Camp Victory: It's not for everyone

We had a couple of "incidents" last week. You probably saw or heard or read about one of them; the other probably didn't make it to the mainstream media outlets. Fasten your seat belts, and I will fill you in.

It was a bright and dusty day. Tuesday (31 May) the sun shone. I believe I recall that the weather forecast for Baghdad was "abundant sunshine." We get a lot of that here. But when it's not sunny and hot, it's dusty and hot. The dust here is freakish. It coats everything. Remind me to post some pictures of the Mother of All Duststorms, taken last year by one of my students. Anyway, I digress (quelle surprise!). The Liberty PX has a nice big plaza surrounded on one side by the PX, and the other sides by trailers with Popeye's, Burger King, and CinnaBuns (yum!) on one end, and trailers with a Jewelry Shop, Beauty Shop, Barber Shop, AT&T Call Center, Plant Shop, Rug Shop, and Gift Shop at the other end. The plaza is used at night to show movies, and last Tuesday was the opening night of Star Wars III. About 15-20 minutes after the movie started, a rocket grenade, launched from somewhere in Baghdad City proper, landed in the plaza about 150 meters from a crowd of about 200+ soldiers and civilians watching the movie. Only a couple of people were injured, due to the fact that the insurgents launch these projectiles with absolutely no training or guidance whatsoever (think Bottle Rockets on the 4th of July, you never know which way they will go). It is just luck that they even land where they are intended. Other than the injuries, the main damage was shrapnel blowing into a couple of the trailers, but since it was Dark-thirty PM, the shops were all closed. We went by a couple of days later to see the plaza, and the light pole right next to the depression was riddled with shrapnel. The lights still worked, of course :-)

Anyway, this caused BDC to go into a mode called "100% Accountability." At the time of the incident, the team was finishing up some administrivia for the two-day class which had started that day. FL was on his daily walk, accompanied this night by Princess and Principal, Submariner was Skype'ing his kids back in Big D, and I was tending to some email. One of the BDC manager types (The Panicked One) flew into the room, breathlessly shouting something about a rocket attack at the Liberty PX and/or the BTC (where our students live). She wanted to know where all of the Team was, and where all of our students were.

This is where working for BDC becomes an exercise in patience. The way Accountability works is this: the Operations Center has this database (or Excel spreadsheet, I'm not sure which) which lists all personnel assigned to the TTC (Theater Training Center). As Instructors, the entire Team is listed on the TTC Accountability Sheet. Each day that we have a class, our Students are also listed on the TTC Accountability Sheet. But they are "technically" only assigned to the TTC during classroom hours; at night they go to their accomadations at the BTC (Baghdad Transition Center). So when this thing happened Tuesday night at 9:00 PM or so, our students had been gone for at least 3 hours. After we received the portion of the printout relating to our class, we were able to validate that Submariner et moi were, indeed, sitting at the TTC. A few minutes later, Princess and Principal walked in, and we validated their presence as well. FL took a little longer, because he was still out walking. Meanwhile, The Panicked One still wanted to know if we had, and I am not making this up, Validated our Students' Continued Existence. We told her that aside from a couple of students who were local (lived at Victory, or Liberty, or Slayer), all the transient students from other camps in Iraq were at the BTC. She said something about how "We have to go down and knock on doors, and validate them!"

At which point The Calm One (a new character; a manager at BDC; and obviously ex-military) pointed out that if the students are at the BTC, then shouldn't the BTC Validate them? Yes. Yes, they should.

Anyway, the Panicked One was not one to be trifled with. She roped a couple of our local liaisons to go with her to the BTC to Validate students. It was about 10:30 PM by this time, and my buddy Mark later told me that he got back from the BTC about 3:00 AM.

The next morning, I came in to the TTC, and

Submariner: "Do you recall the party girl from yesterday?"

Moi: "You mean Vicky? Why, yes. Yes, I do."

S: "It seems like PG wasn't in her assigned quarters at the BTC last night. During 100% Accountability."

M: "Hmmmmm.... Let me guess ..."

S: "Oh, no need to. You've already connected the dots."

M: "Is she in trouble?"

S: "Yes. Yes, she is. And my guess is that she will be sleeping in her own quarters for about a month ..."

So finally, about 14 hours after they started it, BDC had completed the 100% Accountability exercise. Is it just me, or was this an extraordinarily long time to complete this exercise? I don't know, since I have no referential data.

On Wednesday (1 Jun) we start class at 8:30 AM (Party Girl is looking sullen today) and Submariner launches into his module. About 9:00 AM, the building is shaken by a percussion wave and accompanying loud explosion from about a mile away. This is the incident that those of you in the US may have seen on the news. A car bomb exploded at one of the checkpoints on the main road from Baghdad City to Baghdad International Airport. It was a FAIRLY LOUD explosion. Submariner took it all in stride, and continued teaching. Princess, meanwhile, was trying to help Party Girl with one of the exercises, and immediately after the explosion, I looked up and saw Princess trying to occupy Party Girl's chair, while PG was still in it, and her arms were locked around PG, and Submariner later told me that the look of abject terror on Princess' face was astounding. I got up, motioned to Submariner that I would go investigate, and he continued teaching. I walked around the hallways of TTC, but no one seemed to know anything. I later found out (from BDC folks) that THAT is the standard operational result for almost anything that happens here: no one really knows what is happening. Maybe that's a good thing. Too many facts, and they might get in the way of the rumors.

The next day, FL tells the Team that Princess is de-mob'ing back to Dallas(pronounced DEE MOAB ING, as in demobilization; it's BDC-speak for leaving, or getting the hell outta Dodge). It just wasn't her cup of tea, I guess.

Don't get me wrong here: I can understand when someone embarks on a journey, and it turns out to be a different boat, or plane, or roller coaster, than the one they were expecting. I'm just not sure how anyone could come over here, to Iraq, and be surprised at the presence of armaments, ordnance, and bombs. It's a WAR ZONE, remember?

So Princess has left the building, and the Team is down to Four. We have a new cadet on the way, and he will arrive this weekend from Dallas via Houston and Kuwait.

Thursday, the BDC upped the Force Protection Measures to Red from the Yellow that it has been since I arrived: whenever you left a building, you had to wear your PPE. It cut down on the breaks significantly. It was for only one day, though. We went back to Yellow at 1600. We DID decide to keep our PPE in the TTC, though. On the Wednesday of the car bomb, I was the one who went back to the hooches, and I put my PPE on, and I grabbed Submariner's PPE, and Princess' PPE from her hooch, and I hauled it back to the TTC. Normally about a four-minute walk, I stopped twice. Twice! to rest at the bus stop and again at the park benches. PPE is heavy, it's about 38 lbs of steel and kevlar, plus the kevlar helmet, and I was wearing/carrying three sets of it. I have GOT to quit smoking!

So that's about it for the excitement from last week. Oh, and they cancelled the Plaza Theater for the indefinite future.

Any questions?