Slimed by the 3rd Infantry Tankers - Baghdad Hillbillies - Wal-Mart tarp - the Shamal

Sometimes life is on the edge - other times it just sucks...I had that same "it sucks" experience in early 2003 when I found out that the 101st Airborne Division was deploying to Kuwait in anticipation of an invasion of Iraq.  To the left are my 'peeps' who were with me in Kuwait and in the vehicle all the way to Mosul.   The guy on the left is a senior warrant officer who flew Chinooks and the other guy flew Blackhawks.  Me - I'm in the middle.  They are armed, I am not.  To the left of my Chinook buddy is the tarp I brought with me that I bought at Wal-Mart.  I intended to use it as a floor for any tent I may have found myself in since I was in the Middle East in 1990-1993.
We ended up using it as a cover for the back of the vehicle to hopefully keep the dust off our equipment, water and MREs (it didn't work).  No good against IEDs either and particularly no good against those darn Hammer Division 3rd Infantry guys and their tanks rolling past us in the race to Baghdad.  It was their fault I'm still adverse to anything to do with dust and sand altogether.  We put the Wal-Mart tarp on the vehicle a few minutes after someone took the first picture and you can see it to the right.  To the left you can see one of those 3rd Infantry Tank guys sliming us which was pretty much an hourly occurance.

Anyway, it was during this wonderful time that that four day 'shamal' windstorm, hell from Mars hit.  I was in the 101st Division Plans Cell in the Assault Command Post (ACP) with General David Petraeus and the best Division Chaplain in all the world Chaplain Ken Brown.  He sent me ahead with the ACP to ensure we had coverage up front.  My best friend of all MAJ Tim Quillen was with me all the way and the plans cell had helicoptered up from the Division Main Command post (which was so large it supposedly could be viewed from space), and they barely made it because the 'shamal' was starting.  Miserable?  Uhhh - YES!  Ever been in a place where the large tent you are in is shaking violently - sand is pouring in from every corner of the thing?
The computers are so dusty that we're using PAINT BRUSHES!!! to keep them clean?  No, you haven't.  And we're in the middle of quite literally NOWHERE!  A place where you crawl into your tent and there is mud on the floor but it hasn't rained?  Just for the fun of it, I took a picture (left) of the inside of our tent in Kuwait (this is before the 'shamal' in Iraq), when I woke up one night and while lifting my head a few inches I bump into something - and that something turns out to be a tent pole that had fallen over and was inches from bashing me in the head!  Anyway - it sucked - but I've already talked about this in another blog.

But here we are in the Iraqi version of a 'shamal,'  a REALLY bad sandstorm - like Lawrence of Arabia kind of bad sandstorm.  It rains for two whole minutes and there is so much dust in the air that when the rains cuts through it it turns to mud and that mud hits the ground for a grand 2-3 minutes - perfect timing to mess up just about everything.  Tents rattle for three days.  Mud is all over.  The sky is blood red.  Helicopters can't fly and my friend Tim Quillin and the other planners have to land somewhere else and bus in because of the bad winds.  No day for almost four days.  We are all NOT in a happy mood.  But we make it through.  BG Freakley lets the newspaper guys sleep in his tent since they had nowhere to go.  And the one writer found out he won a Pulitizer Prize while he was in that tent.
Anyway - I got to my HUMVEE that night and was just about through with it all.  I couldn't show it but I was beat.  We hadn't slept for about three days or so just to get here and we are downing the Instant Taster's Choice coffee right out of the packet just to stay awake.  Then in pops Tim Quillin - wondering if he could get an MRE because he was hungry - really?  He's one of those brilliant always moving minds that can put things where they belong.  We sat and talked for awhile and he left - I got into my mud hut and went to sleep - I to this day don't know how - and someone remarked after we returned that we were lucky to get out of their alive -I don't know how we did.
One of my enduring memories those days was praying with BG Freakley before he went out on a recon.  And seeing GEN William Wallace, Commander of V Corps, sitting on the ground with MG Petraeus going over maps of all things and strategizing how we were going to take Baghdad - or (I think) how to deal with those towns we by-passed along the way in our march to the Capital of the Persian Empire (Karbala, An Najaf, etc.).
The next day - the sun was out - the wind had stopped - we peeled off the chemical suits we had on for days and generally did some cleaning up.  There's a lesson here friends.  It's written on faces.