Climb in Back!

2011-08-02T17:22:00.000-07:00

Hello friends, family and followers! (as always, please ask if you would like to forward this email)

I have to apologize for this delayed final email! I arrived safely back to the U.S two weeks ago and since then have been catching up with friends and family and my incredible boyfriend who flew over from the UK to meet me. The travel home was hellish as always, but I have to say that for all the things that could have gone wrong, it was relatively uneventful.

After arriving in Kuwait and sleeping more of the morning I woke around 2 that afternoon, managed to get on the internet, suffer through a workout in the transient gym (which with AC only brought the temperature down to a lovely 100 degrees) and then all three teams, Baghdad, Kuwait and Afghanistan had one last meal together in the DFAC.

Saturday we had a roll call for our flight at 8:15am and then spent the entire day doing paper work, schlepping duffle bags, dumping duffle bags (for customs grrr), in lockdown watching movies and eating out of boredom. We finally took the two hour bus ride to Kuwait City around 5pm, and took off for the 6 hour Germany flight around 8pm. We had a two hour layover in Germany and then a 8 hour flight to Atlanta after which we were loaded onto more buses and taken to Ft Benning. We were made to sit through more briefings and then still with no sleep were taken to the Central Issuance Facility to return our gear. By 12:30pm I had finished everything and was technically finished with Ft Benning although my flight to Chicago was not until the next day, Monday, so all the Red Cross folks had an overnight in the barracks. I arrived home to the happy arms of friends and family Monday afternoon :-)

I can't begin to thank each and everyone of you for the support you have provided to me. Even just taking the time to read my time-consuming emails made me feel less alone, less tired. Your kind and thoughtful words gave me a boost each time I opened your emails and letters. Your encouragement has meant so much. I will never forget it.

Signing off....

2011-07-16T05:27:00.000-07:00

Just a short note to say that our team miraculously made it out of Afghanistan on the first try (although our flight did get pushed back about 9 hours!) We landed in Kuwait at 3:30am local time, schlepped our duffel bags off the plane and got signed into tents. We actually were coincidentally assigned to the same tent as the other two Red Cross teams which made for a nice reunion! I slept from about 6am to 2pm in the afternoon which is actually my normal "night" so I'm still somewhat on a sleep schedule. We bummed around most of the afternoon and then this morning met at 8am for a roll call for the Freedom Flight.

And right now I am in lock down after clearing Navy customs (always a miserable experience - 120 degree heat, no AC and I had to dump the two military duffels that I had perfectly packed, plus my back pack so that customs could go through every single pair of underwear and sock and item I had. So demoralizing :-(

But keep your fingers crossed for us - we should be on American soil tomorrow!

2011-07-13T05:07:00.000-07:00

First off, a BIG thank you to the Stockton UU Church for the incredibly generous care packages! You are making a world of difference to the soldiers out here!

So! The incoming team is here and we've been transitioning for the last three days! Hoorah!!! :-)

The transition is always a bit stressful as the incoming team is trying to learn as much as possible in a short amount of time and we, the outgoing team, are trying to keep the shop running but turn over the reigns at the same time. Tonight we are hosting our last Timmy event and then on Thursday the incoming team will officially take over operations and our team will start the process of flying home!

This entails trying to get from Afghanistan to Kuwait by Saturday (plus whatever delightful time we get to spend in the transient tents in Kuwait). Then the Freedom flight out of Kuwait which is a 6-7 hour flight, a layover somewhere in Europe, then another 6-7 hour flight to the States with another possible layover before we land in Ft Benning, hopefully on Monday. From Georgia we have a 24 hour period at Ft Benning and THEN...home to Chicago on Tuesday!

And a small side story- I took my replacement to the hospital yesterday to teach her how to do hospital visits and in a crazy coincidence one of the civilians who I sent home on a Red Cross message for the North Carolina tornadoes was in the ICU Ward! I actually blogged about this gentleman as we had watched the coverage of the tornadoes together in the office waiting for his message to come in and when he got it, he kissed me goodbye on the cheek and thanked me for all my help. We were so surprised to see each other again and he actually got out his bed when he saw me and gave me a HUGE hug. One of the most rewarding moments of this deployment....

2011-07-10T08:33:00.000-07:00

The incoming team is in Kuwait!!! YESSSSS!!!

If all goes as planned they should arrive sometime in the next 24 hours. We will then have about 4 days to transition with them and ideally should be flying out of Bagram on Friday the 15th. The flight to Kuwait is only about 4-5 hours, but the problem is there are about a million factors that influence military travel and unlike commercial flights there are no "reserved seats" which means you can get kicked off the plane at any time, plus there are wind storms, dust storms, planes breaking down due to the weather conditions, rockets, mortars, bad guys, distinguished visitors bumping people off flights plus anyone going home on emergency leave gets priority. So yea.... keep your fingers crossed for us!

Also, I fun side story to share. On Friday my team and I got to go visit the Air Rescue Squad guys which was really cool. They are the soldiers who go out into fire fights and rescue the wounded. For a reference point... it's like The Guardian...without the water ;-) Their stories were fascinating and we got to explore the helicopter and learn how they lift patients off the ground. Definitely a great little field trip.

One last final story, this morning we got up to go to our last possible time at the Egyptian Hospital but it was still closed! That is three weeks in a row now the hospital has been closed due to the change over in unit. We were all quite disappointed as this means we will not have the chance to say goodbye to the kids we saw every week and I honestly regret this.

2011-07-05T09:03:00.000-07:00

Wow, well tonight had me in tears at the office.

I got a call from a very high ranking enlisted officer calling to let the Red Cross know that he was in receipt of his red cross message. When I thanked him for calling back and asked if there was anything else we could do for him or his family... he asked me if I would pray for his son. I was so caught off guard by his request I was almost speechless. For a senior enlisted of his rank to express that kind of request tore my heart right of my chest. He told me his son's name and said that it didn't look good. I managed to get through my condolences without crying and then promptly hung up the phone and wept.

Please keep this man's sons in your thoughts if you can, I feel obligated to share this because his anguish was so compelling I think my heart is a little bit broken...

2011-07-04T15:40:00.000-07:00

Happy 4th of July!

So today was not exactly a relaxing, lazy BBQ and sparklers kind of day, but at least it was felt a little bit special. I got up and went into the office about an hour before my shift started to meet Ingrid and Terra to stop by the USO BBQ and then attend a 4th of July re-enlistement ceremony in which General Petraeus was the distinguished guest.

Unfortunately, but the time we found our way to the correct entrance to the flight line (coincidentally right by the USO BBQ) all we really had time to do was wave hello to the folks who were grilling before we cleared security to get to the ceremony. The ceremony was being held in a hanger on the flight line so all though it was in the shade it was still 106 (plus wretchedly heavy military uniforms).

I really enjoyed the ceremony however. In addition to Petraeus were Senators John McCain, Joe Lieberman and Lindsay Graham, plus Ambassador Olson. The airport hanger was enormous and there were easily 500 people there. I was also pleasantly surprised at the speeches that were made. I was expecting a generic, jingoistic display of blind hoo-rah patriotism, but instead I found the speeches to be thoughtful and respectfully patriotic. They reflected the heroism and sacrifices made by the soldiers and were less about the war and more about what it means to be honorable and noble. I thought the theme was really unifying and the music was wonderful. Easily the best part was when Petraeus and his First Sergeant took the sword from a member of the 1st Cavalry drill team as part of their presentation and used it to cut the biggest American flag cake I have ever seen!

The ceremony lasted about a half an hour and then we had to miss the re-enlistment BBQ to head back to the office since we'd left another station to watch for emergency messages and we'd been gone for sometime. Otherwise there were no fireworks for me (apart from the incoming alarms that went off about 2 hours ago - all's well though), but I hope today was a day full of family, food and fireworks for each of you :-)

2011-06-30T07:52:00.000-07:00

Last night was our Timmy (the Combat Stress Dog) Birthday event and it's safe to say we had another successful bash at the Red Cross. We baked 8 cakes in our little oven, and we are pleased to say most of the experimental ones were not only edible but actually enjoyable! At 4pm some of the members of Timmy's 44 Med unit came over to help with the set up. We did a very similar arrangement as we did to our Father's Day BBQ...only difference was we had a Dixie Brass Band show up to play! Honestly, no one knew they were coming, but they arrive half an hour before the party ready to play. We had hoped they could set up on our deck like the band at our last BBQ but unfortunately we were fighting a dust storm and the tuba player basically said he had to play inside or he would tip over!

This meant that the room where we were serving the food was quite cramped (and loud with the band playing!) but we still managed to feed around 200 people over the course of two hours. The highlights of the night were went all the guests stood at attention and this adorable, clueless yellow lab was promoted to the rank of Major by the President of the United States. Later the band played Happy Birthday to Timmy and he looked equally as clueless.

We were again so happy with our turn out and more than anything, so happy to see so many people come out to the Red Cross to hang out and have fun at a party. Times like these make everything worth it, when you get to provide people with a bit of an escape.

In other news I did a MedEvac Tuesday night which was rather crazy as my friends in the old unit are redeploying and flying home this week, so Tuesday was the first night the new unit ran the MedEvac and it was rather....disjointed. Then yesterday we were offered to tour a MedEvac helicopter which would have been super cool except they had to cancel because they had a last minute mission (can't argue with that!) We are hoping to reschedule for this coming week. And on another happy note- we've decorated the office as best we can in red, white and blue for the Fourth of July. Not sure what we will get up to yet, but hopefully something memorable :-)

2011-06-26T06:07:00.000-07:00

So today was kind of a crazy day.

Got up mad early for the Egyptian Hospital, only to drive all the way there and find out that it was not on! Obviously from the farewell ceremony yesterday we knew this unit was leaving but I had reconfirmed with the Commander that it was going to happen today. Clearly there was a miscommunication! So we were a bit bummed, took some pictures with the sign out front which we had always been meaning to do and then headed back to the office.

I went right back to bed once we returned because I had been invited to a demonstration of the military - working dogs (aka the attack dogs) at 4pm that afternoon. Let's just say that this was one of the most exhilarating and adrenaline - rush activities EVER.

Now we are planning the BBQ Party event for Timmy's Birthday this coming Wednesday and I thought I would share this email with you. Being out in a war zone we have no real access to baking resources so this is what my team leader proposed for Timmy birthday cakes:

Smore Cake: One pack of vanilla cake with cut up bits of Hershey bars,
marshmellows, and graham crackers inside

Hazelnut cake: One pack of vanilla cake with vanilla pudding/plain
yogurt drizzled with nutella

Coffee cake: Mix some fine ground coffee in with the vanilla cake batter
and ice with our remaining chocolate frosting

Red velvet cake with icing made from cream cheese and yogurt.

All of these ingredients are what we have through donations lying about in our office or what we can snag from the DFAC!

2011-06-25T08:35:00.000-07:00

So it has been a 24 hours full of surprises! Last night I went to do a MedEvac and it ended up being a back to back outbound/inbound mission. However, there were only 6 ambulatory patients and one litter on the outbound and only one Ckat (life-support) patient on the inbound so my help wasn't really needed. What came as a real surprise though, was when the unit gathered around me in the CASF and did an impromptu awards ceremony. They said a few words about the work that I had done with them and then presented me with a Certificate of Appreciation! Honestly, it was one of the most rewarding moments of the deployment.

Then today, an hour after billeting woke me up yelling that they needed to secure one of the rooms in our Bhut (aka make a lot of noise and let in a lot of day light for no reason), Ingrid came by and woke me up saying that we were invited to a ceremony for the staff of the Egyptian Hospital. I didn't catch everything Ingrid said in my sleep haze, but I got up and showered quickly and we drove off to the "Clamshell" which is a large recreation facility. Inside we learned that the staff of the Egyptian Hospital was redeploying shortly and wanted to present us, along with their other partners, with certificates of appreciation. So Ingrid and I braved the 110 plus degree heat as we watched a commemorative slide show about the unit's work and then a rather obvious video for Egyptian tourism (post-revolution mind-you. They did well to advertise that Egypt is now entirely democratic ;-)

One of the things I couldn't help but notice was how familial the Egyptians were with both each other and the other allied Middle Eastern soldiers. The officers are frequently embracing and holding each others hands or kissing on the cheeks and I commented that you'd never see such familiarity at a US ceremony. They also appear to be just mad for picture and video taking. Both Ingrid and I were taken aback at the number of pictures and poses and filming that was going on. You would have thought we were at a 25 year anniversary reunion. The majority of the soldiers had cameras and were nothing short of recording the whole event.

After the slide show portion finished the Commander of the Egyptian Hospital began to recognize partners who had made a difference in their work. When my name was called I honestly could not stop cracking up. I know only a very few of the Egyptian soldiers who work as guards on the compound, but the clapping and screaming and cheering you heard when my name was called you would have thought they were my biggest fans. I am going to wager that being the only blond at the ceremony may have had something to do with this reaction, but I couldn't help but shake my head and laugh as I went up to receive my certificate.

It is a recognition I will always cherish. I am very proud to have been a part of their work with the Afghans at the Egyptian Hospital

2011-06-24T03:52:00.000-07:00

A couple of stories from this week...

Tuesday night I spent the evening with a Major who was waiting in the office for his Red Cross message to arrive. His wife was giving premature birth to twins and the babies weren't expected to survive. I spent the evening working with his command and the Pax Terminal (essentially the bagram airport) to try and get him out on a flight that night. He was a wonderful person, calm and courteous, while he had every right to be a wreck. He did end up getting his red cross message and I am thinking of him and his family.

Wednesday night was our weekly Timmy the Combat Stress Dog event and this week proved quite exciting when a newscaster from AFN (Armed Forces Network) showed up about half and hour before the event and said he was interested in doing a piece on Timmy's service career. He wanted to do interviews and then get footage of Timmy interacting with people. Then he is going to come by next week for Timmy's Third Birthday party and promotion ceremony. It's great coverage for the Red Cross plus Timmy deserves the credit! His handler is redeploying in a couple of weeks, but Timmy has another year out here and will get a new handler.

The final piece of news is that our replacements leave this weekend to start their training and travels to replace us! I'll be honest, this makes me very excited! :-)

2011-06-20T03:22:00.000-07:00

Hi all! Sorry again for the delay!

First off, a HUGE thank you to the DeKalb Red Cross who shipped almost a dozen care packages for our Red Cross canteen and for the soldiers over here. Pleas know that your donations make a world of difference!

I am safe and well here in Afghanistan and I confess the reason behind the sporadic blog posts is simply that we are all exhausted and burned out. We have 24 days left on our deployment, have not had a day off in over 100 days and given the nature of the work we are doing, each day now seems to take everything out of us.

That being said, we are still hard at work and doing our best to make a difference, it’s just that we used to be able to squeeze in time to do something small for ourselves and that just doesn’t seem to happen anymore. We are just too tired. Anyways! On a happier note, yesterday was one of the best days we’ve had in Afghanistan. The four of us at the Red Cross hosted a wonderful BBQ event with approximately 200 attendees! The BBQ was a combined Father’s Day/Recognition event for supporters of the Red Cross and it could not have been more successful.

Our food was donated by our volunteers or supporting military units. We had most of our desserts shipped from home including fudge, cookies, freeze ice pops (huge hit!) plus we baked several cakes and such in our tiny easy-bake style oven. The 44 Medical Brigade brought dozens of 6-packs of near-beer (since alcohol is prohibited). We had water guns and water balloons sent from home which were a blast. The First Cav Band played for over two hours and were just fantastic plus we had our good friend Chris manning the monster grill and cooking up steaks, burgers and hot dogs.

The event was such a success that we had people stopping in the office or coming up to us in the dining hall long after the event was over to thank us and let us know how much it was appreciated and most importantly, that for a short period of time they felt like they were just at a BBQ and not stuck in a war zone a thousands of miles from friends and family. The best compliment in the world.

Otherwise, every day brings the regular demands. The Fallen Hero Ceremonies occur so regularly that we are attending several funerals a week. I did a MedEvac last night which is always a rewarding though draining experience. I am still making those once or twice a week. We still visit the hospital everyday to talk to the patients there. Last week I had a young guy, 20 years old, in the ICU tell me I was the first female he’d actually had a conversation with in 6 months. He was stationed at a fire base with 150 other guys. Sadly we missed the Egyptian Hospital this week to prep for the BBQ but Ingrid and I hope to perhaps go tomorrow to make up for it.

And finally, I forgot to mention that I have initiated another weekly event at our office. We are having coffee and cake with Timmy the Combat Stress Dog every Wednesday evening and have had quite a bit of success with this event. In fact, the USO actually came over one night and said they wanted to start doing the same thing over at their place! Back off USO! ;-) It is amazing the number of people who will make the effort to come out and visit our office in order to play with Timmy and we have been very pleased with the response! Timmy’s third birthday is actually next week so coming off the success of yesterday’s BBQ I’m in the midst of planning another one for next week!

After that it’s just two more weeks until our replacements arrive! ;-)

2011-06-12T00:02:00.000-07:00

Yikes! Almost a week since my last post, sorry guys. I confess that with 5 weeks remaining, you can tell the team is getting tired. We've done almost 100 days without a day off and I think we are all looking forward to a break.

Today was definitely worth writing about though. Headed to the Egyptian Hospital in the morning and managed to give out some shampoo, nail polish and hair ribbons to the girls there. It never ceases to amaze me how desperate the women and children are. I offered out a nail polish to one young girl and a much older woman came by and snatched it out of my hand, wrenching it away from the girl and then tottered off. I desperately wish I had the language skills to keep more order among the children and I have managed to learn a few crucial words, but not enough to sort out disputes. The plus side of the morning was that the girls had mixed together a cup of henna and painted our hands. The hilarious part is that they all wanted to help so the girls kept grabbing my hand away from the girl drawing the design causing it to smear. All part of the experience! Now my hand is stained this crazy orange for the next two weeks. You could tell the girls were really proud of themselves though. Typically we are the ones offering gifts and you could tell they were excited for us to participate in something very common to their culture (almost all the women and girls are painted with henna).

Later that night we had another really scary incoming attack. I was at the office by myself when an enormous impact boom shook the office. It was as close as that one terrifying night I spent in the bunker after Osama was killed, so I was up like a jack rabbit, locked the office door and out the back door in 5 seconds. Everyone in offices around me had come out as well, waiting for the sirens to sound, but 30 seconds, 1 minute, 5 minutes later nothing happened. Turns out the impact from the rocket was actually outside the wire, which is only about 75 -100 meters from our camp. Because it didn't hit on base the sirens didn't sound, but it was incredibly close.

Then I went on a MedEvac last night which never fails to be an amazing experience. There was one guy who had the most extraordinary burns on his face, I've never seen anything like it and it was tragic to hear the nurses tell him to use Patient Controlled Analgesia (PCA) which is a device that when the button is pushed releases a controlled dose of pain killers. You can push the button as much as you want and the device self-regulates and cuts you off when you've had enough, but just to hear them say that really gives you a sense of how much pain the guy is in and how he will suffer on the flight.

The other disturbing part of the night was when an incoming MedEvac landed bringing in an EPW (Enemy Prisoner of War). That was another in your face reality check that there is no denying this country is still very much in conflict.

2011-06-06T15:03:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we started the day with the Afghan kids at the Egyptian Hospital and it was the typical free-for-all that it is. This time Ingrid and I brought sidewalk chalk and two blow up beach balls. We tried to keep things calm as we handed out the sticks of chalk, and while we were able to keep control initially, inevitably, it soon broke out into chaos and the kids and even the women fought until all the chalk disappeared. I had better luck with the beach ball. Ingrid had the beach ball torn from her hands before we could play with it, but I actually managed to give mine to one girl who successfully blew it up and then several of us when out and tossed it about trying to keep it from hitting the ground. Then an interesting thing happened, some of the boys came over wanting to play and the girls immediately stopped playing and deflated the ball. My suspicion is that the girls thought the boys were going to take over and steal it, which in this extremely patriarchal society is probably a fair guess.

On a different note, the military has finally managed to fix whatever was wrong with their distro list for months, alerting the residents on Bagram of the "Ramp" ceremonies or the Fallen Comrade Ceremonies on the flight line. Now our inbox is full of them.

In the last 24 hours I have been to the equivalent of 6 funerals.

