Who's gonna throw that minstrel boy a coin?

The Army certainly has its peculiarities. Think, when you do well in the "real world," you usually get some sort of bonus in the form of money. Here, you also get the colloquial "coinage," but they are, quite literally, just that: coins.

A coin in the army is given when you impress someone, do something special, or work really hard and deserve some kind of recognition. It's usually given in lieu of an actual award. The coin is nice, mainly because it doesn't require any paperwork. It isn't worth any promotion points, though, and you can't wear it on your dress uniform.

Anyway, to date, in Iraq, I have recieved two coins. The first one is more of a generic coin, from the Sergeant Major of a humanitarian aid group representing a civil affairs brigade out of Norristown, PA. We have done a lot of work moving her cargo around the country, making sure people have their whelchairs, and kids have their school supplies. It's a nice coin.

The second coin I received is more of an award-type of coin. It was given to me, via proxy, by the Command Sergeant Major of the 13th Sustainment Command (Expeditionary), which is the logistical arm of III Corps, and also who we fall under in the grand scheme of things here in Iraq. These are the kinds of coins that are reserved for about five percent of the soldiers in the command. This was awarded, I think, based mainly on the overall job that I've been doing, and not on anything specific. It, too, is a nice coin.

Now, no one is exactly too sure of where these coins originally came from. There are two stories from the hallows of antiquity that may shed some light on the matter. On comes from Vietnam, and the other, my personal favorite, comes from World War One.

I'll begin with the Vietnam one. Back when the Army was a lot cooler, and they actually let you drink and such, the men would carry a single bullet in their hip pocket, mainly to deny the enemy the possibility of capture. (Now, by the way, we have to allow the enemy to capture us, it's all because of the Code of Conduct- there's too many rules these days.) At the bars, the front line fighters would occasionaly produce their bullets and "challenge" anothe to produce his. If he did, then the others would pay his tab that night. If not, then he would be responsible for his buddies' tab for the night. At any rate, these guys kept trying to trump each others' bullets, eventually getting so egregious that some were producing 105mm artillery shells, rockets, mortars and the likes. It was said that on a busy night at the local hooch bar, one could see the entire range of land-based munitions used in the southeast Asian theatre. Needless to say, someone decided that coins would be much safer than a bunch of live rounds, so they switched them up.

The other story, which is a bit more harrowing, is about a young fighter pilot in WWI. Many young, wealthy men from such esteemed places as Yale and Harvard quit their schooling halfway through the year and joined the new air corps. Back then, it was called the Aviation Section, US Signal Corps, the Division of Military Aeronautics, or the US Army Air Service, depending on when in the war one is speaking of. Anyway, one of these young lieutenants had medallions cast in solid bronze for his entire squadron. Another enterprising young lieutentant decided to wear his aroun dhis neck in a leather pouch. Shortly thereafter, he was shot down and captured by the Germans. They took all of his identification, save the pouch around his neck.

A short time later, the town he was being held in was bombed, and it gave him the opportunity to escape. He donned civilian clothes and went on his way. He was later apprehended by the French, who assumed that anyone with an American accent, not in uniform, and that was from a wealthy New England parentage, was a spy. (Ask E.E. Cummings about that one) They decided to execute him. But, as they were about to kill him, one of the Frenchies recognized the emblem of his squadron, and spared him, then knowing he was an ally. Then, in typical French fashion, they gave him a bottle of wine, began playing their concertinas, donned their berets and forgot about the whole thing. Again, this leads to the tradition of producing a coin to challenge the other, who in turn will either produce a coin, or buy a drink.

It's just too bad that over here all of our drinks are both non-alcoholic and free.

Father said, "Son, don't let the man get 'cha..."

Happy Father's Day, everybody! It's all the same here in Iraq, I guess, just another day. We don't really celebrate anything here with any sort of pomp or excessive festivities. At any rate, it's still an important day, to remember all the sons and fathers over here.



In other news, I read the other day that the "surge" is complete. The BBC stated that the last combat brigade will be combat-ready in the next 30 days. Then what, I wonder? Will we begin seeing some miracles? Will the insurgency begin crumbling under the might of the American War machine? Doubtful, yes, but Gen Petraeus has said that his "plan" can now come to fruition with the addition of all the soldiers. I think that arming the locals is a better idea than increasing our trop numbers. They'll solve it themselves, and we're staring to see proof of that. The only thing we have to remember is that when it's time to go, we need to leave. These people that we're arming will not hesitate to take up arms against us once the spectre of al-Qaeida is no longer looming over them.



