We can't stop here... this is bat country...

Well hello there. Welcome back to civilization! Or was it just me that decided to take a sojourn on Tatooine? Just me and the Jawas, eh? Well, I can't say I blame you. The blasted lands aren't for everyone. They're actually probably not for anyone, but here I find myself.

As you may have guessed I've just returned from our several days long field exercise and after a relatively amazing meal at the DFAC (dining facility - that's Army for chow hall, which is Navy for cafeteria, which is people for your food is about to suck) and a truly glorious shower I'm ready to share the latest and greatest from Sand Island.

For starters, the Attack of the Show's Pros vs. GI Joes event at the USO turned out to be a huge bust. I stayed up way later than I should have for the sole purpose of appearing on TV to assure Olivia Munn that she need not worry about me falling for a burqa-clad temptress out here in the desert. I'd have liked to have played in the tournament to go head to head on the show with her, but the platform was the new Call of Duty game and I haven't had much opportunity to play it so I'd have been smoked by some lance corporal on my way up for sure. Regardless, there weren't a lot of people around and I had a seat front and center with my sign for Olivia ready to go when the generators promptly dropped dead about 15 minutes before showtime. As AOTS is a live show, they promptly lost it on the other end and all hell broke loose. The laptop running the feed stayed up on it's batteries so we could see into the studio but there was no way to get the power back up in time to do the show. Don't know how the show went - I shuffled back to my tent in abject misery. Hopefully Olivia isn't losing any sleep over the ordeal. God bless the USO for everything they do and everyone at AOTS for showing the troops a little love. Hopefully the lights stay on next time.



My window to the world. And former employer. And former enabler. (Yes, I have broken my massive coffee addiction. I just hang out here for the internet..... really....)


When we tire of real war, we make fake plastic war. I eventually lost a climactic rock-paper-scissors showdown when attention deficits came to a head. The world was mine and it slipped right through my paper shaped fingers.


It was THIS close to being legit.


If you happen to run across this little cat kicking around the street looking all pouty-faced, please let her know we're still cool.

Now that we're caught up - Swine Flu? Really? If we're going to attach an animal to make it scary, shouldn't we pick a scary animal? Two flu's in a row, both animals suck and don't scare me. Rabid Polar Bear on Meth with Chainsaw Face Flu. I'd get that shot. Swine Flu just makes me miss SARS.

Immediately following the evening of my discontent we departed for a few days of fun in the sun on the fabulous Udairi Range in northern Kuwait. The range is massive and a wide variety of training exercises are conducted out here. As excited as I was to get out and train, my arrival on the range was bittersweet to say the least - a friend of mine lost his life out here a few years ago and I had a hard time not focusing on the negatives. Combined with the knowledge that we were situated just a few miles from the southern border of Iraq, it made for a serious exercise.

We all piled into the Flintstone house looking structures you'll see below which served as our classroom, home, and everything else you need a building for. A/C was the sole ammenity - no water, which means no heads (Navy for bathroom), no showers, no cooking. Night one consisted of packing out all of our water and MRE's and stacking our gear outside. I thought my days of 0300 wake-ups were behind me, and I thought wrong. Day two began with eating a dinner MRE for breakfast, which is unpleasant. Now I have to temper that statement a little bit.... just a little . The MRE's here are more legit than those we had in the US. These come with a chemical heater that springs to life with a little water and turns room temperature dog food in a bag into warm dog food in a bag. This is a positive development. I have learned to avoid some of the more atrocious bag bombs and developed a bit of a taste for a few of these God-awful science fair projects gone awry. My favorites, in order of preference, are:

1. Beef Ravioli

2. Cheese Tortellini

3. Cajun Beans w/ Rice

4. Vegetable Manicotti

I hear there are other good ones but quite frankly I'm terrified to investigate. I only touch veggie burgers if I need to search below them. I hope the guy that invented the veggie burger MRE trips on something today.

The training here was vastly superior to that which we received at FT Jackson. Started the day with some close-quarters marksmanship training that was essentially a repeat of some the reflexive fire drills at FT Jackson, but the instructors here are private contractors and seem to be motivated by the fact that they can be fired if they suck. Funny how that works out.

The rest of our time on the range was spent preparing for a massive final convoy drill. We broke into 5 groups of 30 or so to set up our separate convoys. Allegedly the courses were set up to mimic the environments each group will be headed into, i.e. the Afghan people should have had a different experience than the Iraq folks, but I hear the obstacles were essentially the same. We spent a great deal of time going over the intel reports supplied and there was plenty of material to study - from individual pdeople and vehicles we were to be on the lookout for to a variety of villages and traffic obstacles we had to patrol through, all under the watchful eyes of approximately 300 local national participants, some of whom were tasked with killing us. I drew gunner in the lead vehicle yet again, which basically guaranteed I'd be getting some in short order.

