Sounds

January 13, 2008

I feel like I have neglected to write to you all for some reason or another. I’m not sure if it’s just a feeling or that I’m truly a bad friend. Recently I had to turn over the computer that I can use for the internet to another section that needs it more. I know the person who it went to, and how hard it is to do their work w/o the computer, so I was okay with the loss, other than now I have a very difficult time communicating to my group, you all. So for the next few months, communication will be difficult to the masses until I get the satellite internet that I bought into with some friends, or I get a computer back in my section.

I thought I would write about the different sounds that are associated with life on the FOB. A lot of the time it is a cacophony of sounds that can be overwhelming when you are trying to concentrate on things like what a patient is saying, or simply falling asleep. Being that the tent that I live in is near a central area of operations, I am constantly bombarded by the diesel churning sound of 3 van sized generators. I have become accustomed to falling asleep to either that or my IPod. I often wonder if I will be able to sleep again to the sound of nothing when I return home. The sound of the generators is constant, so you forget about them for the most part, except when you have to pause your conversation when you walk by them b/c you can’t hear the person next to you until you are around some barrier or more than a few hundred feet away. Some of the sounds that come and go throughout the day are different but the same. There is a lot of buzzing/rumbling at different levels of volume and pitch. There are the HMMWV (Hum-vees ) and larger armored trucks of various purposes, both engines roaring and air brakes releasing. Louder than that is the roar of the tracked vehicles that both have diesel engines but the clanking of the treads. Being that my clinic tent is right off the road and a staging area, this is a show stopper until they roll by. There is the snarl of the flying lawn mower that is the UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) drones. Their take off and landing flight pattern is right over my tent and at all hours of the day and night that thing is cranking on by at just a few hundred feet above our heads. One of the other sounds that you may experience at home is that of large vehicles, such as forklifts, backing up. That incessant “Beep, beep , beep, beep…..” all night long gets quite annoying, especially if you wake up for some reason and they are working. By They I mean the folks over at the post office, which is right across the street. I have seen if for myself. They pull up to the loading ramp, throw it in reverse and sit and wait for the other people on the ground to pack up a pallet. In the mean time it seems like they are pulling a thousand point turn, on and off with the beeps. As I type, I can hear them doing it over the sound of Jack Johnson on my IPod.

Now for some war specific sounds. Kalsu is a refueling point for helicopters. The Helipads, notice multiple pads, are about 300 meters away, and tents don’t do a particularly good job at insulating from sounds. At any given time of day or night, there is at least one helicopter landing, refueling with its rotors running (such as now – the past 15 min and probably the next 15 as well), and then taking off again. When there is more than one, the sounds is magnified tremendously with the difference in the oscillations of sound waves as the air is chopped at different times. During the day, there is the popping of rifle and automatic weapons fire coming from the ranges here on the FOB. The SF guys have their own ranges, which are pretty close to our sleep and work areas, so I assume that most of the gun fire is from them. We have 2 large ranges on one end of the FOB, but there is a lot of stuff between us them, so I discount the amount of noise we actually get from them. BUT, on the same end of the FOB, about a mile or so away, there are the big guns, the Paladins. The paladin is a self propelled field artillery piece with a 155mm cannon. I’m not sure what it’s range it, you can look it up a lot easier than I can. In any case, they are our big protection. They are the support to the troops in the pseudo local area and protection of the FOB itself by raining high explosives on the surrounding area as needed. They perform what is called Terrain Denial missions. They fire out into the areas that were previously used by the insurgents to set up mortars and rockets to shoot at us. Since the arrival of the Paladins in the late summer of 2007, before we got here, the FOB has been blessed with an absence of Indirect Fire (IDF). When the paladins are called into service (several times a day, and sometimes in the middle of the night), everyone is started by an enormous blast, that billows tent walls, vibrates your bed with you in it, turns your stomach and rattles any hardened structure in its vicinity. These blasts typically come in volleys of three or more. The scary part about the paladins is that when I run the perimeter road, you run within 100 meters or less of them. Since I don’t carry a radio at all, that alerts us with a signal word as to when they are going to fire, if I am out on the run and they go off, I feel like I would explode from the noise and concussive force. Needless to say, for that mile or so of running, my pace quickens.

