Sunday, December 28, 2008
Umm Qasr at last!
Umm Qasr 12262008
“How’d I get here” has to be my perpetual refrain. Right now, it’s 21:30 and I’m in an unusual place, one more page in my saga of post-divorce Sturm und Drang. Where am I, you might ask? Good question, that. I’m in my new hooch in the FOB Umm Qasr North.
Ah, but that might not seem so unusual unless you note the details associated with this mild-mannered statement. My hooch is a pre-fabricated steel container that has a single room, about 10 feet by 12 feet. In this area I have a medium top-and-bottom white refrigerator with two beds, two small chairs, a desk, a nightstand and a television that may or may not work. May or may not, you continue to ask in your perspicacious manner? Yes. Though the other hooches have power, mine does not. Apparently the electricity which the other half-dozen hooches have mine does not. So I semi-unpacked by flashlight, made my bed and began this entry with only the light from the laptop.
I flew an English fixed wing from Baghdad’s BIAP to Basrah Air Station. I stayed a few days in a nice hooch in Camp Harper. Tonight I flew from Basrah to Umm Qasr in an English Merlin helicopter. It looked small, not big enough for the 20 or so of us who were coming here. We made three stops letting a couple of Brits on and off at each stop. Several times when we were close to the ground, the pilot set off some flares. Hoo boy, dem flares were very bright! The ramp in back wasn’t closed so our crewman could man his machinegun and the brightness of the flares lit up the inside of the cabin as they left small white-hot squares of burning material behind us. When we got here, Tiny met me and helped me get my gear to the hooch. We walked less distance than I used to walk to take a shower at Gannon.
But I digress- let me outline the various conditions that strike me as unusual. I’m in my own hooch. In the dark. In Umm Qasr North where Brits have run things but where a few Army guys seem to be running the POETT. I got here, in a place I can’t easily get away from sitting in the dark cabin with a bunch of too-young-looking British soldiers, several of whom cheerfully helped me lug my stuff from the staging area to the helicopter and from the helicopter out to where we split up. I’m typing this by the light of my laptop. I brushed my teeth by the light of my flashlight. I ate some very tasty steak and fried chicken with potatoes and delicious onions. A handful of peanut brittle made by my Immigration buddy Johnny’s Thai wife in California and carried in my small brown rucksack whose oilstains from the leaky Marine stallion helicopter in August seem to have gone away.
The lights of Basrah tilted a lot this way and that way as the helicopter pilot left the airfield. No attempt to fly a straight line. We didn’t go very high nor very far, then we came down, dropped a bit of mail and a few Brits, took on a couple more Brits and left. Two more milk-run stops with Iraq’s night blinking through the cabin windows. Once again, I was literally rubbing elbows with people who had weapons and were 1/3 my age, going somewhere I couldn’t see, to do a job I haven’t done and my mind registers only the tilting horizon line composed of Iraq’s lights.
I’m siting in bed listening to the soundtrack of “Xanadu,” entranced by the magic of Gene Kelly and Olivia Newton-John singing about a real-life muse, a movie that came out while I lived overseas but which I watched on VHS when we moved home, back in a time when I was happy with my wife and my family felt complete, unified and cohesive. Now my estranged wife lives with my daughter and my small son; my big son and his girlfriend live in the house I can afford to keep only by working in Iraq.
Yep, life is strange. I feel like a snowflake in a Christmas globe, not sure where I’ll land in relation to the rest of the snowflakes. Less sure who shook my globe, less so of why the someone shook my globe. And to twist the ironic dagger in my mind’s heart, Jeri Southern is crooning to me, “When I give my heart, it will be completely or I’ll never give my heart.” Her 50’s sound is rich, warm, vibrant and talks to me of love and kisses and …. Hope.
Maybe if I outline what my senses are feeling, this will help settle the confusion. I’m seeing my laptop’s screen in the dark room. I’m hearing the soundtrack to “Xanadu” and Jeri Southern love songs. I’m smelling the ammonia that was in the toilet trailer this afternoon in Basrah. I’m feeling my sleeping bag under my legs while my California pillow supports my head. I’m still tasting the chicken that the cookhouse folks kept in an oven for us. I’m not touching anything but the keys of my laptop but I’m remembering what’s touched me recently, things like the kindness of the British Army lads and the contextual sights of flares and skylines and dust and noise.
Seems like my life is a cacophony of never-before and never-again factors- my children, my divorce, my job, my flights in lots of military aircraft, my poor timing in real estate matters, hostility associated with custody, and a strange acceptance of those things I can’t change. Maybe this is what getting old is like. Pity, too, since I might like to be with a woman again, just a few more times. I walked around Camp Harper, just talking with Johnny; I flew next to a Brit in a Merlin; I am in a new place with no idea what I’ll do but strangeness doesn’t seem to have quite the fear-inducing effect it once had.
Time to find my alarm and set it by flashlight for tomorrow’s breakfast with Tiny and a day of wandering around this part of the world, both professionally and emotionally. Fair dinkum life I’ve got these last few moments.
