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