That is positively extraordinary. Last night was for four soldiers killed in a roadside IED. Tonight was two soldiers in a different unit, I don't know how they died. While I am pleased the distro list is now working and while I have every intention of attending every possible ceremony, it is confounding the number of soldiers that are dying out here. The truly incredible thing though is the number of people who thank us for attending. Yesterday we left the flightline with soldier after soldier acknowledging us "thank you Red Cross". I wonder how long I can last until I can't take them any longer with the frequency they are occurring.

2011-06-04T14:47:00.000-07:00

Lots been going on this week!

RECAP: Tuesday our case work program underwent a massive upgrade, which had the system shut down around the world for several hours, meaning emergency messages all over the world were at a standstill. When the system came back up there were several changes to the program which caused caseworkers all over the world much confusion. The result between the shut down and the confusion has been an astronomical number of cases these last few days. On Thursday night there were 23 cases at one time in our queue waiting to be delivered. Absolutely unheard of on my three deployments... I typically do 23 cases over the course of my nine hour shift! To make matters more confusing, the reference numbers assigned to the cases pre-update started with 288- followed by four more numbers, say 2881234. But once the system went back up after the upgrade they restarted at 0. This has interestingly caused mass confusion all over Afghanistan as brigades think they have been given the wrong case numbers and the military airports who schedule seats for emergency leave think the messages are fake! Goodness.

Another story for you, I did a Medivac last night. It was an average sized mission, 8 ambulatory, 6 litters, 2 Ckats, but I had an awful experience with one of the Ckats. Normally Ckats are unconscious, because they are on life support but tonight one of them was awake. I was inside the bus, loading them from the people on the outside of the bus and then securing them to the walls of the bus. I was at this patients head with another air force MedEvac attendant with two other people at this feet when we went to "rack" him (secure the litter to the side of the bus). Both head and feet are supposed to rack at the same time, but this time the feet got into the rack first and normally I would be able to get my handle in without much fuss, even if we didn't rack simultaneously, but unfortunately this guy had huge casts on his feet and another on his left arm, the arm up against the wall. Because of his casts, we couldn't get our end to rack and then the guy started yelling in pain which was absolutely horrible. He was yelling about his foot being in pain, but actually it was the cast on his arm that was preventing the litter from sliding into place. The flight nurse actually had to come over and readjust his arm cast so that we could get the litter in and none of this was our fault, but Jesus, knowing our actions were causing this guy to bellow in pain made me want to vomit :-(

Finally, we took incoming today which was a bit unnerving since I heard a huge boom of impact, and waited for the sirens to off, but when they didn't I thought maybe it was fire from the artillery range. 10 mins later the sirens go off and it's bunker time, but seriously 10 mins later??? Not comforting. Afterwards, I took the car out to run some errands and there were three Blackhawks circling low over one of the villages, I can only assume the two events were related. Also, we found out today that the unit behind our office had four Killed in Action (KIA) today. We were told their ramp ceremony (Fallen Hero Ceremony) will be sometime tomorrow which we hope to attend. It's also Egyptian Hospital day tomorrow!

2011-05-31T05:21:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I was doing some research for a document I was writing on the Joint Theater Hospital and for the first time I learned why the Hospital is named after SSG Heathe N. Craig. I found this on one website:

3/9/2007 - BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan (AFNEWS) -- In 2006, Army Staff Sgt. Heathe Craig was holding on desperately to a patient as the two were hoisted from a ridgeline by a Blackhawk helicopter. Halfway to the chopper, the line snapped. Sergeant Craig and his patient fell to their deaths.

I tried to find more information about him, but I couldn't find much. I have to tell you though, I did a Medivac last night and when I think of how Sgt Craig died, holding on to one of the very guys that I was loading onto the C-130, it physically gave me the chills. Sometimes I can't believe how interconnected everything is out here...

2011-05-28T06:17:00.000-07:00

While on my hospital visit today I found myself literally speechless by the most incredible and tragic story one of the soldiers in the ICU Ward recounted for me. By the end of his story, three of the guys on his team were dead and another 4 were killed trying to rescue him. I hate to sound trite but his story was so extraordinary it was like something out of a movie, similar to Lone Survivor if you are familiar with those events ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lone_Survivor:_The_Eyewitness_Account_of_Operation_Redwing_and_the_Lost_Heroes_of_SEAL_Team_10 )

He told me that this attack made the news and while the article barely does the story justice, this is the information that has been released to the public:

http://articles.cnn.com/2011-05-26/world/afghanistan.attack_1_ied-attack-canadian-troops-soldiers?_s=PM:WORLD

The more this soldier and I talked the more we realized how much we had in common. Both from Chicago, the same age, both attended schools in the Patriot League. He will leave on a Medivac for Germany some time in the next few days and I will likely never see him again, but I will never forget this articulate, calm and and insightful soldier who had every right to be emotionally shattered but instead there I was by his hospital bed, alternating between the story of his unit dying around him and discussing Bill Maher's talents as a comedian.

2011-05-26T07:37:00.000-07:00

This is an excellent article worth reading on the incredible work of the Joint Command Theater Hospital in Bagram:

http://www.dvidshub.net/news/70968/bagram-medics-face-wars-worst-fight-survivors

And on a related note - Tuesday night I had gone over to work out at the hospital gym and on my way out I stopped at the CASF, the unit that is in charge of the Medivacs. They presented me with their unit military 455 CASF patch that can be sewn on a uniform or a bag to recognize all the work that I've done with them. I was really surprised and even more honored.

2011-05-24T03:35:00.000-07:00

Today was another really big day over here in Afghanistan. I arrived at the office at 2pm and Ingrid informed me that there was a “ramp ceremony”, more formally known as a Fallen Hero Ceremony on the Flight line at 3pm to honor four soldiers from a unit we live with who had died in combat. Although we did not personally know them we decided to go as we have wanted to participate in these ceremonies since our arrival. The ceremony takes place on the flight line with much pomp and circumstance as the flag-draped caskets are presented and saluted while a band plays and the pall bearers, usually members of the same unit, carry the coffins onto the plane.

The day was exceptionally hot, over 100 degrees Fahrenheit/37 degrees Celsius. We were given pretty poor directions to the flight line and what could have been a 5 min drive and a short walk to the flight line turned into a mile walk in the wicked heat and our thick, cumbersome military uniforms. I was already thirsty on the walk over and in hindsight I should have paid more attention to this. By the time we got to Delta Ramp we were halfway down the air field and drenched in sweat. We found ourselves over an hour early for the ceremony so we stayed in the shade as much as possible and chatted to the others gathered for the ceremony. About 30 min later we assembled in formation in preparation for the ceremony. One of the members of the color guard, the soldiers who create a walkway to the plane, fainted after standing out in the sun for about 30 min waiting for the ceremony to start.

We stood in formation for 20-30 min before the ceremony got underway, but sadly by this point I was done for. The band started playing and we snapped to attention as 4 Humvees with the caskets back loaded approached the General. The first time we – the visitors on the flight line - saluted the caskets my vision started spinning and I started seeing stars. I was furious with myself at this point, not wanting to disrupt the ceremony and be disrespectful by dropping out of formation, so I told myself to man up and hang in there. I managed to rally for a few minutes before we saluted a second time, my chin dropped to my chest, I felt like I was going to vomit and I was certain I was going to faint which I decided would be a 1,000 times worse than to just step out of formation. I whispered to Ingrid I was going to faint and with the last of the consciousness I had made it over to the airport hanger and dropped to the ground where a Medic came over and gave me a bottle of water. I was somewhat relieved to see that I wasn’t the only one who was with the Medics.

I felt a bit better after drinking half the bottle and I managed to stand up again and at attention while the caskets where loaded onto the plane, but I only stayed up for a minute or two before I thought I was going to drop again. Overall, I was angry with myself for missing the ceremony and I felt like I was disrespecting the fallen, but I was also completely overwhelmed by the whole experience. Many people in the crowd were crying and I found myself close to tears several times and I had never even met these soldiers - and never would which I think was the larger reality. I have never witnessed a celebration representing the honor and dignity and sacrifice of an untimely death. Standing on the flight line with the Hindu Kush Mountains guarding the base and the fighter jets taking off in the background and the military band playing against the drone of the plane engines, it was impossible not to recognize there are few times in a person’s life when they have the chance to be a part of something so… for better or for worse … profound.

2011-05-21T11:10:00.000-07:00

The Armed Forces Day party today ROCKED! (And the world didn’t end :-)

I am so pleased. I took the lead on this event and really had to throw it together last minute and without a lot of resources because we were denied food service support from the dining facility. I had already booked the Combat Stress Dog for the event so we wanted to still do something to celebrate the day and in the end, the party was a huge success and we ended up with far more support and resources than expected. I think we probably had somewhere between 50-60 people over the course of the two hours.

So I did most of the set up from 5-6pm. It took us a while to get the grill going because of this STUPID wind storm that won't quit so we started the grill around 5:15pm. The Special Forces guys learned that our food service request was denied and as such had told us they would supply whatever we needed. Around noon today they dropped off tons of steak and burgers and hot dogs plus all the condiments. Then once we realized the amount of food we had (when we had advertised the event as a dessert party) one of our volunteers stepped up and purchased 5 bags of chips, 4x dozen cans of pop, plastic plates and silverware! So pretty much all we provided was the desserts. I made up plates and plates of Girl Scout Cookies and then we baked a chocolate cake and an apples strudel in the oven we have in the office. Our team leader was experimenting with recipes since we don’t have access to things like eggs out here and we managed to put together some pretty creative desserts (the ingredients for the strudel came from oatmeal packets and little individual butter servings taken from the dining facility. The Chocolate cake was frosted with chocolate pudding that came from a Snack Pack! )

I had one of my teammate’s iPod speakers hooked into my laptop and we were playing music and the combat stress dog was a huge hit, tearing around and playing fetch and slobbering all over everyone. I had advertised the event with flyers that I put up around the base and then I went through the military Morale, Welfare and Recreation (MWR) to advertise the event on the base website and to the base wide listservs. A ton of our friends showed up and it was SUCH an international crowd, there were at least American, British, Kiwi, Australian, Norwegian and UAE that I managed to count, plus a bunch of civilians and contractors. Our office is very difficult to find in our camp so I got at least one email from a friend saying he couldn’t find it and had to give up which makes me wonder how many others might have showed.

We had our emergency message queue covered by the other stations until 8pm and then from 8-9pm I was going from watching the queue and working cases to cleaning up the mess. Easily one of the best nights I’ve had in Afghanistan. Nothing like hosting a party to make the war disappear :-)

2011-05-20T04:15:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was the one year anniversary of the attack on Bagram where insurgents actually got on base and instigated a firefight between Taliban and US forces http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/05/18/insurgents-launch-complex-attack-bagram-air-field/ . There was a cake at the Dining Facility last night with an In Memorium inscription for the contractor who died. This made for an eerie ambiance when the incoming sirens went off this morning at 3:30am. My team leader and I trucked out the Bhut, me in my sandals and dirty workout clothes (being the only thing I could find to put on in the dark) and we huddled in the bunker with about 6 other guys, one of which ran back to his room directly across from the bunker and brought blankets out for Ingrid and I. As the sirens continued to sound I doubt there was a person among us who wasn’t thinking about the attack on base last year and wondering if perhaps this was an anniversary attack. We were in the bunker for an hour before the all clear sounded which was ample time to let your imagination run…and picturing insurgents charging straight for the bunker was not a particularly pleasant thought.

Then today I got up at 12pm and had to permanently move to a different Bhut room on the other side of camp for a reason apparent to no one but the military. So I showered, went over to billeting, got the key to the new room, packed up all my old room, drove the stuff over to the new room, unpacked and rigged up my bed- tent again. Made of sheets and blankets, I’ve taken to completely tenting in my bed to try and make it easier to sleep during the day. Compared to my old room this one is downright huge. It doesn't have a wall locker however which is disappointing because my clothes are going to get all dirty (dust storms like the one we are having now blow straight through all the little cracks and just coat the room). Speaking of cracks the other thing I am concerned about is that there is nearly an inch between the door frame and the door itself which means that the Bhut will never actually be "night time" dark during the day and the air conditioning escapes out the crack. Ahh well, it’s all part of the experience!

Tomorrow we are having a party with the combat stress dog to celebrate Armed Forces Day which should be fun! Originally it was going to be a BBQ but we were denied food service support from the dining facility so we changed it to a “Desserts in the Desert” event. Then some of our wonderful Special Forces friends offered to sponsor the food for us and it looks like we will indeed be having a BBQ. I just hope this dust storm dies down some! ;-)

2011-05-15T06:02:00.000-07:00

Halfway into my shift and I am dragging!

The Egyptian Hospital is always a rip-roaring mass chaos start to the day and between the hyperness of the kids and my getting up in the middle of the night, I am seriously hurting with 5 hours left in my shift. So take it for what you will, but my teammate and I were the ONLY two volunteers at the Egyptian Hospital today, apart from one US solider in full battle rattle which was unsettling. The only other Western civilian person was a woman who works for the State Department in Women and Gender Studies. I had divided several of the bulk beading kits that you donated into smaller plastic bags, each with a section of plastic string, so that each kid could make their own jewelry. The State Department civilian who speaks Dhari, my teammate and I got all the kids settled down after they started circling me like hyenas when they realized they were doing to get a gift. We were able to maintain order about half way round the circle and then maddness broke loose, honestly when the Afghan women started clambering for the bags. Chaos ensued and one of the women actually made off with the remaining bags! Fortunately she only got away with a few. I honestly wasn't too bothered by the whole thing. Most of the kids got a bag and many of them quietly settled down and started making their bracelets and necklaces together which really made my heart smile.

It was a good learning experience though. It is almost impossible to distribute things in an orderly fashion, especially when the Afghan women become involved. The civilian told me that it killed her to see the Afghans, the grown women in particularly, fighting the children to get whatever they could for free, even a plastic bag full of beads for making jewelry. She was fascinating to talk to as well, and I hope to spend more time with her. She told me that she has been tasked with “empowering women” but she cannot even begin such a task for how foreign this concept is to the Afghan women. She said that their lack of education is so profound that the concept of empowerment does not even exist.

So after the hospital it was back to the office for a team meeting which went surprisingly well. I think our team leader was ready for tears with the upcoming housing move, but everyone held it together. The meeting went a lot longer than we had anticipated but we still managed to go scarf shopping at a new bizarre which made the day seem more like a weekend!

Now I just have to get through the rest of my shift, past the “witching hour” when they like to launch things at us, and I am ready for bed!

2011-05-14T14:49:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the hold up the last few days. Wednesday and Thursday nights were so busy with case work I was ready to drop after my shift ended.

Here' s brief recap for you:

Friday the 13th brought an unwelcome start to this already ominous day. I was in the shower when the "Incoming" sirens went off. This solicited a major string of obscenities as I turned off the shower, threw my clothes on dripping went. I headed for a bunker and didn't hear any booms of impact so after waiting a few minutes by the bunker I decided my current state of disarray was more important than the unidentifiable attack so I headed back to my room. Then after the "all clear" siren sounded several minutes later I went to the office for accountability to the find the door locked. My teammates had gone shopping on their lunch break and weren't even in the camp! So it was back to the room again to dress and officially head to the office for work.

Today we got some unwelcome news. We are definitely going to be moving offices as I've mentioned before, but our housing is not available near the new office so it appeared we were just going to stay in the same housing we have now. Unfortunately, they are consolidating those of us still living in camp Cherry-Beasley which means that two of my four teammates have to move to a different hut to ensure that all the rooms are full so they can start tearing down unused housing and my team leader and I who share a Bhut will be getting a new roommate. This is causing some distress for the team as sleeping schedules and routines are being disrupted. The deployment is already stressful enough without having your routine and minuscule private space taken away.

And finally tomorrow we are heading back to the Egyptian Hospital for the first time in 3 weeks. I am very excited to see the Afghan kids again and cannot wait to share with them all of the generous donations you have sent! I promise a blog post for tomorrow! :-)

2011-05-10T07:39:00.000-07:00

It’s been a week since the news of Bin Laden’s death broke around the world and in that time, our base in Afghanistan has been attacked more in one week than it has in the last year. That attack last Tuesday resulted in a crater the size of a bunker less than 100 meters from our office. Although our new circumstances out here are unnerving, keep on keeping on. We have taken to running for the bunkers when the alarms sound and then afterwards returning to the office or to sleeping or to the gym, whatever the activity may have been. There have been noticeable changes to base operations and we do our best to look out for our own safety.

We also hope to be able to return to the Egyptian Hospital this weekend for the first time in three weeks. Many of you have sent such amazing donations for the kids and I cannot wait to visit again and start distributing the supplies. On a brighter note, we celebrated Mother’s Day by taking advantage of free calling that was provided by Morale, Wellness and Recreation (MWR). My sister happened to graduate from her Master’s program on Mother’s Day so it was nice to be able to speak to the family all at once.

Staying busy is certainly no challenge, but we are now twice as motivated to arrange morale events for the servicemember’s since life here has gotten more difficult. Armed Forces Day is on Saturday May 21 and we have submitted a food service request for support from the dining facility to have a BBQ for the soldiers. We have also requested that the Combat Stress Dog, Sgt Timmy, make an appearance. I actually got to play with Timmy today when I went to extend the invitation and that was a pleasant distraction. Meantime, life goes on and we still visit the patients at the Joint Theater Hospital, support the Medivacs, brief incoming units of red cross messages and deliver over 300 messages a week.

Keep thinking of us out here. Even though Bin Laden is gone, the danger out here is anything but.

2011-05-07T16:12:00.000-07:00

4:00am Afghan time and it's been a cautiously quiet night for us.

I'll tell you one thing though - I going through chick flick films like a kidney on dialysis. I think I have watched every single girlie movie in our DVD library. Between delivering messages of death and dying all day and visiting patients in the hospital who are missing limbs and listening to the servicemembers vent their anguish in the office and then running for the bunker amidst the rockets every night...I am craving all things pretty and girlie. Hence the yearning for mindless romance movies where the endings are always happy :-)

2011-05-06T10:30:00.000-07:00

Repeat Tuesday night. Goodness.

Still safe and well though!

2011-05-04T07:33:00.000-07:00

These are the events that happened to me on Tuesday Evening 3 May 2011:

At approximately 8:45pm I was on the phone in the office delivering a case, when I suddenly felt two successive tremendously powerful booms that landed to the left of my office which shook its foundations. It took me about 2 seconds to realize that this was the real deal and I needed to get to a bunker immediately. I quickly told the solider on the phone I had to go. I set down the phone and ran out the back door to the office as I saw the two other soldiers who had been watching TV in the office bolt out the front door. As I stepped out onto the deck, the sirens went off. They sound like air raid sirens punctuated by the announcement “IDF Impact, IDF Impact, Shelter in Place, Shelter in Place, Don IBA, Don IBA.” As the ominous warning sounds over and over I can hear booms hitting around me through the drone of the siren. As my mind attempted to process which was the safest bunker in relation to where I could hear the booms, I saw soldiers with guns and body armor sprinting in every direction.

I finally ran as fast as I could to the bunker behind our office in the courtyard. Inside there were probably about 20 people already and due to the location of this bunker it continued to fill and fill until a soldier yelled for every second person to take a step forward so that we could fit more people in. This same soldier was yelling for soldiers with guns to remain at the two entrances of the bunker for protection. I found myself squashed into the center of the bunker with a woman suffering a head wound leaning into me. I still have the blood on my uniform. She had hit her head running into the bunker and blood was running from the wound down her face. Because of my position I ended up being the one to provide whatever basic care for her I could. People handed me some tissues and I called for a bottle of water and I did what I could for her in the circumstances.

The sirens stopped wailing after about 10 minutes and the air became eerily quiet. Because soldiers needed to report in for accountability people became brave enough to start sprinting to other buildings and bunkers. Our office was only about a 10 second sprint so I ducked and charged back, ran in and got on the phone to another Red Cross office to tell them to watch our emergency message queue because we were taking incoming. Then I ran back to the bunker and settled down to wait. The sirens sounded again and continued going off successively for another 20-30 min. I didn’t know where my team was but I could only hope that given all the noise they had all made it into a bunker.

Once the “All Clear” siren sounded, I went back to the office and waited for my team members to report in as was designated in our emergency action plan. Everyone was safe and had made it to a bunker. We did a short debrief and listened to each other recount their experiences. And then, typical to a deployment setting, everyone departed and I went back to delivering cases.

