being blown up or fired at, that I knew for sure. I just didn’t know what to do about it. Shane had gone to the hospital to work the night shift so there was no guidance there. As I pondered my options, I decided, not based on any training, that the safest place to be when attacked was on the floor. Lying on the cold and dirty floor I realized that even if it was the safest place I couldn’t stay there so I went to option two – grab my weapon.

So there I lay, my M9 resting on my chest (don’t worry it was not loaded), and suddenly all was quiet. “Well whatever it was,” I thought to myself, “It’s over now,” and promptly passed out once again. That is until the next flurry of salvos sounded over my head. Ok, this was getting a little crazy. Why was no one outside yelling? As quickly as it started, the noise stopped again. This nonsense happened three more times through the night, and each time my heart leaped out of my chest until my exhaustion took over.

The next morning at breakfast, my pride tucked firmly into my pockets I decided to ask the other doctors, who had been deployed once before, if we had been attacked last night. Clearly I should have waited until he had swallowed his gulp of OJ as it promptly came shooting out of his nostrils. When the laughing was over, they said, “Yea we probably should have told you about that yesterday.” Apparently, when the Humvee’s are heading out for their nightly patrols around Baghdad they test fire a couple of rounds right outside the gate to make sure that the weapons were functioning properly. Yea, that would’ve been nice to know yesterday.

Baghdad

The final leg of my trip to Baghdad was to be fairly uneventful, just another plane ride to another far off, mysterious destination.  Or so I thought...As we piled our overabundant duffel bags onto a pallet to be stored in the belly of the plane I never thought that I too would be in the belly of the plane as well.  With our bags stacked high we waited in the airport at Ali Al Salem for just over 6 hours waiting to be called for the flight.
There wasn't much to do except watch the large TV suspended over the door leading to the runway.  There is only one channel over here - AFN(Armed Forces Network), and it shows everything from movies to news to sports.  While we waited I was fortunate enough to have to watch the Oscar's pre-show for what seemed like forever.  It was amusing to look around at the other soldiers, the majority young males shaking their heads as they watched and wondered what they had done to deserve this little purgatory.  By the end of the six hours there was no question in my mind - get me on a plane to Baghdad, it couldn't be worse than watching any more of this.
They finally called our flight and we headed out to the runway in single file and began to board the C-130.  This particular plane is immense in scale, but the room inside looked eerily small as we walked in.  The entire plane is hollowed out and one of the first things that I noticed was that there were no seats.  In their place were red straps that criss-crossed eachother to create in effect four rows of hammocks for us to sit on.  I got to my "seat", sat down and immediately began to dream about more Ryan Seacrest and analysis of Oscar gowns.  This was by far the most uncomfortable mode of transportation yet.  It was so tight that we had to weave our legs inbetween the two people that sat directly across from me.  Looking from afar it would look like a giants camoflage zipper made up of legs.
Just when I felt pushed to my claustrophobic limit they began to load up the giant pallet of luggage behind us, effectively removing any sense of natural light or air.  "One hour and twenty minutes," I told myself and got ready for take-off. 
I had already been warned by people who have taken this flight before that it would be a little different from those I had experienced in the past.  I'm glad I got this warning, otherwise I wouldn't have been as seemingly calm on the outside.  As we took off the first thing I noticed was the steep angle of climb that we had assumed, and as the plane banked hard to the right only seconds after being in the air I realized that yes, this was going to be a little bit different.
The banking to the right and left continued as we climbed even higher.  When we reached what seemed like cruising altitude, the banking became less severe, but now the pilot brought the plane up and down as well.  It felt more like being on a ship in six foot swells than being on a plane - but the effect on my stomach was quite the same.  Along we flew like this for another hour or so.  I have never been one to be able to sleep anywhere but in a bed, but in the recent days, sheer exhaustion had helped me overcome this problem.  Here too I found myself dosing off every couple of seconds, even through the acrobatics of the pilot.  My neck which had already been strained during the roll-over drills cried out again every time my head bobbed with the kevlar helmet in place.
I don't know what I expected for the landing but this one was very different.  There was no familar announcement to put my tray table and seat into an upright position, and there certainly was no lazy fall back towards earth.  Out of nowhere the plane took a steep nosedive towards the ground.  On commercial jets, the nose of the plane is never pointing towards the ground.  On this flight it most certainly was at what seemed like a breakneck speed.  The banking left and right seemed to get more severe as well and now I understood why people had given me a heads up prior to this flight.  If they hadn't I certainly would have thought that we were crashing.
Without any windows to peer out my mind raced even more wondering about how much of this was normal.  I was jolted out of slight sense of panic and driven into my seat with quite some force as the pilot pulled up at the last second and we landed on the runway.  The smell of burnt rubber filled the plane and that's when I realized I had made it to my final destination.  After the pallet of bags were removed that familira wall of heat hit our bodies.  Eager to stand and stretch we all quickly stood up and exited.  Standing on the runway I felt extremely overexposed, and then I looked past my immediate surroundings into the distance to a city and thought, "Oh my God, I'm actually in Baghdad!"

