A Few Pictures

Sunrise in Kuwait.

Subway in Kuwait

SITREP: Iraq

Well by the title of my post you can probably guess I am in Iraq.   A sitrep is army lingo for situation report.  But at least it is not an acronym .  My conversations now are about 80% acronyms and I only know about 5 and what they stand for and I feel guilty about it  because  I will be getting these long string of orders from somebody and when they finish I am going make them go back and translate all the acronyms for me.

My thought was that once in Iraq I could give an eye witness insight to what is happening here, but now that I am here I see that I am an eye witness but it’s a worms eye view, and not even a free range worm, but a worm in a jar, so my on the scene  blogging will be of little significance.  But the good news is that still leaves me with a wide range of insignificant things to right about.   Like this wasp,  I was as big as my thumb which you could have seen if I was brave enough to put my thumb next to him.

Report From Ft. Hood

the President @ Ft. Hood

Before mobilization the Army conducts a Soldier Readiness Program (SRP). By “ready,” the Army means medically, dentally, and financially. The process is meant to shake out any problems a solider might have before deploying. As beneficial as it might be to get that loose filling screwed down before you ship out, an SRP is such a tedious ordeal that you might be willing to go a year only chewing on one side of your mouth to avoid it.

I’ve gone through 4 SRP’s at least in the past year, and there is always something not right with the old paperwork. There is always a new excuse for drawing more blood, and there is always extra room on your arm for more shots, and finally, no matter how fast you get everything else done, there is always a huge bottleneck at the final reviewing station.

SRP on Battalion Ave (Ft. Hood) starts in an octagonal building known as “the dome” on account of its roundish roof. You arrive by the busload, bustling in with a couple of hundred soldiers single file. Once you get through the glass doors, there is a desk manned by three civilians demanding your ID card and your green sheet. Once they swipe you in and stamp and initial your green sheet, you can feel proud: you’ve just completed station 1 of your SRP and have 13 more stations to visit. Your last station will be Station14, but Station 14 is just a formality to make sure you’ve gone to station 13. Station 13 is really your last station because that’s where they conduct your final: “the final review.”

At other SRPs, I’ve found myself sitting in a hallway for hours waiting to get into the waiting room, only to wait more hours before getting to see the final reviewer. The SRP on Battalion St. is prepared for the overflow. They have six rows of 20 seats all lined up in the lobby to the left of the front door as you walk in. And when you see all those soldiers lined up –privates, sergeants, majors, specialists– all humbly sitting there, you think to yourself, “I hope i don’t have to wait in that line.” But of course you will.

I had to go through station 13 three times. It is a dull event. But you work with what you have and the first time around you have a bunch of new punctures in your arms from the shots you got at stations 11 and 12. After you have thoroughly examined your needle wounds, you can read about the side effects of the shots from the handfuls of flyers the medics hand out. (The small-pox pamphlet was so good I read it all the way from the front side to the back.) After I had run out of tracts to peruse, I took to playing with my cellphone, taking time to discover how to take pictures with it and send them to people– namely fellow blogger RC2, and a friend in Connecticut who told me to stop because I was running up her bill. But when my battery started running low, there was nothing for me to do but to endure the interminable wait, cursing myself for not bringing a book.

I had already cleared SRP the day Major Hasan employed his Muslim faith to murder his comrades. Our unit had one close call with a soldier who was there that day but was out a good number of minutes before the shooting. The Fort held a big ceremony today and the President and the Generals spoke in grand manner about the heroes the nation lost as the ceremony demands.

But when I think about the events of Nov 5th, I don’t think of heroes or patriots. I just think of all those young people sitting at station 13…waiting.

Speaking of Survival…

This is one of the last projects I worked on, the cover for Survival Writing.

I wanted to give my friend Claire Scrivener a plug.  Here is her website.

Speaki

A Brief Explanation as to where I’ve been…

My apologies to everyone for the long dormancy of this blog, but I have been activated by the Uncle Sam to participate in the WOT (war on terror).  I know we aren’t supposed to call it that any more, but I have seen the mission statement.  And the mission statement specifically mentions the war on terror.

In any event, as the “go date” approached, I found myself being called to attend more and more training and had less and less time to devote to cartoons –which is as it should be.

This is not my first deployment.  Back in the 90’s I served in Desert Storm in the 82nd.  I remember the training and equipment we had then and I see the training and equipment we have now.  And I have to say it is all much better now–all except me.  I am not quite as high-speed as I was in the 90’s so I feel a little guilty about donning all this cool equipment the Army gives me.  Something about  Jesus’ admonition against putting old wine into new bottles comes to mind… Or is it the other way around?

As for this blog, my hope right now is to be able to update it occasionally over the next year or so. Yes, I’m being intentionally vague, as I have an aversion to mentioning anything about troop movements (especially on a blog).  I don’t think I know anything that is “strategically impactful,” but blabbing about the mission  strikes me as bad form.

So let me say so long for now, and I’ll update when I can.

Best regards,

Sam

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