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!

Lovely Camp Buerhing, Kuwait

Hey everyone, sorry it has been a while. I'm here in Baghdad now but wanted to catch you up on my adventures thus far. Going to skip Georgia and get to the really exciting stuff. What life was like at exciting Camp Buerhing, Kuwait. I'll start at the end and then work my way through it. Everywhere you go on base the buildings are protected by what are called "Jersey Barriers". They are like giant highway dividers, and of course everywhere soldiers go they like to leave their mark. These are 1/82 cavs markings.

Had to be fair and enclude everyone. Here is for the ATC's at work.
This one is for the task force in whole. If you look at each of the small flags on the side, they represent our different units attached. This includes one unit if from Nebraska.

Go Ducks!

A bunch of the following pictures are of the base and what it looks like. Life here was pretty routine. We called it "Ground Hogs Day" Nothing much changes from day to day, just keep spinning on the wheel. It is not a bad life but it gets old quickly. So where to start the tour?

How about in our living quarters. Be it ever so humble, theres no place like home. Yes, this was my living space. These are huge tents as you will see and hold 75 soldiers. I can attest to that. On the recuriting poster it never said anything about privacy. They were air conditioned and for that we are very thankful. It would have been bad if not for the fact that we were only there for about 2 weeks. My rack is the one on the right with some clothes hanging up.

I did have good room mates though. Pictured below is Will. He is the MSC officer for the platoon. He handles all of the admin stuff, thank goodness. He is good at it and deserves a pat on the back for the work he does. Other room mates were a little more strange and you had to watch them all the time or your stuff would disapear.

Don't worry Captain is ok, just a little bit of counseling and he'll be fine. This is john, he was on the other side. He works as the squadron S1, which means he takes care of all the personnel issues such as pay and promotions. I try to stay on John's good side.

Going clockwise: The back door to our aid station, USO, movie theater. Spent a lot of time in the first and not enough in the other two.

This is the inside of the USO, it was pretty nice. You could get a free 20 minute phone call. Watch a movie or TV. Use the internet or play video games. They also had a book reading station where they would video you reading to your kids, or just talking and mail the DVD and book home for you. It was wonderful to do so. I so much hope that other people get a chance to do it. Caitlin and Luke I hope you enjoy your book.

The next couple of pics show some of the inside of our clinic. Oregon shared the place with a unit out of Florida. Waiting area shown below, and below that is our trauma room. Pretty much just like the one at St. charles. Yea, right.

This was the back side of the post chapel. Never made it inside, clinic was always during morning service and too far to walk in the evening. Would have been more interested had Shane be teaching. I'll make sure to get there while in Baghdad. Notice the tub, it is the for baptisims.

Can't forget the defac. You go in there 3 times a day to kill some time and stay out of the sand storm or you tent. Food was pretty good and there is Baskin Robins ice cream for lunch and dinner.

Life deployed is very strange in some aspect. You go along doing your job, fixing soldiers so that they can defend our freedoms and return home to there families and then......

You see a Starbucks behind hesco's.

Oh by the way KFC and Baskin Robins are just across the street.

On that thought I'll leave you with a wonderful sunset during a sand storm. It is about 7pm.

Take care and I'll write again soon. Next installment "Lost in Kuwait city"

Kuwait

I'm here. It's a little weird and a little like being on another planet. Outside is very hazy, hot and bright. You can't see more than a mile away it seems because of all the sand in the air. But, you go inside one of the many buildings and you are blasted with air conditioning, TV's, more food than you can eat and almost the atmosphere of being at a resort. I'm in the USO right now with the bank of computers, playstations and movies playing all around me, and it's crowded. There's a band playing next door in just a few minutes.
There is always a brown haze to the sky from the sand storms. We got here just after they had a weeks worth. Still trying to catch up on sleep and get into a routine. Getting our final training before we move on to our area of operation. My guys start showing up tomorrow. It will be great to see them and get ready to go.
Just saw the picture of Chris and the kids from the 4th and it reinforces why I'm here, to protect my family and country. I miss them so! Still don't have my computer on the net, so no pics yet but soon, been taking some from the base and will continue to do so.

Soon long for now, I'll write soon
mike

Georgia

Don't have my own computer up on the net so no pic's yet. Got to Ft. Benning yesterday, it's the south and it's hot and sticky. It will only be for a week or so, then the dry heat. I'll see if I can get some good pic's before I leave and keep updating you. Thanks for following!
mike

This is the beginning of a very long journey. Over the next year I will be going to Iraq. Things are still up in the air as to when exactly. We have begun our training by spending a month in CA. I did most of the training in January 09, so this trip was primarly to perform my job as a PA. Below are some of the pictures of that training.

In many of the pictures you will find a special little friend

named Captain. He was given to me by my kids to take with

me and watch over me. In these first pictures it is pretty clear

where Captain is, but there will be times that

he is more hidden as well.

Here he is on our first day at Camp Roberts, CA, resting in our lovely WWII barracks before we decided to change the room around. He said that it didn't work for him.

One of the many classes that we had to attend was how to disassemble the M9 pistol 9mm. SGT Barnes gave a very good class and we all had hands on training. This was what the barracks looked like, if you weren't lucky enough to have your own room.

This is my buddy Will. The first day out on the M4 range, we were zeroing our weapons. He did much better than me and came off the range after only 9 rounds. The target is suppose to represent a target at 300m and he nailed it. Took me a little longer to get.

What the over all area of the zeroing range looked like.

CLS class. Combat Lifesaver Course. This course is designed to teach non medical soldiers some basic medical skills including sticking an IV.

This is the IV portion of the class. You buddy up with 2 other soldiers who you hope have steady hands and a strong stomach and then you get to stick needles in their arm and pray they can do the same for you. It helps out the line medics a lot during emergency situations. They can then direct medical care for more than one soldier at a time. The best medicine that a CLS can supply is to kill the enemy so that none of his buddies get hurt!

I hope the Chaplin's son is saying a prayer as he is about to get stuck. By the way they both did a good job!

After all that good training Captain was just a little too tired and needed to be perked up a little - so he had his tank topped off!

This is the main lobby of the TMC (Troop Medical Center) at Camp Roberts. This is where I spent most of my days from 0600 to 1600 (6am to 4pm for the rest of you). We would see anywhere from 50 to 100 patients a day between me and the Dr.

This is the BUB our nightly meeting to make sure everything is going well. It includes all the commanders, staff and special staff (that's me, I'm special!) We talk about what has happened each day and what is going to happen over the next 72 hrs. Pretty informative, but can be long too.

This is the SCO (Squadron Commander). GO CAV!

(where is Captain??)

This is my room again after I changed it to work around the one plug in the room, behind the desk.

On our first leg of the journey back to Oregon - luckily Captain can sleep on busses and planes.

Just a brief little picture of my adventure so far. Two days prior to leaving for Georgia I was informed that I could skip the 2 month training and go directly to Iraq without passing go or collecting $200. I get phone calls almost daily from my guys down there, so we can coordinate things for when I join them in Iraq. I don't mind the calls because I get to spend 2 more months with my family!

Thanks for following along and for all the prayers during this journey!