That was yesteday. Today is Wednesday 4 May 2011 and I’ve already been back in that same bunker once today.

2011-05-02T07:13:00.000-07:00

The best way to sum up this historic day from Afghanistan is that I’ve spent it “in the dark”. First off, it’s worth noting that as I was trying to fall asleep last night, about 4am Afghan time, I remember thinking to myself, “What the heck is with the fighter jets?!” I have never heard so many F-15s taking off, circling and landing before at the same time. It went on for about an hour. Then because of my crazy sleep schedule I woke up to about 25 emails in my inbox from friends and family commenting on the death of Bin Laden and asking after my safety which was exceedingly kind of so many of you. Having slept through the breaking news, I hurried onto CNN.com and read as much as I could before I had to shower and get to the office.

I had hoped that I would be able to learn more from the Armed Forces Network (AFN) which supplies our TV news coverage over here, but I was dismayed to see that a bunch of servicemembers had already commandeered the TV and were watching a DVD. So I started my shift not really knowing what was going on in response to the news. My team leader and I agreed that when the movie was over we would turn on the news. This did not happen however, as 5 minutes into the start of my shift, we went into a rolling blackout that lasted an hour. In consisted of 10 minutes blackout, followed by 5 minutes of everything reloading, followed by another series of beeps and pops and everything would go dark again. These blackouts have continued throughout the day.

I can tell you one thing I have observed. I would not describe the mood out here as one of relief or celebration. In fact, in my opinion and in my experience, I would describe it as somber accompanied by heightened caution. As many of you are likely aware, both the Taliban and NATO released news statements just a few days ago acknowledging the start of a new offensive by the Taliban. On Friday morning, Billeting went round our camp and checked the smoke detectors in the Bhuts. On Saturday I did my daily hospital visit and there were so many people in the Ward, they were doubling up beds in the curtained off partitions. Running errands on the base today there were numerous changes evident from just the day before.

The death of Osama Bin Laden is undoubtedly a significant event. But in my own opinion, the news does not resonate the same way for the Americans and Allied forces in Afghanistan as it does for those so geographically far from the conflict. The fear of retaliation that the news is reporting is not a whimsical threat for those located in the midst of the conflict. I will have to continue sleeping with my gym shoes unlaced and set out like a Tri-athlete finishing the swim, but instead of a bike, I’m throwing on my body armor and Kevlar helmet and running for a bunker and not the finish line.

2011-05-02T06:07:00.000-07:00

2011-05-01T06:47:00.000-07:00

Amidst growing “excitement” in Afghanistan, we managed to have an enjoyable and uneventful Sunday afternoon. Our team leader’s mother-in-law shipped over Bisquick, cherry pie filling and a recipe for how to grill shortcake on our outdoor grill. Despite the 100 degree heat we gathered round the grill to cook shortcake and roast leftover Peeps (which seemed kind of cruel as their faces melted) and relax a bit in the calm. The day was also a success in that earlier in the morning, while I was still sleeping, our team and some volunteers set up two bookshelves, one at the Pax Terminal, one at the Green Bean Coffee, for a project we started to help give away more of our donated books. We are going to stock the bookshelves at each location weekly and hope that in this way, more people will be encouraged to take and/or leave a book!

2011-04-28T08:39:00.000-07:00

Summary of the day:

-Storms with thunder that rivaled the Artillery range

-Peaking down suspicious holes for Cobras

-A Blackout in the office while I was by myself that took out the lights, computers and phones

New story to add though:

Tonight, after the blackout I had a contractor, obviously upset, come into the office and request the status of a message. His family had been injured in the tornados and his home was destroyed. His family was currently at the hospital after having been in a Red Cross shelter and he was trying to fly out tonight. The Red Cross was trying to verify the situation with the doctors, but only one caseworker was handling all the military and disaster calls at this chapter in Alabama and I advised him it might be some time before we saw the message ready for delivery. But he had just flown in from an outlying FOB and had no place to stay so I told him he could wait in the canteen until his message came in. Together we watched the news coverage of the tornados as he worked with his family in the States to have the doctor call the Red Cross to provide the verification instead of the one caseworker trying to track down the doctor. We waited about two hours before his message came in and when it did I delivered it verbally straight to him so he could take his message and case number to the PAX terminal to try and get on a flight tonight. Before he left he came around the desk, hugged me, kissed me on the cheek and gave me the most sincere thank you. That is why I love this job.

2011-04-27T11:54:00.000-07:00

So less than an hour left on my shift tonight, with the crackles from an electrical storm hanging over the mountains, I hear a voice weakly calling “hello? Hello?” into the office from our back door. I get up and make a move to the door as it swings open and in shuffles a soldier with blood dripping from his hand. He is sweating bullets and tells me he needs to sit down because he's so dizzy. So I pull out the chair at our second desk and run to get him some water as he drops his head to the desk. I ask him if he thinks he’s really going to faint and he says the water is helping. I ask him what happened and he said he was putting his helmet together and a screw went through his finger. I ask him if I can see his finger to assess if I need to take him to a hospital. He’s says he doesn’t think he can look at it so I tell him to close his eyes and just hold his hand out so I can see it. Gently I removed the paper towels he used and while I could see it was a good sized rip, it was obvious he wasn’t going to bleed to death on my floor. I told him to keep drinking the water and keep breathing deeply. I went over to see if we had anything better to use for bandages and I kept him talking to me the whole time. As he was telling me about what had happened it dawned on me that I probably should take him to the hospital for evaluation since he told me that it was a jagged rusty screw with WD 40 on it that went into his thumb. Sounds like maybe a tetanus shot to me! I was also worried about how woozy and sweaty he was so, better be safe than sorry. I quickly called another red cross station to cover our emergency message queue since I was the only one in the office, and together we walked to the car through this crazy lightening storm with the purple sky flashing like a strobe light every few seconds.

When we arrived at the hospital I took him in the emergency entrance since he had never been there before. Once we found a nurse, I made a move to head back to the office and as I turned to go he says “Hey wait… I don’t know how to get back!” Poor guy, apparently he was a transient trying to get to an outlying FOB and didn’t know the base. So I asked the nurse if he would have access to a DSN phone and she said yes, so I handed over our business card and said “I’m up all night, just call if you need a ride!” Once back at the office, I was just up and running again when an NCO from the soldier's unit came in and said, “I heard you took one of my guys to the hospital!?” I confirmed this and he said he would head over now to stay with him and bring him back. So I guess the whole thing worked out, but a bloody guy stumbling in in a electrical storm? Always something out here...

2011-04-26T06:09:00.001-07:00

Quite the start to the day over here in Afghanistan, picture this… 15 min into my shift. I have just accepted an emergency message to work on and deliver, Ingrid is on the phone with someone who is trying to start a message on their uncle (which we do not do except with extraordinary circumstances) and one of our volunteers is in the office sorting through the at least dozen packages of abandoned mail that we picked up from the post office yesterday. As you may recall we have been accepting the abandoned care packages from the post office and shipping them out to the Forward bases, many of which do not even have a base exchange (any kind of store). Then iIn walks a contractor from Flour, agitated and in a hurry saying he needs to know exactly where to put our new books shelves… err bookshelves? Since Ingrid is on the phone I leave the case and go outside to realize that he is trying to deliver two 3x5 and 5x5 bookshelves for a joint project with the Green Bean coffee and the Pax Terminal to our tiny office instead of their respective locations at the Green Bean and Pax Terminal. Since I am not the lead on the project I couldn’t tell him where they needed to be taken at the other locations, but he is insistent that he is dropping them off here. As the situation escalates I go back inside and ask Ingrid if she can deal with the bookshelves and I will take over her call. So pandemonium ensues and she tries to figure out the shelves while I try and convince the person on the phone that we cannot pass this message for a non-immediate family member. Amidst all this, the volunteer is quietly trying to attract our attention. Since I’m preoccupied on the phone she finally manages to snag Ingrid from the book shelf debacle (which the guys are preceeding to unload onto our back porch…and mind you three men are struggling to move them).

The volunteer motions to Ingrid what she’s found in the box and suddenly a new sense of urgency settles over the room. Ingrid picks up the other office line, looks at me and asks, “Are you almost done there? Once I make this call we are going to have to evacuate right away.” Errrrr WHAT?! I distractedly manage to finish the call, peer over the desk and into the box…inside is a pale army green ammo box with the word “Pressure Release Valve – Do Not Open”. The thing could not have looked more dangerous if it had the words “bomb” written on it. I quickly started gathering my things from the office as Ingrid called the MPs and they told us to evacuate. We called the Baghdad station to cover our messages and then we proceeded to assemble our team and alert others out and about in the camp that they needed to evacuate.

Fortunately, we did not have to wait as long as we did with our other evacuation before the verdict came back…the box contained radios. Delightful! So after an hour’s fun, it was back to the office to set up shop again (and I suspect that will be the end of our accepting the abandoned mail!) and then Terra and I left to run some errands for the day. We went to the PX and picked up our pressed uniforms, some charcoal for a small BBQ we want to have, did some window shopping at the jewelry store and then headed to the post office to pick up the day’s mail. Once we arrived we realized that the shopping cart we had ordered to carry items around the hospital had arrived so we had to haul that mamma jahamba to the truck. Easily the best part of the day was the care package from my boyfriend that survived it’s multi-ocean trip from Scotland to the U.S. then back across the ocean and through the Middle East to Afghanistan. And still the Cadbury eggs made it! Because the APO label on my mailing address is technically a US address all my mail, no matter where it comes from in the world will go to the U.S. first before coming to me, hence the multi-trans Atlantic crossing.

Knock on wood things are quiet at the office now (and relatively uneventful – apart from the fact that I went to smell the new conditioner I bought at the PX…and ended up squirting it up my nose :-)

All in a day’s work I guess?!

2011-04-24T04:18:00.000-07:00

It is Easter Sunday!

This morning I woke up every early to volunteer with the Afghans at the Egyptian Hospital. I was all excited because I had received several donations of beads and jewelry making supplies and I had spent the week dividing the beads into individual bags which also contained a necklace length and bracelet length piece of plastic string. My teammates and I had plans to teach the kids the words for “jewelry” and “necklace” and “bracelet” and “bead”. When we arrived at the Egyptian Hospital however, we pulled up to find no cars outside and the place deserted. We jumped out and just peeked into the open courtyard area where everyone normally gathers but the place was a ghost town, and honestly, out here, when places are deserted like that? You relocate…quickly. We asked the Egyptian guard on our way out of the facility and he said that it was cancelled today and tomorrow, but as to why we can only speculate.

Because we found ourselves with some extra time and we were in the area we decided to head over and visit Sgt Timmy, the Combat Stress pup. Playing with Timmy was phenomenal. When we approached the Bhut where the Freedom Restoration Center is located, the door was standing open so you had to sort of come around it to look into the entry way and there was Timmy, front paws hanging over the first step, head resting on his paws. He gave us the world’s greatest dog greeting (FRIENDS! I love you! Where have you been!? Have you come to play with me?) and somehow life gets simpler and happier and lighter. He spent the entire time eating our water bottles till he had gone through everyone's and left a mess of saliva dripping squashed bottle all over the deck :-)

We stayed about a half an hour before heading back to our festive office. We had been stocking up on Easter candy and spring decorations to make it look like the Easter bunny came over night and given the combat environment, I think we did pretty good! Since then I confess I have looked at the Country Living magazine mom sent me about 10 times today because it’s full of all these gorgeous green photos of plants and grass and professional dyed Easter eggs and it reminds me of Easters back home in the States.

2011-04-20T08:33:00.000-07:00

Today I met our new volunteer at the hospital so that he could shadow me on a hospital visit. We had met a few weeks prior, both of us volunteering on a Medivac. After hearing about the work we did, he was very interested in helping out at the hospital as well. Today was a quiet day at the ward with only two patients who were asleep. There was far more activity in the ICU, where two of the three patients had been hit by an IED and were both missing their legs. We spoke briefly with the third solider who had a gunshot wound, but mostly today we chatted with the staff and did our best to provide them with an outlet to discuss their work, which really does take its toll.

After the hospital I picked up Ingrid and together we went to pick up the post which we had been tipped off the day before was going to be excessive…and that wasn’t a lie! There were at least a dozen boxes for the office and the team members (Mom sent more fudge and Easter candy whose weight in my stomach is keeping me trapped at my desk). The highlight of the mail today was easily the abandoned mail. We open the abandoned care packages that we receive from the post office to ensure that we are not shipping forward something inappropriate… like bottles of beer! Alcohol is against General Order #1 in theater and grounds for some serious repercussions. Because it was abandoned mail the Red Cross was completely innocent in the whole ordeal but the non-commissioned officer in charge (NCOIC) of the post office had to come over and document and take pictures. And the best part…? It had been shipped by a police department back in the States! The irony of the whole thing was pretty hilarious, and we managed to ship forward 5 care packages to outlying FOBs which was great.

2011-04-19T03:47:00.001-07:00

The last few days have made for some fun at the Red Cross! On Sunday we hosted a Pizza Party for the ICW staff at the hospital. The Intensive Care Ward is the area where patients who are not critical enough to warrant a bed in the ICU but still require round the clock care, stay during their time at the Joint Command Theater Hospital. We work quite closely with the staff at the Ward, because these are the patients that we primarily visit at the hospital, typically conscious but unfortunately stuck in bed, often times with debilitating, sometimes life changing injuries. The members of this staff work so hard on the medical care of these soldiers, but also find themselves in the difficult position as the people the wounded turn to for moral support. That is part of our goal in visiting the patients is to provide a bit of relief for the hospital staff.

Yesterday also proved to be an exciting day at the Hospital as I was invited to watch a Purple Heart Ceremony. I happened to be in the right place at the right time as I ran into the military press representative who asked me if I’d like to watch. I wasn’t sure what to expect but the ceremony was not exactly what I had imagined. It was very informal and took place in one of the hospital hallways, but at the same time, because the General was presiding, all the military personell were at their most formal. It also wasn’t quite as I pictured because the two soldiers who received the award were obviously still suffering from their wounds, but they were doing their best to be as professional as possible for their ceremony and their General. Mostly though, I really had to actively stop myself from crying ( I was the only woman there and I would have shot myself if I’d actually lost it) but I couldn’t believe how emotional I found the whole experience. I couldn’t help but find the ceremony representative of all the soldiers I had seen and met since the start of the deployment who had lost their arms or their legs or their hands or their hearing, and I found myself wanting to cry for them and for the two who were being honored that day.

2011-04-16T12:06:00.000-07:00

Early this morning was the Bagram Air Base "Shadow Boston" Marathon. Exactly 367 runners signed up to participate and our team decided to help out and volunteer. We were assigned to work the finish line which ended up being a really cool spot to cover because the course was three laps around the base so we got to help out with times and see all the runners throughout the race and the finish. Unfortunately because Friday night/Saturday morning is our busiest day of the week we had to take shifts to volunteer to ensure the office and message queue were covered. Because my shift ends at 11pm it made sense for me to take the first shift from 1:30-3:00am but that meant that I only got to see the preparations and the start of the race before heading back to the office to put in some overtime so that everyone could participate. One of the coolest things about the race was the start because they actually coordinated with EOD (Explosive Ordinance Division - Hurt Locker anyone?) to have a controlled detonation to signal the start of the race. I didn't end up getting to bed until 6:00am and then it was back to the office by 2pm. It's shaping up to be a mercifully quiet Saturday, the highlight of which was a postcard from my youngest nephew. I also had a semi-awkward/entertaining moment when I went to the hospital for a visit and when I entered and introduced myself to one guy in ICU he goes "Ma'ma you kind of caught me at a bad time. I'm trying to pee at the moment!" Whoops! I couldn't have known he had a catheter in but I offered to leave the room all the same!

2011-04-15T05:39:00.000-07:00

When I came into work this morning I was pleasantly surprised to find out that I had been tasked to make dozens of Easter goodie bags for the troops from donations that we received. This cheery and somewhat mindless activity was definitely needed after the night we had last night at the Red Cross.

Many people do not know this, but in addition to passing Red Cross messages on behalf of families amidst an emergency, the Red Cross actually acts somewhat like a 911 emergency call to prevent suicides. Technically we refer to these “messages” as SPAs - Suicide Prevention Action. Essentially, if a deployed servicemember is communicating with family back home and expressing suicidal ideations, the family can call the Red Cross and initiate a chain of events to intervene and protect the servicemember. Our Red Cross station in Bagram will get a direct phone call from a station in the States briefly explaining the situation as well as the soldier’s personal information so that we can accurately identify both the military command and the servicemember. Once the correct command is located, we call and ask to speak to the highest ranking officer in the unit, whereby we explain the situation and ask that command locate and secure the servicemember, hopefully before any harm comes to pass.

Last night was just such a night here at the Red Cross, although circumstances were made even more precarious due to the fact that the entire computerized message system was inoperative at many stations around the world, including all the deployed stations. We had not had access to the system for two hours when we got a call from National Headquarters advising they had a SPA for us. Fortunately I was still in the office after my shift because my co-worker took the phone call from National and stayed on the phone with them to receive the information while I called the unit and spoke to the only night solider in the office who had never handled a suicide prevention action before. I talked him through what he needed to do while National was relaying the information to Kami who was relaying it to me while I was relaying it to the command all in an effort to ensure that this servicemember was located, secured and given help.

The worst part about SPAs however is the waiting…after we’d passed the information to command they act immediately on their end to get in contact with the servicemember’s actual unit and then to the servicemember himself. This leaves us at the Red Cross office on edge waiting for a call back to hear if we made it in time. I waited another two hours at the office to hear back from command, but by 3am they still could not give us any information and I was exhausted.

Although suicide prevention action is nowhere near as common as the regular emergency message we pass, every now and again a SPA comes through that jolts you into a actual life or death situation where your actions maybe save someone's life and provide them the help they need.

2011-04-14T08:31:00.000-07:00

So today was a productive day. I got up very very early by my schedule to head first to the Egyptian Hospital and then to the Joint Command Theater Hospital to have a previous sports injury checked out since it's been flaring up when I workout. Unfortunately there was a mis-communication with the car and my team member did not arrive back in time with the car for me to visit the Egyptian Hospital so instead we decided to go to the Post Office together, before heading the the US Hospital. Surprisingly there was no mail (we've been averaging 5-10 care packages a day) so we went to the hospital to check out "Sick Call". This is basically where anyone who works on base and has an ailment on base can come to be seen by a doctor. The interesting thing about today is that Tuesdays and Thursdays are the Afghan clinic day which means those Afghans who need more specialized treatment from a doctor are screened for security precautions and then brought to this hospital for more extensive treatment. So my teammate and I awaited amongst maybe two dozen Afghan men, women and children for my turn.

After my appointment I was pleasantly surprised to learn the the pharmacy system at the hospital is computerized so all I had to do was to swipe my ID card with the pharmacist and get my prescriptions! Then it was back to change into my uniform real quick for the start of my shift. My team leader and I went over to the Base Exchange for a little while to pick up supplies for the office and the sodas that we need for our first Intensive Care Ward pizza party on Sunday. We wanted to do something for the staff of the ICU Ward so our office got approval to buy pizzas for the to give them just a small thank you for everything they do.

Now I am back at the office and it is thunderstorming outside. The smell of the rain hitting the dust is distinct only to Iraq and Afghanistan. I've never smelled this earthiness anywhere else and it's times like these I really feel like I'm far from home.

2011-04-12T07:45:00.000-07:00

Quite the start to the day over here… was awakened at 10:30am, still my “night”, by my team leader advising me to get dressed, walk out the BHut and turn left… the camp was being evacuated due to a suspicious package. Now wide awake I threw on whatever decent clothing I could find and stumbled out the steps. I headed left where I found some 40-50 people standing at the back of our camp, one of many that comprises the military base. Ingrid guided me over to the shade since it was like I had been stun gunned by the sunshine - with no natural light the BHut is always pitch black. I asked what was going on and she could only tell me that EOD had come into the office telling everyone to evacuate. Our other two team members had been out on errands at the time and ended up trapped on the other side of our camp.

We ended up settling into a bunker since it was cooler in the shade and somewhat away from the crowd since I was still half asleep. We were outside almost two hours before we were told there would be a controlled detonation in 5 min…meaning they were going to blow up whatever they found. Within minutes there was a popping sound and everyone started to move back into the camp but soon it became clear we weren’t going anywhere. Another suspicious “something” had been identified, and it was another half hour before another explosion went off. And this time the boom was big. Then we were given the all clear. We still have little information about what really happened and likely will not, but it was still quite the Good Morning Afghanistan.