I think that covers the majority of sounds here on the FOB. I have tried to get the sound to pick up some of this on my camera, but it is too difficult to distinguish the interesting differences in everything. It is hard to know when the big booms will come around, so I haven’t been successful in capturing those either. The closest I have to come any kind of silence was my trip to FOB Iskan, when I was living in the TMC, which is a hardened building (which may explain why I slept so well while I was there).

I hope you get some perspective (rerrrerrrerrrrrrrrr– there goes a drone flying overhead at 2200 on a Sunday) as to another aspect of life overhear, I mean over here. As far as other senses go – the smell – think porta-jon in summer and the tastes, well the food is bland with little flavor, but it fills you up and there is always an assortment of juices, sodas, and milks to mask that fact.
Another day complete. Another day closer to returning home.

A New Year in Iraq

Happy 2008. The Holidays were bitter sweet here in Theater. Bitter, because I was not home with you all. Sweet, because I was able to spend it with some great people and celebrate in some fashion. We had a great little Christmas Eve party with mom's homemade cookies that I reluctantly froze when they arrived, so that we could enjoy them. Then we went to "Midnight Mass" at 2200 hrs. A few days later, we celebrated the coming of a new calendar year with a few hugs and Happy New Year Cheers at 2100, then we all turned in so that we could work bright and early. So I brought in the new year like I would at home, by going to sleep and waking up to another day. But, we can count down now only 13 months knowing that we will be heading home at the end of February 2009.

With the new year comes new experiences. As I sit here and write, I am an hour or two away from where I typically reside. I have a smaller clinic that supports the infantry side of the house at a power plant that we protect. Life here is much nicer than at Kalsu. I have my own room. The showers and bathroom are less than a minute walk and there is barely the amount of dust floating in the air as there are at Kalsu. Although, there are new smells and sounds to deal with, I sleep much better and enjoy the laid back company of the docs and medics here. I traveled to this location by truck. Yup, I went by convoy, which is contrary to how every other physical therapist that I spoke with travels. But you know what... I'm okay with it. It was a great experience, on a route that is relatively safe by road standards due to the frequency of travel between the two sites. I got some great photos that I have to sift through still, and I'll post some that aren't an OPSEC risk. I will return to Kalsu the same way in a few days time. Which I am okay with, because I can return to my small group of friends. I will likely return to this clinic once a month for a shorter period of time to deal with a smaller case load. They have been building this patient load for the past 2 months. Mostly chronic knee and shoulder pain, with a few chronic ankle sprains here and there. One thing about first visits, is that you don't know what equipment is lying in wait for you... in this case.... nothing worthwhile. I have a lot of coordinating and ordering to do to get what these patients need. It's so worth all the work and effort to see soldiers get relief from some of their pain and carry on with their jobs and missions. That's why I'm here. That's what drives me to get up in the morning. It's good stuff.

So a new year is here and I'm one day closer to returning home. I have received a few notes from people for topics. I will post again soon. Somehow I was able to log on myself so I squeezed this rambling post together quickly. I'm going to try to make some sound recordings and talk about the sounds of life at war (at least from my limited experience). Tonight, I may have another experience to add to my list. Down the road is a mortar team and they invited us down to shoot some huge mortars during one of their fire missions. If it's early enough, I may go down and try to participate. It's nice to get in with the right people. Mortar men let you play with their stuff. Back at Kalsu, the Special Forces guys have invited me to come to their private ranges and shoot weapons with them (and believe-you-me I'll take them up on it). So life isn't all that bad, as long as you take the opportunity to make the most of the situations presented.

So... there was a point, then I rambled. I guess you can take this away from today's blog....
Life will present challenges. Take those challenges in stride and try to learn something from it, otherwise you'll make yourself miserable thinking of all the hardship that is at your doorstep.

I'll try to write again soon. I have limited access to the Internet while I'm away from my primary clinic. Be on the lookout for pics and maybe some video. (OOOO..AHHHH).