JVB Hotel on Camp Victory

Last week my friend, John, and I went on a tour of the JVB hotel on Camp Victory. One of the troops from Oregon runs this very special hotel. It caters to very special guests. The Vice president, chief of staff and others, just to name a few.

Fellow soldier Brian gave us the behind the scenes tour,

which was very impressive.

Behind these impressive front doors, which John helped relate their size, is a very nice building. I expected it to be dripping with gold and so over the top that I would think it ugly.

It was nice to see that I was wrong.

It is a lesson in craftmanship and cutting corners.

This is the inside of that very impressive door and shows both ends of the spectrum. The door is completely hand carved with some very impressive details. It is hard to show them all with a point and shoot camera. At the top of the doors in the circles are Saddam Hussein's initials. Above the door in what looks like stained glass are just painted images on the glass.
This window is on the other side of the lobby

and the designs are all cut from metal.

This light is atop of the lobby. The designs are very well done. They started with wood carvings, then plaster layed over them. While still wet they painted the designs. This way the paint was taken up by the plaster and the colors go all the way through the material. The 8 sided stars are the symbols of Saddam's party symbol. The light on the other hand is plastic. None of the chandlers in the place are made of crystal. They are all made of plastic and glass.

The next 3 pictures show some more of the great carvings that can be found here.

I am very impressed by the workmanship.

Below are the chairs that Saddam and Dan Rather

sat in for Saddam's last interview to the world.

I wonder how it would feel to sit in them?

Pretty good! Strange sense of history.

They were actually sized well for me and John.

Not anything I would have in my house or my CHU though.

This is the view looking the other direction from the chairs.

A few nights ago we were hitting golf balls

from the deck into the lake.

This came from one of Saddam's childhood friends. The story is that he would give Saddam presents, but that they would also contain information about girls he would give him as well. According to some of the terps the bottom of this vase has the name, address and phone number of one of those girls.

Helps remind us of the animal he was.

A little kitchenette off the last room.

Used now by movie stars and congressmen.

Just a little plain area to eat. The table is amazing!!

This is another dining room or conference room in the hotel.

We had our first meeting here for the hand off with Texas.

Here is the dinning hall for our guys. Not bad.

They eat the same food,

for the most part that we do at our chow hall,

but it sure looks a lot better here!

The following 3 paintings are from EPW's that

are kept on another part of the complex.

They were given the chance to develop

hobbies to focus there energy and rehab

from their former choices in life.

Very simple to me, but seem to have a feeling of peace

Haven't seen anything that looks like this here yet.

What is a hotel without rooms? Now this is a room!

This is the room that only a selected few get.

The president, vice president, army chief of staff

and a few others. It is about 25x25 feet.

If you only have 1 star on your shoulder you only get this room.

Pretty simple and almost feels small. It is a round room and

doesn't even have its own bathroom. The other amenities are a

TV and fridge. That's it. If you don't have a star

you get a room with bunk beds that sleeps about 14. RHIP!

I do love the woodwork though.

All of this is nice and looks pretty on the inside,

but outside we are still at war.

Two days ago Oregon TF Stetson lost 2 soldiers,

a child's father and a parent lost a son, to a road side bomb.

Please remember them in your prayers and

hope that no one else will be

receiving that news while we are here!

It was a day of little sleep and great pain.

I miss you all and look forward to being home again

to spend the rest of my life at peace.

The first month in Iraq

We're here, and don't we look excited! This is the inside of a C-17

just after touchdown at Baghdad International Airport.

One of the first days here my friend and Task Force Chaplin gets

promoted to Captain from the Brigade Commmander. Way to go Shane!

In truth we have been here almost a month now. It has been very busy. Setting up a clinic is a lot harder than just falling into one like I did last time. There are so many procedures to set up and systems to get acess to. We did a lot of work ahead of time, getting SOP's in place for what we could guess would be needed, but doing it for real is more complicated than you could imagine.Our platoon has a lot of good, smart people and that makes things go much easier. Everyone is giving input and pitching in to get things going in the right direction. I'm meeting a lot of them for the first time, since I skipped the Georgia training. Will has done a great job organizing and working on the soldiers behalf. He is a great asset to the platoon!As you can imagine, it's HOT! But, it's a dry heat! There really is a difference. In Texas or Georgia you would sweat and it would stay with you all day. Here or back in Bend you still sweat, but your shirt is dry in 20 minutes. Doesn't make you smell any better at the end of a long hard day,

but you don't have that sticky feeling.

There have been some great sandstorms since we got here. Below is a picture taken at 1500. There is no filter and this was taken standing outside our clinic. The color is amazing.