I managed to get another half an hour of sleep, before I was back up and trudging to the shower latrine…only two find the water stunningly cold. I managed to just stick my head in to just wash my hair before it was back in the office for work. Then approximately 2 minutes into my shift we got a call from the post office advising there was an enormous amount of care packages that needed to be picked up NOW because there was no room for any new mail. So Ingrid, Terra and I went to the post office and schlepped almost two dozen boxes out to the car. From there it was a quick trip to the PX to turn in our uniforms for pressing and pay for a new month of internet (I’ve only been here a month??? ) and then back to the office where I have been fighting sleep since this morning!

2011-04-11T06:24:00.000-07:00

Very cool package received for the canteen today... a shipment of Dari and Pashtun language books on tape. We've put them out in the canteen and I've picked up one of the Dari ones to try and learn more than just the word "No" to use at the Egyptian Hospital :-)

2011-04-10T09:35:00.000-07:00

Today started hours earlier than normal for me with a visit to the Egyptian Hospital to volunteer with the Afghan women and children. The day was cold and dreary, with almost constant rain so when I arrived at the office, my teammates were debating about going, but I was like “Heck no, I just got up 3 hours early! I’m going!” So another team member and I drove over to the hospital which seemed to be bustling with its usual chaos despite the rain. The Afghan women surrounded us as they typically do, asking for shoes and socks. It is such a difficult position to be put in because we know that there are shoes and socks available to the women and children so often times when they are asking for these items it’s because they need them for family or to sell. So they wear just sandals to the hospital which on a cold, rainy day like today really pulls your heart strings because you can tell the children are suffering, but at the same time the rational part of you knows that in some sense they are trying to take advantage of your generosity. It is such a difficult line to tread.

My team member and I played with the kids and corrected their English lessons. I brought a sparkly strip of stickers as a reward for finishing their work which was a huge hit and I am definitely going to look into having stickers sent over. As usual they played with my hair and today I also brought a small bottle of nail polish which went over well. I would like to see more structure to their lessons since some are far more advanced in English than others, but unfortunately with only volunteer resources this is very difficult to arrange.

After the Egyptian Hospital I had a little bit of down time before I went to a volunteer meeting about the shadow Boston Marathon that is being run here in Bagram next week. My team members and I have volunteered to work at the start/finish line so I went as our representative to get the details. Then it was back to the office where a unit came into the canteen and put on The Ugly Truth. I cut up another brick of mom’s fudge and brought it out to them and it was devoured 5 minutes into the movie. I meant to also share that the other day I put out a similar plate in the canteen and the whole thing disappeared… and I mean the whole thing, plate and all!

2011-04-09T10:58:00.000-07:00

So despite the predicated craziness today might bring, the day ended up being just as exciting, but for very different reasons! About an hour into my shift, I went to try and get my picture taken for the flight line badge. The building is somewhere over by the PAX terminal but it was so crowded over there with people walking all around I couldn't find a place to park let alone look for the building. I had to actively try and not kill the pedestrains with my new stick shift driving ability (ie disability). After giving up on that mission, I went for my hospital visit which was fortunately more rewarding than yesterday and I left today at least feeling as though I had made someone’s day a bit brighter.

Then it was back to the office, where we had the scariest incoming ever. We didn’t even hear the explosion, I don’t believe it was near us but the urgency and quite frankly, terror in the incoming “voice” is what unnerved me the most. It was quite the shot of adrenaline. Then Ingrid and I went to dinner at 6pm only to realize that we were supposed to be having dinner with the Jordanians at the UEA dining facility. We halfheartedly attempted to reschedule, but when the officer came over to get us he said that he'd arranged for us to have dinner with the Commander of the UAE camp! So! Dinner round 2!

It was the strangest, most interesting dinner. Their English was quite good (two Jordanian officers and the UAE commander), but still a bit tricky. Unfortunately for me, I had to turn down the food to accommodate my allergy which I think disappointed them, so poor Ingrid had to eat dinner round 2 for both of us. Then it came up how Islam technically allows for up to 4 wives (and both Ingrid and I were thinking mmm where is this going?), but they really just seemed to want to tell us about it and explain the practice. They were telling us stories of their villages where they know of men with 4 wives and up to 36 children. We were told one story about a villager who had 27 children come across some kids in the road when he was driving and he scolded them to go home to their parents…when they were his! But they were wonderful to talk to and it was so incredible to have the opportunity to exchange stories and experiences. Then after dinner we went back into the officer's club for tea. They were so attentive and hospitable that it was proving very difficult to leave. So after tea they took us to the commander's house where we sat in his outdoor gazebo and he offered us the most sumptuous looking fruit and we sat on antique couches and discussed the history of the Red Cross. This, in addition to the fact that the UAE compound is gorgeous by Bagram standards…it actually has trees and vegetation and greenery!

2011-04-09T05:16:00.000-07:00

Wahoo! Government open for business...emergency preparations averted! Back to life as usual on a 24/7 deployment to a military base in Afghanistan :-)

Happy Saturday!

2011-04-08T11:59:00.000-07:00

It has been quite a day over here at the Red Cross. The vibe on the base is distinctly tense and wary as everyone awaits the result of the government budget meetings, the deadline of which is midnight tonight in the States. As you may be aware, if the budget is not reconciled then members of the armed forces would continue to work without pay (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-13015909). For us at the Red Cross, this means we may see a substantial increase in the number of financial assistance cases that we handle. Currently, if a servicemember needs a loan, his family in the States can apply through the military aid societies, but often a red cross message is initiated so that the deployed servicemember can give official concurrence on the loan. If this situation is not resolved by midnight tonight, our office is making preparations to assist in any way we can. This includes possibly working up to 12 hour shifts to support an increased case load if need be, as well as staying up-to-date on developments from the military aid societies. Depending on the outcome, I may have quite an update tomorrow!

On a different note, my wonderful mom sent over 8 bricks of homemade fudge which marvelously survived the ridiculous journey so I made up several plates full and brought them to the staff at the ICU Ward, the ICU and the CASF (which houses the ambulatory patients). The fudge was a huge hit since confections like that are pretty uncommon out here. I also had a really sad and somewhat disturbing experience in the ICU. There was a soldier who was awake, and was very seriously injured. He had lost both of his hands which meant I couldn’t hold his hand to express support, but when I moved close to talk to him it dawned on me that he had lost his hearing in the incident as well. Because he was lucid, he wanted to know why I was there, but because he couldn’t hear I couldn’t explain that I was simply there to support him. He was growing distressed that he couldn’t understand me and I was at a loss for how to communicate. This was one of those sad times, when no matter how much you want to help and no matter how good your intentions, I came away feeling that not only had I failed him,but I had almost made matters worse. Without language or human touch what do you do to express your compassion?

2011-04-07T03:20:00.000-07:00

Most hilarious donation in a care package...string bikini's for men! I wonder how long it will take for those to be snatched up! :-)

2011-04-06T05:38:00.001-07:00

Today my teammates and I went to the Flight Line Badge class to gain access to the flight line so that we can attend the Fallen Comrade Ceremonies. We were a bit late getting to the Pink Palace, the location of the class and the only physical building located on Bagram. It actually has tiled floors and indoor plumbing, ohh the excitement! Anyways, we wound up about 10 minutes late and the soldier who was running the class was already talking the students through the power point test. We began to think we must have been told the wrong time because they appeared to have already gone through the class portion and moved onto the test. Turns out, the whole thing WAS only 10 min long! Most expedient military operation ever!

Afterwards it was a quick trip to the post office to pick up mail, a long line at the Base Exchange to pick up our pressed uniforms and then back to the office. After about an hour at the office, I went over to do my hospital visit and today was a really rewarding experience as I was able to meet and speak with several of the patients who were on the inbound Medivac that I assisted with last night. They actually remembered that I was there and it was just nice to have a chance to chat with them and follow up now that they were stable and resting in the hospital. I also spent almost half an hour holding the hand of a very very sick soldier in ICU. He was heavily sedated and unconscious, he had been hit by an IED which had badly damaged his stomach organs and he was I septic shock. His body looked so miserable and the nurse said he could hear me so I stayed much longer than normal just so he wouldn’t have to be alone.

On a related note, we’ve been given approval to have a pizza party for the ICU staff and we are in the process of getting that event off the ground to honor their efforts which largely go unrecognized and unappreciated. It will also be nice to have the opportunity to social with the hospital staff because they often come across as unapproachable in the hospital, largely I suspect , due to the tragedies that they see everyday.

2011-04-02T07:08:00.000-07:00

Looks like yesterday's madness has taken it's toll...fighting off whats fondly known as the deployment "crude" :-(

P.S. If you have not heard, this is big news out here...

http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/04/01/afghanistan.un.attack/index.html?hpt=T2

APRIL FOOLS

2011-04-01T10:07:00.001-07:00

Good. Lord. Life pulled one hell of an April Fools Day on us over here. Strap on your seat belts for this one...

My first clue that the stars were misaligned today should have been the fact that there was no hot water when I got up for my shower. The shower was so cold that my poor head was stinging from the cold as I just stuck my head in to wash my hair. I arrived to find the office in confusion, 20 care packages stacked up in all our free space, two boxes on my computer chair... and no computer! Turns out one of our two primary case work computers crashed this morning and had been taken to the Help Desk for repairs. This causes incredible havoc for us as our shifts overlap to prevent us from getting backed up on casework. First I tried to get our casework system to load on the Secret computer but that didn't work because apparently you can only visit government sites. Then I tried to do casework on my personal laptop but the program is not supported by the Safari browser. So okay, no casework! At least one of the boxes on my chair was a care package from my Momma! :-)

So I start to unpack the dozens of care packages piled up in our office. I managed to get through two boxes, before I hear a crack and then an earth shattering crash as the top shelf of our toiletry supply store gives way and sends a tidal wave of hundreds of shampoo, conditioner, sunscreen and insect repellent bottles all over the floor. A delicious lavender scented bottle of shampoo seeped half it's contents on the floor by the time I got to it... after an hour of cleaning! By this point we'd received a call that the computer was ready so I grabbed some comfort kits to do a quick hospital visit after I went to the Help Desk. Once at the Help Desk though, I was informed that no one called to say the computer was ready (yes, obbbbbbviously I hallucinated the call) so I was told to come back in half an hour. I zipped to the hospital real quick, and then back to the Help Desk where I am convinced they know nothing more about computers than I do. Nearly everyone at the office came out to help the Red Cross girl and every single one of them told me something different about the computer.

I left with the computer 15 minutes later thrououghly confused about whether or not the computer was actually fixed. Once back at the office the whole team had assembled to meet at 5pm for a Friday Night Pizza Hut treat. We attempted to hook up the computer quickly and low and behold, we can't get the ID card reader to work (necessary to log into our accounts). So after ANOTHER call to the Help Desk we're told we have to come back to the office to pick up a new reader.

At this point we decide Pizza Hut first so the four of us clamber into the car, with Kami and I sitting in the back with a huge Red Cross box of comfort kits smushed between us. We start the trip out to Camp Warrior laughing and chatting about how bizarre the day has been when we notice two soldiers standing in the street holding up cars. We pull up and Ingrid rolls down her window where we are greeted by an MP (military police) asking us where we're going. We all chirp, "Pizza Hut!" together and dissolve into giggles before he says, "And is everyone wearing their seatbelts...?" UHHHHHHHH. Kami and I look at each other....busted. Because we were in back with the box stuck between us neither of us had done our belts. The MP asked us to pull of to the side of the road. So we are all laughing nervously now and rolling our eyes as he approaches the car again.

He informs us that he is going to permanently seize and impound our vehicle.

We get silent and look at each other before Terra asks... "Is this an April Fools joke!?" We all burst out laughing, not BELIEVING what is happening to us today. He informs us no, he is dead serious. Then Ingrid super sweetly with eye lashes batting informs him that the car is essential to us because we have to be able to get mail. He pauses, looks at us carefully and then is like..."So...you're emergency essential?" We jump on it! I whip out my orders and ask "Want to see the copy of my orders?! You can see we are emergency essential!" At this point, he's found the excuse he needed not to be the asshole who seized the vehicle from the four red cross women. He says he'll give us a ticket which means two points go on the driver's Bagram license. Once he goes away to write the ticket, all four of us absolutely burst out laughing. Kami and I are laughing so hard we are crying. I am crying so hard I had to get a wash cloth out of a comfort kit to wipe my face and when the officer comes back, he says to me, "Ma'ma there's really no need to cry over this." Which just makes me laugh harder.

We finally get to Pizza Hut after driving the numbingly slow speed limit of 25 km, where with a few sweet smiles to the guy behind the counter, we manage to get our pizzas in 10 min, as opposed to the hour wait. By far the only success of the day. Then we headed back, I got dropped at the office to start doing cases on the one good computer, while the others went back to the Help Desk. They came back 20 min later with a Sergeant who spent the next hour trying to fix our already fixed computer. After many phone calls and sighs he managed to get everything working...except for the copy and paste feature which is absolutely necessary to casework. I did not discover this until he left however, so it is taking me twice as long to do cases tonight.

And to round off this crazy night, a soldier just walked into the office and told us his NCOIC (Non-Commissioned Office in Charge) told him to come to the Red Cross office and do an accountability check on us because there was an IDF (incoming - i.e. rocket, mortar, grenade, etc) which somehow we completely missed! Kami just looked up the lunar calendar and learned there is a new moon on Sunday... between April Fools and the new moon I hope life is back to normal by tomorrow!!!

:-)

2011-03-31T03:38:00.000-07:00

This morning I got up at 9:30am (after going to bed at 4am) to go back and volunteer with the Afghans at the Egyptian Hospital. The women’s days are Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday and although I likely cannot make every day since I need to get some sleep, I knew I couldn’t make this coming Sunday as we have a team meeting at 6am which would leave me with only two hours of sleep! I went to the office and got a ride with one of my teammates out to the hospital where I got the opportunity to meet the American Ph.D who runs the program. She is on what's called a Human Terrain Team (HTT) a team of sociologists and anthropologists who work with the Afghans: http://humanterrainsystem.army.mil/

Since we only toured the facility when we went last Sunday, the Doctor told me to just sort of sit back today and observe… that was frankly impossible thanks to the Afghan children! The children are adorably friendly, coming up and shaking your hand to introduce themselves. We colored and did English lessons which we “graded” with a smiley face. One military unit brought a bunch of yo-yos which was hilarious as the kids tried to figure them out. There were also a few card games going and then…since everyone seems to LOVE my hair, I pulled out some hair ties and started doing crazy hair styles. A pony tail coming straight out the top of my head, a side ponytail, two pig tails on either side, I even showed them rapidly how to do a French braid. It was such a hit actually that the Egyptian guards came over and started taking pictures (look for the crazy American on facebook ;-) I think that I may try and have some ribbons and bows shipped and actually teach the girls to do some things with their hair. Most of them are quite conservative and wear headscarves but they seemed so into playing with my hair that I think it’s worth a try!

It was also clear that all of the girls desperately wanted my necklace. I actually think I committed a cultural faux pas because they put one of their toy beaded necklaces on me and I thought they were just playing, but I actually think they thought we were going to trade so once I picked up on it, I was gently like, no no no, this one is mine, but when I tried to give the beaded one back, they insisted I keep it. I felt really bad actually… I need to learn Dahri pronto!!! So another idea I had was to have jewelry making kits sent over so we can make jewelry together. Let me know if you have any other ideas for games and activities we could play…especially ones that are somewhat learning based :-)

2011-03-29T11:30:00.000-07:00

Best phone greeting for a unit about to receive a Red Cross message...

"Hello Red Cross, now's not really a good time. Can you call back? We're having a rocket attack".

Sirens going off in the background...

2011-03-29T04:28:00.000-07:00

Today was quite a rewarding, but really draining day. My teammate Terra and I went out to run some errands in the afternoon and we’re thrilled to find the home of the Combat Stress Dog. We found Sgt Timmy, the yellow lab, hanging out at the Freedom Restoration Center which is a little bit like Kanyon Ranch. Servicemembers who are having a particularly difficult time can “check themselves in”. They have 6 male and 6 female spots and they essentially “provide education and practical application of techniques focused on resiliency, adopting to stress reactions, enhancing communication skills and promoting rapid restoration to enhance management of combat and operational stress reactions.” Basically they hang out in a safe environment, play sports, play with the puppy and try to help people find themselves again. Terra and I stayed to play with Timmy for a while and then headed to the hospital for our daily visit.

At the hospital we ran into the female interpreter that was working with the Afghan women yesterday. We asked her if she was free to speak to us for a bit and so we went into a break and she told us about how she was raised in a very different Afghanistan that what we know now. She never wore a burka, had a college education and had lived in the US for 17 years. She explained to us how the Egyptian Hospital worked, that the women who came to see the doctor were so uneducated that they could only say, for example, they may have a pain in their stomach and it turns out to be a kidney stone. The women don’t know about nutrition or sanitation which is one thing the Hospital is trying to combat. I asked her if the women wanted to wear the burka and she said overwhelmingly no. The women complain of getting sick from breathing in the scent and fibers of the fabric. I could have stayed and talked with this woman all day long, but sadly we had to get back to the office.

Later that night, after my shift I went to help with an outbound/inbound Medivac, which are back to back flights to take the patients out on one bus , load them onto the plane and then wait for the inbound mission to arrive to take them to the hospital. The Medivac tonight was really very emotionally draining. There were maybe a dozen ambulatory patients, 4 litters and 2 CKats (on full life support). One of the CKat patients was a solider in the unit behind our office. He was the gunner in an MRAP which rolled twice and he was essentially crushed to death and brain dead. Four of the guys from his unit, who are friends of ours all showed up to carry his litter onto the plane, the closest thing to family this solider has out here. As rewarding as the experiences are, and there’s no doubt that I will continue with them, they are profoundly exhausting. They really test the fibers and substance of your heart and your soul.

2011-03-27T03:27:00.000-07:00

Another eye-opening day in Afghanistan. We were offered a tour of the Egyptian Hospital by our friends at the American Hospital. I got up at 9am (the middle of my night) to meet my team at the office and drive over to the American Hospital. There we met up with the new American medical unit who was taking over the relations between the Americans and the Egyptians, and all of us were going over to tour the Egyptian Hospital.

This Hospital is particularly unique as it is Egyptian run for Afghan men, women and children. They keep the men and women on separate days so today was a women and children day where they can come to the facility (which is on base) and receive free medical care, donations and English lessons from volunteers. When we arrived the place seemed rather chaotic, but in turns out the women who runs the women's days was on business in Kabul so there were no organized lessons or games.

It was utterly profound to intermingle with the women shrouded from head to toe in their pale blue burkas, even their eyes masked by the lattice fabric. The children were very friendly, introducing themselves, holding your hand, playing with my hair. One boy was hit by an American MRAP vehicle and lost his leg. Another boy was in a wheelchair and had to hooks for arms. He looked so lonely. I cursed the language barrier. I would have liked to have gone up to him, but without words you can't use humor to help ease a situation. With looks alone it always comes across as pity.

I lost count of the number of times I was asked for money, shoes, food. I was asked several times to have my picture taken. To be honest, the whole experience was far too voyeuristic for my liking. I felt like the privileged American do-gooder who simply came for a tour of the camp, moaned about how terrible the was the Afghan plight, and then left without doing anything tangible or endearing. It made me feel sick, to be honest. I felt like such a poser. They have the real need out here. We were told by one official that the Afghan women line up outside the door of the Egyptian doctor, without real medical ailments, to beg him to do something about their husbands, who beat or mistreat them. He is the only male they can have permissible contact with. Honestly, everyday I experience what I think will be the biggest reality check I can face...and then without fail it seems that the next day brings an even bigger one.

After the Hospital, two of my teammates and I took a trip out to the Afghan Bizarre which is by the main gate. They have some really beautiful items for sale out there. I was particularly impressed by these hand-carved wood trunks which you can have custom designed. There was also some gorgeous jewelry- lapis lazuli is the most famous natural gem out here and you can find it in almost all their craftsmanship. There were also beautiful scarves and rugs and trinkets. I was mostly window shopping today since all the items there are for barter, but I suspect there will be another trip in the future.

