Killing Time in Kuwait

If you've ever watched the TV series M*A*S*H, then you'd have a pretty good picture of how I have lived for about a week at Camp Virginia in Kuwait. Ten of us are packed into a dark green tent. Some sleep on cots. Others are on mattresses. I'm on the bottom half of the squeakiest bunk bed that I've ever encountered. There's lighting inside and vinyl air conditioning tubes about as wide as my waist blowing some of the coldest air onto us night and day. It's a drastic adjustment for the eyes to go from enclosed darkness to the bright rays of sunlight bouncing off the sand outside our home in Kuwait.

It is here where we are "acclimatized" as they tell us almost every day. That means we are supposed to get adjusted to the time change and heat. You never get adjusted to the heat though. By 9 am, the sweat slowly begins to drip while we're dressed in our long sleeve desert camouflage uniform.

For two days, we received more intense desert training, which includes firing weapons at close intervals (nearly shoulder to shoulder). It's kind of tough to remain focused on your target, while hot bullet casings from someone else's weapons are flying toward your hands and face. We also learned how to identify Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs). It's very interesting how they're are being created, hidden and used.

The most irritating part of the training wasn't the close interval firing. It wasn't that we were less than ten miles from the Iraq border. It wasn't that there were Unexploded Ordinances still bury along parts of the desert where we were training (we were training at a range that was part of the desert used during Iraq's invasion into Kuwait in the 90s). It wasn't even that we went two days without showers. The worst part was sleeping on the floor on a tent that, by day, was a classroom. By night, we moved chairs, spread out sleeping bags and mats (the military calls that a "Sleeping System") and crammed about an inch apart to bed down for the night. There was no room to toss and turn. Heck, you couldn't event just toss! And yes, there were women in our tent too. They were sprinkled among the group. They brushed their teeth outside like us. They wiped themselves down with baby wipes like us. They went without showers like us. They were miserable at some point like us.

As we began to wrap up our training, I heard a couple of people say something that I thought I'd never hear. Tired and drained, some folks said, "I can't wait to get to Iraq." Funny thing. I agreed. We want to get into some sort of routine that will give us some sense of control or "normalcy" over our lives again.