Halfway to Home

The moon is full tonight.  The inkling of superstition in my bones makes me reminisce of the wild, full moon, fight ridden nights we often experienced when I worked in the busy bars of Nashville, and I hope that the same effect isn’t felt in these middle eastern countries.  In all actuality, it’s been startlingly quiet in Baghdad.  This time around has been a far cry from the noisy summer of ’07 when rocket and mortar attacks were a near daily occurrence.  Last year, a few particularly effective rounds had even found me lurching under my dirty, mud-encrusted desk when they impacted a mere hundred yards away, briefly knocking out the power, rattling the fixtures in our trailer, and sending a cloud of dust and shrapnel high into the air.  Save for the few loose rounds of nearby gunfire that have pinged against the metal roof of my room and the absence of F-15’s taking off in the middle of the night, this trip is reminding me more of my short stint in Bagram, Afghanistan, than what I remember of my time spent in Iraq.

In fact, this entire deployment has felt only vaguely familiar.  I’m working with a mostly new and much bigger crew of teammates, each with a dramatically different personality from the next.  My responsibilities and work load are also much more demanding.  Even the landscape of Camp Victory has changed.  Though I’m living in the same row of the same compound as last year, it appears much different.  The chest-high concrete barriers surrounding each trailer have been replaced with new, taller T-walls, and so much gravel has been piled down each path that just trying to walk between the hooches feels like wading through a foot of water.  The parking lot of the shoppette has recently been paved and is no longer of sea of brown.  The Hesco barrier graveyard (as we affectionally called it) has finally been cleaned up, making way for a desert driving range.  I guess that would technically be called a sand trap, but I digress.  Even some of the local merchants have outgrown their accommodations.  The Green Bean, a favorite hang out for the majority of Camp Victory residents, has abandoned its outdoor picnic tables for a new building twice its original size, and it’s still packed to the brim every single morning.  Some things really do never change, though.  On my first morning back in Baghdad, I noticed a familiar face behind the coffee shop counter.  Though it’s been a year since my last tour in Iraq, the Indian man not only remembered me, but also my daily order — double espresso chai hot.

Not only has this trip been much quieter due to the lack of bone-jarring explosions, there are noticeably fewer soldiers contributing to the hustle and bustle of every day life at the camp.  Many troops have moved to more recently active areas of Afghanistan, and being closer to the middle of a year long deployment, others have transitioned to their more permanent homes at outlying FOBs.  At least half of the people milling around the chow hall each day are civilians, and I no longer have to wait in line to catch a quick shower in the mornings.  In fact, I usually have the entire latrine to myself.  Not that there would be any shortage of hot water, nonetheless.  The "cold" water has usually just cooled down enough in the early morning hours to be considered comfortable.

I’m not exactly sure how high the temperature has reached since I arrived, but I’m fairly certain it’s climbed to about 125.  It’s definitely hot enough to avoid walking to work every day (especially since my day doesn’t start until almost 1000), but we break for a half hour game of frisbee in the middle of the road nearly every evening.  Even after the sun begins to descend, the air is still hot enough to raise that flimsy, plastic disc ten or fifteen feet above our heads with almost every fling.  And though it has the same musky stench, the air is much thicker than I remember.  Thanks to an unusually dry winter, the sound of dueling helicopters are even less frequent because of impenetrable sand storms.  Hopefully some of the dust will settle before my scheduled departure in sixteen days.

Yes, an abundance of change has occurred in Baghdad in just under a year.  Sidewalks have been built, new housing has been moved in, and the chow hall is being remodeled with brand new tiled floors.  It’s almost as if we are trying to make this a place we can call… home.  Just as was the news that the US government signed a ninety-nine year lease for our property in Bagram, it’s a stark and disenheartening reminder that we, our troops, our youth, will be here for many years to come.  If anyone can make the best of it, though, the men and women, military and contractors, here in Baghdad truly can.

Cheers,
Felina