2011-03-26T10:09:00.000-07:00

So a few items to share! Last night Ingrid, a Sergeant friend of ours and I went looking for the mythical FOB Warrior which is the camp located on the other side of base, cut off from our half of the base by the airfield. We had heard that Warrior had all of the good food places and true enough, after a 15 minute drive through some rather unsettling rural scenery, we found....PIZZA HUT. The wait for your order at Pizza Hut was 55-65 minutes (and there were over 50 people ahead of us on our order number), but miraculously, the guy taking orders asked if we were "on duty" and thinking we doctors, I believe, told us to wait off to one side and he slipped us our pizzas in under 10 min. I had heard that they used goats cheese here which wasn't as tasty, but frankly, I couldn't taste the difference. It was glorious.

Then I worked my shift and hoped to help with a 2:30am Medivac but as I pulled into the hospital at 2:25am the bus was already pulling out onto the Airfield! Alas... :-(

Today, as I was walking through the hospital for my visit, I was flagged down by the Armed Forces Blood Services guy who said he would be really interested in working with us to start a more public campaign about the need to donate platlets at the hospital. I gave him my card and told him to contact us and we'd look into it.

Then I found out that there was a Medivac mission later this afternoon so my team leader and I went back to the hospital to help with that outbound mission. And perhaps the highlight of this post, as Ingrid and I were walking back to the office I practically crashed into one of my best Air Force buddies from my time in Tikrit. We both started yelling and hugging and jumping up and down. I had no idea he was even in Afghanistan, let alone Bagram...unbelievable how small the world can be sometimes.

2011-03-24T10:45:00.000-07:00

Man, I am having the busiest day! When I got to the office Ingrid hadn't been to the post office or the hospital yet and we couldn't drive there because there was an Afghan New Year event at one of the most cental DFACs on base so they closed the main road to all non-essential traffic. My teammate and I decided to walk to the hospital for our visit. We ran into a K-9 unit leaving the hospital so we got to pet a chocolate lab and a German Shepard who were a specialized search dog (IED detection) and an attack dog respectively.

Then we went in to do our visit, but everyone in the ward was asleep so we left them in peace. Next we went to the ICU and the only guy in there was in a bad bad way, he was missing both his legs from the knee down and one of his arms from the elbow down. I spoke to the doctor and he said they had finally got the guy sedated and settled down (I can't begin to fathom how you react to three missing limbs?) and that it wouldn't be a good time to talk to him right then so we left without really speaking to someone.

From there we walked to the Post Office to pick up the mail. Two of our team members got boxes and the office got something huge like 12 boxes worth of care packages for the troops so we told the guys we would come back tomorrow with the car. Then we went to go check out our new place and sighhhhhh, it's definitely not what I would choose. We are on the second floor of an office building, in a more central location of the base for sure, but honestly, I don't know why you would ever choose to just sort of chill in that space, versus other more comfortable options. Oh well, stop thinking negatively Michelle!

2011-03-23T04:45:00.000-07:00

I had a really interesting experience at the hospital today. The ward was packed when I arrived for my afternoon visit, almost every bed was full. I tried to spend 10 min or so with each patient, talking about home or sports or whatever topic seemed to interest them. I try to avoid talking about why they are in the hospital unless they seem to want to talk about it. Yesterday, for example, there was a very young marine who had stepped on an IED and he very obviously wanted to talk about his experience. He said he kept replaying those last few seconds in his mind over and over again, trying to make sense of what had happened.

Well my last visit of today was to a Loadmaster (the Air Force pilots) of a C-130. We started sharing "battle stories" and our conversation moved into the stresses of a deployment and PTSD. He shared with me a rather incredible story... he was the pilot who actually flew former NFL football player turned Army ranger Pat Tillman to FOB Salerno. This loadmaster said that after Pat was killed and his death made the news, he began to wonder just how many of the guys he had brought into country never came home. It was such a candid, honest conversation. He said quite frankly he didn't know when you reach the point that you just can't take anymore.

2011-03-22T09:09:00.000-07:00

Just a short note to share a few stories. Last night we found the BBQ dining facility on base. It is literally a giant tent with long tables inside (much like at summer camp) and the DFAC serves all the foods you'd find at a BBQ, hot dogs, hamburgers, BBQ chicken, pasta salad, corn of the cobb. It was a fun change from regular chow. My team leader and I also located where the combat stress dog lives and we intend to visit there really soon! We have also been advised that we are officially moving offices and housing. Our section of the base, Camp Cherry Beasley, is all moving so we are going to get a much more central office location and housing, but unfortunately will not have as much space as we do now. This move will take place very soon. This is somewhat disappointing as we'd had hopes to expand the office if we moved, not shrink it. But we are trying to think positively and rationalize that our new location may get a whole lot more visits...they just won't have as much space to lounge :-(

We want to plan a going away BBQ as a farewell both to the units leaving and to our office. It can be very difficult to order raw meat over here so we are hoping to get a head start on that before we have to move! On a different note, we are all going to take "flightline" training to get a flightline badge which will allow us to attend the Fallen Comrade Ceremonies that take place on the flightline for those who have been recently killed.

2011-03-20T14:06:00.000-07:00

The Medivac mission that I participated in tonight was, without exception, one of the most incredible experiences of my life. Whereas my first mission was transferring wounded soldiers from Afghanistan to Germany for further recovery, tonight I was with a group of volunteers that met the C-130 on the flightline to transfer soldiers who had literally just been wounded. Their injuries had just been inflicted and they were being transported from the frontlines to the Bagram base hospital to be stabilized. Fortunately, I am not faint of heart when it comes to blood or injuries, but it is truly difficult to even describe the experience of carrying a litter with a 250 lb man wrapped in bandages and blankets who has lost his hand, or who's face has been brutalized or who has a metal device holding his arm in place. You want to cry for them and hold their hand and tell them everything will be alright or you realize that you can't think of anything to say at all because things are so bad that you can't bring yourself to lie or to speak the truth. I always tried to smile at them, since my smile is sort of my default expression but somehow even smiling seems cruel. Does your smile reassure them? Or does it mock the tragedy of the situation? I really don't know... to be honest, I'm still trying to make sense of what I've just seen and to sort through the onslaught of different emotions I feel...

2011-03-20T06:49:00.000-07:00

Man, I am having the wildest day, I am getting the sense that I am going to be saying that a lot! First off...I did my first errand run by myself using a manual car!!!!!!!!! GO ME! Before arriving here, I had driven a manual twice in my entire life and our retro truck over here is a stick so I have been practicing at 1:30 in the morning when people can't wince as I stall over and over again. But today, after only three days of practice I drove first to the post office where I picked up at least a dozen care packages and then I drove to the hospital to do a visit in the ICU. Today was unbelievable. They had a lot of guys in there but in particular they had a vehical that had been hit by an IED and the guys inside of it were all in ICU. The driver was in the worst way and I asked the nurse if he could hear me (he was intabated and semi-concious and couldn't speak). She said yes so I took his hand and started talking to him and when I started talking he actually opened his eyes and was squeezing my hand in response to the monologue I was saying. It was just incredible. Then I went and talked to the 2 other guys, and one was trying so hard not to cry. Broke my heart.

I also learned there is another Medivac mission after my shift ends so I am going to head back over to the hospital to assist...

2011-03-19T05:40:00.001-07:00

So I just got back from another eventful trip with my team leader. We went to pick-up mail at the post office (and sadly there was none :-( but the weather is so bizarre here right now that afterwards we actually went driving around the base for a bit taking pictures. We are in the middle of crazy windstorms that sound like freight trains ripping through the BHUTs, but they are also causing the craziest cloud formations over the mountains.

Also, I found out today there are landmines in the middle of the base! We drove right by the section all marked off with warning signs and we're told that no matter what you should stay only on the pavement of that road. Then we also discovered that there are little Afghan villages no more than 200 meters away from the rickety chain link fences that protect our base. In one place, we could see a guy sitting against the wall of his house not more than 50 meters away from us. I heard stories about the Afghan children coming up to the fence to receive chocolate from the soldiers, but they no longer do this as it's too much of a security risk for everyone involved.

Now it's back to the office where, knock on wood, there haven't been too many emergency communication messages and there is a crowd of guys in the canteen watching The Fifth Element.

Indescribable

2011-03-18T05:32:00.000-07:00

Today ended up being such a remarkable day...

Ingrid, the team leader and I went to run some errands on the base. Our first stop was the PX (grocery/convience store) where we bought dozens of sandals for the ward hospital patients because that is what they indicated they needed the day before. As we were leaving the PX we ran into Timmy, the yellow lab Combat Stress dog (who's only job is literally to make people happy) and his handler. We got their contact information to hopefully coordinate some events together. From thePX we drove to the hospital ICU to do visits and distribute the sandals AND THEN we discovered that there was a Medivac mission (airlifting wounded soldiers to Germany) leaving in two hours and they were in need of volunteer help so Ingrid and I agreed to do it. We ran to the post office where we had to pick up almost a dozens boxes in comfort care kits, hurried back to the office to store them and then went back to the hospital to get trained in loading and unloading hospital litters with wounded soldiers onto the back of a school bus for transport to the flight line! After the training we had about a half an hour before we started loading the wounded soldiers onto the bus. There were 26 total and one of them was a C-Kat meaning he was so injured he was in a drug induced coma for the flight and he traveled with all his medical equipment, ventihlater etc, loaded onto his litter. It was one of the most incredible things I have ever done in my life. Then we bussed with them to the flight line where we unloaded the patients from the bus and onto a C-17. I tell you, with the mountains and the storms clouds and the fighter jets taking off in the background, loading these wounded soliders onto the plane was just... indescribable.

Welcome to the Mountains

2011-03-15T05:31:00.000-07:00

Greeting from the Hindu Kush Mountains! I'm just going to jump right in with this crazy adventure!

So this past Friday March 11, we went into lockdown at Ft Benning early morning and after lots of formations and roll calls we were bussed to the Airfield where we were kept in an airport hanger until the flight, which they kept secret until we actually boarded the plane. From there it was an 8 hour flight to Leipzig, Germany, a two hour layover and then a 4 and a half hour flight to Kuwait City. The flights were largely uneventful apart from the Silverback gorilla in the seat to me who protruded into my seat at least 3 inches. And sitting on my left was, no joke, a Major Restrepo! I asked him if people always asked if he was the soldier from the documentary and he said I was the third person today to ask! And added though that he could always tell who had seen the movie because they asked "Are you the same guy from the movie?!" Gotta love the black humor ;-) (Restrepo was a documentary about the US in Afghanistan and the little outpost was named Restrepo in memorium for one of their soldiers).

Once in Kuwait City took a blackout convoy to Ali Al Salem camp, a.k.a Tent City. Ali Al Salem is a transient camp for those coming in and out of the deployed zones- Iraq and Afghanistan. We checked into the camp around 7pm and then proceeded to haul the 600 duffel bags that had been loaded into flatbed trucks from our flight off the vehicles. You'll be amused to know that I'd had maybe 5 hours of sleep since Friday morning (it's now Saturday night) but I was on my 600th wind at this point so I was literally throwing these duffel bags at the 6-2, 220 contractor standing behind me in line causing him to have to take a step back each time I heaved one at him. He found this hilarious and starting yelling at everyone that he had muscles standing in front of him, hehe ;-) We spent that night in delightful dusty open bay tent with 10 other women and a mandatory 24 hour lights on rule.

We were manifested on a flight to Afghanistan for Sunday at 1:45pm but we unfortunately got bumped off for soldiers returning from R & R which meant, wahoo...another day at Ali Al Salem :-/ The next morning, Monday the 14th, we managed to get on a flight that left around 10am. We palletized our duffel bags (the military equivalent of "checking bags") loaded up in body armor and were bussed to the airfield where we boarded a C-17. We buckled up our seat belts and after sitting on the tarmac for an hour... were informed that the flight was going anywhere and we needed to de-board and bus back to Ali Al Salem. Sooo back to the PAX terminal to try and get on the next flight (they were having problems with the radar). We did fly out later that day, a 3.5 hour flight to Bagram. The most exciting part (apart from flying in the belly of a military aircraft where you can see the organs of the plane) was the evasive maneuvers the pilot took to land in Afghanistan. All of a sudden this transport aircraft has turned into Top Gun swerving sharply to the left, then dropping down like a rollercoaster making your stomach scream, then veering left, then dropping again. Easily the best part of the flight :-)

After arriving in Bagram at 10pm Afghan time, we met the current team leader in the terminal, and shlepped out duffel bags to the Red Cross truck. After a few errands, we went to the office where we got the keys to our rooms and made calls home. At 12:30am I headed to my BHUT which is the most rugged, cobbled together housing I have ever experienced on deployment. The BHUT is basically an outer skeletal structure with one room inside that has been divided into four "sections" using plywood or whatever the military could find. The walls don't go to the ceiling so there is 3 to 4 feet of exposed room before the ceiling making the room totally communal. I have a bed and a wardrobe and about 5 feet of walking space in the "room." I am also sharing with three other women. It's definitely an experience - it's like living in a construction site... with cobras, rats, and scorpions for neighbors.

Yesterday, our first day, the whole team had to be up by 8am to get a tour of the base and do lots of administrative things. The highlight of which, let me tell you, was the military postal class I had to take at 9:30am to get certified in picking up mail! You had to sit through a class and then take a test. I was so tired I can't really believe I passed, but when we were grading each other's papers at the end I had mis-graded the guy's next to me because I was so tired! :-( My shift is normally supposed to be 3pm to 12am, but since we'd had no sleep and a early start, my team leader let me go back and sleep so I started half way through my shift. It was a good night and I'm getting settled. I will leave it at that if you've even made it this far!

Thank you for all your replies and kind words. Hope to speak to you soon and I promise pictures to come! If you are interested in learning more about the base here is the wiki link! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bagram_Airfield

Across the miles :-)
Michelle

Let the Games Begin

2011-03-10T05:23:00.000-08:00

Hello friends and family :-)

This will be my only email message from the States before I travel to the Middle East! I have spent the last two weeks in training, first at the National Headquarters of the Red Cross in D.C. where we met our team members for the first time and discussed the specifics of our work. I am on a team with three other women and as it stands now, will be working the swing shift in Afghanistan, 3pm to 1am. After D.C., it was on to Ft Benning, GA (aka summer camp) where I have been for the last week, living in the communal barracks, completing a beaurcrat's dream worth of paperwork, every medical test known to man, plus several theater specific training courses like what to do if you are taken hostage, first aid and identifying weapons and explosives (family member disregard that part! ;-)

I will send out another message once I am in country, no doubt regaling you with the joys of traveling with 3x70 lbs duffel bags plus 30 pounds worth of body armor and many layovers in different countries. If you are interested in mailing something, just contact me and I would be happy to send you our mailing address. Letters and packages take about a week to arrive and I have found the mail to be pretty reliable. I also wanted to thank you all for following my stories and wishing me well. I think of you all often when I am so far away and I never feel alone when I hear from you. Your kind and thoughtful words make all the difference at the end of the day.
See you on the flip side :-)

How I Spent My 4th of July...

2009-07-09T14:56:00.000-07:00

...In the worst dust storm in living memory!!! http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,530659,00.html

The Best Thing I have done in Iraq

2009-06-30T06:39:00.000-07:00

After spending nine months of the last year in Iraq, I have to say that today made every single stress or horror or exhaustion worth undertaking a deployment. Today I had the opportunity to assist the 25th Infantry Division, Special Troops Battalion play host to about 30 children, ages 5-8, from the Orphanage House in Tikrit. The day was meant as a community service outreach between the U.S. Military on COB Speicher and the local Iraqis in the town of Tikrit. It was an ironic choice of day, as last night fireworks went off in Baghdad to celebrate the removal of US troops from Iraqi cities and towns. But as one Iraqi official today me today, "Today we are not thinking about that, today we are thinking about the children."

The day was off to a hectic start as my teammate and I, both night shift workers, decided to forgo the morning activities for some sleep and meet up with the festivities for lunch. We arrived at our building around 1:00pm while the children and other guests were having lunch in the courtyard. As we dropped off our belongings in the Red Cross office we were hijacked by the Air Forces Security Forces, our equivalent to MPs on base, and told they needed to do a contraband inspection of our rooms...NOW. Grumbling, Deb and I trudged back out to the car with the police as our escort back to our CHUs to do this contraband inspection.

Half an hour later we were back at the building, just in time to see the children and soldiers on their way to the gym for a carnival. We got re-situated and then drove to the gym ourselves. The Main Gym had been converted into a carnival with lots of different stations around the large room. There was bowling, a foot ball toss, a crafts station, guess the number of jelly beans in the bottle, a dunk tank, and a fishing station where kids threw a fishing line over a painted piece of wood and then reeled in their "fish" which was some sort of prize.

All the prizes had been donated and the generosity was extraordinary. People had donated radios, dolls, beads, yo-yos, there was tons of candy and treats. Our office had donated much of the arts and crafts supplies and although that was our official station to support, the entire gym was mass chaos and everyone migrated to whatever the children were doing. The hilarious thing was that the kids didn't need the stations to entertain themselves. They managed to find the soccer and volleyballs normally used at the gym and soon, games of each type had broken out around the room. They'd also gotten into the store of inflatable fitness balls and in many cases the balls were larger than the kids.

The children themselves were heartbreaking. To be honest, I spent the entire time not knowing if I should laugh or cry. I have not seen a child since before I deployed some 5 months ago and their energy and innocence and sincerity with which they rolled, and kicked and laughed made my heart want to burst. These were war orphans and many of them bore the scars of their pasts. A few children were missing limbs, several were mentally disabled, they were all unclean and in need of a bath and new clothes. They bore scratches and scrapes and looked up at you with at once the saddest and most excited eyes.

I let them lead me around the gym, sit in my lap, I tried desperately to understand what the wanted and when we both got frustrated I would search for a translator. The children were accompanied by probably 15-20 adults. Three individuals, two women and one man, actually worked at the orphanage and when I was introduced to the Special Needs teacher, a woman shrouded in black, eyes darkened with kohl, she shook my hand and then kissed me on both cheeks.

I was introduced to a Colonial in the Iraqi government, who, with the help of a translator told me that support from the orphanage came from all over, from the Iraqi government and the American military, from humanitarians and NGOs. He told me that the children really needed this day. He had wanted to introduce me to another official who he worked with, but he jokingly pointed to the arts and crafts table and said that he was busy "coloring" and sure enough this official was surrounded by a gaggle of little girls with crayons. I teasingly asked if he had any daughters and the official looked at me mischievously and said that he had two wives, 5 children by one and 6 children by the other. Alrighty then!

Afterwards, the same translator and I had a long conversation about the state of Iraq and the US military. She was neither a fan of American men or Iraqi men and she shared some very insightful and somewhat horrifying stories of her experiences with both men. It was an enlightening conversation, to say the least.

After an hour the kids were starting to slow down. The 25 ID band had been playing the whole event and a crowd have gathered by the band to dance. As things wound down, the crowd split into two groups as there were two pinatas tied to each basketball hoop. The girls went to one and the boys went to the other and what proceeded was hilarious as these tiny children attempted to break down the pinatas. At the end of the event, the kids, already loaded down with all their prizes and treats were each given a backpack and a smaller pouch filled with more gifts. Lots of pictures were taken and the adults were attempting to prevent tantrums as the tired kids were led back out to their bus.

It was absolutely the most fulfilling day I have spent in this country and every hardship was forgotten as I watched these children, with no home, and no loving parents run around the gym on a US military base and hold hands with the soldiers as though the war never was.

Trapped!!!

2009-06-17T13:11:00.000-07:00

So it is currently 11:12 at night and I am literally trapped at the office in a dust storm that has shut down the entire base. It hit when I was eating dinner at the DFAC and although the large rooms clouded over with the brownish orange dust particles I still ventured out to get back to the office on time. Approximately 20 yards from the DFAC the decision was made for me, I could not see anything, the wind was blowing mercilessly and I was looking at at least a 5-10 min walk. Defeated, I scurried back inside the DFAC, forced to wait another half an hour. The second time I attempted to get back to the office, the wind had lessened somewhat but the walk was brutal, sand infiltrated every orifice of my body and my eyes were in agony as I tried to navigate my way back to the office.
Once back, I found that the smoke alarm in the canteen was being triggered by the dust and it went off every 5 min until another Army guy and I literally removed it from the ceiling. The dust was so thick in the building that I could not see 10 feet down my hallway, there was enough dust on the floor to literally write messages (I wrote HI ;-) and as I was entering the rest room, two soldiers walked out wrapped from their neck up like mummies!
At 10:40 my poor teammate came tumbling in the office. It had taken her 35 min to drive the normal 5 min to the office and after multiple near car accidents she insisted that I remain at the office. To top it off, I got an email from a friend who works in my building saying the Garrison had issued a statement saying driving conditions are code Black = No Driving! So here I am, pining for food and a shower, loving the crazy country...

