Little Engine that Could....kind of?!

Our mission here is to help transition the Iraqi Police, which was created three years ago, from a start-up pool of untrained and mostly uneducated individuals into an independent and self-sustaining force capable of conducting stability and security operations.  Advising and providing training is the largest portion of the mission, but to get the stations we put a few miles on our beloved Humvees and newly arrived MRAPs.  The picture above is from a few months ago while we were muhalla (Iraqi neighborhood) diving and shows one of my squad's trucks.  These trucks are special, so to speak.

When the war started, the Humvee was a thin-skinned, unprotected truck capable of conducting multiple missions.  The vehicle was relatively nimble given its size, but as the IEDs continued to break trucks and personnel, battle labs pushed out upgrades for the truck to include armoring the personnel compartment of the truck.  The armor package added a few thousand pounds of weight and a significant amount of protection compared to the thin-skinned predecessors.  This armor package helped save lives, but somebody forgot to upgrade the engine.

Well in an effort to be more proactive with IEDs and defeat them before they blew up the newly armored, the battle labs pushed out some fancy electronic gadgets.  My trucks have an extra four to six pieces of electronic equipment which help provide a little protection, but again, no additional batteries or engine upgrades.

So, whenever whoever designed the truck sold it to the government and built them, they either didn't know it would be used in the desert, or weren't quite familiar with the capabilities of an air conditioner.  It's not all that bad in the winter when it's cool outside, but now that it's June and the outside temperature is a balmy 125, the A/C doesn't do a whole lot.

To understand what it's like to sit in one of these little trucks, I invite you to get in your car at about 3pm in July after it has been sitting in the sun for a few hours, turn on the heater, and wear boots, jeans, a sweater, gloves and a beanie.  That's about what it feels like to just sit there.  If you're driving the Humvee, your right leg feels like its being blistered from sitting against the transmission cover (same thing if you're in the passenger seat, but on the left leg).  The little computer we have in the trucks that we use to text each other and command post has a metal frame that will burn you if you put your bare hand or arm on it accidentally.  Well, I think it will burn you, I've never left my hand on it any longer than it requires to know it's hot.  So without dragging it out any longer it's an energy sucking drive to get to the station and start doing what we're here to do.

All that description of the humvee wasn't really the point of this post.  I originally meant to make this a funny post and to get back to all the upgrade stuff and explain the impact on us when we're driving.  As I said, the few thousand pounds of armor and all the electric hardware drains a lot of power on the truck.  You would think driving the humvee is a pretty simple job, but it's almost like flying an airplane, and the guy in the passenger seat is the copilot.  There are only a few gauges to watch, but the most important is the battery power indicator and water temperature.  If either hit the red, it's bad news.

We do our preflight checks and make sure everything is good to go.  As we lumber out the gate, we're flipping switches, making sure our seats and trays are in the upright position, and prep for takeoff.  Hitting the road, we punch the accelerator and a loud VROOM erupts, an auxillary fan kicks on and shoots a cloud of dust in your face, and there is absolutely no increase in speed, in fact I think it slows down sometimes.......but then we slowly pick up speed.  Our MRAPs weigh in around 70,000 pounds and they leave us in the dust if they're not paying attention.  So much for being nimble.  I'm convinced a motor scooter or Geo Metro could out pace our truck if we got into a race.  That would be a humbling experience, but our competition doesn't have a big gun mounted to the top of the truck, so we're still cool.  Well, while we're driving we have to watch the battery indicator and from time-to-time power down systems to ensure there's enough juice to prevent the truck from shutting down.  Generally speaking we're good to go, but sometimes our trucks struggle.  The first time I drove, I managed to stall an automatic.  I didn't know it was possible, but yes, an automatic will stall if you don't properly manage the gauges.  Who knew?  Other than not being able to speed off, I also learned the technique of backing the truck up.  For whatever reason there's not enough power to just throw the transmission in reverse for a quick turn around.  First, you have to power down some of the electronics, but most importantly turn off the A/C (which quickly superheats the truck).  If you fail to turn everything off, the truck will just groan and go nowhere.  So after everything is off, put it in reverse, move, put it in drive, turn everything back on, and continue driving.

So that's our truck and how we get around.  Personally, it makes me laugh a little bit on how underpowered the trucks are, but they get the job done and their a lot easier to move around the than MRAPs.  Well, this post was a little boring and sounds like some whining, but that wasn't the intention.  I'm still alive and well.  Oh, the showers are back on so baby wipes and shaving in front of my webcam is no longer necessary.  At least for now.

Scent of Man

So some of you are probably wondering what, where and maybe even who this email is from.  It's me, Joe Helton.  Anyways, I added a few people to a list that forwards my entries to people and thought I'd let you know what I was up to from time to time.  If this email is clogging your inbox, just send a note back my way and I'll take you off of the list, no hard feelings.  This is just my lazy way of proving I am alive.