Well, back to the surge. It's been getting more and more crowded here at Camp Striker, what with the addition of (from what I've heard) one combat brigade and an aviation brigade. It took one of my roomates nearly forty-five minutes to run the "laundry cycle" of pick-up and drop-off. It took me nearly a half-hour to get a haircut the other day, and I only spent three minutes in the chair. The only facility here that can cope with the numbers is the shiny new dining facility that opened up several months ago. It's ok, but I sure wish they would open up another barber shop and laundry point.

All in all, I guess it's not too bad. At least we have laundry and hot food.

Pack up the meat, sweet, we're headin' out

We had a cookout! It was exciting. SPC B, I call him "Mouth," procured a box of steaks from the Class I yard. He also got some charcoal and a few seasonings. hence, we decided that last Saturday we should forgo the usual horrid cuisine of the dining facility, and create a little culinary magic of our own. I will put this disclaimer in now: I did not cook, so it wasn't top notch, but it was still darned good.
We did use our "chow memo" (a piece of paper that allows us to get take-out food from the DFAC) to get our sides and beverages.

i'm not too clear on what the white stuff is... but that's salad up top

Once word got out that the grill was lit, the KBR guys had to get into the game. Isaac, who works for us on the container management side fo the house, is a self-proclaimed "grill master." Having a few years of experience in a restaurant, he was brought into the collective to aid in the grilling.

I did cook one steak, for me, which was fantastic. I sprinkled a bit of Montreal steak seasoning on it, and then thoroughly coated it with a blend of cracked red and black peppercorns, thus creating something of an "au poivre" style of steak. For my second steak, I let Isaac and Mouth take the reins to show me what they could do.

the spice cabinet

Mouth doing his thing

Even people that work in other yards came by for a piece fo the action. Jamie, who used to work here but moved to the KBR staging yard after getting promoted, stopped by for a chunk o steak. She was mad that we waited to have the cookout until after she left. She thinks it's a plot. It may be.

Mouth, Isaac, Jamie and Spc B enjoying the feast

the sizzle

Finally, after much ado, we got to eat. It wasn't the splendid, sit-down affair that we're usually accustomed to, but our styrofoam plates and heavy-duty plastic flatware certainly lent a dignified air to the festivities.

aaah, beef and brew

The beer, by the way, was god-awful.

Gun went off a rootie-toot-toot

Well, Memorial Day has come and gone, and of course we didn't get to enjoy many cookouts or good beer. We did, however, get to enjoy yet another iteration of everyone's favorite class: Counter-IED. It was the same class, with the same powerpoint slides, and even the same videos that we saw in both Kuwait and Texas. It didn't help the fact that we had to have it after work, and it ran a little long and made its way into our sleep time. We got over it, though.
A cool thing happens here every once in a while. They fire off the "Phalanx" weapon. It's essentially a 20mm gatling gun that's used to shoot things out fo the sky. It works in tandem with the AN/TPQ-36 "Firefinder" Radar to detect and intercept incoming objects. It first was used on ships in the Navy, but the Army learned that it has many benefits for land-based air defense, and is now in places all around Iraq and the US. You can read all sorts of good info on it here or here. Anyway, to make it brief, when they use it at sea, they use tungsten penetrators to knock down the projectile. Obviously, when used over an urban environment this isn't a good idea since the penetrators would fall to the ground and possibly hurt people. Instead, they use exploding bullets that detonate after a certain distance, and they don't leave much residue to deal with. This makes for a pretty cool lightshow when they fire it off. Anyway, the benefit of wotking where we do and when we do is that we can see the whole thing go down. I shot off a few pics of the event for you to see:







It's a little fuzzy, only because I had to shut off my flash and the camera can't stabilize itself without the flash on.
Anyway, if anyone happens to stop by Arnold's, tell Brett and Ronda "thank you" for me for sending the nice package. Everyone should be getting either nice hand-written letters or very nice typed and printed letters on some fantastic paper they sent me. Hooray! I also got some nice photo paper, so when I get home and get a nice photo printer I can print off a few of my more favorite pictures from here in a larger format. I'll need to get a few more good ones, first!

Ain't nothin' left here partner, just the dust of a plague that has left this whole town afraid

Well, not too much of anyting new is going on here in lovely Iraq. We're getting the yard graded and covered with limestone, to help with the mud problem when it rains. This is good, but not too practical, since it may not really rain again until October. Instead it just creates dust, and a lot of it.

The dust gets just about everywhere, too. Sometimes, when people come in from out in the yard, they are completely beige, head to toe, with the exception of their hair and eyes, since they were covered with hat and glasses. I'm glad I work in the office.