A sand storm the first evening brought all preparation and outside activity to a halt. It's amazing how quickly those things pop up. This place can be surprisingly beautiful but it turns on you in an instant. Unfortunately the storm prevented the instructors from issuing our ammunition that night, which lead our convoy leadership to make the decision that we would go forward without ammo. I do not believe they asked any of the gunners for input on this decision. When standing on top of a truck with half of one's body completely exposed, it's a scary proposition to be asked to aim an unloaded weapon downrange and say "bang," even if the bad guys are just playing terrorist. It was bad enough that they didn't give us any big guns and we had to field M16's up top - doing so without ammo felt like being neutered. Regardless, it was cool to get my first look at the up-armored HMMWV's we'll see in-country. They're made by a variety of manufacturers so there are a few variants bouncing around out here. My truck had a decidedly inferior turret compared to some of those in our chock that had windows and all sorts of high speed gear to keep the gunner safe and in the fight. I still did my thing, but I definitely experienced some mild gear envy. We jumped off-road after a dry run of some of the convoy areas on day two and even with all that extra baggage the HMMWV is an impressive vehicle. I can only imagine how much ass a thin-skin kicks in the sand. I have a friend who helps develop vehicles for a very specialized community in the Navy - hopefully I'll be able to take him up on his offer to head out to the desert and test them out one of these days.

Convoy day began at, you guessed it, 0300 with another breakfast composed of fabricated and formed BS being shoveled into my mouth at a slightly increased temperature, followed by doing the scorpion shake on all of my gear and somewhat hesitantly strapping it on in the dark. Luckily no critters (that I know of [no camel spiders BTW. Bummer. The quest rolls on.]) had weathered the storm in my half-buried IBA and we were underway relatively quickly.

I won't go into the tactical details of the operation, but suffice it to say it was a long day. The route was approximately 15 kilometers through several small villages and a full scale town, complete with bridges, overpasses, traffic circles, etc. There were a lot of vehicles on the road with us, some of which had bad intentions, and as previously stated a ton of locals acting as civilians/bad guys. Lead vehicle is a very hard duty to pull, and truck 1 gunner is the most exposed and responsible for securing the most threatening sector. I had my eyes opened yet again. No civilian kills despite the circumstances, which was a plus. I spotted and engaged a sniper from a safe distance, which was a plus. I missed the detonation cord running out of the window next to him, which ran across the road under our truck and connected to a 155mm artilery shell in the berm next to us, which his lady friend blew up, removing my arm. That was bad. There is A LOT going on. It's not enough to find one threat and stay on it - there are just too many areas of exposure. I don't know what I could do differently - I correctly identified a hostile shooter and shot at him, but I missed something right next to him. I think sometimes you just get blown up. Nice.

My shining moment came during the final obstacle of the day. As we approached a village we spotted a large crowd with several IP (Iraqi Police) vehicles and dismounts milling about on the right side of a two-way divided street. We received word from HQ that a coalition convoy had allegedly rolled through about 20 minutes prior and shot the place up, causing understandable distress. We approached the crowd from the opposite side of the road thanks to our TC's (truck commander) good call to jump a berm and put a concrete divider between us and the natives. We dismounted our back PAX (passengers) and they contacted the IP's, who explained that they had several dead civilians across the road and wanted us to send some scouts to check them out. During the interaction the crowd attempted to get close to our dismounts and the IP's. I escalated force appropriately and cleared the area with hand signals and some good old fashioned ass-chewing. Most of the locals cleared out except for one shady dude who kept trying to edge around the divider to our right despite my copious yelling. Having lost an arm earlier in the day I wasn't feeling very sociable, so I trained my weapon on him and let him know he was about to to be perforated. He sulked off to the other side of the street looking a little disappointed, never to be seen again. We found out after the fact that he is a key player in the scenario who is tasked with planting a magnetic bomb on our vehicles and according to the instructor he's good at his job and usually gets it done. He chose not to commit suicide by Mike today and I hope we all learned a valuable lesson. A few minutes later, however, one of his neighbors chose strap on a SVIED (suicide vest IED) and run out of her house toward our convoy. I happened to be scanning that side and I lit her up like Christmas morning, followed in short succession by the truck behind me. What was left of her blew up without fanfare in her own front yard, far from her intended target. Two threats locked down and I only had to kill one of them, and she made that decision on her own. Not bad. Now if I can just stay in one piece for an entire convoy...

Transport brief was tonight. My time in Kuwait is dwindling. It's about to get real.



If this JAG thing doesn't work out, Fred thinks I can get a job from Mr. Slate down at the quarry.


It aint all ugly...



... but it's real ugly.


Rock drill... millions of tiny ex-rocks, actually.


Combat seat belt. Boom.


Sleepover/combat patrol intel brief.


We were doing big boy business so I couldn't get a lot of pictures during the action, but I managed to snap this one on the sly.


I am your lawyer.


I was here.