I think my "winter" is about over...

We had our snow in January, and the "Iraqi winter" low temps of 28 degrees a couple of times. It's starting to moderate a bit. Now, the lows are about 40-45 and the highs are about 55 to 60. It's been much drier than normal for the winter months. I'm back in the brigade office now building those AMRs, the actual flight missions that we'll fly. While I was flying with the Company a week or so ago, the temp was up to 65 a couple days in a row. It made us all anxious for spring.

I mentioned it being dry - in January, we should have had at least 12 days of rain but we only had 4. So far in February, we've only had 1. We ended up having a water shortage disaster here. I'm not sure how the whole water system works, but we were running out of it. The water supply is replenished some by rain, but mostly water is diverted from the Tigris river next to our base and into a reservoir, then processed for our use in the showers, base laundry, the DFAC, etc. Our bottled drinking water is processed and bottled right in Baghdad, at Liberty base. There's no shortage there; always lots of H2O that way. The problem was a gate in the Tigris that diverts some of the flow into our reservoir had broke and then shut our supply to nearly zero. The fix was to have the Iraqi engineers repair it, not the U.S. That meant it would take much longer to fix than if we did the job. End result: no showers - period; paper plates and plastic ware in the DFAC; no laundry...man did that suck! So, almost immediately soldiers were almost fighting over the last packages of huggies wipes in the PX. I feared the worst and started hoarding bottled water. Of course, I was grateful it was cool weather and not summer weather. It's amazing, you can get a pretty good bath with a plastic waste basket, washcloth, and bottled water in my room. After about 7 days of this, the restrictions were eased some and we could get one shower every other day (3 minute combat shower) only during certain hours. Laundry started up again, but only 3kg (normally 6kg) every 4 days. So things were looking up. I knew it was good to have Air Force here...they're not used to 'suffering' as much, and I knew the leaders here would find a fix ASAP. We're almost back to normal but the laundry is still trying to catch up. Imagine the loads of laundry with over 27,000 folks here...

When it was raining here, it is the absolute worst mud I have ever seen...it's like cement...it's clay like stuff that doesn't come off of your boots very easily. Most of the base is covered with this 1/2 inch to 3 inch size 'Lake Superior lake shore' gravel. It keeps the dust down, but makes it really tough to walk through...it's about 3 inches deep almost everywhere. Painful walking the first 40 days we were here. We cursed it most of the year, but now in the rain, it's the only way to make it anywhere over the mud. There are a lot of worn, high traffic areas that we have to get through and we are forced to get muddy. I spend about 5 minutes in some deep gravel outside my room trying to clean off my boots...I feel like some guy in a big cat box scracthin' around.

I've met a lot of interesting people here, from many different parts of the world. I'm still amazed at the number of contractors that are here. As much as 1/3 of the base or more is contractors, and that may be conservative. Many of them make great sacrifices to come here just to find a well paying job. A woman at the laundry is from the Philippines, has been here 2 years and has 2 more to go. She worked in the laundry in her country and now she makes 4 times as much working here. The last time she saw her son was when she would still carry him - he was 8. He told her "The next you see me Mom, I will carry you." I'm sure there are many other stories like that all over the base and the whole Iraqi theater.

As far as our missions go we are still chugging along, trying not to look at the calender too much. There are still people shooting at us...we keep flying fast, dodging the majority of it all. Still very grateful for the surge - troops are still finding weapons caches of bad stuff that would have been fired at us. We are gaining ground overall, and we are still working to win the hearts and minds of the people. A few interesting missions: one of them, our Battalion got to fly Angelina Jolie when she was here to discuss with Gen. Patreaus the plight of Iraqi refugees. A couple of guys were able to get their pictures taken with her.

Some other news, it is so good to hear talk about our replacements coming this summer!!!!! Last week there was a small contingent of our Aviation Brigade from St. Paul, and others from NY and Louisiana's Avn Bn's that will replace us. They got a quick run through on how we do the missions, layout of our Bn area, and had meetings in Taji and Baghdad. Our commanders did the same thing in December of 06 before our deployment. Sure feels good to see other units arriving all of the time...lots of shoulder unit patches that I don't recognize. I kind of feel sorry for them, but then I don't - we all had to got through the same thing. I'm just grateful to be where we are now, and still making progress. The insurgents have been busier in this new year, same as they were last year. They must have received a lot of mortars and rockets for Christmas...they've been donating them to us lately. Our attacks on the base were at least 23 (that I was here to see or hear) in January. No significant damage, and a few duds. February appears to be keeping pace. Bad news in Baghdad: the other day, there was an attack with 14 rockets and mortars at once. No word on damage. Thankfully they miss a lot, but it's still a little unnerving. You may have heard about the attack in a Baghdad marketplace a few weeks ago that killed about 100 people? Insurgents had strapped bombs to 2 mentally handicapped women and sent them into the crowd...someone else detonated it from outside.

On a more pleasant note, the little rain we've had this winter has made things start to green up a little. Of course I'm talking about near the Tigris and Euphrates valley's. There is even a little sign of green grass sprouting beneath the Lake Superior gravel in a spot I found over on the east side of the base. Still seeing large flocks of crows and waterfowl sitting in flooded fields.
Dust storms - we've had a couple now...they move in rather quickly and stay for a couple days. This last one, the dust was a lighter reddish color, not sure where it's from. I use dryer sheets on the front of my ac/heat unit, and I had to change them in just 3 days. Normally I can go a week or so before they are black. It makes for rather eerie visibility. The aircraft are all grounded...can't see more than 1/8 mile. No flying for about 2 days. I stand in it, but you don't feel any wind blowing like you would at home in a blizzard or other storm (?). Strange place this is. It is nicely quite though when no one is flying. It's a nice reminder of who's really in charge of weather and things...

I said earlier, we are doing o.k. I won't tell you we're doing great until we are all out of harms way. Yes we are all tired, but excited, counting the days. By the time I write the last one of these, I'll probably be at a 3 ft hover over my chair (I'll try to get a pic). God bless all of you, and please stay safe at home. We can never let our guard down. Thanks so much for the prayers and support. Pray for us to not be complacent and to stay focused these last 5 months. Thanks.