June 15, 2007

Judi,

After we spoke last night, remember, you told me about Cheryl’s thoughtful and caring advice (You’re going to be in pain for the rest of your fucking life!) I went back to the office to place a couple of calls before the folks in Florida went home. One of the Team 3 guys needed a ride to BIAP for his flight back to the site. Since I was just there yesterday afternoon I figured I knew the route so at about 22:00 we embarked on the journey from Camp Slayer through the “Slayer Tunnel” under Route Irish past the Big PX on Camp Victory through Camp Liberty and then to Camp Sather, the Air Force Base on BIAP from which all of us arrive and depart the Victory Base Complex.

Ron had to be present for roll call at 22:50 which meant we had plenty of time, assuming no wrong turns. I made the first one before we got to the big PX and remembered that Winston was at the wheel when we made the trip the day before.

As the number of missteps grew and the clock ticked my speed and damage to the truck’s suspension grew. Poor Ron took it like a man but it began to look like he would be spending another night on a cot enduring the nocturnal discharges of strangers.

Any trip on the Victory Base Complex (VBC) includes huge potholes, irregular surfaces of nearly fossilized mud, dust and broken pavement. Military traffic is real hard on roads. They are a terrible mess. And there are almost no signs.

On the way there are lots full of Humvees, Strikers, Bradleys, trucks and tanks, hundreds of them. Maintenance yards, cargo containers stacked four high, tents, and all manner of trailers and temporary buildings disappear into the distance. Patrols and convoys have to be avoided and passed or more often stopped for. The amount of activity and equipment is astounding. The cost is beyond belief.

Then, shortly before the final turns on a dirt road bordered on one side by a thirty foot wall topped by concertina wire, common to every wall here, is a yard with scores, maybe hundreds of vehicles destroyed by IEDs. In the darkness I could only see the ones near the road but I’d seen the yard the previous afternoon. Their condition evokes sickening thoughts of the violence, pain and death that each incident must have included. After having just driven past working versions of the same vehicles operated by the living I was stricken by the waste. Even in our hurried state the twisted hulks had their effect.

I missed the last turn into Camp Sather just at the appointed roll call time, realized my mistake, turned around and got Ron to where he needed to be. We ran with his gear to the check-in location and the roll hadn’t been taken! We just made it.

Returning was worse. The first route, which was back the way I’d come, was blocked by a huge truck convoy. I turned around and went the way Winston took in the afternoon and that was blocked by another, longer, convoy. With that I started navigating by dead reckoning based on towers and runway locations and shapes I thought I recognized on the horizon. After seeing an Apache fire countermeasures flares over the road ahead of me, which I’d learn weeks later wasn’t cause for concern, I asked directions from a non-english speaking pedestrian and then from a soldier who told me I had just one more Ugandan manned check point to pass.  It was after 01:00 when I finally turned onto the road that took me into Camp Slayer and boy was I glad. This place, which was as alien as Mars five weeks ago, with the lakeside palms and bombed out palaces feels like home now.

I don’t want you here. We talked about you getting a job here so we could be together but I don’t want you here. You could be perfectly safe but it’s mean, harsh and cold. You are kind and sweet. You need to be safe in our home in a society at peace. Knowing you exist there and it’s a place where people like you are happy makes life here perfectly OK.

The longer I’m here the better it gets. I’m becoming acclimated.

Last night was part of that process. If I ever have to travel off this place, the VBC, I’m going to be prepared. Being lost here made me consider how it would be to make a wrong turn in Baghdad.

© Robert A. Crimmins, Felton, Delaware, USA