The Boxing Smoker

2009-06-06T06:18:00.000-07:00

Last night was the Boxing Smoker VI showdown held at the Main Gym. Our COB Speicher boxed 11 matches against opponents from the neighboring FOB Summerall. A bunch of my friends were heading over as well and I managed to find them almost right when I walked into the gym, sitting on the first row of the bleachers, front and center. I wasn't exactly sure what to expect from the event, having never been to a boxing match before combined with the fact that military events can be somewhat stuffy and uncomfortable. The Boxing Smoker COULD not have been farther this impression.

After squeezing in on the bleachers I surveyed the scene through the dimmed lights and realized that the entire gym swirled with the smoke of a thousand cigars circulating amongst the crowd. Brown bottles of near beer (probably the only inauthentic part of the evening) occupied most hands and MWR employees hawked complimentary bottles of water, Gatorade and bags of pop corn. A boxing ring had been set up in the center of the gym with a judges table slightly off to one side and the crowd was set up on three sides of the ring with standing room only in the back against the walls and on the second floor above the bleachers.

I confess I know nothing about boxing and could make no sense of the "One-two, one-two!" that everyone kept yelling, but I'm sharp enough to know when someone's winning and someone's losing and I cheered like crazy with the crowd. I wasn't able to stay for the whole event because I was still on shift, which figures because after I left there was a knock out, but it was by the far the best Friday night I've had in Iraq, hands down!

Recess

2009-06-05T05:58:00.000-07:00

This morning I was invited to play football and volleyball with our Intelligence & Sustainability (I & S)company who's office is just out front of ours. I had mentioned in passing to their captain how much I missed playing volleyball since in Baghdad I played every Friday morning with the med unit. So Friday's for the I & S company is game day instead of regular PT and meeting up with them worked out great for me because they play at 5:00am which is just at the end of my day.

At 4:45am I walked the half mile from my CHU to the stadium and by the time I got there they were already playing so I waited to sub-in when someone wanted a break. Unfortunately, the unit did not reserve the field so I got to play for only 10 min, before we got kicked off the field BUT I made a play! Wahoo! We then switched to volleyball, playing another unit who I guess is a regular opponent. Holy Lord did we get slaughtered. The other team was comprised of 6 foot tall swarthy guys and we were a bunch of short misfits. In our defence, a sandstorm began kicking up during our game and by the end of it, you couldn't even judge where a serve would land, because the wind decided to play with it. It is now horrendous outside, everything tinged orange and visibility down to 50 meters. But I guess losing 0-15, 1-15 and 6-15 is pretty indicative that we lost.

The Real Memorial Day

2009-05-31T05:49:00.000-07:00

So apparently the MWR decided to reschedule the Memorial Day 5k run so that is actually occurred on Memorial Day, the 31 of May. It ended up being one of those strange occurrences where you feel like you're really moving, flying down the road, legs charging, lungs pumping, thinking to yourself, "I can't wait to get to the finish and see my time! I must have dropped a chunk of time". As the finish line approaches you let loose with everything you have left, everything in you burning as you fight those last yards to the white line. And then you look at the clock and see that you're actually slower than the last 5k you ran when you felt sluggish. Although the satisfaction of running the race and feeling alive isn't diminished...you are left wondering if you really just have no control over your performance or if someone started the clock late ;-)

On The Day of Remembrance

2009-05-25T04:10:00.000-07:00

For a day that honors those who have died in service to our nation, I had an extremely uneventful day of memoriam while working in a war zone...apart from the fact that I stayed up the whole night before Memorial Day after my shift to run the Memorial Day 5k, which I discovered once at the Main Gym had been summarily cancelled with out warning for no given reason. On to the 4th of July then!

A Much Needed Pool Party

2009-05-23T12:02:00.000-07:00

Today brought the long-awaited for Pool Party with Boe, the Combat Stress Dog. A Combat Stress dog is a relatively new program in the military and the dog's purpose is to serve as a therapy dog for the servicemembers, relieving stress and increasing morale. Although we had originally hoped to have the party earlier in the deployment, collecting supplies from over in Iraq proved time-consuming and by the time we set the date the party essentially became Boe's going away party (she goes home in a week). This worked to our advantage however, as people made an extra effort to venture out on an extra hot day .

I set my alarm this morning for 10:15am which is significantly earlier than when I normally arise, but there was lots of set-up to do. My teammate picked me up at 11:30am. We arrived at the office and began setting up plastic tables and chairs in the courtyard and laying tarps that would protect the delicate grass from the pool, a kiddie pool approx 5 feet in circumference. We decorated the gazebo and tables with leis and little rubber duckies. We had Hawaiian patterned table clothes, cocktail umbrellas and paw-print napkins. At 1:00pm we headed over to the DFAC to pick up the fruit and dessert trays plus the drinks that we ordered. This was in addition to bags of chips, pretzels, cookies and Fla-v-or Ice pops that we'd purchased. The desserts immediately began melting in the 108 degree heat so we dropped the food back at the office before heading to the ice point to get the much needed bags of cubes.

The ice point was blissfully cool as a KBR employee hauled bags of ice from a industrial sized freezer. 20 bags later we were back at the office trucking ice bags out to our giant cooler that would house the bottle of water and juice we were going to serve. A little before 2:00pm our guest of honor, Boe, the black lab, arrived with her entourage. She started racing around the courtyard like a crazed maniac and at first didn't seem to understand the concept that the pool was for her! She would tentatively stick her snout in the water and then back away as though she was doing something wrong. Only by the end did we have her dunking.

Our guests began arriving right at 2:00pm and from there on out the party was thriving. We had a great turn out, with at least 50 people attending over the course of an hour and a half. People definitely came to say goodbye to Boe, but ended up staying to socialize and with the arrival of the Air Force (and the longer people stayed out in the merciless afternoon heat) a water war began between the Air Force and the Army using the many water guns we had supplied. The whole thing was hilarious with several of the officers getting involved referring to the water guns as "pistols". Boe was clearly the highlight of the party as everyone migrated to whatever she was doing, and she ate like a celebrity getting little nibbles of whatever a guest was eating in addition to the doggie bacon strips we'd bought her.

At 3:45- 15 mins after the party's end- we still had people hanging around which is a sure sign of a party's success. The Air Force guys that instigated the war, now soaked from head to toe, offered to stay late with me and clean up so with their help clean up was a breeze. All in all, I had a fabulous time at the party (even though I got sunburned with my hat on!) and really without intending it, our party made this holiday weekend feel real for me, when most holidays out here feel like just any other day.

No Turning Back

2009-05-20T07:47:00.000-07:00

I accidentally opened the temperature feature on my computer this morning, a program that I try to avoid to maintain some sanity in the midst of the furnace that is Iraq in the summer. Too late, I looked at the temperature for today, 113 degrees...and it only gets worse :-(

In Honor of Armed Forces Day

2009-05-16T03:53:00.000-07:00

This morning (although for me technically it was the late evening) I got up after a 4 hour "nap" to participate in the Beach to Bay 10k hosted by the 211th Hurricane unit out of Corpus Christi, Texas. The race started at 0600 and the weather couldn't have been better, clear and sunny, but with a relatively cool breeze that kept up throughout the race. I was a little concerned about holding up for 6.2 miles having only ever run that distance in Iraq on a treadmill. But the run was ideal. I started off slow and steady, held my pace and gradually pushed myself so that I had enough left to sprint the last mile. No better way to spend a Saturday morning (Friday night ;-)

A Red Letter Day

2009-05-13T06:16:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning already filled with the excitement of having our May Birthday celebration this afternoon, but surprise after surprise made today just one of those red letter days, when your on top of the wheel. When my alarm went off this morning I rolled out of bed and headed for the bathroom. I opened my door to find an enormous box there waiting for me. It was a care package from my mom. Forgetting the bathroom I climbed back in bed with the box and proceeded to tear into it like a crazed toddler. I was cheered into wakefulness by the site of fudge, snacks, toiletries, the Sex and the City DVDs I had ordered from Amazon plus tons of supplies for our upcoming pool party including a Frisbee, water guns, goggles and an inner tube.

My day considerably brightened, I got out of bed again, this time to check my email. HOSPITAL VISIT TODAY (!) was the newest email in my inbox. I quickly skimmed the message and learned that the Colonel of our 47th Combat Support Hospital (CASH) had stopped by the office that morning and alerted our team leader that there were several patients who could use a morale visit. Not wanting to disappoint, I flew to the shower, got ready and then hurried to the office by 2:00pm where I dropped off the fudge and snacks, checked in with my team leader who indicated he needed the car by 3:30pm and then I was off to the CASH.

I wasn't really nervous for my first hospital visit knowing I could rely on my extroverted social skills to take over, but I also had no idea where I was going or who to report to. The CASH has a very complex layout. It is essentially a confusing series of interconnected tents and buildings within the confines of concrete T-walls and sand bags. I ventured into the maze and with puppy-dog eyes approached the first confident looking military human being. Turns out I got a First Sergeant (who, if you're unaware, is one of the highest ranking enlisted servicemembers) who happily guided me through the hodge-podge to the desk of the Colonel who contact us earlier. Unfortunately, the Colonel had just gone to chow, so the First Sergeant basically took me to the ICW (Intermmediate Care Ward) where the patients were located, told the Commanding Office (XO) that I was okay to do morale visits and left me to it!

So! Semi-confidently I went into the Ward and noticed there were about 5 patients lying on various beds so I moved towards the first guy that made eye contact with me. He ended up being an extremely chatty fellow who was in serious need of some company and after talking with him for 20 min I felt relaxed enough to move among the patients. I started my conversation with all of them by asking if they wanted company, that way they could easily say no if there weren't feeling well. Everyone was surprisingly friendly and conversational. I met a girl who was my age, a mechanic in the army who loved the military and her job and told me about her difficulties with her family support and her fear of having children. I met another fellow who was an Army brat and had lived his childhood all over the world including New Zealand while his father supported the US military in Antarctica. There was also a very formidable looking patient behind a cloth screen who, when I entered, was being visited by an entourage of Iraqi police officers. They had brought an extravagant bouquet of flowers and I was dying to know his story, but since the screen implied he was of some importance and he spent most his timing bossing around the staff, I didn't think he really needed a visitor ;-)

At 3:20 I had to drag myself away from the last patient so I could get the car back to the office so Peter could deliver another million pounds of Starbucks coffee to a requesting unit. Back at the office I made the final rounds through our birthday supplies and at 4:50 Deb and Peter came to the office to load up the car. Deb and I proceeded to the DFAC where we met the Air Force fellows who had volunteered to help us and hawk the event to people coming into the DFAC. We spent about an hour setting up, decorating the room, organizing our raffle and giveaways. The event began at 6:30 and we had a good turn out. We sang, and did our raffle around 7:10 and by 7:30 the Air Force guys and I were playing keep away with the zillion balloons we blew up.

Then it was back to the office to work the final three hours of my shift and to top it all off, my girlfriends and I booked out trip to Puerto Rico in August. We found a great deal at the Ritz-Carlton so I'm headed to bed with dreams of aqua-marine waters and twinkling margarita glasses!

Safe & Well

2009-05-11T16:18:00.000-07:00

The American Red Cross is safe and well and thinking of those in Baghdad.

We Are the AU Eagles

2009-05-08T05:15:00.000-07:00

The military dining halls in Iraq, DFACs, are essentially an enormous cafeteria with two entrances, one on either end of the building. After scanning your ID you process along one wall where you pick up your tray and eating utensils and then you approach the various food service islands where you can eat anything from burgers to water melon to salmon. Because the DFACs would be rather Spartan without some decoration, it has become the trend to adorn the white washed walls with University flags and insignia. On both my deployments now, in Baghdad and Tikrit, I have been in almost a dozen DFACs and never once have I sign the flag of my Alma mater, American University.

I thought I'd change that. I wrote to my Athletic Department and asked if they has any flag they my spare to send to me. As it turns out, they had just acquired an enormous one from public safety and promised they'd get it off to me right away. My flag arrived this week and tonight we took it over to the North DFAC on COB Speicher to present for display. It case you are unfamiliar, the American University flag is half red and half blue with a giant, interlocking AU in the center- extremely difficult to miss. It is now the largest flag on display in the DFAC and perhaps the only AU flag in Iraq ( I can't claim that title with any certainty as I've yet to eat in every DFAC in the country ;-) Go AU!

You can see a picture of the flag here! http://www.aueagles.com/sports/c-swim/spec-rel/051409aab.html

Three's Company

2009-05-07T12:39:00.000-07:00

Well, it's official. The Tikrit station is permanently a team of three. Previously, the three Red Cross stations in Iraq; Baghdad, Balad and Tikrit deployed in teams of 4 people and Afghanistan and Kuwait in teams of 3. However, given the recent influx of troops into Afghanistan combined with a new Red Cross office under construction, it was decided that the Afghan team needed a 4th person. Because our station has the lightest load of emergency message traffic among the Iraqi stations, it was determined that Tikrit would lose a team member to join the team in Afghanistan. Our 4th teammate Gene began his travels to Afghanistan on May 2 and today we got the word that after 6 days of travel he made is safely to Bagram, Afghanistan. Thus begins the remainder of my deployment in the company of three.

The 47th CASH

2009-05-06T05:27:00.000-07:00

This evening my team and I were invited to attend the Opening Ceremony of Nurse's Week hosted by the 47th Combat Support Hospital (CASH). National Nurses Week is May 6-12 annually and our 47th CASH includes some 52 nurses and over 100 medics. The American Red Cross was asked to donate giveaways to the event and as a result we were asked to be guests at the Opening Ceremonial dinner this evening in the Main Dining Facility.

I wasn't quite sure what to expect, but the evening went nothing how I'd imagined. First off, we were the last ones to slip in before the 6:00pm start and the room was absolutely packed, over 150 people. We were escorted to seats front and center and were placed right next to Lieutenant Colonel Ramos, the head nurse. As soon as we sat down, the ceremony began and the Red Cross was singled out and promptly asked to stand again in front of the entire audience to be recognized for out contribution to the event.

We sat down a second time, only to snap back up to attention with the rest of the attendees as the General entered the room. He made humble gestures for all of us to sit as he took the podium and made his opening remarks. He related the now infamous event at our CASH on Easter morning when three causalities were brought in, one was already gone, another was saved with some minor injuries and the last soldier survived...but as a paraplegic. It was quite a speech.

From there we moved onto dinner and I found myself wrapped in discussion with LTC Ramos. I asked her how often the CASH received causalities like the dramatic ones Easter morning and she surprised me by saying every couple of weeks. She revealed heart-breaking stories of soldiers being brought in, dying on the operating table and begging to call their families, but she explained they didn't have a phone. Naively, I thought the problem could be fixed by simply asking communications for the technology. No, she explained, dying soldiers cannot say goodbye to their families. Such contact would alarm the families when the call is disconnected and the frantic families would then call Red Cross to initiate a health and welfare message. If the servicemember does die, then Red Cross cannot verify or pass the message because only the Department of the Army can inform a family of a casualty. I was too speechless to respond.

After dinner, there was cake cutting and a photo slide show, and finally a newly appointed full- bird Colonel was chosen to be the guest speaker. As he prefaced his remarks, he promised his speech would be short because the physicians in the room had already warned him they wouldn't tolerate a rambling soliloquy. As he said this the doctors sitting behind me pulled out their pistols and cocked them! Everyone in the room cracked up and I had to wonder if those weapons were loaded! On the whole, it was a really fun evening and perhaps most importantly, I had been given the opportunity to see life in Iraq from another perspective, from those who see at face value the butchery of war and who truly fight, in the most basic sense, to preserve life.

Cinco de Mayo Madness

2009-05-05T05:40:00.000-07:00

Since fighting the Groundhog Day effect is an ongoing battle while deployed, you find yourself willing to make sacrifices to do things that will liven your day. Today, the North DFAC was having a Cinco de Mayo fiesta during their lunch hours-- a meal that normally I am sound asleep through. But my teammate and I decided we needed to spice things up, so I got up 3 hours early and she, as the night shifter, stayed up late so we could go. But things did not go as easily as planned.

At exactly 9:46am (the middle of my night) the smoke detector started going off in the room next to me. I was up like a jack rabbit since a fire in our enormously interconnected CHUs would be devastating. After a solid minute of sniffing the air and listening for crackling all I heard was the racket of the guy next to me trying to turn it off. After a lot of scuffling he got the thing silenced. He left the room. 15 min later it was back at it. I shoved my ear plugs in, pulled the pillows over my head and shut my eyes.

When I woke up about an hour and a half later it was still blaring. I grumbled against it's inconvenience and headed to the shower. I flipped the shower on and was most distressed to learn that with the water turned as hot as it would go, it was no warmer than my University pool. No! I looked at our hot water heater and sure enough, the thing was ca put, on zero. I grumbled some more and decided to wash my hair and face using the nozzle, without getting my body wet. As the water got progressively browner, I knew our water heater was dead.

I entered my torture chamber to get dressed while the alarm continued it's mind-altering repetitious beeps. Soon my teammate and I were ready to depart and she looked at me and said "Be ready, it's ugly out there." Sure enough we're in the midst of a full blown dust storm. Visibility 25-100 meters, the base command even sent out a bad weather warning! Not to be discouraged, we headed over to the DFAC for some celebrating.

As it happened, the place was packed despite the weather and the military and KBR did a great job with the event. They had a pinata strung up from the ceiling, a DJ blasting everything from Shakira to Pit Bull to Juanes, with couples dancing to the more traditional tunes. In an attempt to liven the celebration, (in the noticeable absence of the standard alcoholic beverages) we had Sangria made with Sparkling apple cider, sprite and slices of apples. The had tons of cake available, and bizarrely their main entree was fried chicken which I'm pretty sure is not a Mexican staple. The highlight of the event came when this burly guy was taking a monster swing at the pinata, missed, and sent the broom handle flying into the tables of diners and spectators. Everyone ducked with the military precision of an incoming rocket and the military decided that was the end of the pinata!

We only stayed about 45 min, my teammate at the end of a long day and myself slightly traumatised and sleep deprived, but it was worth the sacrifices. Sometimes what you go through makes the experience that much more memorable.

The Polar Bear Swim

2009-05-02T09:00:00.000-07:00

I don't want outages to become a trend in my blog writing, but I wanted to share a particularly entertaining one. This morning my alarm went off about 1:30pm and sleepily I trudged into our bathroom to shower. As I flipped up the nozzle all I got were pitiful noises of strangulation emitting from the spout. Damn. They shut the water off! Usually we are privy to these disruptions via base wide email the day before, but apparently this was an emergency shut off.

Had I known that we'd be without water I'd have done one of two things: A. showered the night before or B. taken out several of the bottled waters we kept stocked in our fridge to warm up so I could wash my hair and brush my teeth. Since this was a sneak attack and I had not showered the night before my only option for personal hygiene was to use the positively frigid bottled waters from our fridge, and I mean icy--like the waters on the shelf closest to the freezer have ice shavings in them! In a helpless effort to warm up the ice cold waters I set a few of them on the steps to our CHU hoping the indirect sunlight would do the trick.

No such luck. Brushing my teeth was the easiest part because of minimal skin contact. Washing my face was exceedingly more painful as my face was burned and puffy from the cold. But washing my hair gave a whole new meaning to the term "brain freeze". It took me 5 full two liter bottles just to wet and shampoo (not even conditioner) my hair and by the time I was on the second bottle I had to grit my teeth as I poured the bottle onto my head, my hands stinging and once I finished I was literally dancing around the bathroom in pain rubbing my scalp to try massage away the needles.

I have to say this is way better than an alarm clock, but definitely not the most pleasant way to start your day!

Are You Afraid of the Dark?

