September 10, 2004

We have finally made it to our Area of Operation. We’re in a place called Al-Qaim, pretty far north, right on the Syrian border, from what I understand.

The night we left Camp Udairi, in Kuwait, the news said that there were upwards of 230 dead in that Russian school. It kinda put stuff a little into perspective, reminding me that this isn’t the only horribly violent place in the world. Not that I’ve yet ever experienced any violence. I didn’t have much time to think about it, though.

There was a lot of excitement around the company. This road march would be our first combat operation, and intel reported that contact would be imminent. This was pretty believable considering our route would take us into Ramadi, and right past Fallujah.

The road march up was a pretty surreal experience. Being a scout is pretty disorienting in general, because you take turns ‘popping up’, standing with your head sticking out keeping a lookout, and the rest of the time you’re down in the scout compartment with no idea what’s going on.

Our first stop was Navstar, right on the Kuwaiti/Iraqi border, where we got some ice to fill our camel-baks with. We left there at about midnight, and around 0600 we got to a convoy support base called Cedar. Our northward progress was already evident, by the presence of vegetation and birds.

From there I replaced our driver because he’d been driving all night. In all the other vehicles in our platoon, the gunners replaced the drivers, and I’m not sure why I was the only scout to get picked as a relief driver. I drove for about six grueling hours, which I made bearable by putting in my earbuds under the comm helmet. My soundtrack for Road Trip Iraq 2004 consisted of The Gossip’s Movement, Snow Patrol’s Final Straw, and Pretty Girls Make Graves’ New Romance. Also I popped a Stacker-2 that a buddy gave me, which I guess is an over-the-counter amphetamine sold as a fat-burning pill, because I didn’t want to fall asleep at the wheel. That thing kept me wired well into that night, which was bad when I was trying to sleep.

Driving sucked for the following reasons: the driver’s hole is closed up with very little ventilation, and we had to wear full uniforms and flak jackets, so I was sweating like a pig the whole time, I couldn’t get my sunglasses on under the comm helmet, and the worthless Wiley-X goggles we got issued broke, so my eyeballs were just frying through the periscope the entire six hours, the drivers’ seats are really uncomfortable, and it adujusts vertical position hydraulically, but the lever is really touchy, so I kept smashing my head into the hatch, with the force of hydraulics, and I kept seeing things I wanted to take pictures of while driving. Like little kids running around on the kind of gravel that’s so hot I can barely stand it even with boots on.

That afternoon when we got to an army base called Scania, I discovered I had a pretty bad case of heat rash all across my back. That sucked a lot. Scania is right next to some swamp or something and it was really muggy. The drivers (not the replacement drivers like me) slept in an air-conditioned tent, and didn’t have to stand any watch that night, while the rest of us slept in the sand-flea-infested humidity. It’s hard to decide whether to cover up and sweat all night, or to sleep with flesh exposed and get eaten alive. The bugs, the humidity, the heat rash, and the two-hour post in the middle of the night all conspired to keep me up all night.

Scania looked like something out of Mad Max. There were huge lines of semis parked all over the place, and humvees and just industrial junk strewn all about.

We left Scania at about 0800, our next stop was Fallujah. Lcpl G____ popped up most of the morning while I slept. I woke up in Fallujah. We ended up staying at a firm base there for most of the day because a suicide bomber in a vehicle-borne IED had hit a seven-ton truck and killed all eleven or so Marines inside, so the route we were going to take was closed. When we went to refuel, we saw all kinds of vehicle husks in a ‘boneyard’, the remains of vehicles that had been hit by IEDs. It was sobering.

We left Fallujah sometime in the afternoon. I was popped up, but was informed that the area surrounding Fallujah was a ‘no-fire zone’ because so many units in Fallujah had taken casualties from return fire from convoys that had been attacked. That’s right, folks, there we were, rolling by one of the most dangerous cities in the world, and we weren’t even allowed to shoot back.

So I took pictures. Oh man, Fallujah did not look like a good time. I don’t even really know how to describe it.

Our next stop was Al-Asad. Al-Asad, I think, is a Marine Airbase. It was huge, and well stocked with amenities. This is where I made my last “I’m still alive” post. There was a huge P/X and a Hajji store. I couldn’t pass up trying out the Iraqi version of fried rice. I’ve had worse. We stayed there a couple of nights in air-conditioned tents and had real flushing toilets. I can’t believe how well POGs get treated.

The final leg of our road trip was pretty uneventful, and we finally arrived here at Al-Qaim. It seems to have been an old trainyard converted into a firm base. It’s rather dumpy. I guess it’s at about the end of the supply lines, so there’s not much here. There are showers, but they’re unreliable. Whereas at the last three bases we ate at we had crab legs(!) for dinner, here we have tray-rats, which are about a half step up from MREs. Last night our temporary billeting was in an open maintenance bay. Helos kept blowing huge clouds of dust inside, and one Marine got pooped on by a pigeon.

Tonight we got moved to some warehouse, but we’re likely going to get moved again soon.