Joint Forces: Iraq

As of today I have been in country exactly one week. I have made an observation about how the military combines its forces to make a joint effort toward, I believe a common goal.. Win the war with the minimum amount of forces necessary. However, I still believe that each service still likes to puff themselves up to make them either feel better about themselves and their choice of service or that they just like to think that they are in charge. This is true here at Balad. Army and Air Force working on one base trying to see who can be bigger, better and more important in charge. But the good news is, new groups of these people keep coming here year after year, month after month. This is what we call fresh meat or fresh ideas. I've never been a staff guy but this makes me think that flying a desk is more harassment than anything and that you need to struggle daily to just keep your head above water. Now with that off my chest, I plan to write on this thing daily so that I can vent and you can read how tough war is. This base is crowded and evolving and I have to be at the center of the planning here and three other bases. The part that concerns me is the airfield and what flies into and out of this place so nearly every construction project goes thru this office...ie. me since I'm a one man office. I do have a civil engineer to help with the drawing the relative placement of buildings and such so that is way good for me. But there is always some new construction going up on this base and the guy I've replaced had a saying, "where'd that come from?" I hope I don't say that.

On the food side, I had some great pasta today at dinner. It was followed by a dried piece of cake and chocolate ice cream. The cake was so bad that as it approached my mouth to eat I could feel the moisture from my mouth getting pulled into the cake. It still didn't help. Ice Cream was good though.

When it got dark, the power failed and I had to walk to my hooch in the dark. And let me tell you it is so dark that it is impossible to see anything. I bet it was really scary in big cities when the lights go out because just looking at our compound of hooches in the dark with no lights makes you stop and think how lucky we are with electricity. I finally got to my room and found a flashlight and an extra flashlight, walked back to the office and gave my buddy a flashlight so that he could walk to his room with a light. I went back to my hooch, dark as could be, getting hotter by the minute and all I could do was read a book by flashlight. When I woke up the next morning the electricity was back on. That is that.