2009-04-26T11:06:00.000-07:00

If you are currently, on COB Speicher I hope not! You may be aware that the military has come under fire in the last year for at least 18 soldiers being electrocuted while in the shower due to faulty wiring. You can read more about this here: http://cp2test.msnbc.msn.com/id/29891090/

As a result, right after our arrival end of March electrical ground crews have been perpetually taping signs to CHU doors stating that electricity would be periodically and without warning cut to conduct inspections. While I was under the impression that this would just be in our LSA (housing neighborhood) the last few days the power has been going off frequently and without warning. Yesterday afternoon it went out for about and hour and a half in my room and then again later on my shift at the office, leaving the only light coming from my computer monitor running on it's battery. It went off again this afternoon for about an hour entirely shutting down one of the dining halls and then again tonight on my shift for just a few minutes.

Although only an inconvenience now, potentially delaying casework and resetting clocks, I'd rather go through this while the temperature is in the upper 80s/90s than when we hit the 120 mark!

Fire on the Mountain

2009-04-19T03:30:00.000-07:00

Although celebrity tours in Iraq are quite common, I have never had the opportunity to attend any of the concerts or meet and greets, apart from my aeronautical adventures with the WWE. Tonight, however, I finally had the chance to take advantage of one of the only perks in being deployed: free concerts from amazing performers... and the Charlie Daniels Band did not disappoint. I've discovered that if you've never heard of the Charlie Daniels Band I need only mention the song "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" which appears in a bar scene from the movie Coyote Ugly and most people in my generation recognize the singer with whom I'm referring.

Anyways! The concert was supposed to be outside at the stadium but we've been having these incredible mutant dust/thunderstorm combinations and apparently Charlie Daniels caught wind of one such dust storm in Balad and requested that his performance in Tikrit be moved inside. Our Red Cross team was lucky enough to have another station cover our queue of emergency messages so we all headed over to the gym and managed to snag great seats front and center on the bleachers.

The concert was really fantastic. Although it seemed like I was the only Yank in the crowd (the audience went ballistic when he played "A Few More Rednecks") his energy was amazing for a 72 year-old and he even played Johnny Cash's Folsom Prison Blue's which got everyone going. He also played the most superb rendition of the Star Spangled Banner I have ever heard. It was acoustic with Charlie playing fiddle accompanied by two guitars, drums and keyboard. The crowd stood and with so many in uniform, shoulders straight, heads high as the fiddle sang, it was quite possibly the most patriotic moment of my life. Nothing short of goosebumps. He closed with the Devil Went Down to Georgia and I couldn't get it out of my head all night.

An Easter Birthday

2009-04-12T12:30:00.000-07:00

My Easter weekend was exhausting and enjoyable. Saturday was my team's first experience with hosting the monthly birthday party for servicemembers and civilians. We took some risks with this event as previously the event was held in the MWR (Morale, Welfare and Recreation- essentially a Rec center) which is in the building where we work. The event was not very well attended according to the team we replaced so we decided to move the event to the DFAC because not only did we need to pick up the cake from the DFAC, but why not host the event where everyone already goes to eat?

So we reserved one of the overflow rooms in the DFAC and I went over early, at 4:00pm, to meet some of the Air Force guys who wanted to volunteer for the event and we went crazy decorating the room with streamers, balloons, candy and posters. We set up a gift table where those with birthdays could chose a gift, a red cross mug or water bottle plus a calling card and the chance to win our raffle which was two fleece blankets, and two gift certificates to the PX. We put in an Eagles CD and had a beautiful cake with real frosting. We stationed the Air Force guys at the doors to invite people with April birthdays and their friends to attend. Although the room was slow to fill up (we need to do it an hour later and on a weeknight!), by the end of the hour the room was relatively full and people really seemed to enjoy themselves and appreciate the event.

After the party I was back at the office to work the rest of my shift and then again found myself staying up until 5:45am so that I could run the Easter 5k at 6:30am. Unlike my inaugural Tikriti 5k, this morning was clear and cool. I met my running buddy at the stadium and since neither of us was feeling in top shape this morning our understanding was simply that we'd run it to finish. The run was gorgeous with clear blue sky and sunshine off to the West and for once, the mountains were visible in the East with purple clouds rolling in above their peaks.

Although we kept good pace, you can imagine my shock when I crossed the finish and had dropped over a minute since the last 5k!!! That was a welcome surprise! Afterwards it was a walk back to my CHU and 6 hours of sleep before I was up again to work my Easter shift. I had received a few Easter packages from friends and family so there was no lack of chocolate eggs and jelly beans. After a quiet shift, the night worker and I headed out to midnight chow and were treated to a stunning electrical storm that was sweeping across the desert plain. Words fail to explain the awesome power and beauty that ravaged the sky, but we decided to pull off the side of the road and just sit and watch the brillance as another Easter came to a close.

Promotions & Pools & Pups

2009-04-04T10:11:00.000-07:00

So I've had an unusually eventful 24 hours. You may have heard me reference what's known as "Groundhog Day syndrome" which is used to describe the lack of variation in daily routine while deployed due to that fact that there are no days off and the weather rarely varies. Apparently the groundhog has seen his shadow cause he's nowhere to be found!

First off, Friday afternoon I was invited to a friend's military promotion ceremony. She was being promoted to First Lieutenant at the most prominent and secure building on base because it houses the Garrison. I discovered this first hand when I attempted to breeze through the security checkpoint with my military ID and got thoroughly blocked by the Uganda guards who insisted I could not enter without the necessary badge. Fortunately there was an MP who overheard our conversation and he managed to get me an escort inside. The ceremony itself was somewhat surprising. Before the ceremony, held outside in the expansive gazebo, everyone was lounging and socializing and then LT Colonel, who presided over the event, showed up and everyone snapped to business and it became totally no-nonsense while she was promoted. Then afterwards, people broke out the cigars and dug into the food and it was back to chilling out.

After the promotion, I headed to the office to meet my teammate and together we were going to bring some video donations out to Freedom Rest which is an extremely unique aspect of the base where I reside. Freedom Rest is the military's equivalent of a resort where servicemembers can go when they receive their 4 day R & R which is too short to travel to the States. When we arrived at Freedom Rest we were lucky enough to be taken on a tour of the facility and it truly is the closest thing I have seen to a luxury setting (excluding the pre-existing palaces in Baghdad). The floors are shiny and tiled, the cherry couches are a glossy leather. The servicemembers can go and place their meal order off a menu where it's then delivered to them by a waiter. There is a movie theater, the most up to date technology and best of all, two Jacuzzis and a pool! The highlight of the trip came when our tour guide, a KBR employee said that since the servicemembers come on 4 day cycles there are the occasional off days when no one is there and she promised to email when the next one came up!

Finally, today my teammate and I got up early to play with the Combat Stress dog. You may remember when I was in Baghdad I was able to play with the Specialized Search dogs. The Combat Stress Dog is a pilot program run by the Combat Stress Clinic where the pup, a Black Lab named Boe, is actually a therapy dog whose sole purpose is to ease the stress and increase the morale of the servicemembers. My teammate and I met the adorable "Sergeant First Class" Boe who immediately made my heart ache with happiness. How do dogs do that?

The best part is that I spoke with Boe's handler and we have plans to host a morale event nicknamed "Pool Party with Boe". Because she's a Lab, but never gets the chance to swim out here, (I can relate) we are going to purchase a kiddie pool and hold the event in our building's courtyard which actually has a lawn with real grass and access to a hose. We'll buy doggie treats and people food and advertise the event around base. Boe is so popular out here that I have hope the event will be a great success!

Fudge with a touch of Love

2009-03-31T08:38:00.001-07:00

As far as living without the necessities in life, Iraq has really moved beyond that point. On the whole, we sleep in a bed with a mattress, we have hot showers, satisfying food and access to phones and the internet. We can run on treadmills at the gym, watch movies or play ping pong in the MWR and visit the PX for items ranging from gift cards, electronics, bedding, candy and souvenirs.

What continues to remain elusive however? Treats and reminders of home. You can essentially buy or find any dessert you might desire from the PX or the DFAC, but there is nothing like homemade baked goods to inspire thoughts of cozy kitchens, and family gatherings. This is part of the reason we have taking to baking bread in our Red Cross offices.

Yesterday, I got a box from home with 4 bricks of homemade fudge and it went like wild fire. I first cut up two slabs of the chocolate and went around to the various offices within our building. I thought that people might turn down the offer (although it was still perfectly fresh) seeing as how it had just spent a week shipping from Illinois to Iraq. But there is just something irresistable about Mom's homemade fudge. It was received so well that I printed up signs that I posted in our building to advertise "Homemade Fudge Today, Visit your American Red Cross" and people dropped by the office all afternoon to inquire after the fudge.

Despite having access to sweets on base, there is just something extra special knowing that it came from home. I'm trying to think of other desserts or inklings of home that I can share with the servicemembers out here. If you have any thoughts or ideas for items or foods that symbolize the comfort of home, I'd love to hear them...

The EOD Memorial 5k...Iraqi Style!

2009-03-28T08:11:00.000-07:00

This morning I participated in the EOD (Explosive Ordinance Disposal) 2nd Annual Memorial 5k. The run was intended to raise money and awareness for the families of those who had lost a servicemember of the EOD. The kick off was 6:30am this morning.

As always, working the night shift makes for some crazy sleeping adjustments and this was no exception. I got up yesterday at 1:00pm for my shift that begins at 3:00pm. I worked until 11:00pm and then had the unfortunate task of trying to keep myself awake for another 7 and a half hours until the race started. I decided it would be better to keep myself awake and active at the end of a long day, then to go to bed and get up in the middle of my "night" to run the race.

I headed to midnight chow with my teammate, went to the gym, biked 2 miles to warm up my legs and did some abs. Then I headed to my CHU and decided the best way to stay awake was to watch scary movies. I put on "Stay" and after it was over and my heart was racing, I put in my iPod, stretched and danced around my room until I went to meet my other teammates at 5:45am.

In true Murphy's Law fashion, what was once a clear night a few hours before, had developed into a full blown Iraqi sand storm. The wind was blowing fiercely kicking up tornados of dust that glazed your eyes like hubcaps, dusted your eyelashes like white mascara, caked your hair so it looked like a wig and infiltrated your lungs so you were coughing like an emphazemic. Lovely.

The guys drove me over to the start of the race which is actually a place of some historical significance in Iraq. For those not aware, Uday Hussein, the oldest son of Saddaam, had an affinity for beating and torturing the Iraqi National soccer team when they did not perform to his expectations. It is purported that the remnants of the soccer stadium on base are one of the those prior locations of evil. I will do a more indepth blog post on this soon after I can do some research, but suffice it to say that the bombed out stadium has a haunting aura and coupled with the impregnable haze of dust, the morning felt surreal.

Despite the eeriness, I was excited to race and having my teammates there to support me was a blast. My teammates acted almost as my coaches, carrying my water or my fleece and taking lots of pictures. We had some great opportunities to enhance the visibility of the Red Cross on base and our team leader even ran over to our office so that we could donate 25 calling cards to the raffle.

The race got started right on time and despite the quality of the air, I ran the best time of my pitiful distance running career. My last teammate, Deb, had gotten off the night shift a bit early so she could also watch the finish and take some pictures. Ultimately the entire Red Cross team turned out to watch me race which was really special.

Back in the Saddle Again

2009-03-26T09:20:00.000-07:00

It has been just over a week now that my team "The 4:18 to Tikrit" assumed ownership for the Red Cross office in Tikrit. Initially, I wrote about the difficult adjustment to small-base life in Tikrit, but I have settled into my new routine and am finding myself increasingly satisified.

Part of that stems from a lot of changes that we have made to the two rooms that make up our office and canteen. As I mentioned earlier we are located in a communal building with several other offices and we have been allocated 2 rooms, one for our office and next door, a space for our canteen. I talked about how the lack of ownership for the office space contributed to a sense of detachment from our services and relatioship with the troops. Well, we've really attacked the rooms in this last week which I think has provided us with that missing sense of ownership. We've rearranged the furniture in the canteen to open up the room and make it more inviting (it is only 12x12, approximately the size of my CHU). We've put a table cloth on our coffee table and acquired some plastic covering from one of the dining halls to protect it. We put this really neat little table in the center in the room to serve as a coffee table. It is a wooden table painted white with the words "We were with you then...we're with you now" inscribed in red paint with a hard plastic cover on the surface. All in all, we've had people stopping us over the past couple of days relating how much they like the changes and we have noticed an increase in the number of people trafficking the canteen.

We also bake bread here two times a week with a bread machine. Bread night has been established on Wednesday and Friday and it happens on my shift so I get the pleasure of playing baker twice a week. The bread is all prepackaged so last night I made Hawaiian Sweet Bread and added a dash of cinnamon which had the entire hallway smelling like French Toast!

The Retreat

2009-03-22T06:39:00.000-07:00

Initially the adjustment to this deployment has been a bit difficult for me. Everything about the station in Tikrit is very different from my last deployment to Baghdad, for better or for worse. I loved the assignment is Baghdad because it was very urban. The Victory Base Complex, made up of multiple smaller bases was international and bustling, the hub of military affairs in Iraq. The base contains a number of Saddam's beautiful palaces and the artifical lakes and canals provided for an unusual reprieve from the desert landscape.

The Red Cross office in Baghdad was also it's own entity. We had our own trailer with canteen space for a flat screen t.v. with a viewing area and a library, we had several phones available to servicemembers and an internet cafe. My evening shift was always the busiest in terms of emergency communications messages to relay and people trafficing the canteen.

Tikrit is very much a remote, country base that has a small town ambiance. Our office and miniature canteen are located in the MWR (Morale, Wellness and Recreation) Building which is also shared with nearly a dozen more offices. We only offer 2 DSN phones and do not have a lot of service to offer, plus the space is seriously limited (12x12 ft). I guess the best way to describe it is that there's no sense of ownership of the space. We are one of many in a communal building and with the MWR upstairs the basically over all the morale needs you could want. There are also almost never any "incomings" which for my own personal safety is a benefit, but they made the deployment in Baghdad feel more real.

It's not necessarily that I'm unhappy, it's more that for a girl that was raised in Chicago and DC I'm used to a fast-paced enviornment with bustle and action. Tikrit feels like a country retreat.

Luck of the Irish

2009-03-18T05:14:00.000-07:00

Iraq! So good to be back in the dusty barreness. By the luck of the Irish we arrived in Tikrit on Tuesday (yesterday) after a rather tumultous trip from Ft. Benning, GA.

Our flight departed Ft Benning on Friday afternoon a few hours earlier than the last time I left for the Middle East. My spirits were high as the first 6.5 hour flight, the 6 hour layover in Ireland and the second 6 hour flight passed by painlessly. I should have known that nothing involving Iraq and the military can be so seemless.

When we arrived in Kuwait City on Saturday night, we took the familiar blackout convoy to Ali Al Salem base where it was confirmed than our team was NOT manifested for a flight to Tikrit. Lovely. As we watched the teams around us depart for their respected stations (Baghdad, Balad, Bagram & Kuwait) we became passengers traveling on the dreaded Space A list. Essentially this is like flying standby in the commercial world, but unlike United, American & Delta, in the military world people who are mission essential or who out-rank you bump you off the list for standby spots. To top it off, it rained off and on the entire night and our ridiculously heavy duffel bags were piled up outside and we were to exhausted to schlep them inside!

So there was a flight out that Sunday morning at 0500 which we waited up for all night to find out we didn't qualify for a standby seat. We then had to wait another hour and a half to make the accountability roll call before we could head to billeting and receive bunks in a tent for our impending wait at Ali Al Salem. If you recall from the last deployment, there are 16 people in a tent with no pillows or bedding, you have to perpetually guard your belongings from theft and the lights are on 24/7. I slept on the airplane pillow I snagged from the flight and my poncho liner which spreads out like a blanket. I then took every piece of cloth I owned, T-shirt, towels, sweatshirt and strung them up around the bunk (thank heavens bottom) to cave out the light.

I slept amazingly from 7:30am to 3pm, got up, showered and the team went to dinner at 5:00pm. We then headed back to the terminal tent for another roll call and discovered we had a shot at getting on a flight at 3:00am. So I slept from 9:00pm to 1:30am and was back at the terminal at 2:30am. They announce there are 15 standby seats available. Hallelujah! We check out of our tents, drag our duffels back to the terminal to wait for the flight briefing at 4:00am. At that time we palatized our bags (assembled them to be loaded on the plane) and went back for our last briefing at 5:30am. 5:30 rolls around...."Ladies and gentleman there's been a change of plans. The flight to Al Sahara has been scratched." :-(

Alas. Back to billeting. Back to the tent. Back to sleep. Later that evening we went to chow again and showed up at 8:30pm for the accountability roll call. At that point we learned that the team currently in Tikrit was able to space block us (reserve us) a flight for the next morning! Wahoo! The flight wasn't until 9:30am and the prospect of a good chunk of sleep was exciting for all, but sure enough, I was wide awake at 4:30am, my body's sleep schedule too messed up to understand I could get more than a few hours.

We got off easily enough on our flight and to top it all off, we ended up sharing the fly with the USO's celebrity tour guests, a contingent of WWF and WWE wrestlers! Greg "The Hammer" Valentine, Jimmy "Mouth of the South" Hart, Brian Knobbs and then two female wrestlers SoCal Val and Traci Brooks flitted around taking pictures and cracking jokes. It was hilarious to watch them travel with us on a C-130, a totally legit military flight. The Hammer looked too stoned to know he was in a war zone, the girls periodically reapplied their lip gloss and Brian Knobbs kept raising his eyebrows and winking at me. All and all a great way to cap off the crazy last 4 days.

We've been in Tikrit about a day and a half now and it's extremely different than Baghdad...night and day, but I'll save that for my next entry. Thanks for reading!

Debacles

2009-03-16T09:27:00.000-07:00

Just a short note to say that after a very uneventful trip to Kuwait, I am now stuck at a military base just outside of Kuwait City until further notice due to a series of debacles. I am safe and well, but am living in a tent with no bedding where there are 16 other bunks, the lights are on 24/7, I am in dire staights for clean clothes living out of duffel bags and we are in the midst of sand storms.

Such is the nature of the assignment (and truth be told I am perfectly content minus the Jumangi sized mosquitos) but we have no timeline on when we might be heading to Iraq!

More to come...

A New Beginning: The Breeze at Ft Benning

2009-03-12T09:33:00.000-07:00

Hello!

Thank you for stopping by to check out my blog and read about my travels. I am about to begin my second tour to Iraq as an Assistant Station Manager for the American Red Cross. I will be stationed in Tikrit for this assignment from mid March 2009 to the end of July 2009.

When I began blogging about my first deployment I sort of breezed over the week spent at Ft Benning in preparation for deployment overseas. This time I wanted to start my adventure from where it begins at the Conus Replacement Center (CRC) Ft Benning, GA. Although I am not going to go into too much detail about the week spent at the CRC, suffice it to say that my experience the second time around could not have been more different than the first, and I say that with a smile of relief on my face.

In part, I know the ease of this past week came from knowing what to expect and how to cope, but I cannot discount the cool, calm, collected attitudes of the team leaders on this deployment. Their patience, self assurance, and go with the flow mentality has made what was a hell week my first deployment, a cinch this second time around. The days at Ft Benning can be long and tiresome, filled with hours of paperwork, vaccines, computer based training and a lot of "hurry up to wait" but here we are nearly done and the week was a breeze.

If this week at Ft Benning is any indication of how my coming deployment will be I am more than ready for it to start!!!

Where the Ocean Meets the Sky

2008-11-18T08:25:00.000-08:00

Greetings from Stockton, IL population 2000 not including the cows!

I arrived safely in the U.S. on Sunday morning and still in one piece to my parents home on Monday night. I have to confess I will never again complain about TSA or traveling commercially again. Traveling home from Iraq was hands down the most physically and psychologically exhausting experiences of my life!

First off, I mentioned that my shift had been rearranged and I was now starting work 4 hours earlier. This was extremely unfortunate for me because much as I tried to force myself to bed earlier, I just could not fall asleep. My body couldn't understand why were were doing to sleep during the "day" so I went into this marathon of traveling already sleep deprived. Last Wednesday after 3 hours of sleep we met at 7:00am to pick up our three 70lb duffel bags from our rooms, ran some necessary errands and then convened at the Red Cross office until it was time to leave for the airport. We made the airport run in two shifts because we couldn't fit all 12 duffels in the car. I ended up passed out on the canteen couch while most of this was going on, but around 11:30 my team leader roused me and said we were off to the airport.