"Scent of Man," the sergeant said to me--to me that's a funny description of why all the female interpreters on base to sat around a sergeant and I in the chow hall after a long day of training (it definitely wasn't our ruggedly handsome looks of caked dust and sweat stains).  It was funny at the moment and is now totally taken out of context, so I don't expect any chuckles from those reading this.  That description just came to mind after what happened today and seems to be a recent and unwelcome trend.

I was sitting in my room just after making the trek back to my room this morning when my bladder decided four bottles of water was enough for the moment.  No big deal, I'll just walk around the corner and go to the bathroom I thought....Well these guys, these TCNs (third country nationals, AKA low paid workers that do all the jobs you see on Discovery Channel's 'Dirty Jobs'"), must've descended upon the base's latrines with SWAT Team precision.  I came around the corner and there are two guys at each of the four bathrooms putting "Closed Until Further Notice" signs and tape across the door frames.  For added security, another guy was screwing the doors shut with a drill.  I couldn't help but wonder what happened to the initial notice of the bathroom closure, but figured I'd just walk over to the next living area and use their bathrooms.  Wrong.  As I rounded that corner I caught a glimpse of another group of TCNs walking away, leaving the same presents across the door.  Well, there are three bathroom complexes and the third time is a charm, so I booked it across a gravel lot, between sewage tanks, through a hole in the concrete wall and there was another crew finishing up the last bathroom door.  I don't know where they came from, but in all of about 5 minutes, every bathroom on base was locked down.  I asked the guy what was up and he used his best broken english to say the sewage water was backing up in the city.  His buddy held up a bottle of water and said in his finest english, "use dis to showa."  Nice.  So from now, until further notice, I'll be using the superheated porta-jons and the luxury shower/shave kit in the picture above.  

So, at this rate I better make sure there are plenty of open seats around me at dinner tomorrow because Scent of Man kicks at 112F.

Fingerflickin' Good

So as you know it's been quite a while since the last post and I'm not really sure what I should write about or even say.  I've never been one to talk about work, so I'm not sure what is boring or fun for you to read about.  That being said, I'll try not to terribly bore you.

Let's talk about eating since I love to do that, but not quite the same way the Iraqis do.  Let's start off by saying Muslims, or rather good Muslims don't eat pork (or rabbit by the way, weird).  Anyways, cows aren't that plentiful as they're grazers and I haven't seen much grass around here.  So the main dish as far as I know is lamb or goat.  Sheep roam everywhere over here, but they're most often seen near the markets where people buy everything.  There are no Wal-Marts or grocery stores to buy staples, so street vendors and store owners place all their goods out in the open so people will stop and spend their money.  Well the sheep generally have some marking on their wool, generally some symbol or Arabic writing written in spray paint advertising the owner.  The sheep which hang out near the market ought to know better because you can't go long without seeing someone stuffing a live one in the trunk and driving off, or one being quartered on the side of the road.  I'm assuming the butcher takes it to the market and sells it to a store, or he just chooses to do his butchering on the roadside as if it was some advertisement for the quality of meat he sells.  Anyways, the sheep just go on eating garbage (it is rare to see a trashcan around here) or whatever else they can find for sustenance while what used to be Bob and Sara are taken down the street and hung from a hangar outside of a shop for sale.  I've walked past several places like this while on walking patrols and besides the ever present sewage and garbage smell, the meat sometime smells a little strange.  The flies crawling all over it don't seem to help the appetite either (and the flies are everywhere).  

But, back to the eating.  To sit down and eat with Iraqis, or Muslims as I have been told is a good thing, they say it is as if you are now brothers.  When the Iraqis eat, they put on a large spread.  There was a platter of seasoned rice, plates of vegetables, fried things, homemade goat's milk yogurt (tasty!), different types of bread, and of course....lamb.  There are no plates or silverware to use, so I hope everyone washed their hands prior to showing up.  Once they say eat, everyone is expected to dig in (but only with the right hand because the left hand is for the bathroom, and there's no TP in Iraq).  So now that everyone is eating with their hands and touching every bit of food on the table, you get over the initial gross factor and dig in.  There's this weird thing the Iraqis I've eaten with like to do with their food though.  The rice is a bit greasy from whatever is in it and after they make a little rice ball and eat it there's a little bit of rice left on their fingers.  Well instead of being rude, they don't like their fingers, but instead shake their hand and flick the fingers so the rice lands back on the platter so the rest of us can enjoy those savory little pieces.  Again, tasty.

So there I am eating my lamb that was covered in flies while hanging from an outside overhang after it was butchered in the dirt on the roadside post daily garbage buffet, and I'm doing all right despite the turmoil going on in my stomach.  And then the guy looks at me, grabs some rice and a piece of lamb and breaks the lamb into smaller pieces using his now greasy fingers into my hand and motions for me to eat it.  That was the best bite of lamb and rice I've ever had.

If that's what being a brother means, I'm glad I don't have any.