In other news, I have an update on the kittens.

First, I'll say that my desire to keep them was vindicated the other day when we had a mouse running around the trailer. It took three days to get him caught in a trap, and I'm sure that he's not the last one we'll be seeing. Therefore, on to the kitens:

The one that I was going to name Dusty died. I still haven't gotten the straight story on it, but some say that he ran out in front of a truck, and others say that one of the hillbilly guys here "accidentally" killed it. Either way, it was a waste.

As for the other one, which was the one that got wounded, he is doing quite well. The civilian KBR employee here, Jamie, told me that he's living with a bunch of third-country nationals and they play with him and he's getting a lot bigger. That makes me happy to know that his wounds are most likely healing up well and he's doing fine.

Oh well, that's all for now.

Happy Birthday, Kristen!

you can't strike camp without camp striker

Well, the "surge" is beginning, I think. I haven't really seen too many new soldiers around yet, but they've been solidly working on a new pad over by the gate to Striker. A pad is part of a LSA, or life support area. Essentially, it is a small piece of the pie that forms this ghetto that we live in. Seriously, it's a ghetto. We are blocked into a small part of the city, unable to go out, we are completely self sufficient, all of us have a shared commonality and we're forced to wear an identifying symbol. Let's not forget that we're in a war zone, also.
Anyway, rumor once had it that we were going to move into this new pad, but I'm hoping that we don't. Even though we're technically living below standard (a prisoner at Supermax gets more space than I do), it's better where we're at than in the horrid little housing units on the new pad. Right now we live in three unit "CHU's, " or containerized housing units, with three people to a room. It's not too bad. Actually, it's a lot like college, except we have guns. Unfortunately, we don't have the parties or the booze.
The units that are currently being built are nothing more than shipping containers with a door and a window. I'm not even sure that they are the usual size of eight by twenty. So this is where I live now:

And hopefully they don't make us move here:

crapland

And this is my current room:

note the improvised computer table

all my worldly possessions, in this one little box

This is why they call it Camp Striker (I think):

Stryker Combat Vehicles

And this is a shot of our dining facility (hence the DFAC sign):

it's a really big place

In other news, I guess Ruby is up to his usual shenanigans, what with him denying OJ a table over the weekend. That even made news over here. I'm waiting to see if it pops up in "Stars and Stripes," our daily circular. Even some people over here that know where I work have asked me, "hey, isn't that your boss?" And I reply, "yeah, that's Ruby, alright." Speaking of, I found this on the net not too long ago:

PS, this was really cute:

medicating in the sun, pinch doses of laudanum

Well, summer is officially starting to come on in central Iraq. We've entered month three without much of a hitch, with the exception of the monotony, it's not all that bad. It's getting rather warm here on a daily basis. Since we're working 11:30 pm to 11:30 am, we get to experience a bit of the famous Iraqi sun. My hands and face are starting to get a bit of sun. I imagine by the time I'm home on leave, I should have a pretty swell "army tan."
Anyway, it starts getting warm here by about nine o'clock in the morning. Lately, it's also been a touch humid. We're on the tail end of the rainy season, so on occasion it will spit for a few minutes and then quit. That makes it positively miserable. I can't wait for the real heat of summer. Not that I'm anxious for it, but I've never quite experienced 130 degrees before. It'll be a "life experience," or whatever I decide to call all the little milestones in this collective rock pile.

In other news, we got a new copier at the CRSP. I know, in the real world that's kind of hum-drum, but here that's monumental. It makes my life a thousand times easier and a million times more efficient. Instead of laboriously researching and printing off the convoy commanders' paperwork, I can now quickly fire out my approvals, and make copies for them, so they have records for their higher-ups. Yaaay!
We also had to call the fire department because the KBR forklift driver punctured a drum of hydraulic fluid. Nothing really cool happened, except for the fact that a fire truck came, and you all know how much I like fire trucks. The KBR data entry clerk, Jamie, was positively enamored with one of the firemen. I guess it made her day.
Aside from all that, I guess the only news is that my promotion packet went winging its way to Cleveland last week, in hopes that the promotion board convenes sometime soon, and I haven't missed it. Not to worry, though, because my First Sergeant is working dilligently to get me promoted, so I'm not worried. If I have missed the Cleveland board, then we'll be seeking someone's approval here. The Army's promotion system is whack. I won't go into great detail here, that's for another rant. OK, I'm going to go soak up some AC and take a nap. It's going to hit 108 this weekend.