War in Iraq, a Soldier's View

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12-Apr-03 11:44 PM

Well everybody seems to be ok with going forward but everybody has it in their head that their going home around just over 180 days too, which I hope comes true. They don’t have enough here to keep us busy now let alone a month from now.

We didn’t know if we were leaving tomorrow morning or not but apparently it’s been delayed till the area we’re going to has been cleared, so for now we wait; tomorrow will probably be spent packing the last of our things so we’ll be ready at a moments notice. I haven’t started packing but it won’t take more than an hour or two to be ready. I was more worried about getting some more brown T-shirts from the PX and calling my family to tell them I was moving. They said they wanted to be notified as soon as I knew so I tried to call them but I couldn’t get any answer on the phone. It was about 7:00am on a Saturday so I know that somebody was there if not everybody I guess they just didn’t want to answer the phone, which pisses me off when they know that I don’t have very good access to a phone. I can only call a few times so when I don’t get through I don’t really have a chance to try back later. For me trying back later means calling the next week. And with us moving it’s not sure if the phone will be moving with us or if we’ll have that ability when we get to LSA Scandia, so this might have been my last chance to call for another month and they didn’t pick up.

Oh well, I decided to send a letter so that it may take them a week or two to get the message but it’s on it’s way. I also was able to transfer some money from my Savings account to my Checking account so they can keep paying the bill to my storage unit. I have a lot in there now, enough to pay off my Pathfinder but it’s hard to get all that done when I’m over here. I wanted to do it when I was in Arifjan but now there is so much going on that it’s hard to think about that kind of thing when you can only call home once a week and only for 15 minutes.

Considering the fact that we’ve been fucked out of going home (or tricked I guess) everybody’s been in good spirits. We spent the day washing laundry and the night we just spent sitting around talking about this and that, especially speculating about what’s going to happen in the next few days and weeks. It was really nice, the weather is perfect and everybody just sits in a circle talking, if there was a fire in the middle it would be just like camping.

We also spent a lot of time making fun of the NCOs, tonight was there day to have Guard Duty but they tried to pawn it off on Keller and Gibson at the last minute (7:30pm) but they refused and went to bed. The NCOs didn’t burn the shit-can either so it’s nearly overflowing. I’m sure that tomorrow they’ll be bitching about Keller and Gibson not doing their jobs, but screw them. We don’t like doing duty but we do it every time were scheduled, they don’t feel like it and try to force others to do it (by abusing their rank) and then act like children when they have to do it anyway.

Lead by example indeed.

I’m not complaining and I only got 5 hours of sleep since I had duty last night, today was supposed to be my night off but I helped get things ready without saying a word.

I was too pissed about the change of orders to mention how nice guard duty was last night. Me and Durham talked about a lot of things but spent a lot of time talking about her beliefs as a Mormon and my beliefs about religion. It was a similar conversation to what Patterson and Andersen were talking about the day before except I wasn’t trying to prove her wrong, I was just learning about her beliefs. It sure helped make the night go faster, it didn’t really start to drag until the last two hours when it got freezing cold and I was too tired to think straight. But I love just having thoughtful in-depth discussions with people. That was kind of nice about talking tonight with the guys around the table, it wasn’t quite as deep but you learn a lot about people, and everybody’s quirks like Keller’s trying to assert that big powerful Trucks are so great, or Layton and his infinite Financial wisdom.

…

Anderson pounded on my door looking for the NVG’s I guess he was volunteered for guard duty tonight. He seemed pissed to say the least, but screw him and screw the rest of the NCOs. They have one night a week to divide between 5 people; that means they have it a little less than once every two weeks. If they cry about that they can start doing it every week like the rest of us, and if they can’t figure out a fair way for all of them to do it then they need to learn how to become LEADERS.

When I was in line for the phone a bunch of Special Forces guys were in line behind me and Patterson and they had the same Army mentality as me, they didn’t get hung up on the little things. I guess the SF has a reputation for that, they let their hair grow out and sometimes grow beards, for them the Army ideas of a good soldier being one with a shaved head and a freshly shaved face don’t apply. They realize that actions speak for more than trying to follow a set of guidelines. I feel the same way about the Army, discipline is important but not to the point that we judge a soldier’s abilities on how polished his boots are. The Army should instill a sense of pride in appearance and uniform but it shouldn’t base its promotion system off of it too.

The stress is really starting to get to everybody. We all spend the day avoiding each other, not because we don’t like each other we’re just getting tired of our situation. We’ve been living in close quarters with the same people for the last 5 ½ months, the only people that it doesn’t seem to bother are people like Layton, Griffin, and Anderson who have personalities where they always want to be around others. But even with them we’re all getting a weary look on our faces, the deployment is really getting to us, some people are totally content to spend all of their time active and on deployment, but we’re Reservists and were used to the civilian life. We can handle this kind of thing for a while but we’ll always be fishes out of water in this active Army mentality, and it’s starting to cause us to fall apart.