Good Morning Baghdad!

Camp Boehring was to be my home for a little over three days after leaving Fort Benning, and it was hot.  As we cruised into our final approach the sun was just beginning to come up over the horizon, and it was difficult to tell sky from earth.  The sand streched on to what seemed infinity as it blurred with the dust clouds which hung low to the ground.  So let me stress again, it was hot.  When they opened the doors to the plane it reminded me of opening the oven door to check on some food - the heat hits you like a wave and immediately the sweating commences.  It seemed escpecially bad in contrast to the snow that was falling during our layover in Leipzig.

We settled into our buses, strangers in a strange land, not quite sure what to make of it.  Our immediate instructions were to keep the curtains on the bus windows closed tight - a convoy of buses with soldiers on it could make for a nice target.  It took about an hour to reach Ali Al Salem - an Air Force base north of Kuwaiit City.  When we got there we started the arduous task of unloading our bags once again.  After that we were seperated based on our final destination, and away we went to Camp Boehring.

At Camp Boehring, we went through yet some more training, with a particular emphasis on IED's.  For those that don't know, IED stands for improvised explosive device, which accounts for most of the casualties in Iraq today.  I can't talk a lot about the specifics but suffice to say that the bad guys have come a long way and are quite skilled at blowing things up.  It is an interesting cat and mouse game between the Coalition Forces and the insurgents - they come up with a new way to kill you, and we come up with a new way to prevent it, with each step becoming more and more technologically advanced.

The most interesting experience I had during my stay at Boehring was the Humvee rollover training.  Besides IED's, the second most common cause of morbidity and mortality in Iraq today is caused by vehicles that flip over.  The armor and turret make the vehicles very top-heavy - it doesn't take much of an angle to flip them.  So the Army decided that everyone had to go into the simulator to practice getting out of a flipped vehicle.

Eight of us piled into the back of the Humvee with our Kevlar helmets and body armor - in addition to the near total darkness and the tight seat belts it was a bit claustrophobic. The simulator then rocked to the left and to the right before finally flipping completely upside-down. We then had to get to our buckles and basically fall onto the roof of the vehicle all while trying to avoid landing on our heads or the guy next to you. We repeated that fun little procedure two or three more times, each time attempting to exit via a different route. By the end I had had quite enough and my neck is still sore because of it.

There was one unexpected treat in the middle of the desert - Starbucks! The coffee at Fort Benning was horrible and scarce. We all had begun to experience coffee-withdrawal headaches and this little oasis was perfect - I half expected it to be a mirage!

The rest of the time spent in Kuwaitt involved once again going to the range just to make sure that our weapons still worked.  We headed about 20 minutes outside of the base to a range where we waited for over two hours to shoot.  Finally, fed up with no information, the Colonel in our group asked what the hold up was.  Apparently the local bedoins were out just beyond the range with their camel herd(not in kansas anymore).  The soldier in charge of the range said that they couldn't make them leave and we couldn't fire while they were there.  So, after standing in the heat of the day for hours we piled back into our transport and headed back to base.

That evening we found out that we were scheduled for our second red-eye flight in less than one week.  We were to load the buses at 1:30am for our flight which wasn't scheduled until 7am.  Since it was already late at night we decided to just stay up all night.  A bunch of us went to the recreation center and watched movies.  Then when the time came we loaded up our bus and started our final trek towards Iraq.

On a side note, I just wanted to say that the support through email and comments posted to my blog from my friends and family have been tremendous.  They keep me upbeat - I really don't deserve it but all the support makes me feel like one of the luckiest guys out there.  I just got reliable internet so I hope you all understand if I haven't gotten back to you yet but I certainly will soon.  Again, thanks it means a lot.

Wrapping up at Fort Benning

Sorry for the lack of posts over the last couple of days but I’ve been so incredibly busy over the past 4 days or so. I also haven’t had any access to the internet so was unable to load up any new posts. Last Thursday and Friday were the last two days that I spent on Americxan soil and already it seems like ages ago.


