Its A Beautiful Day

It is an absolutely beautiful day. I am sitting on a deck overlooking the FOB and the helicopters going in and out. Recently I’ve been earning my money, usually in the middle of the night. But today it seems like things are quiet and I have some time to reflect on the past few weeks.
Things here go in waves. Whether boardem, squabbles, drama, loneliness, happiness, or real work, it seems that it goes and comes like the waves on the shore. The sand doesn’t have to worry about the water permanently submerging it. The water will go and come as regular as a heartbeat. And so it goes with life in the CSH.
With the waves life is now about the battle rhythm. We have adapted to the new normal, which no one back home would find normal. Midnight trips to bunkers, or the whole CSH waiting on a medivac to arrive (just like the opening credits of MASH), it all is peculiarly normal. Now most of us come from a hospital setting back home, so we are already used to a lifestyle that others would find atypical. But now, with the addition of a war zone, and guns, our lifestyle can be downright comical. For instance, where else would you find yourself in boxer shorts, t-shirt, boots, and an M16 huddled in a small dusty bunker just the right size for a hobbit, with 5 of your coed colleagues from work in similar attire?:) Now imagine that encounter happening on a semi regular bases. After a while…this becomes normal.
Now this is one normal occurrence among many. Other things include, the “executive game” poker night, cigars, bon fires, finding the best “ingredients” to add to your coffee, trips to the PX to find the newest shipment of stuff you don’t really need, new techniques for redecorating your CHU.
In addition to having new norms, you also acquire new skill that will be useless in any other setting such as: being able to tell what type of aircraft is arriving by how it sounds, knowing the least popular times to use the showers, how to season fish using normal condiments so that it tastes like a different dish than the week before, how to combine a PT reflective belt, a Ipod, and your ID so that it is one unit and can be easily doffed and donned when going to the gym, how to make an online ordering form fit in such a way that things can get delivered to Iraq, convincing your insurance agency or really any company in the US that you are not driving in your car on your cell phone, and that you have no “land line” to call from, and that you really are in Iraq.
And so, as I have said before, “life goes on.” I am now about half way done with my tour here, and I can tell I write a lot less than earlier in the deployment. I think that is because things become like I have said, so normal, and sometimes it’s hard to write about normal things. The other reason is because there are many things that I just can’t write about (but that is for the good and safety of the soldiers here…I would be naive if I thought that no one with nefarious purposes would have access to this blog and use the information herein to the detriment of the troops here).
I try to write down the significant things that happen to me here…and by far the thing that is the most amazing so far is how God protects our soldiers (see previous blog entries). That’s not to say there aren’t tragedies that we deal with here. As in any war, there is death. And here those losses are felt acutely by those that knew and lived and worked with the guys that don’t make it home…a soldier that just got engaged, or the one who’s wife back home is pregnant. We see those too. Right now in Iraq the culture is violent…but our nation has its share of violent culture as well, so I can’t throw stones. Weather its south side of Chicago, Washington DC, or Mosul violence abounds. With just a google search you will find that 4 people were killed in DC, 3 people were killed in Mosul, and 3 people were killed in Chicago all yesterday. What for?...gangs and domestic dispute in the US but here it was some police officers and a random guy; for what reasons… maybe ideology…..I do not know for sure, but not as easily classifiable as our home grown violence that we seem to be comfortable with, or at least aren’t reporting on the mainstream media.
But even death is part of the battle rhythm. Now for some of us working in the hospital, death is no stranger…especially people who deal with trauma back home. It happens. Death here or back home always feels the same… and now that this blog entry has turned very morose I don’t feel like describing the feeling. Needless to say the feeling ain’t great. But today is another day with new possibilities and problems to solve. And I need to leave you now to go take care of the medivac coming in….something about a peritonsilar abscess. But I will leave you with a few shots around the FOB…little glimpses of my life here.

Poker Night...no real money at stake of course.

The winning shot...March Madness has nothing on us...move over Blue Devils

This little book from Hood Publications Inc. has every one here jealous that they too aren't "hoodlems" too. Happy Birthday Don...am I the first to wish you Happy B-day?


Thanks Mom and Dad for the Posters!




They Have some pretty scarry banditos over here

Two things that makes life here very sweet!