There aren't any lights visible, but when you see a floresent light, it looks blue.

It is a strange other world feeling.

There is some down time here as we get into a battle rhythm. I get to workout 6 days a week. Hit the gym Mon, Wed & Fri. Go for runs on Tues and Thurs. Below is my reward for doing the running. Got this from a guy that races for Cannondale. It will be Chris' when I get home, but for now it is my Saturday morning PT. Most of the time, if I'm going somewhere under a 1/2 mile, I use shoe rubber. The platoon has an ambulance for longer trips, like going to our 2nd sickcall site. I am going to ride to our other site come fall when the temp drops below 100 in the AM.

Riding gives a sense of freedom. And not being stuck in a heavy truck or grossly sweating on a short walk has it's advantage. I see more and enjoy whats around me to the fullest. Although I must admit there isn't much color here. Even the palm trees are dust covered brown right now. There are little plants outside our aid station that I go out on a regular basis and empty expired IV solution on to clean them up and help them survive.

Even a little green is a wonderful sight!

I live in the 300 block of pad 4. It is a lovely block, (dripping sarcasim.) Everything in the army has a reason for itself. To be honest I don't understand the reason about half the time, but in this case I do. The large concrete structures are called T-wall or Jersey barriers. They are like highway dividers on steroids. They place them around where we live to protect us from a blast, such as motars or rockets. If it does hit in the road everyone in the CHU's should be safe from the blast. If it hits a CHU, only that CHU should be damaged. A CHU is a (Combat Housing Unit) They are kind of like FEMA trailers.
The T-walls surround every building by the way.

Below is the inside of my CHU. I am very lucky, I was rooming with our CO and CO's should have their own room. So I had to move out into this room. No one lived here, so I got a room to myself too. I have managed to fill it up by myself though. When a unit leaves they sell everything they have aquired since getting here and on the last day it becomes a free for all. The room came with 2 beds, 2 wall lockers and 2 night stands. This is suppose to sleep 2. Not rocket science. The room is about 10x10 just to give you an idea. By the way the comforter came with my linens, I didn't bring it. It does brighten up the room though, so I will keep it until it needs washing and then we will see what I get next. I've seen barbie, and Iron man comforters so far. Not exactly army issue.
The next 4 pics give you a panarama of my room. It is not quite the room Chris and I built, but it is where I hang my hat (literally) for the next 8-10 months.


The bed stand allows me extra storage space. It is high enough that I almost have to pole vault into it though. It is like having a bunk bed without someone sleeping below me.

Been working on my putting with the putter my father in law gave me before leaving.

With the garage sale and free for all I was able to outfit my room for 80.00. Should I send it into one of the HGTV shows like "Design On A Dime"? It doesn't have everything though. Not sure if you noticed, no bathroom. That's halfway down the block. Interestingly, in one trailer they have urinals and showers. You have to go to a second trailer that has urinals and sit down toilets. That one is on the other side of the block. I enjoy old world type resorts, but this is a little odd.

Well that's about all for the week. I will try to be better about keeping in contact and letting you know what is going on. All your messages and prayer are felt, thank you!!!!!

Everyone who reads the paper should know by now that a brave Oregon soldier was seriously hurt last week, can't tell you more. Please pray for him and his family.

In Band of Brothers one of the soldiers was asked by his grandson "were you a hero in the war?" To that he replyed, "no but I was in a company of heros"

These guys lay it on the line for you and your freedom!

These guys do it because they care.

I miss you all!

Losing myself (and others) in Kuwait

It was quite a day. Fun in some strange way but unnerving in others. During my stay in Kuwait I was allowed to go off base twice, both for medical reasons. It seems the only way to get medical supplies is to personally hand deliver your request to the class VIII people (medical supply). In this wondrous day of computers, e-mail, faxes and phones, the personal touch is still needed by some. This little story is a recount of my second trip to AJ (can't remember the whole name). I was in charge of our little group - tell you why in a minute.

Captain Getting Some Rays On The Start Of A Very Long Trip

It all started very smoothly one sunny day. We were suppose to leave the day before but couldn't get all the papers, driver and truck until late in the day so we waited. The next day we got started about 0900, good start. As you can see from above there isn't much to see outside of base. This was the first thing for about 20 miles. I got to be in charge of this little outting because the driver had never been off base and my back seat, Scott, had slept most of the way the last time we went. Our strip map only included about half the route and didn't have names, only grid coordinates of the the different areas. Kuwait city has a lot of roads and is looped kind of like San Antonio. But still, everything seemed to be ok. After all we are in a friendly country, right. Well then why do we drive off base in uniform and each with a M4 and magazine of ammo?