Thursday and Friday were spent at Fort Benning mainly getting the rest of our equipment. The highlight was definetly the shooting range on Thursday. That was the day that I needed to qualify shooting a 9mm Beretta at some pop-up targets. I had a great deal of anxiety about this because I had only fired a pistol twice before – once when I attended Officer Basic Course 8 years ago and the other time was just before I left with my brother Adam at a range in NJ.

Most of my fears had been put aside when I learned that we would have a course before going to the range. The course was taught by a bunch of retired Army soldiers and they were amazing teachers. When the two hours of instruction were over they had me feeling confident that I could not only use the weapon to defend myself, but also disassemble and clean it without forgetting how to put it back together again.

At the range we were required to hit 16 out of 30 pop up targets to pass. The targets would stay up for three seconds and you had to hit them before that in order for it to count. The same instructors that tuiaght the course were also available as coaches during the qualifier to help you through it if need be. I jumped at the chance for a coach even though I was the only one to do so in my group. I’ve come to learn that there is no shame in asking questions or for help – especially with something as important as defending yourself. With little actual aid, I was able to knock down 22 out of 30, enough to earn me sharpshooter status!

At dinner that night I got the opportunity to talk to some of the linguists that would be traveling with the Army to help with translating in Iraq and Afganistan. Most of these guys had amazing stories and I was in awe of them. One told me of how he fleed Afganistan and the Taliban shortly after 9/11 and came to the US. He then self-taught himself english in just one year’s time. He then decided to sign up with the military’s linguist program so that he could help the US take control of his country and free his family of the oppression that they were experiencing. He had back to Afagnistan four times since 2001, and each time he was unable to tell his family that he was going to be there – if the Taliban found out, he assured me that his entire family would be killed.

Courage like theirs amazes me. Living alone in a foreign country, learning a new language all by yourself, and never contacting your family must really weigh on these guys. Yet they do it anyway with the hope that someday the they can return to their families in peace. Their bravery is incredible, and I don’t think that most people even know that people like this exist – I certainly didn’t. It’s a small gesture but I wanted to mention them in this post to acknowledge the work that they do.

Friday came and went with more briefings, and then the craziness began. As I had mentioned earlier I signed up for baggage detail for the flight, so I was up at 4 so start the loading process. It wasn’t actually that demanding of a task. Just line up the bags, count them and then stand back as a hired crew loaded the cargo on a truck bound for our plane.

By 9:30 the trucks were loaded and we headed to the airfield on Fort Benning. As we entered a large hall, it started to sink in that there was no backing out now. We went through security and ate lunch and then boarded the plane around 3 in the afternoon. As we prepared to board, several people addressed us, thanking us for the work that we were about to do. However, it was one person that didn’t speak at all that got the tears whelling up in my eyes. As walked towards the plane there was a line of soldiers there to shake our hands. As I got to the end I noticed a little old man, not in uniform. Wondering who he was I soon realized that his cap said WWII veteran and tears were streaming down his eyes as he shook our hands and said thank-you. That’s when all my emotions bubbled to the surface as I thought about what an honor it was that someone like him actually thanked me.

Struggling to pull myself together I set foot in the plane. I started to wonder if my devious plan to score great seats had backfired in my face when I noticed that there was no first class section. However, they did reward the baggage detail by giving us the middle seat in a row of five with no one on either side of us which was just as good.

Two and a half hours later we landed in Bangor, Maine, to refuel. As we got off the plane to stretch our legs, we were greated by the Freeport Flag Ladies who snapped pictures of us and along with other veterans again thanked us for our service – all the while I was thinking about how unworthy of praise I was – especially from people like that. They actually loaded up the pictures of us to their website which I linked above so that our friends and family could see us.

Seven hours later and with Bangor behind us we landed in the snow at Leipzig, Germany. After quickly refueling we boarded once again for our final destination. The flight to Kuwaiit City was about four hours and exactly 8 time zones from NYC. I was a little surprised to find out that my baggage duty had not quite finished as I found myself crawling up into the belly of the plane to unload all 800 or so bags with a crew of about 20. My entire body is still asking me if the middle seat was worth it!

Ok, think I’ll stop here since I’m sure that most didn’t get past the first couple of paragraphs anyway. All told we traveled for about 40 hours before actually getting to lay down in a cot – but more about that and my current location, Camp Boehring, later.

