Another View from the Porch

With the Army at Camp Speicher, Iraq 2004

By
Chucky

The birds showed up along with the snakes shortly after winter solstice. The sun is low in the sky now, casting its long shadow. Even the ants are feeling brave. We’ve been busy. Put in a wood floor in the tent in anticipation of the coming rains. It has a pallet foundation with plywood decking. I salted the pallet foundation with mothballs to discourage the critters, and I think it is working with the lone exception of our resident kangaroo rat which has moved in. I think he’s nibbling the moth balls like candy. Some of them eat anything. It must be like living in a warehouse for him under there. His own air-conditioned space to hop around in. He doesn’t seem to be afraid of us at all. Acts like a member of the family. We will have to murder him in short order though. Don’t want a tent full of droppings to breathe in with the dust. I’ll bring back some large mouse traps with me from vacation.

The birds are eating well. Bread and cookies from the messhall each morning. They have taken to spending the majority of their time grab-assin. Birds should be grab-assin. Like kids on summer vacation. It’s a bummer working looking for food all the time. They should be flittin and fartn around. I’m their sugar daddy. They can do that. Just like my kids at home. I sure did when I was a kid and its good to be able to pass it on to everybody/bird I can. I usually drop their nuts and crackers, bread crumbs and all out by the back hoe ditch where the lizard lives. Last week I was out there reading, (my Raytheon ethics manual(yeah, right) when I heard them flitn and chirpin ‘n jumpin up and down. I never put any food over there. I looked over my left shoulder to see what all the commotion was about. Oh. They were raisin’ a fuss for no apparent reason, just a' hoppin and 'chirpin, about 10 of them. Grab-assin birds, I said to myself. Something at the bottom of my vision caught my attention. It was silver with black spots and slithering toward the porch. I jumped up, looking for something to hit it with. He skedaddled under the porch and the birds flitted back to their bread crums. Mission accomplished. They like me because I’m their friend or they were rescuing their golden goose. I prefer the former but suspect the latter.

We’ve enlarged the porch. I did a dope-deal for a brand new tarp that’s twice the size of our old one. With the cooler temps below 100 degrees F it’s nice to sit out and watch the birds flap and watermelons grow. We made a fly trap. Simplest of simple: tub of water. Its like the Roach Motel. They check in for a dip, but they don’t check out. Buzzing around harassing people, lost souls that they are, their little horrible selves gets thirsty. There is their tub of fresh water just for them. They get caught in the surface tension and can’t escape. They eventually drown or die of exhaustion, whatever. The last thing some of them see on their road back to Hell is my big happy face.

Our watermelons are grown from scavenged seeds from the chow hall. We germinate them in an empty water bottle. Wrap the seeds in a bit of tissue one layer thick and place them in a capped water bottle with a few drops of water, put the bottle in the shade and after a week cut the bottle in two and add a little dirt and water if necessary. If you like boiled watermelon seeds then leave the bottle in the sun. Chirp Chirp. There they go again; jumping around trying to steal one anothers chip of cracker. Peck peck. “Yo! Lookit what Herbie’s got. I’m going to chase after Herbie and get his piece. OH. Herrrbiee..” They are hopping around in a horn of plenty, gobbling more food in a day than they have ever seen in their life and they want what Herbie’s got. I thought that was just in my neighborhood, but it looks like animal nature rather than just the human kind from my view from the porch.

We got energetic and re-inventoried our conex. We decided to build shelves to organize our parts. Turns out we were finding parts that weren’t on the inventory. We re-inventoried and organized it all on our new shelves. From now on I’ll do my own inventory when I arrive at a job. We found most of anything we never thought we had and a lot we will probably never need. Whilst we installed the shelves we got the idea to build a door to the tent. Now we’re legit. Got our own door. A door is like your face to the world. It’s what everyone looks at when they pass your abode. No longer do we need to be ashamed of our entry. No more peeking out the tent window and crawling out under the rear flap if we see someone who lives behind a better door passing. Now we have a door to be proud of. We have a fancy door knob and some Hajji carpet trim around our door. Those Yahoo System Operators in the next tent over will be hard pressed to beat that. They’ll try though. I caught one of them sneaking over some materials today.

“Hey. Whatcha got there”

“You’ll see”. Uh huh. Dead giveaway.

Maybe they are up to a coat of paint, maybe hang a light or something. We are going to decorate our walk-up with lights. Lets see em top that. That’s on my list to bring back from vacation. A string of Christmas Lights. Maybe a snowman and some egg nog. If they are satisfactorily submissive I may share some with them. With some nutmeg sprinkled on top. No mistletoe this year though. Most of us been out here too long and I’m way too good looking to risk that.