The desert is big out here and not like central Oregon's high desert. It's like movie deserts. And it went on

and on

and on

for about an hour. The first sign that you are getting close to something is all the power lines. It's like being right next to Bonneville dam, without the dam. It seems to just be a collection of power plant lines that converge on Kuwait city.

As you draw closer to Kuwait city you begin to see other things. The next is water towers. And then of course you begin to see mosques. Some of which are very interesting in there placement.

If you look closely at this next picture you will see a mosque and Burger King right next to each other. In fact this was repeated on both sides of the highway just across from each other. In total we saw something like 10 Burger Kings in and around Kuwait city.

The second one is a close up of the mosque from the parking lot of the Burger King.

Advertising is somthing else a little bit different. If you look below you can see some writing on the overpass listing out someone's business. There were very few billboards and what we saw were mostly for cell phones or internet service. The ones on the overpass were more interesting. Sometimes over to the left there would be a little message too. There were things like: Buckle Up, Speeding Kills, Don't put your kids in the front seat. Most of the time these were written in English with Arbic subtitles.

These were some of the first houses we got close to. They were building all over the place on this edge of town. The other side of the highway was just desert or old military base looking structures. The main road to our destination was called loop 7. Later on our miss adventure we found out that this is the outer most loop and that there are really 7 loops. Trust me, we passed them all!

Almost forgot about this picture. It is interesting in that the sign is both in English and Arabic. This is very common, we found out, on the outskirts of town. When you are lost downtown the signs are only in Arabic!

As I stated, it was a wonderful sunny day. We had driven through the desert to come to Kuwait city. Shoot, the tank was almost on empty. They didn't fill it up the night before and we were in such a hurry to get going that we didn't check it. Lucky they had me along for the ride! I remembered that the highway had lots of gas stations. Shouldn't be too tough. Pull in, swipe your card and get some gas. Wrong! No card reader and no english speaking attendant. We only got 20L,(5 gals). Just enough to make it back to base. Didn't know the exchange rate. Didn't have any local money. The attendant didn't want us talking to the cashier, so we bartered for the gas. At first I had a 20.00 showing and that made him very happy, but I said no. We quickly found a 10.00, but I was looking for a 5.00 to give him. None could be found, so we settled on the ten, figuring that 2.00 per gallon was not too bad. We got in and found out that our passenger had a calculator. After figuring what the exchange rate was, we found out that we should of paid only 3.75 for what we got. The whole thing was very ackward and we felt somewhat cheated but what do you do? They knew we weren't from around there. The uniforms gave that away.

We were on the road again, with gas!

At one of the turns to a different highway we saw a police station (above), what a relief. Well maybe not.

We made it to AJ without any other problems, actually got there on the first try. We dropped off the person that was suppose to stay there for a few days and did the rest of our business and began the 2 hour drive back to our base. Hard parts over, everyone stayed awake and saw how we got there.

Well it isn't that easy. Exits are not marked very well and one thing lead to another and we were lost. This part of the story is kind of exciting or scary, depending on how you want to remember it. Exciting part was seeing a foreign courntry's capital and some of the different cultures around the world. Scary is not being able to speak the lanuage and knowing that there are people in this country that hate you and your country and would love to make an example out of you. Could that be why we all carried M4's with ammo? The buildings were an interesting mix of modern and what I would call middle eastern. There is a lot of building going on. I don't think OSHA exsist though. Some of the scaffling was made out of tree branches, the highest we saw was 4 stories high.

Mosque in down town. No english signs here didn't hang out very long. People looked at us a little funny in our uniforms.

Nice sports statium off one of the loops. Saw the national shooting club grounds too. Very nice, but it does not look like anyone ever uses them.
Later on a great site for sore eyes. A US MRAP. They were out doing drivers training. We saw this one on the way back to base. We missed another turn off and almost headed to Jordan. We decided to follow this guy for a while after that.

On a Kuwait Air Force base. This was one of the best sunsets of our time there.

Our base from a distance. It doesn't look like much, but it sure was good to be back.

Thanks for all the notes people have been sending to the blog. I enjoy each and everyone of them. If you have specific questions I will try to answer them. Your post do not leave an E-mail address for me to send things back to though. I'm not ignoring you. Please put your E-mail address in the note for a personal e-mail back, thanks.

In Iraq now and will try to be more proactive about doing the blog. Things have been very busy. Setting up a clinic from almost scratch has been a lot harder than it was just walking into one like in Afghanistan. I am already looking forward to being back home next spring. I miss you all!