Trail of Tears

So the past two days rank right up there as some of the most miserable days of my life.  Ok, maybe that's being a bit too traumatic, but I'm so ready to get on the flight for Kuwaiit on Friday.  For the past 48 hours we have been issued everything that we will need for our deployment and then some.  Most of the stuff I'm sure that I will never use including items such as an entrenching tool (if I'm forced to dig my own trench something over there has gone horribly wrong), extreme cold weather gear(for those cool 90 degree nights in Baghdad), and body armor which I'm told is outdated and can't be worn in theater. 

It would be fine if we could decline to take certain items, but in the Army's infinite wisdom every item must be placed into a duffel bag and transported to Iraq.  The duffel bags are large and weigh probably 70lbs a piece so I'm not quite sure how they will be carried - tune in later for that.

The next two days are called the "long" days by people around here but I'm not quite sure what that means since the last two days have seemed fairly long.  On the bright side I'm told that the MD's don't have to be certified in CPR so we should have tomorrow afternoon off.  I will probably be venturing off post with a couple of the guys to pick up some last minute supplies and perhaps even a real meal.

Finally, as we were signing for the thousands of dollars of useless equipment that we had just picked up, there was a sign-up sheet for baggage detail on Friday.  After a sarcastic remark to the next person in line I was ready to head out the door - I mean I'm willing to help the next guy but lugging 70lbs bags for a couple of hours didn't seem like all that much fun.  It was then I read the fine print: volunteers for the baggage detail may receive better seating on the plane.  I quickly scribbled my John Hancock on the line and hope that it's true.  Otherwise I guess it serves me right for signing up not out of the goodness of my heart, but for the promise of extended leg room

Welcome to Fort Benning - now hurry up and wait!

As my deploymeny to Iraq approached last week I tried to think about ways to pass the downtime - books were loaded onto my new Kindle, my iTunes library was updated and I began to try and think about what else might help occupy the inevitable downtime that was coming my way.  So I decided to start blogging about my deploymeny experience.  I've never considered myself interesting enough to blog, but as I started saying my goodbyes to friends and family it dawned on me that everyone was very curious about the whole Army/deployment thing.

The truth is, I was very interested in the whole Army/deployment thing too.  Having been a civilian up until last July I was totally clueless about just about everything military.  I grew up in the Northeast and I didn't realize until I moved to Texas that in the rest of the country it was very common for people to join the military.  Where I'm from it seems to be the exception and not the rule.  I thought it would be enjoyable for people to learn about my experiences since this whole thing is so new to me and most of the people I know.

So let's begin....

On Saturday morning, Rachel, my wife dropped me off at the airport to attend CRC.  What is CRC you ask?  It's apparently the place you go before you deploy to make sure all your records and immunizations are up to date, and also where you get issued all of the gear that one needs to be deployed.  The next obvious question is, what does CRC stand for.  I didn't have the fogiest.  However, I'm happy to report that after nearly two days here, I've figured it out:  CONUS Replacement Center.  Unfortunately, the answer to the first abbreviation contains yet another abbreviation - hopefully I'll figure out what CONUS means by the end of the week.

CRC is held at Fort Benning which is a quick connecting flight from Atlanta.  When I got off the plane, I have to admit I was an emmotional mess on the inside.  It hadn't really sunk in that I would be leaving my best friend and wife for Iraq until I was placed on an Army bus.  I don't think I was the only one that was a little shaken.  The bus was immersed in silence as forty or so soldiers headed for unknown futures.  Many had been before, but the silence suggested that it wasn't going to be easy for the next couple of months.

Saturday and Sunday have been a whirlwind of activity.  They put you up in barracks in groups of four.  The rooms are anything but spacious and contain huge lockers to put your belongings in and that's about it.  I did feel right at home though when I hopped up to the top bunk - I shared one with my brother Adam for 18 years of my life.

So far, CRC has consisted of mainly a bunch of meetings(which the Army calls briefings), and a whole lot of standing in line waiting for signatures.  They said I will be shipping out on Friday, with the first destination being Kuwaitt.  From there it's anyone's guess as to how I get to Iraq.  Luckily, I was able to link up with the two other ER docs that I'm going to be deployed with to Iraq.  They have been really helpful so far telling me about the little things that I would never think of on my own that will help make the deployment as smooth as possible.

Now that I've caught up I think I'll stop here for now.  If you got this far, thanks.  I hope this blog will be helpful for other people who are preparing to deploy for the first time as well.