Two Weeks In Theater!!

Wednesday 2 May 2007

I am finally getting settled into a battle rhythm for my duration here in the IZ. With most of the day being spent here at work, you tend to do everything here. Breakfast, lunch and dinner are eaten at the chow hall adjacent to our office. Workout at the gym is also the norm, so the days I do one workout a day I tend to do it here at work, and for the two a days then the second workout I do early in the morning over at the gym close to where my hootch is.

I am getting spun up on the details of the project that I will be leading, having met with my Corp of Engineer counterpart and the US Army Engineer officer who will also be supporting the project. Prior to that meeting we had our weekly meeting with our Iraqi Officers that will occupy the facility once we have it completed. There were three that Iraqi officers that attended the meeting. As usual we started off the meeting with Chai tea which is definitely habit forming especially with all that sugar that stuff has. Then a formal round of pleasantries and finally down to business.

Looks like I will be heading up north for a day or two to check out the current status of the project and look at the buildings and power generators on site. This will also give me a chance to speak with some of the Army Material Command (AMC) folks that are supporting the project.

The other day there were two incidents that were stark reminders that we are in a combat zone even though sometimes in the IZ one tends to forget. While waiting for the bus you could plainly hear two explosions about 5 minutes apart. The first one was a VBIED that exploded near one of the Government Bldgs outside of the IZ, the second one was a suicide bomber who blew himself up at the scene when the first responders IE police. Fire and medical personnel arrived at the scene. The first explosion was big enough to blow out windows in nearby buildings. Then at night right after I turned off the lights and hit the sack. About 5-6 rockets exploded in the IZ and the whole billeting area where I am staying at shook big time after the sounds made their way to where I was at. No one got hurt. The sirens went off and those outside had to take cover. I was inside but when your hootch is a metal trailer with a thin roof, it sort of doesn’t give you much protection from incoming rounds. So I put on my flak vest (IBA) and went back to sleep. At about 2330 hrs I work up the sirens were off which meant it was all clear, so I took off the vest and went back to sleep.

Today is suppose to be a scorcher as temps are to hit 99 degrees, it definitely would be a nice evening to hit the pool nearby, but since I only have one duffle bag and a ruck with me my civilian items are up north so I guess for now I am out of luck. A couple of minutes ago you could hear another loud explosion from inside my office and I just grabbed some coffee from the coffee shop and to the west you could see large clouds of smoke billowing to the sky which means another one of those scumbags decided to either detonate a bomb remotely or blow himself up and kill some more innocent civilians or Iraqi Security Forces.