I should emphasize that for security reasons the military is frustratingly vague regarding your departure time and flights are always "subject to change." For this flight I believe we left around 4:30pm after waiting about 4.5 hours. We were in our body armor and Kevlar helmet which is always an enlightening experience (okay, more like encumbering-the flack vest weighs 35 lbs and the helmet is so heavy you have to fight to keep you head straight).

We flew in a C-130 to Kuwait which was sort of fun. Once in Kuwait we were bussed in a black out convoy to Ali-Al Salem military base. From there we checked in, made sure we were on the manifest for our flight back to the States on Saturday and then we checked into billeting and hauled our insanely heavy duffels to our tent. This was another highlight of the extravaganza home. They issue you one bunk in a dusty 16 person tent. I should clarify that Al Al Salem is fondly called "Tent City" because it is a transient camp. The mattress is rubber and you are issued no bedding: no sheets, no pillow, no blankets! So all of us pulled out anything we had to compose a make-shift bed. To top it all off, the lights are supposed to be on 24/7 so travelers arriving during the night can claim their bunk.

It's safe to say that combined Thursday and Friday nights I got maybe 5 hours of poor sleep. I was really starting to shut down psychologically because the experience was so exhausting and overwhelming it was the only way I could make it through. All day Friday we sort of futzed around and waited for the other Red Cross teams to arrive. Friday night 4 of the 5 teams had dinner together for the first time since we departed Ft Benning on the Fourth of July.

I was up at 0430 on Saturday morning, showered and hauling my duffels to the customs folks by 0530. There was a flight briefing at 0700 and it turns out that we were redeploying with a unit from Ft Dicks which pretty much filled the plane to capacity, After several hours of waiting we were eventually called in groups to take our duffels through Navy customs and I have to tell you this was nightmarish. Not only was it hot and I was a zombie, but you are forced to haul your duffels through a line that takes almost an hour and then you are made to dump out the duffels you so meticulously packed in front of a customs officer you sifts through everything including your underwear to make sure you are not smuggling knives or guns or war trophies back to the U.S. This was such a demoralizing process and after he's gone through your stuff, you load all your gear and equipment and personal belongings into giant plastic bins and repack your duffels rapido.

Once this was over we proceeded through security to another part of the base where we were held in lockdown with almost no information on our flight. By this time I was so tired that I felt ill and like I said, I just had to shut everything off and go through the motions to make do. We entered lockdown around 1:00pm and sometime around 5:00pm were were in formation and on another blackout convoy to some undisclosed airport location. The ride to the ariport was almost 2 hours and I mercifully passed out. Then we were boarding the plane and I was thanking heaven I got an aisle seat. The first flight was about 5.5 hours and I was awake for most of it. Then we had an hour and a half layover in Germany and then another 9 hour flight of which I mostly slept. We landed at McGuire Air Force Base at 4:00am and dropped off the Ft Dicks bunch and had another 1.5 hour layover and FINALLY we had a two hour flight to Ft Benning and arrived somewhere mid-morning. The suffering wasn't over yet!

We disembarked and headed to the airport hanger where an Army band greeted us and then there was a no-nonsense ceremony welcoming us back. However, we then proceeded to fill out more paperwork and we were bussed to CIF, the facility that distributed all our military gear. Thus began another 3 hour nightmare where we were made to unpack our duffels again and this time stand in line to turn in the 100lbs of military gear we received. This was a painstaking process not only because there were 130 of us, but also because if you didn't turn something in or is the worker marked your form wrong, you are made to pay for the gear! I made it out of there around 1:00pm and took the bus back to the Conus Replacement Center at Ft. benning. I was issued billeting in the barracks (this time with bedding!) and thankfully snagged a bottom bunk.

By this time I was on my 10,000th wind and I couldn't sleep so I took a blissful shower (after 3 days of disgustingness) and played on the internet until it was time for dinner when my friend an dI decided to head to the bowling alley for drinks and dinner. Although the prospect of having a drink after 4.5 months of abstinence was exciting, we ended up practically falling asleep at the bar and thus were back in bed by 9:00pm.

The next morning we were up and packing. There was a briefing at 11:00am where we were given our individual flight itineraries home. We then boarded a coach bus and were shuttled to the Atlanta Airport where my flight left at 4:50pm. Mom met me at O'Hare when my flight arrived at 6:30pm and I back home by 10:00 that evening!

Sorry for the lengthy entry, but since you've traveled this adventure with me I felt I owed it to you to do the ending justice. I know I've said this many times, but thank you for everything for sharing this experience with me. Knowing you were there, even in spirit, made the lonely and dark times so much more bearable. Thank you also for your courage in supporting me. It's not east to stand by as someone you care about puts themselves in danger, but you had the strength to stand by and raise me up.

Until Tikrit....

Redeploying Part II

2008-11-05T18:03:00.000-08:00

I mentioned earlier that we did the medical portion of the redeployment process. This morning, at 0930 (which is almost exactly in the middle of my "night") we completed the second part to this process, essentially a lecture on what you can expect when you redeploy. And again, just as with the almost flippancy of the medical requirements, we breezed through a slide show in less than a half an hour on the following: breakdown of marriages, how to get to know your spouse and kids again, the warning signs of suicide, do not rape, do not drink excessively and make sure you file your taxes. It was the oddest smattering of information on topics which are incredibly profound and seriously affect so many of the servicemembers, but it's done in such a desensitized fashion.

I guess just as I relay news every night of deaths, illnesses, assaults, suicides and disasters with the practiced efficiency of a mortician, so does the military out process it's soldiers with the same mechanized expediency.

2008-11-02T14:40:00.000-08:00

I confess that I am passionately starting to miss the 100 degree weather. It's now raining every few days and it's almost like the terrain here just doesn't know what to do with water. There are giant standing puddles that have this greenish film on them (probably from the oil-rich earth- have I mentioned that oil seeps up from the ground here? It's why we spread gravel on the earth). It's still pleasant during the day, but at night it's getting quite chilly, to the point that I am wearing long pants, sweat shirts and the walk to and from the latrine is not fun.

Here's a classic story for you--last night I got off of work, went to the chow hall with the plan to bring my food back to my room, eat, and then head to the gym. Well, as I am walking from the car to my CHU in the blackness I happen to step into one of those filmy pools of filth and I found myself ankle deep in muck. So balancing my dinner, I haul my caked feet back to my room, peel off my shoes and socks, and in sandals, trudge to the latrine. I then have to thoroughly douse my shoes in hot water to clean them of the crude so now the gym is out because my shoes are drenched.

I walk back to my room, take a hanger and start finagling with the air conditioner to rig my shoes so that they hang and absorb the air pressure. Then, because I am cold and because I think hot air will dry them faster I switch the unit from AC to heat. Well after several seconds there is a pungent burning smell and I casually think it's just from the unit transitioning from AC to heat. 10 seconds later my smoke detector starts screeching it's batteries out!!! So I starting tossing photos off my night stands, mount one on top of the other and balance on them until I can reach the smoke detector and silence it's screaming. So I ended up trapped, shoeless, in my burnt-smelling room listening to my smoke detector chirp every 45 seconds until it tired out. Now that's a rocking Saturday night ;-)

A Few Ponderings...

2008-10-30T16:36:00.000-07:00

~Be careful what you wish for... the rain has now decided that after having been on hiatus for my entire deployment it is now going to soak in as much time with me as possible. Since that first storm I shared with you it has now rained almost every other day, turning the normally baby powder fine dust into a thick muddy peanut butter that clings to you with the adoration of a labrador. My clothes are caked after a single day and my shoes are, safe to say, trashed.

~It's pretty incredible to look up into the sky on a cloudy night and stand mesmerized as brilliant flashes of light splash across the sky. The incredibility comes not in the beauty of the moment but in the terrifying thrill of not knowing if those flashes are an act of nature or man.

~Yesterday (October 28) my teammates and I took part in what's known as Golby, the redeployment medical processing. I found the process disturbingly simple. We went into a small room laid out in a lecture hall formation. We were each handed a palm pilot with a 42 page survey. As we casually breezed through the questions (Have you had thoughts of suicide?Have you seen dead bodies? Do you have recurring nightmares?) I began to wonder...how many soldiers skimmed through the questions just as I was now doing? Answering those questions the way they knew needed to be answered: to ensure that they would successfully return home without branding themselves for follow up evaluations. And how many of them would later pay a price as the result?

The Thunder Rolls

2008-10-25T07:09:00.002-07:00

I have been waiting for this day every since we arrived in this lifeless barren, dusty desert. Anyone of you who know me personally know I am sort of wild about thunderstorms. I love to dance in them, chase them down in my car, when I was little I used to drag blankets and stuffed animals out onto our porch to watch them roll in. At American University I used to climb up to top floor of the parking garage and sit on my car to watch the lightening. For me, there is no greater gift from nature. They are good for the soul.

Well in all my time in Iraq I had hope against hope that I might see one. Often throughout the deployment the wind would pick up and the sky was turn a hesitant purple and I would pray that the storm would get angry enough to burst but it never did.

Last night I could smell it in the air. Normally Iraq has a burnt, chalky smell that gets stuck in your throat. To me, it does not smell like life. No hint of grass or flowers or water, only a charred earthen smell. But as I went to work last night I could smell the rain in the air. The wind was blowing pretty fiercely, tearing through the palm trees and sounding surprisingly like rain I yearned for. When I got to the office I opened the window right behind me and that scent of rain was overpowering. I could practically taste it, that pure, clean smell of moisture. My entire shift I kept sticking my head out the window and inhaling as deep as possible, turning to my co-worker (who was watching me like I had escaped off the reservation) and saying "I just know it's going to rain, I can FEEL it".

Well by the time I left at 2:00am the wind had died down and the sky appeared to be clearing and as with all my past disappointments, I figured the storm just couldn't muster enough to break free.

Boy was I wrong. Around 11:00am this morning I was awoken to huge booms and a rapid pelting sound that had my heart racing. Gun-fire and mortars. In my confusion I lay still trying to decide if I should get dressed and find a bunker or if I was safer where I was. However, as full alertness was registering I realized that something was actually hitting the roof of my CHU. So I opened my curtain...and there it was. An angry gray sky hurtling succulent, plump rain drops over the dessert. The smell was over powering-- of life and health and growth seeping it's way into the barren ground. Beautiful.

Two Lighters

2008-10-23T07:09:00.000-07:00

Today marked the passing of my 24th year. Since I could hardly expect a temporary ceasefire or a day without a single tragedy in the world, I was pretty much banking on a regular day in Baghdad. And yet, knowing it's your birthday, things just seem more special.

To start with, our team leader agreed to close the office for a few hours so that the four of us teammates could all eat together for a change. Since the office is open 24/7 and someone is always sleeping this took some major coordination with the Tikrit Red Cross office covering our queue for life -threats or suicides and Kris, the true grave yard shift waking up in the middle of her "night" to eat with us. We drive out to eat at the BIAP Air Force DFAC (BIAP is Baghdad International Airport) because that DFAC has real silverware, china plates and booths. Can't ask for anymore in Iraq ;-)

After dinner with lots of lovely "chinking" sounds we drove straight back to the office and understandably there were half a dozen guys milling around the deck waiting for us to come back and open up. The ladies took me back to our little office and there they unveiled a substantial sheet cake that Greta had decorated with twizzlers and skittles. Greta and Kris each pulled out a lighter to serve as candles and after a little happy birthday serenade I made my wish on two lighters.

The cake actually had ingredients on it and mercifully it was nut free so for once I got to eat my birthday cake! After we cut ourselves huge pieces we cut more for all the guys in the office and then I put the rest of the cake out in the canteen. Greta and Kris had combined to buy me a beautiful marble chess board made in Iraq. At that point my shift had already begun and as a little present from above it was a relatively quiet night. I forbade anyone from dying on my birthday and for the most part everyone seemed to have received the memo.

After work I met up with another night shift worker from a brigade we work with and he gave me a really sweet gift. It ended up being a beautiful night so we stayed and chatted outside for several hours. I was treated to my own personal firework show (which was really the Blackhawks shooting preemptive flares but still... it was pretty)

And to top off my day I played volley ball with the med unit. It might not have been extravagant, or decorative or filled with wild partying but for Baghdad it was perfect.

The Parallel

2008-10-20T18:33:00.000-07:00

There are times when living on base seems like living in some parallel dimension where I can hear things that happen in the city of Baghdad, and I can see things in Baghdad and I can smell the fires burning in Baghdad...but I never really know what is happening in those streets. I was watching the news while at work this past weekend and every network was broadcasting images of thousands of Iraqis marching through the city waving flags and yelling slogans in protest to the pact that would allow U.S. forces to stay in Iraq for three more years. And it occurred to me that throughout the day on Saturday I may have registered sounds or smoke in the distance but it was not until the imagery on the news alerted me to the demonstration that I became aware the day was anything other than average.

It is astounding to me that something so monumental and historical could have occurred so close to where I reside yet due to obscurity and confines of my employment I will never witness such significant events. You may wonder why I wish to be on the other side of the wall where my life would be in undoubtedly more danger, but to be so close yet blind to the events that will shape the future of this country and the future of international relations make me feel, in some ways, as though I'm not really even here.

Duel in the Pool

2008-10-14T08:31:00.000-07:00

It's no secret that Greta and I are pool rats. Any free time we can acquire together we love to head to the small island pool and pretend we are somewhere off on vacation. That is until the Blackhawks fly over head. If you and I have never met, I swam in college and it's safe to say that the pool is my mothership. However, I rarely have the opportunity to get in some laps because of the testosterone overloaded Rambos who cannonball, chicken fight and splash their way through the water. I'd usually prefer not to draw any further attention to myself so I only break out the cap and goggles when the place is deserted.

Today was a different story.

When we arrived at the pool today there were probably about 25 people there which is decently crowded for this small outdoor facility. There was a military unit roughhousing on deck, probably about 16 guys and then a smattering of twos and threes, air force, army and possible a few civilians. There were four women total among the pool-goers.

We chose a spot next to one of the other women who was there sun bathing by herself and we proceeded to laze about the afternoon. It was clear however, that the arrival of two blondes was too good for this rowdy unit to pass up. The moved their belly flop contest to the ledge of the pool about 5 feet behind where we lounged. We got splashed every time they went in which was clearly the plan. After several splashes I weetly asked them to move which got some obnoxious grins out of them, but after another 5 or 10 min Greta made a sharper remark after being asked to "Give them a smile" and they retreated farther down the deck. They flirtatiously asked the girl next to us if they were bothering her and she coyly replied, "No, I'm one of you guys, I'm military" implying that Greta and my's prissiness was due that we were civilians. Grrrr that's cute honey.

Well their next manly challenge became underwater swimming something that I excel at if I can toot my own horn. The guys were making a huge fuss about making it down the length of the pool and back underwater and of all 16 of them, only one made it. I was very tempted to hop in and show them a thing or two about the prissy Red Cross girls, but I refrained knowing if I participated there would be no peace from them the rest of our stay.

They continued to goof around and about the time Greta and I were dressing to leave they must of sensed our departure as they started up with the underwater racing again, only this time when one failed to make it he would climb out and flop on deck pretending to be dying while his buddies would be grinning and call for the Red Cross to perform CPR. Finally the loudest and biggest of them shouted "Hey Red Cross chicks, did we splash you that time? I did two laps underwater, that's good right? Tell me that was good?!" Wait a second, Red Cross chicks?! I had to take the guy down. I turned to Greta who was already dressed and said "Would you mind?" and Greta turned back to the unit and announced, "Well fellas, Michelle here is going to show you how it's done." Well at that the entire pool stopped what they were doing and flocked to the edge of the pool.

I stripped my shirt back off and tied my hair back tightly. I hopped in the pool and started breathing deeply, trying to slow my heart rate down as much as possible. The secret to underwater swimming is to move slowly and exert as little effort as possible, while keeping your heart rate low, and your mind under control. Unfortunately, my adrenaline was surging and I knew the guys would start razzing me if I didn't start soon, so I prepared as best I could and pushed off. I did the entire swim underwater with my arms above my head in a streamline while kicking dolphin kick. The first lap underwater was fairly easy. As I approached the wall for the second lap I could hear cheering and yelling coming from above the water, when I hit that wall and turned for the third length I knew I should have been able to go four, but I wasn't warmed up enough. As I came up at the third wall all I could hear was silence. As I turned back around to the crowd at the other you could see these macho dudes were stunned. I swam back to the other end, where one of the guys reached out for my hand, shook it and then helped pull me out.

The once ultra-cocky obnoxious soldiers were stumbling over their words, "I- I've never seen anything like that", "How did you do that?", "How long have you been swimming?" It was really pretty hilarious, gone was the arrogant machismo and in its place was sincere disbelief.

I hurridly dressed while the unit continued to stare at me wide-eyed and as Greta and I proceeded on our way, the soldiers had apparently relocated their balls as they went back to roughhousing and wrestling and yelling after us "Wahoo!! Red Cross!!!"

It was one of life's sweet redeeming moments.

A Stork in Baghdad

2008-10-10T12:31:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was a happy day at the Red Cross. So often our message traffic is dominated by tragedy: death, illness, destruction. But yesterday was all about life. On Wednesday we had a young solider come into the office and share with us that his wife would be induced the next day and he was wondering if there was anyway he could "be there". So he went about getting some technical information from the hospital and we at the Red Cross promised to get him set up with a computer and a webcam so he could view the birth.

It was all excitement here as all of us waited for the birth of his first child, a baby girl. I dropped by the office a few hours before my shift and the anxious father to be was pacing up and down the hallways, stepping outside for a nervous smoke and popping back in on the computer every few minutes to see how his wife was holding up. We all followed the progress of her pregnancy through her inducement, contracts and dilations.

When I came back for my shift 2 hours later, the poor solider looked exhausted and my team leader asked me to watch the office while she drove him to grab some dinner. By 9:00pm he walked tiredly into my office, sighed and said, "well, I can't wait any longer, I've got to get back, thanks for everything. It's okay". I was crushed that they guy had waited all day and wouldn't get to see the birth. I wished I could have done something more for him.

But during the beginning of my shift today I received this email:

Hey everybody,

First off, I would like to say just how much I appreciate what you guys did for me in providing me with the tool's to see my daughter's birth and I would like to let you know that at 2:22pm (9:22pm Iraq time) we welcomed Haven Serenity into the world. She is 7 lbs 8 ox and 20 and 1/4 inches long and let me tell you does she have a set of lungs on her. She is the most gorgeous little girl I have ever seen in my life. My wife would also like to extend her thanks as well for what you guys did, it really helped her along. Again I would like to let you know how much I appreciate everything and I will spread the word to every solider in need about just how awesome you guys are.

Thank you, thank you, thank you

Spc James

That's why I wanted this job.

Bump, Set, Shoot

2008-10-03T17:44:00.000-07:00

If you've been following the posts, you'll recall that recently I went to the TMC to treat what I thought was an allergic reaction. Well, the evening after I was released I returned to the clinic with bags of Starbucks to thank the medics who'd spent the morning with me. A day or two after this visit I got a phone call while I was at work from the SGT who was my primary care taker during the reaction. Having had several hours to chat while at the clinic it came up that his unit played volleyball every week and he must have registered my bright-eyed interest because the purpose of his call was to invite me to play with his unit this Friday.

So this morning, with butterflies like a kid on the first day of school, I walked to the volleyball court behind Pad 10 (less than 5 min walk from my CHU) at 6:00am. I should clarify that I absolutely LOVE volleyball though I'm just a decent player. I've never played on a team, but am a huge fan of the sport and this invitation was a thrill.

Naturally, I was the only female there as seems to be the curse of Iraq, and I encountered two types of reactions from the guys, they were either extremely shy and would barely look at me, gently tossing the ball to me underhand or they were overtly flirty and were thrilled to see a woman who wasn't afraid of the ball.

Either way, the morning was a blast. I actually made the 12th player so we played 3 games of 6 on 6 and then we lost a few players and our last game was 4 on 4. The invited me back to play next week which was a relief. Part of me felt like I was intruding since this was their unit playing and not a collection of random individuals. It was one of the first experiences I've had in Iraq where I think I was genuinely just having a great time. The sunshine, the game environment, the jokes and the laughing. It was almost like we could have been on a beach somewhere, on vacation, except for the rat-tat-tat of gun fire heard off in the distance, keeping pace with our game.