“How’d I get here” has to be my perpetual refrain. Right now, it’s 21:30 and I’m in an unusual place, one more page in my saga of post-divorce Sturm und Drang. Where am I, you might ask? Good question, that. I’m in my new hooch in the FOB Umm Qasr North.
Ah, but that might not seem so unusual unless you note the details associated with this mild-mannered statement. My hooch is a pre-fabricated steel container that has a single room, about 10 feet by 12 feet. In this area I have a medium top-and-bottom white refrigerator with two beds, two small chairs, a desk, a nightstand and a television that may or may not work. May or may not, you continue to ask in your perspicacious manner? Yes. Though the other hooches have power, mine does not. Apparently the electricity which the other half-dozen hooches have mine does not. So I semi-unpacked by flashlight, made my bed and began this entry with only the light from the laptop.
I flew an English fixed wing from Baghdad’s BIAP to Basrah Air Station. I stayed a few days in a nice hooch in Camp Harper. Tonight I flew from Basrah to Umm Qasr in an English Merlin helicopter. It looked small, not big enough for the 20 or so of us who were coming here. We made three stops letting a couple of Brits on and off at each stop. Several times when we were close to the ground, the pilot set off some flares. Hoo boy, dem flares were very bright! The ramp in back wasn’t closed so our crewman could man his machinegun and the brightness of the flares lit up the inside of the cabin as they left small white-hot squares of burning material behind us. When we got here, Tiny met me and helped me get my gear to the hooch. We walked less distance than I used to walk to take a shower at Gannon.
But I digress- let me outline the various conditions that strike me as unusual. I’m in my own hooch. In the dark. In Umm Qasr North where Brits have run things but where a few Army guys seem to be running the POETT. I got here, in a place I can’t easily get away from sitting in the dark cabin with a bunch of too-young-looking British soldiers, several of whom cheerfully helped me lug my stuff from the staging area to the helicopter and from the helicopter out to where we split up. I’m typing this by the light of my laptop. I brushed my teeth by the light of my flashlight. I ate some very tasty steak and fried chicken with potatoes and delicious onions. A handful of peanut brittle made by my Immigration buddy Johnny’s Thai wife in California and carried in my small brown rucksack whose oilstains from the leaky Marine stallion helicopter in August seem to have gone away.
The lights of Basrah tilted a lot this way and that way as the helicopter pilot left the airfield. No attempt to fly a straight line. We didn’t go very high nor very far, then we came down, dropped a bit of mail and a few Brits, took on a couple more Brits and left. Two more milk-run stops with Iraq’s night blinking through the cabin windows. Once again, I was literally rubbing elbows with people who had weapons and were 1/3 my age, going somewhere I couldn’t see, to do a job I haven’t done and my mind registers only the tilting horizon line composed of Iraq’s lights.
I’m siting in bed listening to the soundtrack of “Xanadu,” entranced by the magic of Gene Kelly and Olivia Newton-John singing about a real-life muse, a movie that came out while I lived overseas but which I watched on VHS when we moved home, back in a time when I was happy with my wife and my family felt complete, unified and cohesive. Now my estranged wife lives with my daughter and my small son; my big son and his girlfriend live in the house I can afford to keep only by working in Iraq.
Yep, life is strange. I feel like a snowflake in a Christmas globe, not sure where I’ll land in relation to the rest of the snowflakes. Less sure who shook my globe, less so of why the someone shook my globe. And to twist the ironic dagger in my mind’s heart, Jeri Southern is crooning to me, “When I give my heart, it will be completely or I’ll never give my heart.” Her 50’s sound is rich, warm, vibrant and talks to me of love and kisses and …. Hope.
Maybe if I outline what my senses are feeling, this will help settle the confusion. I’m seeing my laptop’s screen in the dark room. I’m hearing the soundtrack to “Xanadu” and Jeri Southern love songs. I’m smelling the ammonia that was in the toilet trailer this afternoon in Basrah. I’m feeling my sleeping bag under my legs while my California pillow supports my head. I’m still tasting the chicken that the cookhouse folks kept in an oven for us. I’m not touching anything but the keys of my laptop but I’m remembering what’s touched me recently, things like the kindness of the British Army lads and the contextual sights of flares and skylines and dust and noise.
Seems like my life is a cacophony of never-before and never-again factors- my children, my divorce, my job, my flights in lots of military aircraft, my poor timing in real estate matters, hostility associated with custody, and a strange acceptance of those things I can’t change. Maybe this is what getting old is like. Pity, too, since I might like to be with a woman again, just a few more times. I walked around Camp Harper, just talking with Johnny; I flew next to a Brit in a Merlin; I am in a new place with no idea what I’ll do but strangeness doesn’t seem to have quite the fear-inducing effect it once had.
Time to find my alarm and set it by flashlight for tomorrow’s breakfast with Tiny and a day of wandering around this part of the world, both professionally and emotionally. Fair dinkum life I’ve got these last few moments.
# posted by rich @ 7:54 AM 