Got Me a Job

Written in Camp Speicher, Tikrit, Iraq sometime in 2004

I've got a job that pays me more money than I have ever made in my life counting inflation and I don't have to go to work. All I do is sit around. Its like a night watchman's job except I don't have to make any rounds or monitor a tv. I don't have to wear a uniform, I don't have to answer to anyone. I don't have to go to meetings, write reports. I don't have to do anything. Ok. I have to make a conference call once a day. If I miss it nothing is said. Hey! I couldn't get through. It's like I'm someplace all the time, but staying right here. I can mind travel all I want. sometimes I just sit and watch the horizon and think up interesting lies to tell during the conference. No work to concentrate on. Sometimes I fish all day. Other days I go to the beach. I'm reading my book in the middle of a sandy desert and if I were to get up and walk stright ahead I would eventually hit water, somewhere on the other side of Iran. Its a beach. My beach chair is just a bit further back from the tide line than most. To think that I used to do this for nothing: lie on the beach.

All day long I make up things to pass my time. I am studying for a Microsoft Certification. I am reading a lot of books. I do my own clothes rather than send them to the free laundry because it is something to do. I sit out on my porch and swat flies. I play chess once in a while. Its one of those jobs where I'm paid for what I know, not what I do. Paid for what you know? Consulting Physician, Psychanalyst? Theoretical physicist? Me? Its more like being paid for what I don't know. ts a job that no one else wants to do because of where it is. That is the only drawback. I'm a terror fighter in Iraq.

When I previously contracted to the Army I was a Commie fighter; protecting America against the ravenous Commie beast. Now I are keeping the world safe from terrorism.
We are all fighting terror over here. Just by being here I am doing my job. I owe Osama a lot. When I was working for the Army in Vietnam it was the commies that we were saving the world from. That wore kinda thin..and so now it is the terrorists. They are everywhere, just like the Commies used to be till their wall fell down and weren't any fun anymore. There is a lot of change to be made in fighting terrorism.

That is the bottom line. How much money can we make before the American People get sick of it. Ok. We have to sacrafice a few GIs, just like in Vietnam, but here it is only a few hundred rather than 60,000 killed by the enemy and another 60k that killed themselves after they grew up and realized the crimes they had comitted. Names that aren't on the Wall, but should be. The Army has toned down its operations over here recently. There is a Presidential Election coming up and this war is growing unpopular already. No operations above battalion level. Anything done at battalion level doesn't attract the attention of the national news. Brigade level stuff gets Rather's et.al attention. They need to stay below his and his ilks radar till after the election. They are still hunting Saddam. I think they have him hid out. If they find him there won't be a lot of excuse for us remaining here. Whooaa!Nickel Dripper.

One of the biggest nickel catchers here is Brown and Root. I think Lady Bird has ties with that company. Lyndon made sure he got a piece of the action by starting up the company. At least he had something to do with it.All the usual suspects are here with some name changes to protect the guilty. Dynelectron became DynCorps after the bad taste their participation in Vietnam left in everyone's mouth. Bush and Cheny and Conde are oil people and you had better believe they are getting their share. "Hey!" They said amongst themselves. "Lets get the ball rolling against Saddam because he's burning up our resources. We can save the worlds oil supply and make ourselves a barrel of bucks for our trouble. Who can we get to run for Pres? Hey Dwba. Who can we get to run for President?" Halliburton (which owns B & R now by the way) used to be owned by Cheny and they get contracts here without even having to bid.

So this is my last op to make any real money, thanks to Osama and Dwba,OH! and Ronnie Regan who made this possible by running the USSR broke. I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. If it weren't me it would be someone else hauling in the bucks. I'll stay here with my smiling mouth shut till they kick me out. Or for as long as I can stand it. Meantime..plink....plink, kach'ing.

Its hot here. I mean the temp tips 57C in August. The wind hits you like a knife. There is the dust. Lots of it. What the wind doesn't kick up the Army vehicles blow at you. Then there is always the odd dusting by a helicopter. You are dusty before you get back from the showers. Nothing to do here except study and read. No where to go. No recreation. Just sit and listen to the nickels drip. Drip, plink, drip plink. Into that deep hollow bank account. Like dropping a stone into a dark well and listening for it to hit the water. The longer I'm here the shorter that wait becomes. I wonder how much it is going to take to fill the well. Where there is nothing but a visible splash the nickel makes as it hits the surface.

Sometimes we have a/c. Right now the generator is down again. Its easily over 100 deg F. in the tent and no wind blowing. Its the middle of October. Things always get better here though because they can't get any worse. Our first campsite was Udahri in Kuwait. Hot, dusty, no a/c, portajohns full up to the brim and a line waiting to get into them. Absolute misery. Then we moved across the border to Tikrit. We are building shantys now and getting some semblance of civilization. We have movies, music and a little privacy. Still, I wouldn't be here except for the dripping nickels. This place is like Killeen, Tx in that there aren't many jet setters electing to retire here.

Haven't found any way to make extra money here yet. There might have been before all the fanatics we let go started mortaring and shooting us. Now its hard to get into town and do any business. Ears open though.

"Fact is the Cowboys is good for business" as Fred the Sheriff said in Tombstone. An evil bunch of shits but good for business. One of them killed him eventually. Dance with the Devil.