Hello All,

Greeting from the land of sandstorms and heatstroke! I know that some of you were wondering when I was going to write again, especially after my last blurb about almost nothing. I admit that things have been a little slow around here, and the stupidness level was down for most of this week, however I went on a mail run to Doha yesterday, and the stupidness level is right back to a normal (Army normal, that is) level.

Now if you remember, Doha was the nice place I was at during my first week here in Kuwait. I liked it then, we had a spacious warehouse to live in, cots to sleep on, almost (no, not really) clean showers and really good chow four times a day (Midnight meals RULE!). Subsequent trips to Doha had soured me a bit, it had become much busier, and since I no longer lived there, I had to drive around and try to find a parking place. Trust me, I would rather go to the mall during the Christmas rush than try to find parking on Doha. However, I was assigned to go and get the mail and to take two Hummers instead of one because of the large number of packages that have arrived.

My mood quickly improved when I heard of the number of packages arriving for the company. First of all, the folks from work sent a large number of them with lots of goodies for me, and secondly, I kinda like playing Santa Claus to all the troops with their mail. It’s good for the soul, you might say. I was also assigned two soldiers that had to go to Doha to see the finance department about a couple pay issues. No problem, I needed anther two soldiers to drive the second hummer and Matt wanted to come along to go to the PX (see Mini-Mall in Army terms). What could be better than a cool drive with a pal to up to pick up presents for your buddies?

Well, how about a hot drive up to a rolling cluster fuck to pick up presents for your buddies? To say that it was hot out would be a mild understatement. I saw the devil on the corner as I was driving out the gate
and he asked to borrow my sun-block. Those of you that live in the desert
know how a hot wind feels when you’re driving down the highway (Hummers don’ t have air-conditioning) opposed to the cool wind blowing in your face in the Midwest (see Home). I didn’t mind the breeze too much, the body armor was more of a nuisance, keeping the hot wind from evaporating the sweat off my body. When we reached Doha I had a weird reverse pit-stain going and my T-shirt was soaked on the chest and back, but not on my pits or sleeves.

Before you can go onto any military post you have to clear your weapon. This is a procedure that ensures your weapon doesn’t have a live round in the chamber, and is a very good idea. If things aren’t too busy, I like to take off my body armor and let my T-shirt dry out at this place, and considering the climate here, it only takes a couple minutes. I did this, then put my helmet and armor in the back seat of the hummer and wore my soft cap (it’s like a baseball cap, but different) up to the final gate to enter Doha.

My logic, you see, was that since we’re inside the perimeter of Doha, and therefore protected from any would-be terrorist dickheads, it would be safe
to move about without any additional protection. You might agree with me,
but then you would be wrong as well. As we approached the gate there was a bit of a traffic jam. I muttered to myself about lousy drivers and using the vertical pedal on the right side when a female soldier walked up to my hummer. It wasn’t until she was standing right next to me that I noticed her rank; Sergeant Major. For those of you that don’t know, Sergeant Majors are the top of the Enlisted food chain. They generally report to Colonels or Generals and rarely take shit from anybody else. I have met several in my career, and have no personal grudges toward any I met, unlike many of the officers I have met in my years. Being experienced with the species, and knowing that I hadn’t done anything wrong (um, yeah, I didn’t think that I had done anything wrong) I greeted her calmly.

“Good morning, Sergeant Major,” I was grinning like an idiot.

She looked back like I WAS an idiot, crumpled up her nose, cocked her head for a second and said, “You aren’t from here, are you?”

“No, Sergeant Major, we’re just in from Camp Coyote to pick up 2 months worth of mail.” Technically this was a lie, however, when the Sergeant Major tells you the answer to a question, only a fool (not an idiot, mind
you) would answer incorrectly.

“Well,” she said rolling her head and sizing me up (this is usually not a good sign), “you need to put on your flak and Kevlar before you go on post.”

“Roger that Sergeant Major, I’ll get squared away.” And quickly reached back to grab my armor and helmet, thinking to myself, ‘What the hell is all this about?’

“Pass the word to your First Sergeant, now.”

“Roger that, Sergeant Major.”

“Drive on soldier.”

And we drove into Doha. Matt looked at me and said, “Two months of mail?”

“Trust me, remf’s don’t mess with guys in the field, even if we’re remf’s too, if they don’t have to. Can you believe that a Sergeant Major was playing Kevlar cop?” A remf stands for Rear-Echelon-Mother-Fucker, a little pet name that front line troops (see Infantry, Armor and Artillery) came up for guys in the rear, and yes, I am one of them. I played on the Sergeant Major's weak side, because Sergeant Majors are supposed to look out for their troops, and nobody had told me about the policy change on Doha.

“I’ve never even heard of it before.” Matt said.

But I had, from the first gulf war. I didn’t attend that expedition, but those veterans that did told me a story about a full bird Colonel that did the same thing. He would walk up and down the convoy before it was heading out and scream at soldiers that weren’t wearing their helmets. All I could think of when I heard that story, years ago, was the same thing I was thinking as we rolled thru the gate on Doha, ‘Don’t these people have better things to do?’

I’m beginning to understand what drives postal employees over the edge. I’d better get going, if this keeps up, I might be going ‘postal’ a little myself. Kidding, well.... almost.

I love you all,
Will

PS – This will be the first of two messages about the mail run. I ran out of space and time, but there will be a happy ending for this one.